The Maiden's Hand (4 page)

“I must remember that,” he said, dropping his hand and grinning down at her. “The lady does not like to be touched.”

“Nor do I like walking in a strange alley with a man I hardly know. However, it is necessary. You see, there is a matter—”

“Hail the lord and his lady!” A group of men in sailor’s caps and tunics tumbled past, swearing and spitting and jostling one another as they shoved themselves into the tavern.

“Good fishing to ye,” one of them called out to Oliver. “I hope the perch are biting fair.” The door slammed behind the man, muffling his guffaws.

Lark frowned. “What did he mean?”

She was surprised to see the color rise in Oliver’s cheeks. Why would so shameless a man blush at a sailor’s remark?

“He must have mistaken me for the sporting type.” Oliver started off down the alley.

“Where are we going?” Picking up her skirts, Lark hurried after him.

“You said you wished to talk.”

“I do. Why not here? I have been trying to explain myself.”

A creaking sound came from somewhere above, where the timbered buildings leaned out over the roadway. Oliver turned, grabbed Lark in his arms and pushed her up against a plastered wall.

“Unhand me!” she squeaked. “You rogue! You measureless knave! How dare you take liberties with my virtue!”

“It’s a tempting thought,” he said with laughter in his voice. “But that was not my purpose. Now be still.”

Even before he finished speaking, a cascade of filthy wash water crashed down from a high window. The deluge filled the road where Lark had stood only seconds ago.

“There.” Oliver eased away from the wall and continued down the street. “Both your gown and your virtue are safe.”

Miffed, she thanked him tersely. “Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise.” The sound of his tall, slashed knee boots echoed down the tunnellike lane.

“I don’t want a surprise,” she said. “I simply want to talk to you.”

“And so you shall. In good time.”

“I wish to talk now. Forsooth, sir, you frustrate me!”

He stopped and turned so abruptly that she nearly collided with him. “Ah, Mistress Lark,” he said, his bluer-
than-blue eyes crinkling at the corners, “not half so much as you frustrate me.” She feared he would touch her again, but he merely smiled and continued walking.

She followed him along a pathway, passing kennels where dogs for the bull baitings were housed, trying not to gawk at a flock of masked prostitutes gathering to watch the sport.

The north end of the path opened out to the Thames. The broad brown river teemed with wherries, shallops, timber barges and small barks. Far to the east rose the webbed masts of great warships and merchantmen, and to the west loomed London Bridge. From this distance Lark could not see the grisly severed heads of traitors that adorned the Southwark Gate of the bridge, but the whirling scavenger kites made her think of them and shiver.

Oliver lifted his hand, and in mere seconds a barge with three oarsmen at the bow and a helmsman at the stern bumped the bottom of the water steps.

Bowing low and gesturing toward the canopied seat of the barge, he said, “After you, mistress.”

She hesitated. It had been a mistake to leave Randall behind. For all she knew, Lord Oliver was dragging her along the path to perdition.

Still, the open, elegant barge looked far more inviting than the dank alley, so she descended the stone steps to the waterline. The helmsman held out a hand to steady her as she boarded.

“The lady mislikes being touched, Bodkin,” Oliver called out helpfully.

With a shrug, Bodkin withdrew his hand just as Lark had one foot in the barge and the other on the slimy stone landing. The barge lurched. She tumbled onto the leather cushioned seat with a thud.

Mustering courage from her bruised dignity, she glared up at Oliver. His buoyant grin flashed as he grasped the pole of the canopy and swung himself onto the seat beside her.

Lark stared straight ahead. “I assume we are going someplace where we can speak privately.”

Oliver nudged the oarsman in front of him. “Hear that, Leonardo? She wants to tryst with me.”

“I do not.”

“Hush. I was teasing. Of course I will take you to a place of privacy. Eventually.”

“Eventually? Why not immediately?”

“Because of the surprise,” he said with an excess of good-humored patience. “The tide’s low, Bodkin. I think it’s safe to shoot the bridge.”

