Free The Courtship by Catherine Coulter Page B

dislike of this intruder, said immediately, “My attributes might be obvious, sir, but your rudeness is even more apparent. Indeed, it is rather transparent.”
    Lord Crowley took a step back. His well-formed mouth grew ugly in its sneer. “Is this your first assignation with Lord Beecham, my dear? I beg you to have a care. Beecham is a dangerous man. He won’t treat you as well as I would.” He bowed. “I am Crowley, you know. And you are?”
    She smiled up at him, showing lots of white, locked teeth. “I am a lady, sir.”
    â€œGo away, Crowley. The lady and I are busy.”
    â€œBusy doing what?”
    Lord Beecham rose slowly. He eyed Lord Crowley for a very long time. The man fidgeted. “Actually I will tell you, Crowley. The lady and I are partners.”
    â€œPartners in what?”
    â€œThat is not any of your affair. Go away, Crowley.”
    â€œYou begin to interest me, Beecham.” Then he gave a small salute to Helen with his riding crop, turned, and gracefully mounted his horse.
    â€œStay away from him,” Lord Beecham said, looking after Crowley until he disappeared from view. “I have the reputation of a seducer, surely a harmless pursuit when all is said and done. Lord Crowley has a flair for evil.”
    â€œWhat sort of evil?”
    Lord Beecham said briefly, “He feeds on helplessness. Now, where were we?”
    â€œRobert Burnell and the lamp. He said he’d never seen it do anything save just sit there and let the king and queen rub it endlessly until Eleanor grew violently ill in the fall of 1279. Some sort of fever was raging through London, and the queen, along with three of her ladies, became very ill. All of the ladies died. The king was distraught. He took the lamp—it was a last resort, Burnell wrote, because the physicians had given up—and he put it in Eleanor’s arms.” She shuddered.
    â€œWell, what happened?”
    â€œShe survived.”
    Lord Beecham said slowly, “As I recall, Queen Eleanor bore more children that I can count. If she could survive all that childbirth, it seems to me that surviving a fever would be nothing to her.”
    â€œShe was pregnant nearly every year,” Helen admitted, “but still, the fever was virulent, and it did kill all three of her ladies. Don’t be so cynical, sir.”
    â€œWhat did Burnell write about that?”
    â€œHe claimed that the king wrapped the lamp in a bolt of exquisite crimson velvet from Genoa and set it beneath glass. He proclaimed the lamp magic and set guards around it. Then one morning, the king unwrapped the velvet to look at the lamp.
    â€œIt was gone. In its place was a silver lamp, ugly and quite new. The king went on a rampage. The guards were questioned, brutally. No one admitted anything. Then, the next morning, the gold lamp was back. Everyone believed that the guard who had stolen it had been so frightened that he simply returned it.
    â€œBut you see, it happened again the next week. One morning the gold lamp was gone and in its place was the ugly silver lamp. The following morning, the gold one was back.”
    â€œWhere did the lamp go?” Lord Beechem asked. “What magic made it disappear only to reappear?”
    â€œKing Edward brought in scholars, Burnell wrote, but none of them could figure it out. The king himself even slept by the lamp for a week, to guard it. The same thing happened. The lamp disappeared, then reappeared. Everyone proclaimed the lamp to be magic. Churchmen said it was evil. They wanted it destroyed. The king refused, saying it had saved his queen.
    â€œFinally, Burnell wrote, the king, because of the pressure from the Church, buried the lamp near Aldeburgh, right on the coast. Supposedly when the queen was ill again, he sent men to fetch it. They reported that they could not find it. The queen died. It seems that the lamp disappeared.”
    â€œWhich of Burnell’s