Kissed by Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page A

punt and heaved it backwards.
    “Harder . . . harder!” the girl in the punt exhorted.
    She
was
a girl, not a woman, Robin thought from the distance of his own thirty years, as he put his shoulder into the work. “I can do this without your encouragement,” he declared acidly. “And sit still. Every time you move, the balance shifts.”
    “Oh, I beg your pardon,” she said, all contrition, and sat on the thwart, hands folded demurely in her lap.
    Robin paused, panting slightly. “'Tis no good,” he said. “'Tis stuck fast. When the tide comes in it will float free.”
    “But when will that be?” The girl sounded shocked. “I cannot sit here and wait. Someone will find me.”
    “I'd have thought that an outcome to be desired,” Robin observed, wiping his sweating brow with his handkerchief.
    “Well, it's not,” she said. “I must return home before Dona Bernardina wakes from her siesta. I just wished to go out by myself for an hour.”
    She sounded so distressed Robin lost his desire to tease. “Perhaps if you get out of the punt it'll be easier for me to free it,” he suggested. “I could lift you onto the bank.”
    “I did not think I was
so
heavy,” the girl said with a frown. “But if you think it will make a difference . . .” She stood up, holding out her hands.
    Robin caught her around the waist and lifted her unceremoniously onto the bank. She was actually no light weight, but he had spent too much time in the company of his sisters to venture a comment on the normality of puppy fat.
    “So, where does your duenna lay her head?” he inquired, leaning on the pole, regarding the girl quizzically.
    “Up the river a little way.” The girl gestured in the direction of the Savoy Palace. “I found the boat moored along the bank while I was walking and thought to take it just for half an hour. But now . . . Oh, can you not free it?” Her voice rose with sudden agitation.
    “Yes, I'm certain I can,” Robin reassured. “But tell me your name. Where are your parents?”
    It was clear to him that she must have arrived in England as part of the contingent of Spaniards. It was clear she was not a servant. Spanish servants didn't have duennas, and neither did they speak near-perfect English. But he had never seen her at court, and he thought, despite her present disarray, that he would have remembered such a face.
    “You will not tell anyone?” She regarded him closely.
    He shook his head. “No, but I will see you safely home.”
    She seemed to consider, then said with a touch of the Spanish arrogance that so annoyed him among the courtiers, “I am Dona Luisa de los Velez of the house of Mendoza.”
    “Ah,” Robin said. The house of Mendoza was one of the oldest and greatest in Spain. He frowned suddenly. “There are no members of the Mendoza family here at court.”
    “No,” she agreed.
    Something in her expression made him drop the pole and join her on the bank. He sat beside her. “How old are you, Dona Luisa?”
    “I have eighteen summers.”
    A woman then, he thought. Not really a girl. “You have a husband?”
    She shook her head. “I was betrothed to the Duke of Vasquez, but then he died of the pox when he was thirteen. Then they would have me wed the Marques de Perez, but I refused.”
    Restlessly her fingers trawled through the bright pink flowers at her side. “I said I would rather take the veil. He is an old man, past fifty. I would not let him touch me.”
    Robin said nothing. He picked marsh mallows, threading them together in a chain as he remembered seeing Pen and Pippa do.
    “My father died a few months ago. He left me to the guardianship of Don Lionel Ashton.”
    At the name Robin's fingers stilled. “An Englishman?” he queried softly.
    “An old and trusted friend of my father's. I have known him all my life. My mother relies on him absolutely. It was decided that he would bring me to England when he came with Philip and that I would thus be diverted.” A note of