The helmsman tugged at his beard. “Upstream? We’ll get soaked.”

Oliver laughed. “That’s half the fun. Out oars, gentlemen, to yonder bridge.”

Lark hoped for a mutiny, but the crew obeyed him. In perfect synchrony, three sets of long oars dipped into the water. The barge glided out into the Thames.

In spite of her annoyance with Lord Oliver de Lacey, Lark felt a thrill of excitement. Turbulence churned the waters beneath the narrow arches of London Bridge. She knew people had drowned trying to pass beneath it. Yet the smooth, swift motion of the sleek craft gliding through the water gave her the most glorious feeling of freedom. She told herself it had nothing to do with the benevolent, lusty and wholly pagan presence beside her.

Moments later, white-tipped wavelets lifted the bow of the boat. As the barge neared London Bridge, it bucked like a wild horse over the roaring waters around the pilings.

Lark lifted her face to the spray. She had come to London for a business transaction, and here she was in the throes of a forbidden adventure. She swirled like a leaf upon the water, buffeted, at the mercy of a whimsical man who, with sheer force of will, had turned her from her purpose and swept her up in an escapade she should not want to experience.

“I wish you would listen to what I have to say,” she stated.

“I might. Especially if it involves wine, women and money.”

“It does not.”

“Then tell me later, my dove. First we’ll have some fun.”

“Why do you insist on surprising me?” she demanded, gripping the gunwale of the boat.

“Because.” He swept off his hat and pressed it over his heart. He looked boyishly earnest, eyes wide, a silver-gilt lock of hair tumbling down his brow. “Because just once, Lark, I want to see you smile.”

S
he did not understand him at all. That much she knew for certain. She could not fathom why he insisted on entertaining her. Nor did she know why it pleased him so to wave to strangers boating on the Thames, to call out greetings to people he’d never met, to run alongside a herring-buss to inquire about a fisherman’s catch.

Most of all, she could not comprehend Oliver’s shouts of humor and ecstasy when they shot the bridge. The adventure was sheer terror for her.

At first. Her senses were overcome by the rush of the water with its damp, fishy smell. Her teeth jarred with the churning sensation as the bow lifted, then slapped down. The rush of speed loosened tendrils of hair from her braid and caused her skirts to billow up above her knees.

Terror, once faced, was actually rather exhilarating. Especially when it was over.

“Was that my surprise?” she asked weakly once the bridge was behind them.

“Nay. You haven’t smiled yet. You’re white as an Irish ghost.”

She turned to him and forced up the corners of her mouth. “There,” she said through her teeth. “Will that do?”

“It is precious. But nay, I reject that one.”

“What is wrong with my smile?” she demanded. “We cannot all be as handsome as sun gods with beautiful mouths and perfect teeth.”

He laughed, tossing his mist-damp hair. “You noticed.”

“I also noticed your vast conceit.” She poked her nose into the air. “It rather spoils the effect.”

He sobered, though his eyes still shone with mirth. “I meant no insult, dear Lark. It is just that your smile was not real. A real smile starts in the heart.” Forgetting—or ignoring—her interdict against touching, he brushed his fingers over her stiff bodice. “Love, I can make your whole body smile.”

“Oh, honestly—”

“It is a warmth that travels upward and outward, like a flame. Like this.”

She sat transfixed as his hands brushed over the tops of her breasts, covered by a thin lawn partlet. His fingers grazed her throat, then her chin and lips. She thought wildly of the oarsmen and Bodkin at the helm, yet even as a horrible embarrassment crept over her, she stayed very still, transfixed by Oliver.

“A true smile does not end here, at your mouth.” He watched her closely. “But in your eyes, like a candle piercing the darkness.”

“Oh, dear,” she heard herself whisper. “I am not certain I can do that.”

“Of course you can, sweet Lark. But it does take practice.”

