The Maiden's Hand (28 page)

“You should have told me. It’s too frightening to endure alone.”

“Lark, I have looked death in the face. There’s nothing fearsome about it, except to be separated from you.” They sat still for long moments, listening to the scratching of a rat in the dark and the murmured conversation of the guards outside.

“You know, don’t you?” he asked quietly.

“Know what?” Her gaze fled his. She seemed inordinately interested in things about the room: the coals in the grate, the slumping candle in the corner, the walls weeping with moisture, the arched lintel over the three steps leading to a locked door.

“I’ve been condemned to die.”

“You shall get a reprieve,” she shot back. “You must—”

“Lark, time is short. Just listen. There can be no reprieve.”

“Why not?” The red of anger and fear stained her cheeks.

“Because I refuse to recant.”

Her eyes widened, and at last she looked at him again. “You?”

He felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. “I surprised even myself. But it’s true. To give in to them now would discredit everything we’ve worked for, fought for. I will not forfeit my honor and the safety of Richard Speed and my sister.” And you, he thought, but did not say the words. “I cannot meet Bonner’s price, Lark. Not now.”

“Would it help to beg you?”

“Sweetheart, you know better than that.”

“Oliver.” She sat on her heels and regarded him furiously. “I want you to recant. Tell them you’ll name the sacraments and believe in transubstantiation and the absolute power of Rome—”

“Stop it!” He flung aside her hand. “Listen to you.
You,
Lark! The woman who told me that the cause of Reformation is worth dying for.”

“That was before my beliefs became a peril to your life.”

Bitterness chilled him. “Now I understand why they brought you to see me,” he said. “Did they instruct you to beg me to recant? Did they tell you the exact words to say, or did you think of them on your own?”

“Oliver, please—”

“Don’t ‘Oliver, please’ me! Think about what you’re asking, Lark. Shall I trade my immortal soul in order to spend a few more years on earth?” He caught both her hands then, squeezing hard as if to press his meaning into her flesh.

“I’m dying, Lark. I came close the night you told me about the baby. That night, when the illness seized me, I saw the most extraordinary vision, heard a voice that
wasn’t a voice. And I had the most uncanny feeling that all I needed to do was reach out, and I would touch the hand of God.”

She gaped at him, and he laughed without humor. “I’ve never bothered myself with matters of deep faith, but the experience affected me profoundly.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s not easy to speak of.”

“If I lose you,” she said solemnly, “I shall die, too.”

“No!”
He startled himself with the violence of his reaction. “That would defeat me utterly. You must live on, Lark. And nurture our child and one day tell him about me.” He gentled his voice. “I have never been a man of honor, Lark. Never committed to anything save my own amusement. I was shallow and stupidly happy. Until now, my life has been a promise unfulfilled.” He smiled. “You once said I loved you because it was easy. What say you now, Lark?”

She waved her hand as if to banish the question. “What of our child, Oliver? A letter is a poor substitute for a father.”

He closed his eyes, trying not to see a smiling babe in a cot, a fair-haired child wading in a brook, an earnest youth bent over a book.

“Tell him I died well,” Oliver said quietly.

“Nay—”

“Better a dead martyr for a father than a living coward.” He didn’t want her to break down and cry. Though he hated his own selfish vanity, he feared that if she fell to pieces, he would, too.

Distance, he told himself. Distance would keep despair at bay and allow them to consider pragmatic affairs.

But first, ah, first, he allowed himself a blissful, surreptitious brushing of his lips over her soft hair. Then he put
her away from him and stared intently into her face. The small, rounded chin. The wide eyes. The lips that trembled but allowed no sound of despair to pass them.

Her sincerity broke his heart, but he would not let it show. “Lark.”

“Yes?”

“I would speak of practical matters.”

She mouthed the word
practical
as if it were a foreign phrase.

“You are to put the properties of Eventide and Blackrose and Montfichet into a trust holding. My father will help you with that. Or Kit—” he cleared his throat “—if he survives.”

She looked at him with her soul in her eyes, and he couldn’t be certain she was listening. He went on. “I want you to leave London. Take Nance with you and go to Lynacre—”

“Stop it!” She put her hands over her ears. “I won’t listen to this!”

As gently as he could, he took her hands away, keeping hold of her wrists. The sensation of her heartbeat beneath his fingers was nearly his undoing. He remembered kissing her there, feeling her pulse under his lips. Almost brusquely, he released her hands.

“Will you do that, Lark? Will you go to Lynacre?”

“Yes.”

“Go soon. Tomorrow. It must be nearly November. The roads will be rivers of mud in the rain, so make certain you travel in dry weather. I think you’d best go by barge at least as far as Wimbledon—”

“Oliver.”

“—and do not stay at just any inn along the way. I’ll not have you—”

“Oliver.”

“For God’s sake, what
is
it?”

“Listen to yourself.”

“You’re
supposed to be listening. I haven’t got all day, you know.”

Her cheeks paled another shade. “How can you make a jest at a time like this?” She held herself very stiff and straight. Her face seemed set in marble, white and immobile. “You’re so
distant,
Oliver. It’s as if you’ve already gone, and some horrid stranger is sitting here planning my future for me.”

“Well, there’s not much point in planning
my
future, is there?” he demanded. “Or shall we do that? What will I say tomorrow? Will I stand there with my gaze up to heaven and say, ‘Lord, here I am, do You find me good enough in Your eyes?” He heard the cruel edge to his voice, saw the bewildered hurt on her face. Ashamed, he glanced down.

