Free The Dark Lady's Mask by Mary Sharratt Page B

too, would have to make the most of her education, learn as much as she could in order to become a poet, a lady. Then, as a woman grown, she would return to London and drive Master Holland out of Papa’s house.
    â€œThere you are!” Lady Susan appeared from beneath a bower of white roses. She sat on the stone bench beside Aemilia and touched her hot, tear-stained face. “You’re not still crying over that naughty mare, are you? Think no more of it, dear.”
    Susan took Aemilia in her arms, a rare gesture, for the lady wasn’t given to extravagant displays of affection. Leaning against her, Aemilia let herself be held, Susan’s heart beating against her ear as Papa’s once had.
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    F RESH SNOW MANTLED THE gardens and hedges in a train of diamonds. Golden shafts of winter sunlight poured into Lady Susan’s room where Aemilia lingered, surrounded by her mentor’s books and maps. Before the looking glass, she whirled in her new gown of rose-colored silk with brocade sleeves, a gift from Susan. She had pink and scarlet ribbons woven into her hair and a wreath of gilded rosemary crowning her brow.
    Today Perry would wed Mary de Vere in the family chapel. Grimsthorpe Castle heaved with guests who had come from as far away as Oxford and Exeter. Aemilia’s room had been sacrificed to accommodate such eminent persons, but the greater glory was hers, for Lady Susan had invited her to share her four-poster with the embroidered draperies.
    Alone in Susan’s chamber, Aemilia practiced her dance steps before the mirror. She would play the lute and sing madrigals in honor of the newlyweds. She would join the sons and daughters of earls in a masque Lady Susan and Master Wingfield had arranged. Such a day of celebration this would be! The aroma of roasting and baking wafted up from the kitchen.
    Smiling into the mirror, Aemilia tried to embody the sweetness and grace Lady Susan expected of her. She spoke in dulcet tones, in her most cultivated voice. “My name is Amy.”
    But Angela’s corpse-cold face intruded on her thoughts. Catherine Willoughby had finally broken the news that Aemilia’s sister had died in childbirth. How could her beautiful sister be dead while she lived in such pomp? Did her good fortune make a mockery of all Angela had suffered? If Aemilia gave in to her grief, she feared it would devour her, that she’d start crying and never be able to stop.
    She told herself she must be strong and make the most of this precious chance she had been given. Looking once more in the mirror, she said first shyly, then boldly, “Amy Willoughby.”
    For a long moment, she allowed herself the comfort of pretending that Susan, not Angela, was her sister. That she had been born to this manor house, titled and rich.
    But she didn’t look the least bit English. Even in the depths of winter, her skin remained olive in tone, no match for Susan’s complexion of cream and roses. Aemilia’s eyes were as black as ink with amber flecks swimming inside them. Her hair, even in high summer when exposed to the full flood of sunlight, remained dark with only a few auburn lights.
    Still, she curtsied before the mirror and uttered her incantation, her prayer. “Amy Willoughby.”
    Then she shrieked when, like a phantom, Mary de Vere’s pale face appeared in the glass behind her.
    â€œYou can preen all you want, girl,” the Earl of Oxford’s daughter, Perry’s bride, said. “But you will never be a Willoughby.”
    Aemilia burned, her Bassano blood rising to the surface, beating in her ears. Before she could think what to say, Mary vanished in a swish of silk, only her carnation perfume remaining in the air.

 
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Warrior Women

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    WELVE YEARS OLD , A EMILIA pored over Plutarch’s
Life of Alexander,
preparing a written translation from the Greek into English. About to ask a question, she glanced at Master Wingfield, but he