Somehow, his lips were mere inches from hers. And hers tingled with a hunger that took her by surprise. She
wanted to feel his mouth on hers, to discover the shape and texture of his lips. She had been lectured into a stupor about the evils of fleshly desires, she thought she had done battle with temptation, but no one had ever warned her about the seductive power of a man like Oliver de Lacey.

Closing her eyes, she swayed toward him, toward his warmth, toward the scents of tavern and river that clung to him.

“I am touching you again,” he said, and she heard the whispered laughter in his voice. “Please forgive me.” He dropped his hands and drew away.

Her eyes flew open. He lay half sprawled on the tasseled cushions, one leg drawn up and one hand trailing in the water. “A rather cold day, is it not, Mistress Lark?”

She resisted the urge to make certain her partlet was in place. “Indeed it is, my lord.” She was not used to being teased. And she was definitely not used to bold, handsome men who flung out jests and insincere compliments as if they were alms to the poor.

It mattered not, she told herself. Spencer claimed he needed Oliver de Lacey. For Spencer’s sake she would endure the young lord’s insolent charm. Certainly not for her own pleasure.

“Will you listen now?” she asked. “I have come a very long way to see you.”

“Nell!” he roared, causing the barge to list as he leaned out from under the canopy. “Nell Buxley!” He waved at a shallop proceeding downstream, aimed toward Southwark. “I made heaven in your lap last time we met!”

“Good morrow to you, my bed-swerving lord,” brayed a wine-roughened female voice. A grinning woman in a yellow wig leaned out from the shallop. “Who’s that with you? Have you ransacked her honor yet?”

With a moan of futility, Lark slumped back against the cushions and yanked her hood over her head.

“This is another place of iniquity!” Lark dug in her heels. “Why have you brought me here?”

Oliver chuckled. “’Tis Newgate Market, my love. You’ve never been?”

She stared at the swarm of humanity pushing through the narrow byways, crowding around stalls or pausing to observe the antics of a monkey here, a dancing dog there. “Of course not. I generally try to avoid places frequented by vagrants, cutpurses, and no-account young lords.”

Even as she spoke, she saw a lad dart up behind a portly gentleman. The child tickled the man’s ear with a feather, and when the man reached up to scratch, the little rogue cut his purse and slipped away with the prize.

Lark clapped one hand to her chest and pointed with the other. “That child! He…he…”

“And a good job he made of it, too.”

“He stole that man’s purse.”

Oliver began strolling down the lane. “Life is brutish and short for some people. Let the lad go.”

She did not want to follow Oliver into the raucous crowd, nor did she wish to stand alone, vulnerable to the evils that could befall her. Despite his devil-may-care manner, Oliver, with his prodigious height and confident swagger, made her feel protected.

“Watch this,” he said, sidling up to the dancing monkey. A few people in the crowd moved aside to let him pass. Lark fancied she could feel the heat of the sly, appreciative feminine glances that slid his way.

When the little monkey, garbed in doublet and hat, spied Oliver, it leaped excitedly over its chain. The
keeper laughed. “My lord, we have missed you these weeks past.”

Oliver bowed from the waist. “And I have missed you and young Luther.”

Lark caught her breath. It seemed decidedly impious to name a monkey after the great reformer.

“Luther is a chap of strong convictions, are you not?” Oliver asked.

The creature bared its teeth.

“He is loyal to the Princess Elizabeth.”

At the sound of the name, the ape leaped in a frenzy, back and forth over its chain.

“He has his doubts about King Philip.”

As soon as Oliver named Queen Mary’s hated Spanish husband, Luther lay sullenly on the dirt path and refused to move. Oliver guffawed, tossed a coin to the keeper and strolled on while the crowd applauded.

“You are too bold,” Lark said, hurrying to match his long strides.

He sent her a lopsided grin. “You think that was bold? You, who have been known to steal out in the night to save the lives of condemned criminals?”

“That’s different.”

“I see.”

