By Arrangement (8 page)

He did not. He was randy enough at sixteen and not inexperienced, but he held his body in check. At first his dismay and shock helped him. His knowledge of females consisted of the happy servant girls with whom coupling was a form of joyful play. Instinctively he knew that this woman was nothing like that and that she tempted him to something other than pleasure.

But as she continued displaying herself, it was anger that kept him in control. He turned away from her. He did not like playing the mouse to this cat woman. He resented her using her position and degree to humiliate him.

Finally he could tell that she grew angry too. She addressed him directly and began to renegotiate the price of the goods. She pursued the subject a long while, refusing
to pay the whole tally, demanding his attention. Finally, he had to look at her, and as he did she raised one leg to the side of the tub and exposed herself.

He lost control then, but not in the way that she expected. He let his face show what he thought, but it was not the desire she demanded. He looked down at her and let her see his utter disgust before he walked out.

He had almost reached the road before her men came and dragged him back. They tied him to a metal ring set in the trunk of an oak tree in the garden. Before the lash fell, he looked over his shoulder and saw her honey hair at a window.

“You do not remember me,” he said. “But then, there were a number of us, why would you remember one?”

Over the years, they had found each other, the boys now grown to men whom she had ensnared in her web. The woman's unhealthy appetite was not discussed openly, but it was not unknown. It was why David Constantyn had never let his apprentices serve her or deliver goods.

But he was the one who had not played her game as she wanted it, and so the lash fell harder on him than those others whose only crime had been to show the lust that she demanded and then punished while she watched from her bower window. He had been flogged once in Egypt, but it was this first time that had scarred his back. His youth had been beaten out of him that day.

He regarded her impassively, watching her study him hard. This time the spark of memory caught hold and her eyes flamed with recognition. Her gaze slowly swept the room as she calculated her danger. She collected herself.

“You were compensated,” she said coolly.

Aye, he had been compensated. When he staggered back home and his master saw his condition, that good man had done what no other master or father had done. Going to the city courts the next day, he petitioned against
this woman and forced the mayor to address the issue. After a long while, the husband had been made to pay fifty pounds. David had refused to touch the money.

“The others were not. And it is not a debt that money settles anyway.”

She glared at him angrily before calming herself. She glanced at the bed and then eyed him with a question.

“Aye, that too. But if you want this extension, I have other terms. I will extend the loans in return for the Hampstead manor and property, and for one hour of your time.”

“The Hampstead lands belong to me, not my husband. They were not pledged as surety for any loans.”

“I know that they are yours. In return for them, however, I will in fact forgive the loans, not just extend them.” He smiled. “See how well you negotiate? Already I have conceded much more than I had planned.”

He saw her weighing certain ruin against the property. If he called the loans, she would have to sell it anyway.

“Why do you want that house? Why not another? Are you going to burn it or something?”

“Nay. We merchants are very practical people. We rarely destroy property. It is a very beautiful house and I have admired it. I will have need of a country home near London soon. I hold no grudge against a building.”

“And the hour of my time?”

“That is for the other debt. You will go to a place that I tell you. There a man will flog you just as you watched others flogged for your pleasure. Ten lashes.”

Her eyes flew open in shock. He noted her reaction with relief. Those who took pleasure in pain often went both ways, and he did not want her to get perverse enjoyment out of this.

“I didn't realize that we had so much in common,” she finally said.

“We have nothing in common. I will not be there, although some of the others might be. They will be told of this and may want to see it. I would demand your husband do it, as he should have long ago, but he knows what he has in you, and if he started he might not stop. It is justice we seek, not revenge or your husband's satisfaction.”

She abruptly rose from the tub. She stepped out and began to dry herself. Her hurried, angry movements gradually slowed, however, and the expression on her face changed. He saw her considering, calculating, planning the final negotiation that, if executed well enough, might change everything.

He realized with surprise that he had totally lost interest in taking her humiliation any further.

He removed a small purse from the front of his pourpoint. It contained exactly the difference between the value of the loans and the Hampstead property. He dropped the purse on top of her garments. “It is the money that you seek but not a loan. That would be bad business. However, I always pay for my whores whether I use them or not.”

He walked to the door. “A week hence, madam. The time and place will be sent to you. Afterward husband can contact me about settling the loans and property.”

Her voice, harsh and ugly, ripped across the chamber. “There will be a new debt to settle after this, you bastard son of a whore!”

He paused. Justice, not revenge, he reminded himself.

Still …

“Fifteen lashes, I think now, my lady. The last five for the insult to my mother.”

He strode out through the solar and hall and left the house.

The sky had clouded over and a light snow was falling by the time David reined in his horse outside the tavern. To his right, along the Southwark docks, small craft of all types bobbed. Stretched out in front of them rose the small houses where the prostitutes of the Stews plied their trade. Even at night these docks would be full, for the city discouraged crossing the river after dark and it was traditional for these women to have their customers stay until dawn.

The rude tavern was dark and musty with river damp. David let his eyes adjust, and then walked to a corner table.

“You are late,” the man sitting there said.

David slid onto the bench. “Oliver, you are the most punctual whoremonger I have ever met.”

Oliver passed him a cup of ale, drank some of his own, and wiped his black mustache and beard on his sleeve. “I am a busy man, David. Time is money.”

“Your woman's time is money, Oliver, not yours. How is Anne?”

Oliver shrugged. “She doesn't like the winter. The nights are too long in her opinion.”

She would probably move to Cock Lane soon. It was right outside the city wall and the women there worked differently than here in Southwark. But then, they also had to deal with the city laws. Southwark, across the Thames from London, was a town apart and close to lawless.

