The Shadow of Albion Read Free Page A

handkerchief to her lips, she felt strong cool hands,
    against her back, supporting her and pressing the worst of the pain away.
     

 
    „Who dares?“ she demanded at last, when the paroxysm passed.
     
    „I dare,“ a voice said calmly. „As Your Ladyship knows, there is little I do not.“
     
    Lady Roxbury’s eyes widened fractionally as she caught sight of her visitor for
    the first time.
     
    Dame Alecto Kennet had been a great beauty in her day, and was still a woman of
    commanding and formidable presence. In her time she had been actress and
    confidential agent, mistress to two Kings, and more. In later life she had chosen
    obscurity as the companion of the Dowager Duchess of Wessex, herself a woman
    who shunned the limelight. Even so, only the veriest of green-heads would hold
    Dame Alecto at naught.
     
    „I had thought you in Bath with Her Grace of Wessex,“
     
    Lady Roxbury managed to say. She lay back against the mounded lace-trimmed
    pillows, trembling with the effort of showing an untroubled countenance to her
    visitor.
     
    „And so I might yet be, did you not need me more,“ Dame Alecto replied. She
    unpinned her wide, plume-trimmed scarlet bonnet and set it upon the bench at the
    foot of the bed next to a slightly-battered hatbox done up in coarse string. Her hair,
    titian in her youth, had faded almost to pink with age, but was still elaborately
    dressed beneath its rich lace cap. She studied Lady Roxbury intently through eyes
    that Time had washed to silver as she unclasped her wool traveling cape and laid it
    beside the bonnet.
     
    Lady Roxbury managed a bleak smile. „I shall soon need nothing at all,“ she said
    wryly, „or so my physicians tell me. I wonder who shall have Mooncoign when I am
    gone?“
     
    „You would be better employed in wondering who will do that which you ought
    to have done, when you are not here to do it,“ Dame Alecto snapped. „Who will
    take your place, Lady Roxbury?“
     
    Such plain speaking was not something her ladyship cared for at any time, and
    still less at a time like mis. Ignoring the effort it cost her, she forced arch indifference
    into her voice as she replied.
     
    „I dare say Wessex will find someone. But you have not come to tease me
    because my dying releases your mistress’s grandson from his betrothal?“ – It
    suddenly occurred to Lady Roxbury that, though Bath was a. day’s journey away,
    she had received her death-sentence from Dr. Falconer only hours before. Even if
    the doctor had talked, there was no way that the Dowager Duchess could have
    known of it and dispatched her henchwoman hither. Lady Roxbury struggled upright
    against her pillows, groping for the tasseled cord that would summon Knoyle to her.
     
    „Your betrothal is a minor matter, beside the Great Work that you have left
    undone. Or do you forget who you truly hold these lands of, Lady Roxbury?“ Dame
    Alecto’s gaze was silver and ice; a formidable thing to face. But it was a formidable
    woman who faced it.
     

 
    „I hold them of the King. I am Roxbury,“ the bed’s occupant replied. But the
    bellpull slipped unrung from her pale jeweled fingers. Whatever was afoot, she
    would face it herself, and not spread gossip to the servants’ hall.
     
    „And have you sworn no other oath?“ Dame Alecto demanded, still standing at
    the foot of the great bed as if she would summon Lady Roxbury from it.
     
    It was on the tip of her ladyship’s tongue to end this wearisome interview when
    sudden images rose up unbidden behind her eyes: Midsummer’s Eve four years ago.
    She had been one-and-twenty, and Mooncoign’s steward had summoned her from
    Town – had brought her, over her protests, to the Sarcen Stones that lay at the edge
    of her land, to show her to the Oldest People, and to take her promise that Roxbury
    and Mooncoign would always do what must be done for the People and the Land.
     
    She came back to herself to meet Dame Alecto’s gaze. There in the