Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [40]
I had not. More pairs of courtier-and-lady formed, sitting opposite each other at different small tables, the dice between them. Those not willing to gamble, or perhaps unchosen, clustered with excited envy around the players.
Lady Cecilia stood in the middle of the floor, her expression tense but otherwise unreadable. She was not one to join watchers, to be left out of whatever amusement presented itself.
Sudden jealousy tore through me like a gale. If she paired with one of these young lords to wager her chastity, if she lost, if she went with him to some secluded chamber . . . I couldn’t breathe. All at once I could feel again Hartah’s knife in my hand, sliding into his flesh, and I knew I could do the same to any man who wagered with Cecilia for her sweet and untouched body. Stupid, irrational, insane . . . who was I to have such thoughts? Yet I had them.
A handsome minor courtier, Lord Dillingham, walked toward Cecilia. His sword gleamed at his hip. He grinned at her but she, for once, did not flirt back. Instead she rushed forward and grabbed me by both hands. “Roger! I shall wager with you! For a silver coin with Her Grace’s image stamped upon it! Come!”
Jane Sedley, seated opposite Lord Thomas, looked up and gave a derisive laugh. But before I knew it, Lady Cecilia and I were seated at one of the little tables, people crowding around to watch this new amusement. One of the queen’s ladies, wagering with the queen’s yellow-faced fool!
But Cecilia faced me quietly, all at once as sedate and sober as Lady Margaret herself, and laid a silver coin upon the table. “The game shall be fifty points,” she said. That was an incredibly high number; a single game would last all night. We began, and she stayed sedate, barely talking, her eyes upon only the dice. After a while the watchers, disappointed, drifted to other tables. No flirting, no bawdy jokes, no forbidden crossing of the boundaries of rank. We were too dull.
Bewildered, I threw the dice and counted points, as I was told. What was Cecilia doing? Was she secretly as shocked as I at the licentiousness of these young ladies and gentlemen, and so, choosing this method of preserving her chastity? But surely she could have just announced that she preferred not to play, or even retired for the night? One other lady, besides Lady Margaret, had done that. What was truly happening here?
We played on. Cecilia never looked at me. Finally a great shout arose from one of the other tables; someone had won. Or lost. Under cover of the babble that followed, Cecilia bent her head over the dice and said, “Roger, are you my friend?”
How to answer that? A lady-in-waiting could not be friends with the queen’s fool. But I let my heart answer.
“Yes, my lady.”
“And friends do favors for each other, do they not?”
“Yes.” My stomach grew cold.
“I need a favor from you, Roger.”
“I am in attendance on the queen . . .”
“Not always. Not right now. Please . . . please. It is very important.”
She raised her head and I saw that tears gleamed in her green eyes. Tears, and fear. I would have gone anywhere, done anything, to erase that look from her lovely face.
“Go out the kitchen gate—you came from the kitchens, didn’t you? The queen found you that night in the kitchen? ” Some private memory twisted her face with grief. “Go into the city. Ask your way to Mother Chilton, it’s not far. Tell her