At the Queen's Summons by Susan Wiggs Page A

belting him in the face, tearing at his clothes. Mud spattered him to the thighs, but he ignored it.
    He went farther west, turning into each alley, calling her name. The rain blinded him, the wind buffeted him, the mud sucked at his feet.
    At a particularly grim-looking street, the wind tore down a painted sign of a blue devil and hurled it to the ground. It struck a slanting cellar door, then fell sideways onto a pile of wood chippings.
    He heard a faint, muffled cry. With a surge of hope, he flung away the sign and the sawdust.
    There she sat, knees drawn up to her chest, face tucked into the hollow between her hugging arms. Thunder crashed again, and she flinched as if struck by a whip.
    â€œPippa!” He touched her quaking shoulder.
    She screamed and looked up at him.
    Aidan’s heart lurched. Her face, battered by rain and tears, shone stark white in the storm-dulled twilight. The panic in her eyes blinded her; she showed no recognition of him. That look of mindless terror was one he had seen only once before—in the face of his father just before Ronan had died.
    â€œFaith, Pippa, are you hurt?”
    She did not respond to her name, but blurted out something he could not comprehend. A nonsense word or a phrase in a foreign tongue?
    Shaken, he bent and scooped her up, holding her against his chest and bending his head to shield her from the rain as best he could. She did not resist, but clung to him as if he were a raft in a raging sea. He felt a surge of fierce protectiveness. Never had he felt so painfully alive, so determined to safeguard the small stranger in his arms.
    Still she showed no sign of recognition, and did not do so while he dashed back to Lumley House. A host of demons haunted the girl who called herself Pippa Trueheart.
    And Aidan O Donoghue was seized by the need to slay each and every one of them.
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    â€œBatten the hatches! Secure the helm! There’s naught to do now but run before the wind!”
    The man in the striped jacket had a funny, rusty voice. He sounded cross, or maybe afraid, like Papa had been when his forehead got hot and he had to go to bed and not have any visitors.
    She clung to her dog’s furry neck and looked across the smelly, dark enclosure at Nurse. But Nurse had her hands all twisted up in a string of rosy beads—the ones she hid from Mama, who was Reformed—and all Nurse could say was Hail Mary Hail Mary Hail Mary.
    Something scooped the ship up and up and up. She could feel the lifting in her belly. And then, much faster, a stronger force slapped them down.
    Nurse screamed Hail Mary Hail Mary Hail Mary…
    The hound whined. His fur smelled of dog and ocean.
    A cracking noise hurt her ears. She heard the whine of ropes running through pulleys and a shriek from the man in the funny coat, and suddenly she had to get out of there, out of that close, wet place where the water was filling up the floor, where her chest wouldn’t let her breathe.
    She pushed the door open. The dog scrambled out first. She followed him up a slanting wooden stair. Loose barrels skittered all through the passageways and decks. She heard a great roar of water. She looked back to find Nurse, but all she saw was a hand waving, the rosy beads braided through the pale fingers. Water covered Nurse all the way to the top of her head ….
    â€œNo!” Pippa sat straight up in the bed. For a moment, the room was all a pulsating blur. Slowly, it came into focus. Low-burning hearth fire. Candle flickering on the table. High, thick testers holding up the draperies.
    The O Donoghue Mór sitting at the end of the bed.
    She pressed her hand to her chest, hating the twitchy, air-starved feeling that sometimes seized her lungs when she took fright or breathed noxious or frozen air. Her heart was racing. Sweat bathed her face and neck.
    â€œBad dream?” he asked.
    She shut her eyes. Like a mist driven by the wind, the images flew away, unremembered, but her sense