Songs of Love & Death by George R. R. Martin, Gardner Dozois Read Free Book Online

other birds of fine plumage, their bright laughter and extravagant gestures indicating that they’d escaped the gilded cage of court in the nearby Palace of St. James. But why was one of them staring at her, a very sparrow of a spinster?
    He turned back to his companions. She’d imagined his interest, but now she couldn’t help staring at him. He seemed somehow brighter than his glittering companions. Merely the effect of a suit of peacock blue silk, she told herself, but he did seem perfectly made and he moved with such grace, even in ridiculous shoes with high red heels.
    “Such extravagance in their clothing, and a shower of rain would ruin all.”
    Martha turned to her mother, smiling at the practical comment. “I’m sure chairmen would rush to carry them to shelter. Let us admire nature instead. Trees welcome the rain.”
    They strolled on their way.
    Martha and her mother were enjoying the park, but also, it must be admitted, some glimpses of the follies of the great. Martha had certainly seen nothing like those courtier peacocks in York. But then, in York, she’d lived quietly for so many years, helping her mother nurse her father through a long, distressing illness. This visit to a relative in London was to help them regain their spirits and be ready to pick up life, but Martha wondered what form her life could take. She was too accustomed to quiet and routine and too old for adventures.
    Unless…
    She was looking at that man again! She quickly turned away. “Let’s walk toward Rosamund’s Pond, Mother.” Away from temptation.
    Temptation?
    Ridiculous. Lord Peacock was a wastrel courtier and she was the virtuous daughter of a canon of York Minster and at twenty-four, long past the age of folly.
    Yet she looked again.
    Just to be sure she was safe, she told herself.
    Safe? Did she think he would pursue her? Laughable…
    But then she realized that he
was
looking at her again. He smiled.
    She turned her back, heart pounding. Lud! Had he caught one of her glances and taken it as admiration? Even as lewd encouragement? Heaven defend her!The court was notoriously licentious. She urged her mother to walk more quickly, but plump Anne Darby was never energetic. Her strolling involved many pauses to admire a vista, or yet another pelican. For some reason this park was full of them. Pelicans and peacocks…
    “Come, Mother. We must hurry.”
    “What? Why?”
    Martha came up with the only possible excuse. “I need to piss.”
    “Oh dear, oh dear. Yes, very well.” Her mother did walk faster and gradually Martha’s panic simmered down. They were safe and she would not come here again.
    “Ladies.”
    Martha froze, then would have walked on if her mother hadn’t already turned, incapable of being cold or discourteous. Thus she must turn too, already knowing who had spoken. By logic, surely, not by a frisson on the back of her neck and a strange tension deep inside.
    He stood mere feet away, his silk suit embroidered with silver thread as well as colors. The lace at throat and wrist would have cost a fortune, and his neckcloth was fixed by a gold pin that sparkled in the sun, as did rings on his fingers and the jeweled hilt of his sword. As did his eyes, as green as a summer leaf. His handsome, lean face was painted to give him fashionable pallor and then to restore color with rouge on cheeks and lips.
    He was ridiculous, but Martha was powerfully aware of being dressed in mourning gray with only a silver pin for ornamentation, and of never having let paint touch her face. She should have been disdainful, but instead the peculiar sensation within could almost be awe.
    He was smiling directly at her now and holding out a handkerchief. “I believe this is yours, ma’am?”
    Martha glared at the linen, ferociously irritated that the handkerchief was indeed her own, marked by the embroidered forget-me-nots in one corner. How had it come to fall out of her pocket?
    Before she could lie, her mother said, “Oh, see it