Face Down Beneath The Eleanor Cross Part 16

Content, Rosamond cuddled closer, murmured, "Mama," and drifted into sleep.

Chapter 29.

Rosamond was sleeping in Lady Appleton's bed.

Jennet scowled at the child then felt her features soften as she saw that her mistress held the small intruder in a comforting embrace.

Sometime during the night, Rosamond had left her own chamber, toddled down one flight of stairs and up another, and climbed into the bed. Not so surprising, Jennet supposed. The child had been accustomed to sleeping in this room with her nurse.

Nurse Bond. There had been a wasted trip. Ten miles each way to talk to a woman who had naught to say about Eleanor Lowell. And not a word about Master Secole, either. She claimed she'd had nothing to do with anyone but the maids and Rosamond.

Jennet would have admired the woman's loyalty if she'd been in Lady Appleton's service. As it was, she dearly wished Nurse Bond could have given them some sort of evidence to use against Eleanor.

And if wishes were horses, she thought, beggars might ride.

Rosamond appeared sweet when she was sleeping, but a few hours later the little girl put on a fearsome display of temper.

Hands over her ears, Lady Appleton stared at Rosamond in wonder. "How can such howls come from a human throat?"

"Ignore her." Eleanor concentrated on her needlework, pretending to hear nothing out of the ordinary. "She'll quiet down all the quicker if you do not coddle her."

Jennet agreed, having had some experience of her own with cranky children, but when Rosamond tore off up the stairs toward her mother's bedchamber and Lady Appleton went after her, Jennet followed.

"Something has provoked this rage. Did I do something wrong?" Lady Appleton hovered near Rosamond, who had thrown herself on the floor and was beating it with her fists.

"You have done naught but indulge the child, madam, playing with her after you broke your fast." Jennet had watched, astonished, as her mistress flopped down on the ground and thrashed about to make a snow angel alongside Rosamond's.

"Rosamond," Lady Appleton pleaded, "what is the matter?"

"She's too young to explain anything complex," Jennet said. "And this tantrum may have been brought on by nothing at all. Children her age are often unreasonable."

"Such heats cannot be good for a child. If words will not calm her, then mayhap herbs- Stop that, Rosamond."

On her feet again, she tossed her mother's possessions onto the floor and began to jump up and down on them. Determined to bring the child under control, Lady Appleton caught her by the back of her bodice and lifted her clear off her feet. This sudden move so startled Rosamond that she stopped her racket to stare in disbelief at her captor.

Taking advantage of the momentary silence, Lady Appleton plunked Rosamond down on the edge of the bed, giving her a warning look. "No more of this nonsense, Rosamond. You are old enough to start learning how to behave like a young gentlewoman. Furthermore, you will put this room back to rights or you will do without your supper."

Jennet decided this would be a good time to leave, before she was pressed into service as a watchdog, but as she backed toward the door, her foot struck something. When she bent to pick it up, she discovered it was a book, one that was familiar to her. She began to smile. She had been right about Eleanor Lowell, after all.

"Madam," Jennet whispered, "There is something here you should see." She handed over a copy of John Knox's diatribe against women rulers.

For several minutes, Lady Appleton did not speak. Rosamond, over the worst of her fit of rage, had also lapsed into silence. Thumb in mouth, she lay curled in a small, pitiful-looking ball on the bed.

"Say nothing of this to anyone," Lady Appleton said at last.

"But, madam-"

"You will obey me, Jennet. Sir Walter loves Eleanor. If she loves him in return, she will tell him everything before it becomes necessary to force her to do so. She just needs a little more time."

"But we are leaving here soon."

"We can delay our departure a while longer."

Lips pursed in disapproval, Jennet watched her mistress tuck a blanket around Rosamond and listened to her murmur to the child. She was getting much too attached to the girl and taking a foolish risk on Rosamond's mother besides.

It was not that Jennet wanted to rush back to London but staying longer at Appleton Manor seemed to her to be a mistake, too. To her mind there was only one sensible course. At her first opportunity, a little later that same day, she walked to Denholm Hall.

"Lady Glenelg," Jennet whispered, looking over her shoulder to make sure the two of them were alone in the stable. "I have a plan."

Fishing a piece of dried apple out of a pocket in her cloak, Catherine Glenelg offered it to Vanguard. "To do what?"