He looked at Oliver's wiry thin body and long black hair. They had known each other since boyhood, when they had played and scrapped in the streets and alleys together. On occasion during those carefree days, they had met danger side by side. But then Oliver's poor family had moved up to Hull and David had been plucked from those alleys and sent to school and into trade.

They had met again when Oliver returned to London several years ago. David had recognized at once that he had found a man whom he could trust. Like Sieg, Oliver might do a criminal's deeds sometimes, but he lived by a code of loyalty and fairness that would put most knights to shame. Since then, they had again on occasion met danger side by side.

The decision for Anne to become a prostitute had simply been the easiest of several choices available to them when they had come back to London. Anne had already decided that the winter nights were too long when he had met them a short while later. Still, she probably earned three times as much on her back than she and Oliver could together through honest labor. The odd jobs Oliver did for him and others helped some.

He wondered how he was going to explain Oliver and Anne to Christiana. Sieg's story would be strange enough when she finally realized that he wasn't a typical servant.

“Has he spoken to you?” Oliver asked.

“Twice. The last time just this morning.”

“I have followed him like you said. He spoke to a ship's master yesterday. I think that he will sail back soon.”

“He will need to. I expect that he will seek me out one more time, though, and delay his trip until I will talk to him at length. He has only felt me out so far, and has not achieved what he came for.”

“You think that it is set, then?”

“I think so. I refused him, but I left the door open.”

Oliver shook his head. “I am not convinced. His actions have been very normal. He goes to merchants and other places of business. That is all.”

“His offer to me has been subtle so far but unmistakable. He appears to be a merchant because he is one. Except for the letter for Edward and his mission with me, he is here for trade. It is the whole point. Whenever
I go to France or Flanders, I go for trade, too.” He stretched out his legs beneath the table. “Speaking of which, tell Albin that I will need to go over in about a week or so.”

“Running from your duel?” Oliver asked with a grin.

“Before that. After he talks with me but before my wedding. I want to sail along the coast.”

“You are pushing things, my friend,” Oliver said, laughing. “Wait until after you marry this princess. Tempt fate and you might find yourself caught in bad seas for a week and miss the ceremony. That will take some explaining, I'll warrant.”

David looked away. Sieg had been right. It was a bad time to be getting married. Oliver was right, too. He should wait until after the wedding to sail the coast. But it needed to be done soon, and he had no intention of leaving Christiana for a while after she came to him. This girl, and the growing desire he felt for her, were complicating things.

Her eyes were faceted jewels full of bright reflections. A man could lose his soul in eyes like that.

For one thing, he had begun to lose interest in these subtle and dangerous plans that he had laid and in which Oliver played a role. He had finally admitted that to himself as he rode over here today, and had been astonished to discover it. After all, he had been slowly planting this particular field for almost two years. A piece of information here, a deliberate slip there. It had worked because people like himself were quick to notice mistakes and weakness and potential advantage, and he knew that he dealt with a man very much like himself. In fact, matching wits with him should be a pleasure in itself, and the final justice much more satisfying than the rather thin contentment he had felt with Lady Catherine today.

Instead, he was losing interest and even considering cutting things short just as they reached the critical moves. His own plans and Edward's had become so intertwined that he had pondered at length whether it would be possible to extricate one from the other. That he even considered such a thing had to do with Christiana. She had him thinking of the future more than the past. He already felt responsibility for her. He considered far too often what it would mean for her if in the end he lost this game.

He had changed his testament so that she would be a wealthy widow if something went wrong. Funds would be on account with Florentine bankers too. When the time came, he would give Sieg and Oliver instructions for getting her out of the country if that became necessary. But all of that would never compensate her if he failed.

Her gestures were full of elegance and poise, her hands and arms beautifully angled like a dancer's. It was the way that she moved that made her appear fragile.

She still expected that her lover would come for her. He didn't doubt her resolve on that for one moment.

Stephen Percy. Learning the man's name and something of his character had been easy enough, but the knowledge only confirmed David's initial instincts about the affair. Christiana was in for a bad disappointment.

That her heart would break soon went without saying, but when would she see the truth behind illusions? Two weeks? A month? Never? The last possible. A girl's first love could be a blind thing, and she was convinced that she was in love with this man. Accepting the truth could well be impossible. God knew he had seen that before.

So young Percy doesn't come for her. Then what? A marriage full of cold duty? He smiled thinly at the thought. He knew well what happened in such unions. The men found mistresses quickly or spent too many nights with the prostitutes on Cock Lane. The more honest wives absorbed themselves with religion or their children.

And the braver and bolder women … well, they eventually found their ways to the beds of men like David de Abyndon.

He felt her thin, lithe body against his. He sensed her responses to him, and her fear of them. A tremor flowed through her and into him, and he had wanted to kiss her again and again.

He had enough experience to recognize the possibilities which those tremors had revealed. But then, he had already sensed them that night in his solar.

In his memory's eye he saw her sparkling eyes and pale skin and the wide mouth that he couldn't see without wanting to kiss. He imagined her walking toward him, naked and inviting, that beautiful face and mouth finally turned up willingly to his.

But then her image grew hazy and dim, and another woman's face replaced it. Gaunt and tired, this face was beautiful too despite its weariness. Resting on a pillow with golden brown hair encircling it like a halo, its eyes were finally closed to disappointment and disillusion.

The image fell away and he could see the entire chamber with its flickering candles and the white sheets on the bed. Clothes hung on pegs along a wall and a fire burned too hotly in the hearth. And sitting on the bed, his graying head buried in that lifeless breast, bent the anguished figure of David Constantyn.