A VERY TUDOR CHRISTMAS Page 3

  “Attention, please!” Lady Burghley called. “We have no time to lose.”

  Meg was so very cold, her head spinning so she feared she would faint. “Excuse me for a moment, Bea,” she gasped.

  “What...” Beatrice said, obviously bewildered. She tried to catch Meg’s hand, but Meg managed to slip away. She pushed her way through the crowd, seeking an escape route.

  With the new arrivals, the hall was even more crowded and confused than before, and Lady Burghley was striving to regain control. In the confusion, Meg was able to slip past the shifting tide of people and through the still-open doors into the empty entrance hall.

  She ran down a long corridor, not knowing where she was going. The rise and fall of all the voices blending together faded behind her as she hurried along the darkened passageway. A few servants passed her but paid her no attention, for they were on their own urgent errands. Everyone was focused on the wedding preparations, and surely Lord Burghley himself was at the queen’s side at Whitehall, getting ready for the Christmas season festivities.

  Why did Robert have to come back now, after all this time? She’d been able to put her youthful folly, her romantic dreams, behind her, and now here he was. Making her feel just as young and giddy as ever, just from one look from his beautiful blue eyes.

  He would just have to go away again. Soon. And in the meantime she would have to seek to avoid him. That shouldn’t be so hard, should it?

  Meg turned down another corridor and then another, until suddenly she found herself confusingly in the entrance hall once again. Bewildered, she tripped over the edge of a Turkish carpet and fell forward. With a startled cry, she shot her hands out to catch herself....

  And found herself with a fistful of warm, soft velvet instead.

  Strong, hard-muscled arms came around her and held her steady. It was Robert Erroll—she knew it even without looking up at his too-handsome face. She could smell the clean, cool scent of his soap, and her traitorous body still knew his touch. She made herself go very still, and not panic and run again like a ninny.

  “You must have an urgent appointment somewhere, Mistress Clifford,” he said quietly, his voice deep and smooth, like spiced wine on a cold Christmas night. “Is it still Mistress Clifford, or have you a new name?”

  “I— Yes,” she murmured, staring hard at the gold buttons of his doublet. “And I hear you are Sir Robert now, for all your good deeds to the queen.”

  “I am not sure how good they are,” he said with a hint of laughter. “But I am indeed Sir Robert now. It’s been too long since we met.”

  Since they’d met—and he’d kissed her and trifled with her girlish affections when she was too silly to know better. If anyone did such a thing to Bea now, she would beat them over the head with their own bodkin! It was infuriating how men thought they could play with girls’ tender hearts like that and then run away, completely unaffected.

  “Not quite long enough,” she said. She tried to slide out of his arms, but his hold on her just tightened, drawing her closer.

  “Did you never think of me at all after we parted?” he asked, the laughter vanishing into a strangely serious tone.

  “I have been much too busy here at court to ponder such trifles,” Meg said, hoping she sounded cold and distant. Dismissive. “There are so very many people about. Surely you have been busy, as well.”

  Busy kissing women from Paris to Muscovy, she was sure.

  “I have seen a great deal, ’tis true,” he said, still holding onto her. “But I never met anyone else like you—Meg.”

  “True. I am not most women,” she said, trying once more to tear herself out of his arms. “I have forgotten all about you.”

  “Meg, you can’t mean that,” he said, and for an instant he sounded truly hurt. But Meg knew better now than to listen to any man.

  “Don’t call me Meg,” she said. “I am Mistress Clifford.”

  “You’ve always been Meg to me, in my memory. What has happened to you?”

  “What do you mean?” Meg realized she wouldn’t be able to break free of his arms, so she went very still and stared at the high embroidered collar of his doublet, at the hard line of his jaw. And suddenly, she wanted to cry, because she just wanted him to go on holding her. Wanted to feel again the way he’d once made her feel. So alive and free.

  But she knew that could never be again.

  “You look like the Meg I remember,” he said. His hand slid down her arm, rubbing her soft satin sleeve over her skin until his bare fingers touched hers. “You’re even more beautiful now. But your eyes are so cold.”

  In a burst of anger, Meg cried, “You mean I’m not the foolish girl I once was? The one so easily lured in by pretty words and kisses? I’ve learned my lesson well since last we met.”

  He raised their entwined hands to study her pale, ringless fingers as if he had never seen them before. As if they fascinated him.

  “Do you still take what you want with no thought to anyone else?” Meg whispered.

  Robert’s eyes met hers, and for an instant she saw a bright flash of something like anger or pain in those ocean-blue depths. Then they went ice cold again. “You know nothing of what I’ve done in my life. If only you had...”

  “If only I had what?” she said, bewildered.

  “You drive me mad,” he growled, and suddenly his arms came close around her again. He pulled her body hard against his, drawing her up on her toes, and his mouth swooped down to cover hers.

