Read Online Queen of Ambition by Fiona Buckley - Free Book Online

ain’t Roland Jester!”
    “Mercy!” Dale whispered. “What a merry household.”
    “It happens,” I told her. “You should have heard Uncle Herbert and Aunt Tabitha when they found out that there was something going on between me and young Master Gerald Blanchard, who was supposed to be marrying my cousin Mary. Roland Jester in there’s a dear little baa-lamb by comparison.”
    “The girl is coming out,” muttered Brockley. “Quick, madam, talk of something else.”
    “I wonder who did the carving on this settle,” I said clearly. I was facing Dale and Brockley across the table and although they were seated on a bench as rude as the table, I was on a settle with wooden arms that ended in heavy, carved lions’ heads. I fingered the mane of the lion immediately beside me and then withdrew my finger with a startled “Ouch!” and used my teeth to remove a splinter.
    “They were all right when they were new but all our seats and tables are old now,” the girl said in a dull voice as she came up to us. “With the queen coming to visit Cambridge and all, we’re having new seats and tables made. Father thinks maybe courtiers might come in.” She didn’t sound as though she shared her father’s optimism. Even in the poor light, I could see that her hands were callused and chapped with work, and that her eyes were reddened; she walked as though bowed with depression. She had a dark stuff gown on with a stained white apron over it. “What’ll you eat and drink?”
    I opened my mouth to ask what was on offer and then remembered that I was not here as Ursula Blanchard,court lady, but as Ursula Faldene, cousin to Roger Brockley. I had decided to use my maiden name, in case Jester should happen to mention me to his half brother, and in case Giles Woodforde had heard my name at Richmond. I subsided and looked at Brockley, silently asking him to do the talking instead.
    Brockley, therefore, inquired what was to be had. “We’ve got chicken and onion pasties,” said Ambrosia. “Or chicken pies without onion. The chicken was fresh-killed today. We don’t hang poultry in summer. We’ve got some of the mutton pie from yesterday left as well, and that’s all right, too. Or there’s bread and cheese, and radishes. With small ale or milk to drink.”
    She rattled it all off efficiently, in an accent a little more educated than the man’s, but she sounded as though she had said it at least a hundred times that day and would probably be reciting it that night in her sleep. We settled for chicken pies, Brockley and Dale with onion and myself without, and small ale to go with it. Brockley gave her his best and pleasantest smile, and as though we had heard nothing of the quarrel, asked if she had worked there long.
    “All my life. I’m Master Jester’s daughter,” she said, and whisked away.
    “What an odd-looking girl,” whispered Dale.
    “Yes, very unusual,” I agreed. She had been facing the light from the open front of the shop and I had seen her features as well as her hands and eyes. Ambrosia Jester had the kind of face that is ugly or attractive according to your personal taste. It was slightly squashed from brow to chin, as though someone had put her chin on a tabletop and then placed aheavy weight on top of her head. Her lips were a fraction too thick, her nostrils a fraction too splayed, and her dark eyes were deep-set under brows that swept dramatically upward at the outer corners.
    Yet it was a face with character and even passion, and judging from her father’s strictures, she had found a focus for that passion. She was no clod—and her indignant parent, whatever Cecil might say about his style as a correspondent, hadn’t sounded like a bore. That word didn’t fit Master Jester, any more than it fitted Giles Woodforde, whose impassioned outburst I had witnessed in the corridor at Richmond.
    “This family,” I remarked, “begins to look interesting.”
    “You mean to go through with this?”