“You can’t be seen like that!” protested Willow. “ ’Tis the most indecent costume that I’ve ever seen. Blessed Mother! You can see your legs!”
“Don’t be such an old woman, Willow,” retorted Velvet. “I’m wearing scarlet silk stockings.” She held out a rather shapely red leg. “See!” Her garters, covered in twinkling red garnets, flashed wickedly.
“That’s worse!” shrieked Willow.
“I can’t be fire in a gown over vertingale and hip bolsters, Willow. It would have been far too awkward. Fire must leap and flow gracefully.”
“I think she looks rather original,” said Robin, his lime-green eyes sparkling with amusement. “I certainly have no objection to her costume, and I must assume, Alex, that you have no objections either, else we would not see Velvet here before us now in her delightful garb.”
Alex let his eyes slide lazily and appreciatively over his wife. “She’s more covered than ye are, Willow, with yer rather low neckline.”
“Indeed,” said the Earl of Alcester, looking pointedly down his wife’s décolletage. “Besides, I think Velvet looks rather fetching.”
Willow threw up her hands in despair. “I cannot imagine what the queen will say,” she fussed, and then drawing her lips together in a severe line grew silent.
The queen, however, was enchanted by the originality of Velvet’s costume and praised her greatly. There wasn’t a gentleman at court who didn’t agree with Her Majesty’s entirely astute judgment, and Alex found his temper sorely tried on far too many occasions that evening. The women were divided between those who agreed with the queen and those who hid their jealousy behind disapproving frowns and pretenses of shock at the Countess of BrocCairn’s outrageous garb.
Mary de Boult was one of the latter. She had come dressed as an English rose, but had chosen a dusky pink for her gown, and not until it was too late had she realized that the deep color rendered her milky skin sallow. She would have been far better off had she chosen the clear pink her dressmaker had tried to press upon her. Added to this was the fact that her gown lacked originality—there were at least two dozen other roses in the room—and Lady de Boult’s unhappiness was complete, particularly in the face of Velvet’s much-talked-about costume.
“I am appalled that Lord Gordon would allow his wife to appear in such an outlandish garb, but then he’s naught but a rude and savage Scot,” she said spitefully.
The Earl of Essex turned and fixed the lady with a rather fierce look. “Madame,” he said, “I fear that your disappointment stems rather from the fact that Alexander Gordon used you to bring Velvet around. But then how could he have possibly had any serious interest in you when he was betrothed to her?”
Mary de Boult gaped, struck dumb by the insult, but before she could reply, Essex had turned away from her, and the few people who had been gathered about her melted away with mumbled excuses. Angry and ashamed, she vowed vengeance. Essex had been right. Alex had used her. He was the most exciting man she had ever known, but he didn’t know that she was alive. He had simply used her to gain his own ends. She hadn’t even been able to bring him to her bed, an unheard-of thing in her experience. Men were ever eager to get into her bed. He would pay! God’s bones, he would pay dearly! And that proud, arrogant bitch he was married to would pay as well!
Mary de Boult sought out her husband. “Take me home,” she commanded him. “I am ill.”
Clifford de Boult was some twenty years older than his wife. His first wife had died childless after some fifteen years of marriage, and he had had no illusions about Mary when he had married her. She had been fifteen at the time and came from a large family. He had noted that she was quite healthy, and he had hoped she would prove fecund, which she quickly did, birthing him four healthy children in four years. He now had three sons and a daughter. She had done her part, and now he did his by allowing her to spend a portion of each year with the court and turning a blind eye to her little flirtations as long as they were discreet. He had not, he believed, been made a cuckold by his wife, and he would have called out any man he believed had had intimate knowledge of his Mary, for in his own way he loved her.
Bending, he inquired solicitously of her, “What is the matter, my dear?”
“My head aches unbearably with all this noise and the stink of the fireplaces,” she whined. “You’d think Lynmouth’s fireplaces would draw better.”
He had not noticed any excess smoke and had thought that, quite to the contrary, the ballroom was quite well ventilated. Still, it was not like Mary to leave a good time, and so he could only assume that she was telling the truth. “I will beg the queen’s leave for us to withdraw,” he said and hurried off.
Mary de Boult looked across the room to where Alexander Gordon stood next to his wife. The open look of love on the earl’s face as he bent to speak to Velvet made Mary almost physically ill, so great was her jealousy. Why should he be so happy when he had made her so miserable? she fumed bitterly. Her hatred rose, almost choking her, and she whispered to herself, “I wish you were dead, Alexander Gordon! I wish you were dead!”
Velvet shivered suddenly.
“Are ye cold, sweetheart?” Alex inquired worriedly. “Those silks ye’re wearing cannot be very warm.”
“Nay, Alex. ’Twas just a rabbit hopping across my grave.” She was puzzled herself. For the briefest moment she had felt some terrible, fierce hatred directed toward herself and Alex, and, looking around, she had seen no one who might be their enemy. She shook off the anxiety and concentrated on having a good time. Was she not the highlight of this evening, the center of attention? There wasn’t a person in the room this night who hadn’t either admired or disapproved of her costume.
The queen did not leave Lynmouth House until the first pale light of dawn was beginning to gray the skies over London. She had danced every dance that evening, eaten of the finest food, and drunk the best French wines. Elizabeth Tudor felt more relaxed and at peace with the world than she had felt in many months. She had even, for a few brief moments that evening, not missed her Dudley.
The young earl’s Twelfth Night masque was declared an enormous success by all who had attended it, and even Robin himself admitted to having had a good time. So much so that he had promised the queen that from now on he would continue his late father’s custom of keeping Twelfth Night. Well-satisfied, Elizabeth Tudor had stepped into her barge and, waving gaily, departed.
Now began another round of fêtes and parties prior to the beginning of the Lenten season. Feeling better than she had felt in weeks, Angel persuaded Robin to remain in London at least until Candlemas, and perhaps beyond. The Earl of Lynmouth, his beautiful wife, and his sisters became a familiar sight at all of the galas.
Velvet could not ever remember being happier. It was true that she and Alex still quarreled over the slightest thing, but she sometimes wondered if they both remained stubborn only because their reconciliations were so wonderfully passionate. Yes, she was very happy and certainly not prepared for the sudden arrival home of her brother Murrough O’Flaherty.
Murrough was the second of Skye O’Malley’s children and perhaps the one most like her, for as much as he loved his wife and children he also loved a good adventure. He had spent his early years in Ireland, and later followed the Tudor court where he had been a page to Geraldine FitzGerald Clinton, the Countess of Lincoln. Growing bored with it, and realizing that with no lands of his own or title he could not go very far at court, he had asked his mother to send him to Oxford where he studied diligently both there and later at the university in Paris where his father had studied. No one had been more surprised than Skye when Murrough announced his intentions of going to sea.
Taken in hand by his mother’s best captains, he had shown a true O’Malley talent for the sea. By the time Murrough reached the age of twenty-five he had his own ship, and was one of Skye and Robbie Small’s most trusted captains.
“Of them all, he’s the only true O’Malley you spawned,” old Sean MacGuire, Skye’s senior captain, had observed to her.
Murrough’s had been one of the eight vessels accompanying Skye and Adam to the Indies. Now suddenly he was back, sailing not into his home port of Plymouth, but up the Thames into the pool of London itself. By chance, one of the Earl of Lynmouth’s retainers was on the docks seeking a ship with oranges, for Angel craved them desperately. Recognizing theSea Hawkand her master, the earl’s man spoke to Murrough.