  He wasn’t harsh, but he was deliciously insistent, his mouth opening hungrily over hers, his tongue tracing the seam of her lips as he sought entrance. She opened for him, meeting him eagerly as a raw, hot hunger swept over her and she couldn’t resist it.

  She hadn’t realized until his mouth claimed hers again how much their long-ago first kiss lived in her memory, how much she had longed to feel that way again. That sensation of the real, everyday world, where she had to be the sensible, practical Meg, flew away and she felt herself falling down into pure emotion. It was terrible, delirious—and all too wonderful.

  Robert’s hand slid down her back as their kiss deepened, pulling her body closer into his. He caressed the curve of her lower back through her satin bodice. When she moaned against his lips, his hands slid under her hips and lifted her high against him.

  As she held onto him, her head fell back and his lips slid down her arched neck. The tip of his tongue tasted the hollow at the base of her throat, where her pulse beat out a frantic rhythm. How she wanted him, even after all this time! She knew she should berate herself for it, but it was an emotion so dark and primitive it seemed she could not banish it.

  His hand cupped her breast through the stiffened satin, stroking it until she moaned again.

  “Meg—it’s been so long....”

  “I know,” she gasped. She threaded her fingers through his black-satin hair and drew his mouth back against her skin. He hungrily kissed the soft skin of her neck, his breath warm. She could only hear the mingling of their harsh, uneven breath, the pounding of her heart in her ears.

  One of his hands slid lower, grabbing the slippery fabric of her skirts and drawing them up. The cold air swept over her bare skin like a whisper. A chilling touch of reality.

  Meg suddenly heard a burst of laughter beyond the closed doors of the great hall, and the noise reminded her where they were. At Cecil House, with half the court just a room away. She tore her lips away from his, struggling to breathe. Her emotions tumbl
ed over each other inside of her, lust, confusion, joy, anger. It was surely madness.

  “Please,” she gasped. “Please do not do this to me again.”

  “Do what, Meg?” he said hoarsely, his breath warm on her skin. “All I ever wanted was...”

  “Meg?”

  Meg spun around at the sudden sound of Bea’s voice. Her cousin stood at the edge of the room, staring at Meg with startled eyes.

  Meg felt Robert ease away from her, into the shadows under the staircase, and she hurried toward Beatrice. She swiped her hands over her damp eyes and tried to smile. “Am I needed for the masque now?”

  “Y—yes,” Beatrice murmured, still peering past Meg into the shadows. “You are to be an Hour of Night, I think. Who was that with you?”

  “No one at all,” Meg said, firmly steering Beatrice back into the crowded great hall. “An old friend of my parents’, who has been abroad for some time. He was offering his greetings.”

  “Truly? He seemed rather young to be friends with my uncle.” Beatrice tried to glance over Meg’s shoulder, but Meg pushed her into the great hall and slammed the door behind them.

  “Perhaps so,” Meg said. “But never mind that. Tell me about our roles in the masque....”

  Margaret. Meg. It was really her, at last, after all these years. But she was not entirely the Meg he remembered.

  Robert raked his fingers through his hair, pacing up the Cecils’ corridor and back again, the sound of his bootheels on the polished wood floor the only noise to break the silence.

  From beyond the closed doors of the great hall, he heard the sunburst of youthful laughter, cut off by a stern word from Lady Burghley. He knew he should be in there, keeping an eye on his kinsman Peter Ellingham, but he had to regain his calm senses first. All he could see, all he could think about, was Meg’s cool, fathomless dark eyes, looking at him as if she had never seen him before.

  She had never replied to his letter, left at Clifford Manor before he went on his travels to make his fortune, and he’d always known there was a chance she wouldn’t wait for him. In truth, they barely knew each other. A dance, a walk, a kiss. But in those few meetings had been a—a knowing. A realization, such as he’d never had with anyone else. She was the main reason he was driven to make his fortune thus.

  Everywhere he went, Paris, Rome, Venice, the frozen wasteland of Muscovy, he remembered her. She was why he did what he did, so he could be worthy of her pure spirit. But the Meg in his memory, with her quick laugh, her bright enthusiasm for everything around her, seemed vanished.

  In her place was a cool, still statue, a court lady with coiffed hair and the armor of her embroidered gown. It gave him such a chill to think of his dream of Meg Clifford, so long cherished, was vanished.

  And yet—yet for just a moment, after that fiery kiss, he looked into her dark eyes and saw the glimmer of his Meg. Like the gleam of a diamond under ice, precious and beautiful. Far away, but not completely beyond reach.

  If he could just crack that ice.

  The front doors of Cecil House suddenly banged open, letting in a blast of icy wind and the loud clatter of a group of young men. It was the bridegroom, the golden-haired Earl of Oxford, surrounded by his posturing cronies. Their swords clanked, their furred cloaks swirled, and their laughter echoed mockingly off the luxurious walls of the bride’s dignified house.

  Robert couldn’t help but feel sorry for young, quiet Anne Cecil, despite the luster of the title she would soon acquire. He was only glad Meg had not ended up married to such a one as Oxford and his friends. That she was still available—if she would only listen to him.

