Kissed by Shadows by Jane Feather Page A

probing. However, she was unable to help herself.
    “No, you have no wife? Or no, you have no children?”
    “I have neither wife nor child.”
    “But you have had experience of pregnant women?”
    “That is what I said.”
Why in hell had he invited this catechism?
Lionel wondered, furious with himself for such a slip. He never
ever
revealed personal details. Never
ever
let down his guard.
    Pippa crumbled the last morsel of bread between her fingers and accepted that she had gone as far as she could. She didn't like the cold flatness of his tone. It didn't go with the sweetness of his smile or the warmth and compassion in his eyes.
    She said with a casual shrug, “As yet I have barely acknowledged my pregnancy myself, sir. 'Tis hardly a topic for discussion between strangers.”
    “Are we strangers, Lady Pippa?” He laughed softly and he was once more himself. “I do not feel that to be the case.”
    “No,” she said frankly. “Neither do I, although I don't know why not. However, Mr. Ashton, I am a married woman, and, as you so rightly assume, I appear to be carrying my husband's child.”
    “Quite,” he murmured, stretching his long legs in front of him on the grass. “And those facts should keep us strangers?”
    Pippa glanced at him. “You don't think so?”
    He shook his head. “No, madam, I do not. One may be friends without impropriety, I believe.”
    “Yes,” she agreed slowly. “But I do not choose my friends from among Spaniards and those committed to their cause.”
    “Ah.” He nodded solemnly. “You are, of course, loyal to the Lady Elizabeth.”
    “That is no secret.”
    “No, indeed.” He stood up. “But I fail to see why that should impede our friendship, my dear lady. If I do not question your affiliations, then why would you question mine?” He reached down to take her hands and pull her to her feet. “Friends can agree to differ, I believe.”
    Pippa again felt she was being swept along on a tide not of her own harnessing. His hands were warm and strong on her own. The mead was powerful honey in her belly.
    “Perhaps so,” she said, and firmly removed her hands from his. “I thank you for your kindness, Mr. Ashton, but pray excuse me now.” She turned from him and flitted, a primrose butterfly, through the trees towards the palace.
    Lionel remained in the grove for a few more minutes. So Philip's seed was well sown in the womb of a young, fertile, healthy woman. There was every reason to expect the pregnancy to go full term and produce a sound child.
    A child that Spain must not claim.
    If there was no child of the English/Spanish alliance, then on Mary's death Elizabeth would inherit the throne, and the hell that was the Inquisition would not consume England's heart and soul as it had devoured the Netherlands' and every other territory where the dread hand of Spain had fallen.
    He raised his head and gazed unseeing into the green canopy above. He could still smell it, the smoke of the unseasoned wood that fueled her pyre. He would always smell it, as he would always hear the sullen yet terrified silence of the crowd amid the pious recitations of the priests and the staccato orders of the soldiers.
    One piercing scream had escaped her, and then not another sound as the flames from the damp wood crept with agonizing reluctance around her broken body.
    And he had had to stand and watch, helplessly bearing silent witness to the horror, swearing vengeance as hatred devoured him with the flames that finally consumed Margaret.
    There would be burnings here, too, soon enough, if Philip was able to consolidate his position. But Mary was frail, weakened by a lifetime's ill health, years of deprivation, and her desperate struggle for survival. She was nearly forty, she could not live for many more years. England's agony would be short-lived as long as there was no child that Philip could claim as his own.
    Lionel's face was a mask as he continued to stare sightlessly up through the