For My Lady's Heart (48 page)

Ruck hesitated, scowling down at the body. He knelt and pushed the man
over on his side, with a thought to pressing the water from his lungs. But
there was no motion, no struggle or life beneath his hands.

“Go to the princess, before she leaves.” Allegreto’s head was bent, his
voice muffled. “Go to your Englishman.”

Donna Cara plucked at Ruck’s shoulder. “Let us go, sir,” she whispered.
“Please. I’ll show you where your horse and gear are hid.”

Too sudden it was, too brief and effortless a thing to embrace. The river
lapped softly at Navona’s feet, glittering in sun and shadow between the
reeds. Ruck thought of the black well behind him, and looked at Allegreto’s
wet hair, and marked the cross on himself again.

“Go!” Allegreto looked up fiercely, his eyes drowning. “Leave me with
him.”

Melanthe stood in the screen passage of the near-empty house. “My books?”

Old Sodorini pulled at his sleeves gravely. “On your own bark, your
grace, but not where you may reach them. I am sure, your grace, if we only
had another week—”

“Thou dost not have another week. Nor another day.”

Sodorini clung to the notion that he was directing the move instead of
his nephew, but Melanthe had been no such fool as to suppose that he could
have the household packed and leaving on close notice. The hall was already
cleared and the chests aboard only because his nephew, who had been
displaced from his position as steward for the journey to Bowland, was back
in authority. But Old Sodorini was loath to give up his moment of glory.

“I fear for the hurried way things have been packed,” he said ominously.
“My lady’s grace will find nothing at her convenience.”

She ignored this gloomy warning. “Has Dan Gian arrived yet?”

“The boats and baggage are here, and the lower servants. His grace has
not come with his men.”

Late sun through the open front door made Melanthe’s shadow a long
distorted shape. “Hold all of my people at readiness on the dock. As soon as
I am changed, we depart. Dan Gian’s servants may do as they please, but I
will not wait for him past the time that I set. I wish to be at London by
midnight. I will want a supper on the boat. See to it.” She almost ordered
that Cara attend her, but remembered that the girl would already be off with
her beloved Englishman. “Send Lisa to me.”

She left him, climbing the stairs to her solar. The bareness of the house
did not sadden her—she was glad enough to leave Merlesden. She had no
childhood memories of the place; it had merely been convenient while the
court was at Windsor, and full in its way of Gian’s presence.

But her steps were slow on the stairs. Leaving here, she broke the final
thread. There would be London and Dover and then the sea, but it was here
that the end came.

She passed under the arched door. The last chest lay open for her to
change into traveling gear. The great bed was dismantled and gone, the stone
walls bare of tapestries and the floor of carpets. Colored light poured in
the oriel windows, green and gold and red and blue, intense with sunset.

A shadow stepped into it. She started. “Gian!”

But he was too tall, too broad in the shoulders. He was all black against
the light but for the hard curve of his cheek and the red and blue hues on
his shoulders.

Melanthe turned and slammed the door, barring it. She pressed her back
against the wood. Lisa’s knock came, and her perplexed call, muted through
the door.

“I do not need thee!” Melanthe strove to keep her voice steady. “Go to
the others. Wait at the wharf!”

“Yea, my lady.” The maid’s voice was barely audible through the wood.

Too late, Melanthe realized that she should have given some order that
would keep Gian and everyone else from the house. But her mind seemed
simple, her heart sending too much blood to her brain with wild beating.

“Ye wends you anon,” Ruck said.

“A’plight, art thou to annoyen me yet, mad churl?” She thrust herself off
the door, but stayed near it. “Go, ere I have thee arrested for trespass!”

“My lady, ye stonds betwix me and the way.”

She could not let him leave—at any moment Gian would come. So close, she
had been so close to drawing the danger safely off. Even now, if she could
get Gian aboard the barks and on the river, if she could hold Ruck bound
just long enough—

“Ne would I leaven here by any way,” he said. “I have come for you,
wife.”

“Thou hast a wooden head.”

“So haf 1 said myseluen, as I lay in chains of your making, my lady.”

“Behoove thee to mark them well!” In her agitation she glared at him with
real savagery. “I know not how thou art here, but by Christ’s rood, I tire
of thy impestering of me!”