Her gown had the bodice set high, and her velvet skirts draped her belly, grown huge with her child. His child. Theirs.

As he stared in amazement, something moved.

He must have made a noise, or the look on his face betrayed him, for Lark took his hand, and he could tell from her touch that all anger had drained from her.

She placed his hand on her belly. It was hard and taut. She arranged his fingers so that they splayed out.

“My hands are filthy,” he whispered.

“Do you think that matters now?”

It was the
now
that broke down the barrier. That one simple word conveyed, in a single breath, the desperate finality of what was to come.

“Oh, God,” he muttered.

She covered his hand with her own. She, too, had felt his wall of reserve crumble. And, bless the girl, she was not falling apart.

“For the first time in my life,” he said, “I find myself at a loss for words.”

“You don’t need to say anything.”

He stared at her. “I don’t, do I? Not to you.”

She smiled, and her lips trembled only a little. “Hold very still,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Your hand. Keep it still.”

He held his entire being still. A quiet hiss came from the fire. Somewhere, water dripped steadily onto stone.

Beneath Oliver’s hand, the baby moved. The wonder of it traveled up his arm and spread all through his body. He was feeling
life.
A life he had helped to create, a life that had grown out of his extraordinary love for this woman.

When he dared to look at Lark’s face, he saw her smiling through tears.

“It is a miracle,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Do you suppose it’s a boy or girl?”

“I’ve never even considered it. Have you?”

“No. I only pray you will be safely delivered.”

“I will, Oliver. I promise I will.”

“Do not name it for me,” he said suddenly. In spite of himself, his mind made a picture of a child with a beautiful round face, wavy dark hair. Blue eyes, like his own.

He took his hand away.

“Why not?” she asked.

He forced a grin. “A girl called Oliver would endure too much teasing.”

She, too, smiled, and he loved her for that, loved her
for her strength, for not making their last moments harder by flinging herself, weeping, to the floor.

Time was running out. They both knew it, and, oddly, conversation lagged. He wanted to tell her that he loved her, that she was beautiful, that she had given purpose and depth to his life.

But she knew that. He could see it in her eyes.

Nervously she touched his knee through a hole in his hose. “I should have brought needle and thread,” she blurted out.

“Sweetheart.” He touched her chin. “There’s no need.” He could see that she was about to shatter, so he took her in his arms and said, “Do you know what I want?”

“What?”

“To dance with my wife.”

Her breath caught, and he was afraid she would refuse him. Instead she rose and helped him to his feet. There was no humiliation in leaning on her, just a tenderness that gripped his heart.

“I should have danced with you on our wedding day,” she whispered.

“You’re dancing with me now,” he said, holding one hand at her waist, the fingers of the other linked with hers. With his rusty voice, he hummed a love song. For one magical moment the dank, moldy walls faded away. Oliver felt no pain, only a huge, honest love that filled his chest and heated his blood. The song ended when his voice cracked, and they both stopped and faced each other.

He held her face in his hands then, tracing it with shaking fingers. He wanted to memorize every aspect of her. The softness of her skin beneath his fingers. The shape of her mouth, her nose, her cheekbones. The color of her eyes and the way they always reminded him of the rain.

Like a blind man, he moved his hands over her, gathering sensation into his heart, committing her to eternal memory.

“
I
won’t forget,” she said, clearly understanding exactly what he was doing. “Oliver, I will never,
ever
forget you.”

A shuffling sounded outside the door. Oliver ran his hand over her silky hair.

“They will make you leave soon. I feel as if I should speak some great truth that will make this all come right somehow. But for the life of me, I cannot think of a blessed thing.”

The door opened. Neither looked to see who had entered the room. The silence between them spoke volumes.

And then the guards in their splendid livery were leading her away, and a huge roar burst from his throat.

“Lark!”

She turned, broke away from her escort, and Oliver embraced her. With all his heart he wanted to beg, to recant, to betray all the secrets he knew.

He looked into Lark’s face. And it was there that he found his strength. He kissed her lingeringly, imprinting the taste of her on his memory. Then he pulled back. “I do not wonder what heaven is like, my love. I
know.”

He sensed her frantic fear, but she held it in check. “You do?”

“I am that rare, fortunate man who found it on earth. Right here with you in my arms.” He kissed the palm of her hand and closed her fist around it. “I have no memento to give you except this.”

They held hands even as she backed away toward the door. He gripped her hard enough to hurt, squeezing his eyes shut. Love flowed like a river between them, and the miracle of it lit his soul with fire. Their fingers slid apart at last, and the guards guided her out the door.

Oliver stood alone in the empty silence. Yet he was not alone, for even after she had been torn from him, he still kept the ache where he had gripped her hand.

Sensing a presence behind her, Lark jumped up from the writing table and faced the door.

Moving with catlike grace, Wynter entered the room, an office on the main floor of Wimberleigh House.

“You might have asked to be announced,” she said coldly. It was a wonder that she had any voice left to speak. Upon arriving home, she had wept, tearing at the bedclothes, screaming with sobs until her voice was hoarse. She and Belinda had sat up all the night through to find a way to save Oliver. Their plan was desperate, and it hinged on a precise timing of events that did not include a visit from Wynter.