Kissed by Shadows Read Free Page B

breaking sticks,
Stuart reflected even as he covertly assured his queen that no hint of English contempt would mar the Spaniards' pleasure.
    Pippa, now free, hurried to where her stepbrother stood with the French ambassador, the disgruntled and now disfavored Antoine de Noailles. But even as she reached her quarry her eye was caught by a man standing alone against the narrow door behind the queen's chair. The door that led to the queen's privy chamber.
    He was leaning his shoulders against the door. He wore a short cloak of dark gray silk over a plain white shirt and dove-colored doublet. His shirt was open at the neck, strangely casual in this formal setting. She gazed at his bare throat, and her skin prickled. Her gaze moved up, and then she was aware only of his eyes. Wide, deep-set, clearest gray.
    Her step faltered. Where had she seen those eyes before? How could a stranger's throat seem so familiar? A curious dread crept up her spine, tendrils of fearful confusion tangled her mind, as if she were fighting her way up from a nightmare.
    She had never seen him before. She
knew
she had never seen him before. His face, quite apart from the piercing clarity of his eyes, would be impossible to forget. It was strangely crumpled, the features haphazardly put together, and yet there was the oddest symmetry to it.
    He didn't stir from his negligent pose against the door, but he looked at her and then he smiled. It was a smile of such surpassing sweetness, of such compassion, of such complete reassurance, that Pippa had to restrain herself from rushing across the chamber to his side.
    She stood, her feet refusing to resume their path towards Robin. Bewilderment swamped her. His smile and the dread that had settled upon her shoulders like an almost palpable cloud were connected in some way, and yet how could they be?
    “Pippa?” Robin's voice snapped her free. She glanced with relief at the familiar, beloved, untidy figure of her stepbrother.
    “I was coming to find you.” Her voice sounded squeaky.
    “You looked like Lot's wife,” he observed. “Turned to a pillar of salt. What did you see over your shoulder?”
    “Nothing,” she said, shrugging as if she could cast off the shadow. “I just find Mary's disfavor so uncomfortable. And I know it distresses Stuart.”
    Robin looked at her closely. It was a reasonable enough explanation for anyone but Pippa. But he knew full well that Pippa did not find her present disfavor in the least uncomfortable, it merely confirmed her in her loyalty to Elizabeth.
    “You look peaky,” he observed with some concern. “Are you unwell?”
    “No . . . no, not in the least,” she returned firmly.
    Experience told Robin that he'd get nowhere by pressing. “I have news from Pen,” he said. “Or at least, the ambassador has a dispatch from Owen and Pen has added a few sentences.”
    “Oh, show me at once.” Pippa turned herself away from the man by the door. She found she needed to turn her whole body away, and felt her movements to be stilted, like the articulated limbs of one of her nephew's toy soldiers. And even with her back to him as she approached the French ambassador in the window embrasure, she could feel his eyes upon her.
    “Lady Pippa.” Antoine de Noailles addressed her with the casual familiarity of an old friend. “I have here a dispatch from Chevalier d'Arcy. Your sister encloses a few words for you.”
    “My thanks.” Pippa almost snatched the parchment from his hands in her eagerness. And then involuntarily she glanced once more over her shoulder before immediately unfolding the sheet.
    “Who is that man by the door, Robin?” Her voice was satisfactorily casual, she thought, as she perused her sister's words, for the moment not taking them in.
    Robin looked across the chamber. “You mean Ashton?”
    “I'd hardly ask you his name if I knew it already,” she retorted in the sparring manner customary between brother and sister. “The man in the dark gray