“And I tire of thy faithless deceits!” He walked nearer to her, out of
the glare. His dress was nothing from a prison—he wore his black velvet,
with the gold belt and marcasite, stones that were silver and pitch at once,
like the face of water at night. “Where lies thy heart?”

“I have no heart. Did I never say thee so?”

“I had a message of thee, that thy great love, this Navona, had come to
wed thee. Allegreto hatz poured news of it in my ears, how ye cherish his
father and forget me for love of him. N’is nought thy heart?”

She turned his words. “Hast thou slain Allegreto to get free?”

“Nay, he is safe enow, but nought here to twisten and turnen for thee, my
lady. Nor Navona to harbor thee.”

“Gian comes anon.”

His eyes flickered, as if he heard a sound behind her. Melanthe
stiffened, gripping the door hasp, but there was nothing, no noise of feet
on the stairs, no voices below.

“Faithly, does he? Then my lady has only to wait. He will slay me, nill
he nought?”

“Slowly,” she agreed. “With the greatest agony he can serve thee.”

He smiled slightly. “So would I serve him, if I could.”

She saw with despair that fear would not move him. He had no dismay of
Gian, but she was possessed with dread of what would happen if Gian and his
men found him here. It would be no quick poison this time. It would be
torture, and she would have to watch.

Melanthe tilted her head back against the door. She looked at him beneath
her lashes. “Come, wilt thou be such a poor love-sotted wretch, to die for
me?”

“Yea,” he said simply. “I would.”

“Fool!” She pressed against the door. She must have him out of here,
away, and yet she could not think of how. “When I despise thee! Wilt thou
torment me to my grave?”

“To thy grave. Jouk and duck and tumble, and guile as thou wilt, I am
still thy husband, Melanthe, and I will have thee.”

“Never did I wed thee, fool. How should I? It was a jape, an idle
disport, monk-man, to make thee forfeit thy vaunted chastity!”

His green eyes held steady. “Thou hatz as many deceits as a fox has
turnings, my lady, but thou art well skewered on this jape of thine.”

She laughed. “I love another man. Thou art nothing to me.”

He took a step at that. She sought desperately for a way to turn it to
advantage.

“Melanthe—”

“I loathe and scorn thee!”

He lowered his hand. With a sharp turn he paced to the far end of the
chamber, lost again in shadow. The rays of the sun were longer and lower.
Gian must come, any moment he must come.

“Ye ne’er told of Wolfscar to them,” he said, his voice coming with a
soft echo from the dark corner. “Why did ye nought, lady?”

“Why?” She shrugged. “But why should I? Ne did I wish to make my lover
jealous.”

She could not see him, but she sensed that she had found a chink. An
inspiration came to her, if she only had time to employ it. She reached to
her throat and released the catch on her silken mantle. It fell to the
floor, and she kicked it from her.

She stood in the light and stretched her arms luxuriously overhead. “But
Gian is not here yet. Haps I will bedevil thy chastity one more time before
I go.”

She turned, looking toward him, unable to see past the shafts of colored
sunlight. He said nothing.

With a wicked smile, she moved into the shadow. “One kiss,” she murmured.
“For farewell, monk-man.”

He caught her hand before her eyes adjusted, pulling her up against him.
“Is this loathing and despite?” he asked low.

She lifted her eyes, the sun-haze still in them, his face dim and veiled;
his mouth on hers all feeling. He kissed her hard. She breathed him,
familiar heat and plain scent, a man’s unadorned skin and the taste of him
on her tongue—memory and delight and pain. The last time. The last time his
arm pressed her into his chest, the last time his fingers slid upward behind
her throat, straining her closer still.

She almost lost herself in it, but the declining sun burned on her
eyelids. Her hand crept up his shoulder. She pressed the point of her dagger
beneath his ear.

He jerked at the prick of it, his breath hissing inward.

“Now,” she said, “thou wilt do as I bid. Thy hands crossed behind thee.”

His dark lashes hid his eyes as he looked down upon her. Slowly,
slightly, he shook his head. “No, Melanthe.”

She breathed deeply, holding the tip against his skin. “Dost thou think I
have not the skill, or the strength?”

“Nought the will.”

“Fool! Ne do not try me!”