"To save Lady Appleton from a horrible death. If she cannot find the real killer, she must not risk her life by returning to London."

"What do you have in mind?"

"Take her back to Scotland with you. Take all of us. We can live with you on your husband's estates. No one from England will trouble to come after her there."

"What an appalling fate! Would you condemn her to exile in that wretched and backward land?"

"I would save her life."

But Lady Glenelg shook her head, unconvinced. And to make matters worse, when Jennet left the stable, she ran full force into Bates, who was lurking near the door. He had overheard everything.

"If you make a run for the border," he said, in the longest sentence Jennet had ever heard him utter, "I will have to come after you and bring you back."

Chapter 30.

The last day of February ended the shortest month of the year. Lady Mary Grey had always felt a certain kinship with February. On St. Valentine's Day, two weeks earlier, she had made her decision. Now she lay in her lover's arms in one of the chambers above the water gate at Whitehall, staring at the ornately embroidered canopy over their heads.

At last she understood why her sister Catherine had defied the queen in order to marry. This was bliss. All of it. 'Twould even be worth spending the rest of her life in prison to have just a little more of such pleasure and the contentment after.

"Did I hurt you?" The concerned whisper warmed her.

"Nay."

"I must seem overlarge to you."

"Too tall?" Laughing, she ran her fingers over her lover's sinewy chest, and lower, reveling in the discovery of textures so different from those of her own skin. "Everyone is, compared to me."

"That is not what I meant." He dipped his head to kiss the end of her nose. "And I think you are perfect."

He was wonderfully inspiring. She had never felt so alive, so clever, so full of ideas. Overlarge? Oh, no.

When she left him a few hours later to creep back into the room a.s.signed to her in the palace, she found herself thinking about Lady Appleton. She had used that word, too-overlarge-though with quite a different meaning.

Lady Mary had not given Susanna Appleton a thought in weeks, but now it came to her that she might be able to a.s.sist her friend. Unless she had found his killer in her travels, Susanna would need help to escape the terrible dilemma created by Sir Robert Appleton's murder.

I will help her, Lady Mary decided, if she will agree to do a special favor for me in return.

Chapter 31.

Appleton Manor March 6, 1565 Lady Appleton announced the winner of the pancake toss and presented him with his prize, more pancakes. Unlike the plain ones used in the compet.i.tion, these had been prepared from fine wheat flour, seasoned with cloves, mace, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and fried in sweet b.u.t.ter.

Seeing her mistress's open smile, Jennet was glad she had postponed their departure for London until after these festivities. She wished now that they never had to leave for the south. After all, Lancashire was almost as remote as Scotland. If they stayed here, there was a chance no one would bother to come after her. Bates, Jennet had realized, seemed to like Lady Appleton. And he'd shown himself to be open to bribery. Mayhap- "Mabel tells me this is not the first time Shrove Tuesday games have been held at Appleton Manor," Lady Glenelg remarked as she came up beside Jennet. She, too, watched Lady Appleton.

"When Mark was steward here, we used them as a way to sweeten the neighbors." The residents of the nearest village, Gorbury, two miles distant, had been pa.s.sing unfriendly when Jennet first met them, wary of the inhabitants of Appleton Manor, but they'd responded well to the offer of free food and lively games.

"I expect Eleanor had little to do with the villagers."

They exchanged a look. Neither shared Lady Appleton's trust in Eleanor. Rosamond's mother seemed happy to have Sir Walter's company and tolerated the rest of them but she stuck to her story. She had not seen Sir Robert Appleton since before Rosamond's birth. She had received only one letter from him.

"If friend Secole was Sir Robert, some old beldame might have recognized him from his boyhood."

"Have you asked among the villagers?"

Jennet nodded. "One or two remember catching sight of Secole during his stay here and allowed that he bore some slight resemblance to the Appletons." She sighed, dispirited. "At least one fellow said so only in hope of a reward. I cannot judge what the truth is."

Lady Glenelg started to make some comment but fell to coughing instead. The sound alarmed Jennet, but the n.o.blewoman took the fit in stride, fishing a h.o.r.ehound drop out of the pocket hidden in a placket in her kirtle and popping it into her mouth. She sucked hard, wiped her streaming eyes, and blew her nose on the handkerchief she kept tucked in her sleeve. Like her maidservant before her, Lady Glenelg was afflicted with a catarrh.

