Almost Innocent by Jane Feather Read Free Book Online

morrow.”
    “But was it more than four hours?” she asked urgently.
    He smiled, looked up at the sun, and gave her the benefit of the doubt. “By a hair,” he said.
    With a sigh of satisfaction, Magdalen settled comfortably into the crook of his arm.

Two
    I T WAS M AY morning, a delicate cobweb of a morning dawning under a sky so pale as to be almost translucent, the faintest tinge of pink in the east offering the sun’s promise.
    “Up, you slugabeds. This is no morning for maids to be stewing beneath the sheets! You must bring in the May.” The words were laughingly spoken and a large hand swooped, stripping back the bedcovers, creating tickling havoc with the squealing, wriggling children, nesting like baby voles beneath.
    “Oh, ’tis our brother,” squeaked Mary obviously. “Is it time for the Maypole, sir?” She squirmed away from her half brother, giggling as he reached for her.
    “Lazybones, you will be lucky to see the Maypole at all. The bell for prime sounded some ten minutes ago,” he declared, catching her and swinging her out of the bed, the rest of his sisters jumping for his knees in a futile attempt to throw him off balance. Within an instant, they were joined by their equally exuberant little brothers from the next-door chamber, and the match became somewhat uneven.
    Magdalen watched the rough-and-tumble as she always did with the bedclothes pulled up tight over her nakedness. As always, part of her wished he would play with her in the same jolly, uninhibited way, but a larger part knew that she would sink with embarrassment if he did. He didn’t . . . he never did. The bed she shared with his cousin, Catherine, was always inviolate. Whenhe called a halt to the morning’s game, he would greet the older two cheerfully, sometimes giving their hair a teasing tug, before leaving the bedchamber and his vociferous brood of brothers and sisters to their dressing.
    “My lord, they will never be ready if you do not cease this foolishness.” Lady Gwendoline, half laughing, half scolding, appeared in the open door. “Sounds of revelry are come already from beyond the gates, and it would be a sorry thing indeed if this house were the only one bereft of the May.”
    Her husband shook the children from him like a dog shaking his coat after the rain. “Make haste, then, or you will miss the crowning of the queen.”
    “I think Magdalen should be crowned May queen,” little Margaret announced. “She can dance better than anyone and has such pretty hair.”
    “Oh, such silliness, Meg,” Magdalen chided, blushing against the pillows.
    Guy de Gervais smiled at her. “I am not sure it is silliness. What do you think, my lady?” He turned to his wife, the tenderness of his smile as always overlaid with anxiety. It took no experienced eye to see that the Lady Gwendoline was in poor health. Her skin was of a deathly pallor, her body thin and frail, her eyes sunken.
    She stood leaning for support against the doorjamb and returned her husband’s smile. There was much love between them, and it was there for all to see. “I think the poor girl has been put to the blush quite sufficiently,” she said. “Do you go to your breakfast, husband, and leave the nurse to her work.”
    At the door, he turned as if reminded of something. “Magdalen, you and I are to journey to the city later this morning. It would be as well for you to dress with more than usual care.”
    He had gone before she had absorbed the statement sufficiently to respond. Her companions, however, burst into a chorus of envious speculation.
    “It must be about your wedding,” Catherine said,standing naked beside the bed and stretching. “But he did not say Edmund was to journey with you.”
    Magdalen’s head was buried in the clothes press, and her reply was muffled. “I am not to be wed for months yet,” she said more clearly, backing out with a gown of embroidered linen in her hands. “I do not seem to be growing quickly enough.”