Vixens. Bertrice Small

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СКАЧАТЬ down from the house and curtsied before her. She had dancing gray-blue eyes, and her hair was ash brown beneath her cap.

      “I be Bess Trueheart, mistress. Your grandmother has sent me to serve you. We are to depart for Queen’s Malvern on the morrow. Please come into the house. You will want a bath, I am sure, and your dinner. And a bed that does not rock,” she concluded with a smile. Then she curtsied again.

      Fancy laughed. For the first time in weeks she actually laughed. “Thank you, Bess Trueheart,” she replied, “and you are correct. I am hungry, tired, and dirty.”

      In Greenwood House she had been greeted by the servants, many older than younger, who welcomed her warmly. They remarked on how very much she resembled an ancestress, whose picture hung in the Great Hall overlooking the river. The housekeeper took her there, and Fancy was surprised by the portrait of the woman that was pointed out to her. She had dark hair, skin like cream, and her head was held at a proud tilt. She wore an elegant gown of scarlet velvet, embroidered with pearls and gold thread. They did resemble each other, but Fancy thought the woman far more beautiful than she was.

      “Who is she?” she asked the housekeeper.

      “Why, miss, that be your great-great-grandmother, Skye O’Malley. But you do not have her eyes. You have the duchess’s, your grandmother’s, eyes. I never in all my born days saw eyes that color except in her, and now you.”

      The next morning, Fancy and her new maidservant departed for Queen’s Malvern, outside Worcester. It would be a trip of several long days. Her uncle, the duke, Bess told her, had arranged for the best of inns along the way. She was not to worry herself about anything at all. The weather was usually good in early autumn. The roads would be, if not dusty, dry so they should be home in no time at all.

      Fancy sat back and took Bess’s advice. She closed her eyes and thought about Maryland, and her family, and tried to push what had happened from her memory. But along with the thought of tobacco being harvested, the sweet smell of it drying in the barns, and the long skeins of geese soaring above the Chesapeake as the trees began to turn, came images of Parker Randolph.

      They called him the handsomest man in the Colonies, and outwardly he surely had been. He was tall and lean of body, with wavy dark blond hair, and the bluest eyes she had ever seen. His smile had been quick. His laughter infectious. His manners and his charm legend. And she had believed him when he said he loved her. Fancy blinked back her tears.

      But Parker hadn’t loved her at all. His soul had been as black as his features were beautiful. And she had found out too late. Too late to prevent their marriage. Too late to prevent the scandal that surrounded his death. Her dreams of love, a life of happiness like her parents had shared, had been brutally crushed. But she had at least been fortunate to escape Parker before he caused her worse pain than the reality of what he was already had. If only they had learned of his true character, and that of his family, before she had become his wife.

      But they hadn’t known, hadn’t even suspected. After all, as Maeve so succinctly pointed out, he was a Virginia Randolph. His more important Virginia relations had helped Kieran Devers quell the storm of controversy that had erupted over Parker Randolph’s death. Faced with the true facts of the situation, and as horrified as the few others who knew what had really happened, they had used their considerable influence to extinguish the uproar as swiftly as possible. The truth was not pretty and had it been known, the scandal would have been impossible to contain.

      So they had agreed with Devers that the sooner the widow departed the Colonies for England, the quicker this disgraceful situation would die down. With Frances Devers gone, the talk would fade away, probably by winter, everyone was quite certain. And so she had been exiled from everything and everyone she had loved. But Parker Randolph had taught her a valuable lesson. He had taught her that men could not be trusted. He had taught her that her father and her brothers were unique.

      And when she had asked her parents why they had not told her these things before she wed, her mother had wept bitter tears. They had been so happy together, Fortune explained, that the difficulties they had faced in their youth in England and Ireland had been forgotten as the years passed. Aine, her eldest sister, had known the real story. So had Shane, Cullen and Rory, who had been named for deceased relatives and friends in Ireland. When pressed, Maeve recalled something about their father’s wicked younger brother but little else. Neither Jamie, Charlie, nor she had known a great deal of their father’s early history. And they weren’t particularly interested.

      They knew about their mother’s family, who it seemed were wealthy and powerful people. Their grandmother was, in their minds, a colorful character who had outlived several husbands and had had a royal prince for a lover. She had known dukes and kings. Their mother said that her mother’s own father had been the ruler of a great land thousands of miles across the earth. Fancy remembered that as children they had not quite believed their mother’s tales. She was, it seemed, a great storyteller, touched with the gift of gab, her father would tease, for their mother had also been born in Ireland although she wasn’t raised there.

      But now, Fancy considered, those stories did not seem quite as outlandish as she and her siblings had believed. The comfortable luxury she had experienced so far was eye opening. She had never before known servants who had been with a family for generations. She had never experienced the fawning respect given to her and her equipage as they entered the assigned innyards and the inns. The lady wished a bath? At once! The lady preferred duck to capon? Immediately! It was all most revealing, and her curiosity was piqued. She found she was anxious to reach Queen’s Malvern. And then suddenly they were there.

      The elegant carriage that had been drawn all the way from London by six perfectly matched bays with cream-colored manes and tails moved smartly through the gates of the estate. Interested, Fancy pulled down the window and peered out. Located in a small valley in the Malvern Hills between the rivers Severn and Wye, the house and its lands had once been a royal property. Late in the reign of Elizabeth Tudor, the queen, in need of monies, had sold the estate to the de Marisco family. They had left it to their favorite granddaughter, and it was her son, the duke of Lundy, who now possessed it.

      Constructed in the reign of Edward IV as a gift for his queen, the house of warm mellowed pink brick was built in the shape of an E. The brick outer walls were covered in shiny dark green ivy except for one wing that had been burned during the Commonwealth and reconstructed just five years ago following the king’s restoration. The windows were tall and wide with leaded panes. The roofs were of dark slate with many chimneys. It looked a comfortable home to Fancy. Waiting before the house upon the carefully raked gravel drive was a small group of people. The most striking of the group was a woman in a garnet silk gown, the cream-colored lace of her chemise showing above the neckline, a lacy shawl draped about her shoulders. The lady had silvery hair with two ebony wings on either side of her head. Next to her stood a younger woman wearing a silk dress of ocean blue. Her hair, a dark blond, was fashioned with elegant curls. Next to her was a tall gentleman in a black velvet suit with snow-white lace cuffs, and a white shirt. His auburn hair was cropped short, and he had silver buckles on his shoes. With these three stood two young girls, quite similar in appearance. One wore a gown of deep green silk, and the other a gown of rich violet. Both had dark hair as did Fancy. How alike we are, Fancy considered. We could be sisters. How odd. I wonder if Mama knew. They are more like me than my own siblings.

      “The old woman is your grandmother,” Bess said. “The gentleman by her side is the duke, your uncle. The blond lady is his wife, Lady Barbara. The two lasses your cousins, Lady Cynara and Lady Diana.”

      “Are they sisters?” Fancy asked.

      “Nay,” Bess quickly said. “Lady Cynara is the duke and Lady Barbara’s daughter. Lady Diana is the duke of Glenkirk’s lass.”

      Fancy СКАЧАТЬ