"You should let Lady Appleton physic you," Jennet said.

"I have sampled her remedies." Lady Glenelg shuddered at the memory.

Jennet sympathized. She had been on the receiving end of some foul-tasting medicines herself. "A hot infusion of hyssop and h.o.r.ehound is not unpleasant to the taste."

"Susanna would have me to gargle at least once a day with a decoction of agrimony leaves mixed with honey in syrup of mulberries." Lady Glenelg made a horrible face.

"If she believes you are too ill to travel, she will remain here longer."

"Aye. There is that." Lady Glenelg looked thoughtful. "It is not a brilliant plan, Jennet, but I can think of nothing better."

She wandered off to watch the last event of the day, the c.o.c.k-throwing, in which native-born Lancashire folk seemed to delight. Jennet felt sorry for the c.o.c.k, which was tied by a long string to a post while the compet.i.tors took turns throwing cudgels at it. The dead bird went to the man who killed it.

The winner had just collected his prize when Jennet realized that a large party on horseback was approaching Appleton Manor. Puzzled, she shaded her eyes to watch as the clattered across the stone bridge. A woman led them, a woman riding sideways on her own horse as Lady Appleton did.

Bright winter sunlight glinted off brilliant red curls as the woman pushed back her hood. For a moment, Jennet wondered if it was the queen who'd come to Appleton Manor. Queen Elizabeth had such a saddle and that color hair.

"By all that's holy," Lady Glenelg whispered. "Annabel." More fleet of foot than Jennet, Lady Glenelg reached the newcomers first, embracing Annabel MacReynolds in welcome the moment she dismounted.

Outraged, Jennet skidded to a halt a short distance away and glowered at them when they began to whisper together. How could Lady Glenelg look so happy to see the woman now that she knew Annabel was naught but a spy for that Italian woman who ruled France as regent?

Jennet glanced around, searching for Lady Appleton. She was watching the display of affection with a speculative gleam in her eyes. She did not appear to be upset. Just the opposite. Peculiar as it seemed to Jennet, she looked pleased by this latest development.

"Madam?" Jennet ventured.

"Let us find out what our visitor wants," she suggested in a mild voice. "And no scowling, Jennet. I hoped, at the beginning of my quest, to speak face to face with Mistress MacReynolds. I am not unhappy to have been granted my wish."

"Be careful what you ask for, they do say." Grumbling, Jennet followed after her mistress.

"Welcome to Appleton Manor," Lady Appleton said.

"A charming place," the red-haired woman replied. "I apologize for arriving unannounced, but the matter seemed urgent." She gave Jennet a sharp look. "I suggest we go within, where we may speak privily."

"I keep few secrets from my companions," Lady Appleton told her.

"I must insist," Annabel said in her odd, accented English.

"Annabel," Lady Glenelg protested. "I-"

"What I have to say is for Lady Appleton's ears only."

That gentlewoman considered a moment, then agreed, but not before she'd sent Jennet a significant look.

Lady Glenelg did not like being excluded. Neither did Sir Walter. It did not seem to occur to either of them to take matters into their own hands.

To Jennet the proper course of action was obvious. She scurried into the house by the back way and had secreted herself behind the bed hangings well before Lady Appleton led her guest into the chamber. From that hiding place, Jennet could hear every word they said to each other and even see a bit through the gap where the folds of fabric did not quite meet.

Annabel took off her traveling cloak, revealing rich velvet beneath. The bodice had been cut low to show off her bosom but the effect was diminished somewhat by the canvas safeguard attached over the lower half of her kirtle to protect that garment from the filth of the roads."No doubt you wonder at my coming here," Annabel began. "You have no reason to trust me and even less to accept my help."

"Mayhap I am not so narrowminded as you think. And I am not in a position, just now, to refuse any offer of aid."

"Indeed, your case is pa.s.sing perilous. That is why I have been sent."

"Sent by whom?"

"Catherine de' Medici."

"Ah."

Lady Appleton did not sound surprised, but Jennet had to clap both hands over her mouth to prevent a gasp from escaping. The queen mother of France wanted to help Sir Robert's widow? Why should she?