LIBERTINE in the Tudor Court: One Night in Paradise / A Most Unseemly Summer
One Night in ParadiseThough Queen Elizabeth I’s court at Richmond was a hotbed of illicit liaisons, beautiful Adorna Pickering remained unscathed. Yet the one man she couldn’t resist had a reputation blacker than sin. And though Adorna didn’t want to be just another easy conquest, she’d willingly forsake everything she held dear for one night in Sir Nicholas Rayne’s arms…A Most Unseemly SummerCapable and determined Lady Felice has had to learn how to take care of herself. So she is shocked when the surveyor of her family’s new home, Sir Leon Gascelin, forces her to accept him as her temporary guardian. Is it to stop tongues wagging because they reside under the same roof? Or has she deliberately been sent to this dangerously attractive gentleman to be well and truly tamed?
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Libertine in the Tudor Court
One Night in Paradise
A Most Unseemly Summer
Juliet Landon
JULIET LANDON lives in an ancient country village in the north of England with her retired scientist husband. Her keen interest in embroidery, art and history, together with a fertile imagination, make writing historical novels a favourite occupation. She finds the research particularly exciting, especially the early medieval period and the fascinating laws concerning women in particular and their struggle for survival in a man’s world.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Author’s Note
Chapter One
23 June 1575, Richmond, Surrey
A dorna Pickering’s ability to stay calm in the face of adversity was put severely to the test the day that Queen Elizabeth went hawking. They were in the park at Richmond and Adorna was noticed not so much for her superb horsemanship but for her graceful fall backwards into the River Thames and for her pretence that it was nothing, really. Though Adorna managed to impress the Queen, there was one who refused to be impressed in quite the same sympathetic manner.
It had all begun so well, the midsummer sun promising a windless day perfect for hawking, one of Her Majesty’s favourite sports in which she always indulged when staying at her palace in Richmond. The park was extensive, well stocked with deer and water-birds, and a select gathering of the Queen’s favourite courtiers made a brilliant splash of colour behind her, quietly vying with each other to show off their finery, their horses, and their popularity.
As the daughter of the Queen’s Master of the Revels Office, Adorna’s presence in such company was not only accepted but encouraged. Living at Richmond so close to the royal palace had many compensations, as her newly appointed father had only recently pointed out.
Adorna had already attracted smiles and admiring glances, her striking beauty and pale gold hair reflecting the similar pale gold of her new mare in the blue-patterned harness given to her last week for her twentieth birthday. By her side rode Master Peter Fowler, another member of the royal household, a young man on the upward current who privately believed that his future would be enhanced by his association with someone slightly above his station. Not that he was oblivious to Adorna’s physical attributes, but Peter was more ambitious than moonstruck, and his appearance by her side this morning was no coincidence.
In a sea of jewel colours, tossing plumes and a speckle of spaniels weaving between hooves, the company waited while the Queen and her Master Falconer cast their falcons up into the sky while down below the beaters flushed ducks from the river, putting them to flight. But, being on the edge of the gathering and not far from the river bank, Adorna’s flighty young mare took exception to wings whizzing overhead, squawking loudly. The mare bunched and staggered backwards, quivering with fright, and it was with some difficulty that Adorna controlled her and stopped her barging into nearby horses whose riders were looking skywards. Then, thinking that she was over that semi-crisis, she gave her attention to the falcons, which, in bringing down the ducks, dropped two of them into the river in a flurry of white feathers.
Everyone’s attention was now engaged in seeing who would be first to retrieve the flapping quarry for Her Majesty, none of them noticing how Adorna’s mare, still restive, had decided to join the retrieving party of her own free will against all her rider’s attempts to stop her. Moving backwards instead of forwards despite all that Adorna could do, the mare was beating a determined staccato with her hind hooves into the water around her. Men called, others laughed, including the Queen, some used their swords as fishing hooks, one lad plunged in bodily to earn the Queen’s favour, but no one—not even Peter—noticed how Adorna and her pale golden mare were now wallowing, hock deep, into the current.
She yelled to him, ‘Peter! Help me!’ but his attention was on the ducks like everyone else’s, and Adorna was obliged to use her whip to impel the horse forward as the water covered her feet, the hem of her long gown swirling wetly around one knee. But she had left it too late; the whip hit the water instead of the horse, which still refused to respond to her commands. Help came unexpectedly in the form of a large man and horse who plunged into the water ahead of her, grabbing unceremoniously at the mare’s bridle only seconds before the current swept over the saddle.
Concerned only with getting on to the bank as a team, she paid no attention to the man’s appearance except to note that his horse was very large and that he himself was powerful enough to drag the reins out of her hands and over the mare’s head and to haul the creature almost bodily through the muddy water on to dry firm ground.
