The Shadow of Albion by Andre Norton, Rosemary Edghill Page B

Sarah did not know at all.
     
    „And now,“ Knoyle said, „I shall just get the hare’s foot and your jewel-case – “
     
    „Oh, never mind that,“ Sarah said impatiently, turning her treasured ring round
    and round upon her finger. Now that her strength had returned, she itched to see the
    world beyond this room, and to discover what the Duke of Wessex was doing here,
    and how she might escape the clutches of their betrothal. „Where is this Duke?“
     
    * * *
     
     
    The house was not familiar to her at all, but Knoyle accompanied her as if
    expecting Sarah to need a stout arm to bear her up, conducting Sarah along
    unfamiliar corridors until she reached the library. Once inside, Knoyle stood beside
    the door as though hoping to emulate one of the suits of armor that Sarah had seen
    in the corridor, and Sarah gazed about the room with interest, stories that someone –
    who? – had told her resonating within her mind.
     
    Family legend swore that, in the time of the martyred King Charles the First,
    before ever a Roxbury had walked these halls, this room had been not library but
    chapel to the manor’s Catholic folk. Puritan storm and Glorious Restoration had
     

 
    destroyed most of the evidence of this – if ever there had been any – but what
    remained were three magnificent high-crowned windows in the north wall, the center
    one surmounted by a small but splendid rose window that had surely never been
    meant as any secular ornament. Sarah gazed out through the tiny diamond-shaped
    panes of the narrow windows at a world now red, now blue, now greener than grass,
    now a strange blank amber.
     
    The room itself was filled with books and curios. There, there are the antiquities
    your father gartered in Greece; the Canaletto King Charles gave your
    grandfather…. She crossed to the shelves and took a book down at random. More
    books than she might read in a lifetime, here for the taking. Why did that astonish her
    so?
     
    „Lady Roxbury?“
     
    Sarah turned at the sound of the voice, automatically setting the volume in her
    hands aside. She clasped both hands before her, fiddling nervously with her ring.
    The Duke of Wessex was just closing the door to the library behind him.
     
    „Your Grace,“ the appropriate tide came to her lips almost automatically. „What
    are you doing here?“
     
    „Admirably direct,“ Wessex flicked a glance toward Knoyle, then crossed the
    room to where Sarah stood. „Send your maid away.“
     
    „I – I beg your pardon?“ Sarah wondered if she heard him rightly.
     
    - „What I have to say is for your ears alone, Lady Roxbury. I won’t have it
    repeated in every kitchen in – in England.“
    Sarah glanced toward Knoyle but received no clue there; the loyal abigail’s face
    was a mask of righteous indignation that gave no hint whether Wessex’s request
    might be reasonable. Sarah looked back at Wessex, trying to judge what sort of man
    he might be.
     
    Face like a swordblade, and dark smudges of exhaustion beneath his eyes. His
    mouth bore the stamp of both temper and cold calculation, but some instinct
    prompted Sarah to grant his request.
     
    „You may go, Knoyle.“
     
    The abigail fairly quivered with silent protest, and Sarah locked eyes with her,
    willing Knoyle to obey. After a moment Knoyle dropped her eyes and curtseyed
    before exiting the room.
     
    As Knoyle left, Wessex made a cat-footed circuit of the library, lifting curtains to
    peer behind them and glancing into the chairs beside the fireplace-as if to assure
    himself there was no one else present. Before Sarah could quite frame an objection,
    he had returned to her side.
     
    „Victor Saint-Lazarre is one of your guests,“ Wessex said without preamble.
     
    Victor Saint-Lazarre. Die royalist, a ghostly voice prompted Sarah. „I know,“
    she said.
     

 
    „Why did you invite him?“ Wessex pursued.
     
    As Sarah herself had not the slightest notion, the question only increased