  “Erroll!” Oxford called. “Come to celebrate my nuptials, have you? Every man should be wed, or so my guardian says. I vow you will be next....”

  Chapter Three

  Meg was lost.

  She held tight to the reins of her horse and tried to peer through the snow, falling so heavily around her now that the whiteness disoriented her. She cursed herself for leaving the hunting party, but when she turned away from them down another path the day was cold and gray but clear. The snow had come on suddenly, too fast for her to turn around, and she couldn’t even hear the echo of their laughter in the muffling silence.

  Aye, she was foolish indeed to run away. But when Robert joined the party, the day had turned all closed-in and confusing. She didn’t want to see him, to hear his voice, watch his smile, and remember his kisses—remember what a fool she had once been over him.

  What a fool she could still be, if she let herself.

  She would have left the party and gone back inside the palace, hidden her ridiculous feelings away in her own chamber, if she hadn’t already been mounted on her horse. Luckily Bea was too preoccupied with Peter Ellingham to see Meg’s blushes, and Robert seemed intent on making the too-solemn bride-to-be Anne Cecil laugh. He was very good at that—making ladies forget themselves.

  And now Meg was lost, a long way from the palace.

  “This way!” she heard someone shout through the snow. “Meg, can you hear me?”

  The voice was hoarse, tinged with worry, but Meg knew it was Robert. She recognized his voice all too well, and her heart pounded at the sound of it.

  “I—I am here,” she called back. “I fear I am lost.”

  “Just stay where you are! I will find you.”

  Meg took a deep breath and forced herself to stay still. Running away had got her into this trouble in the first place. At last Robert appeared out of the whiteness, a figure all in black, his short cloak swirling around him, his cap tugged low over his brow so she couldn’t see his expression. He reached out a gloved hand to seize her bridle.

  “I noticed you were missing and feared you had become lost in the snow,” he said. “I saw a hunting lodge not far from here. It looked empty, but we can shelter there until the snow ceases.”

  He had come looking for her? The thought made her shiver even more than the snow. Meg nodded quickly. She didn’t want to be alone with him in an empty house, forced to face their past with no distractions around them, but she knew she couldn’t stay where she was. The cold was seeping through her fur-trimmed riding clothes and into her very skin.

  She swiped away the damp snow from in front of her eyes and nodded.

  He led her slowly back down the path and over an icy bridge to where a small, square, dark brick house loomed out of the snow. It was indeed a hunting lodge, far enough from the city to be quiet, but near enough to be an easy travel to court. The windows were dark and no smoke curled out of the chimneys. But a wreath of holly hung on the door, a small sign of the festive season.

  “Holly,” she said whimsically as Robert helped her down from her saddle. “My nursemaid used to say fairies would hide under the prickly leaves to get away from the winter’s cold.”

  “That’s an old tale indeed.” His hands lingered at her waist, warm through her woolen doublet. She swayed toward him helplessly, but he stepped away.

  She shook away a pang of regret at losing his touch.

  “Why don’t you go inside while I settle the horses?” he said quietly. She could read nothing from his voice, his eyes that watched her so closely. His gloved hands clenched into fists.

  She nodded and hurried inside. It was a small house, she saw as she made her way through a narrow corridor into a sitting room. Plain and functional, with carved beams criss-crossing the low ceiling and a dark wood floor covered by a luxurious green carpet. A few chairs and
stools were scattered about, and painted cloths hung on the white-plastered walls to keep out the draft. A swag of greenery hung over the large fireplace.

  Surely a court family lived here, Meg though as she swept off her damp cloak and hung it on a peg. She would have to thank them later for sheltering her.

  Her and Robert.

  She shivered as she remembered that she was not alone there. That he would be in that cozy room with her at any moment. Part of her knew she should run from him, even into the snowstorm, because she knew all too well his effect on her. But she stayed where she was.

  “You are cold,” he said behind her, startling her. She spun around to find him stepping through the doorway, ducking his head under the low lintel. She thought again how very kind the years had been to him, carving his youthful beauty into something truly extraordinary.

  “No, I’m fine,” she said, but he swept off his fur-lined short cloak and laid it gently around her shoulders. Its fine, soft folds smelled of him, of lemony French cologne and clean, cold air, and it still held the warmth of his skin.

  “I’ll build us a fire,” he said. He took her arm in a gentle clasp and led her to a cushioned cross-backed chair near the fireplace.

  “You know how to build a fire?” she said, bemused.

  Robert laughed as he knelt down by the grate and reached for the wood piled up beside it. “I am not completely useless, Meg. I have learned many useful skills in my travels.”

  “Nay. Not completely useless, I suppose,” Meg murmured. She sat back, wrapped snugly in his cloak, and watched as he shed his close-fitting doublet and set about building a fire. She wondered where he had been and what he had done in the time they were apart.