His mouth was a taut line in the half light. “I try you. Do it, if you
will.”

She gripped his sleeve, turning the blade, pressing harder and praying.

“Ye thinks to tie and imprison me until you go,” he said bitterly. “But
thou moste slay me, Melanthe, if thou will to be free, for nill I concede it
while I breathe life.”

She cut him. He flinched, but he held her, his arms tightening as a
bright trickle of blood ran down his neck. She was trapped in his embrace.

“Fool! Fool! If Gian comes now, he will flay the skin from thee alive.”

“What matters it to thee, who hates and loathes me?”

She heard horses. Hoofbeats sounded in the courtyard, and the voices of
men. “He is come!”

Ruck seized her tight. “Decide, my lady. It is beyond lies now.”

“He is come!” she cried. She tore herself from him. “Go!”

“Is he you want, then?”

Her mastery shattered. “Go!” she screamed. “Thou simple, dost thou think
it is between you? He will slay thee—I cannot bear it, God curse thee, he
has killed all that I ever loved only because I loved it. Go! The kitchen,
the postern door—”

But he did not go. Melanthe stood in the midst of the streaming light
clutching the dagger, staring at the blind shadow of him, hearing the sounds
below.

“He knows, he knows,” she moaned. “He will find thee here—how didst thou
come? Thou wast safe, I made thee safe, go, go now, if thou ever loved me
... please—I cannot bear it.” She could see nothing, only light and the
window, the last sun pouring past her in rainbow hues. “I cannot bear it.”

He caught her wrist, wrenching the blade from her. His body made an
outline against the light, the rays shifting and dancing around him. She
heard the knife clatter on the stone floor.

“Melanthe—” He held her hands up, and she saw blood on them, felt the
sting where she had cut herself. “He is dead.”

“Go,” she whispered, but it was hopeless, too late. She could hear them
in the hall and on the stairs.

“Navona is dead, Melanthe.”

She shook her head. “He is not dead. He comes.”

“Nay, my lady.” He held her hands. She couldn’t see his face. She wanted
to see his face, but tears and light and dark were all she had.

“He comes.”

“No,” he said.

There was a scratch upon the door. She shuddered. She could not move.

“My lady, thou said me once, ne’er was I to tell thee false. Gian Navona
is dead. I saw him—my lady, my sovereign lady. Believe me. Thou need nought
fear.”

“My brother, and Ligurio,” she whispered. “And my daughter. And any
friend I ever thought to have but Gryngolet. I did not mean to love thee. I
did not mean to. It was so far away. I never thought he could find out.”

The sun rays shafted around him as he lifted his hands to her face. He
smoothed her hair, his fingers catching in the net and passing over the
jewels.

“She only had two years. My baby. And she was so fair. I always
remembered how fair—and I thought—with thee—if God willed—” She licked tears
from her mouth. “But then I was afraid.”

“I would thou had told me. Melanthe. If thou had told me!”

“I was afraid.” Her face crumpled, and she could not see again. “I was
afraid for thee. And then Desmond came, and I knew that I had brought it all
there, and I had to go away.” She shook her head. “Ne did I want to, but I
could not say thee so, for thou wouldst come.”

“I did come. How could I nought?” His hands squeezed tight on her
shoulders. “How could I lose thee? Ah, Christus, a child ... Melanthe, my
lady, my life—e’en that? And thou kept all from me, and made me think—” He
shook her and then pulled her to his chest. “Helas, I have nought known
thee; thou hatz blinded me.”

The scratch came at the door again. She put her hands on him, closing her
fingers.

“Gian is dead,” Ruck said. “It is not Navona.”

With an effort she released him. He let go of her and went away. She
stood facing the shining window, the tall traceries of colored glass. Her
hands stung and throbbed.

Behind her, someone spoke softly in French. Ruck answered them, the words
too low to understand. Melanthe turned around, and for the first time she
saw him clearly, not a shadow against glare, but real and distinct. He
closed the door and came back to her.

His face in the light was sober, his black brows and lashes stark. He
touched her hands gently, and then her cheek. “Is Allegreto below, and
Navona’s men.” He took her wrists.

She lifted her eyes, a new terror rising in her. “Who killed Gian?”

“No one, lest it were the Arch-Fiend himseluen.”