She knew he was laughing at her. Before she could scold him, he stopped at a stall surrounded by long canvas draperies.

“Come see the show of nature’s oddities,” a woman called. “We’ve a badger that plays the tambour.” Reaching out, she grasped Oliver’s shoulder.

Patting her hand, he pulled away. “No, thank you.”

“A goose that counts?” the hawker offered.

Oliver smiled and shook his head.

“A two-headed lamb? A five-legged calf?”

Oliver prepared to move off. The woman leaned close and said in a loud whisper, “A bull with two pizzles.”

Oliver de Lacey froze in his tracks. “This,” he said, pressing a coin into her palm, “I have got to see.”

He made Lark come with him, but she steadfastly refused to look. She stood in a corner of the stall, her eyes clamped shut and her nostrils filled with the ripe scent of manure. Several minutes passed, and she closed her ears to the whistles and catcalls mingling with the animal noises.

At last Oliver returned to her side and drew her out into the bright light. His eyes were wide with juvenile wonder.

“Well?” Lark asked.

“I feel quite strung with emotion,” he said earnestly. “Also cheated by nature.”

Lark shook her head in disgust. For once, Spencer was wrong. This crude, ribald man could not possibly be the paragon of honor Spencer thought him to be. “‘An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations,’” she muttered, “‘feet that be swift in running to mischief.’”

“I beg your pardon?” Oliver weighed his purse in his hand.

“Proverbs,” she said.

“Why, thank you, my lady Righteous.” With an insolent swagger, he plunged down yet another narrow lane, and Lark had no choice but to follow or be left alone in the crowd. They passed flower sellers and cloth traders, booths selling roast pork and gingermen. Oliver laughed at puppets beating each other over the head. He dispensed coins to beggars as easily as if he were passing out bits of chaff.

After what seemed like an eternity, they reached the boundary of the fair. In the distance they could see the horse fair at Smithfield.

“We’ll venture no farther.” Oliver’s face paled a shade. “I mislike the burning grounds.”

She followed him obligingly from the area. Though the blackened stakes and sand pits were not yet visible, she felt their proximity like the brush of a cobweb against her cheek.

“That is the first sensible thing I have heard you say,” she announced. “Think of the condemned Protestants who have been martyred here.”

“I’ve been trying not to.” As they walked past the fringes of the fair, Oliver heaved a great sigh. “I have failed.”

“What do you mean?”

“I wanted to make you laugh and smile, and you have not. Where did I go wrong?”

“Well, you could start with our near drowning while shooting the bridge.”

“I thought you’d find that exhilarating.”

“I found it foolish and unnecessary. As was your greeting to the woman called Nell.” Lark lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “Heaven in her lap?”

He had the grace to blush. “She’s an old friend.”

“What about your treasonous little exchange with a monkey?” Lark continued, enumerating the outrages. “And your prurient interest in a bull’s, er, his two…”

“Pizzles,” Oliver supplied helpfully.

“Hardly a cause for great mirth from me.”

“I know.” He had a rare gift for looking both sulky and charming at once. “I’ve failed you. I—” He broke off, glancing over her shoulder. The sulkiness disappeared, and his face glowed with sheer delight. “Come, Mistress Lark. Here is something you’ll like.”

Pulled along in the wake of his enthusiasm, she found herself at the stall of a bird seller. Wooden crates of
burbling doves, huddled robins and moth-eaten gulls were stacked about haphazardly.

“How much?” Oliver asked the man.

“For which one, sir?”

“For all of them.”

The man’s jaw dropped. Oliver grabbed his hand and dumped a small fortune of coins into it. “That should keep you in your cups a good while.”

“My lord,” Lark said, “there are hundreds of birds here. How will you—”

“Watch.” He drew a silver eating knife from the leather sheath attached to his belt and pried open each cage. With a flourish he removed each little door.

“Oliver!” Lark barely noticed that she had used his Christian name. The bird seller uttered a blue oath.

Like a great, winged cloud, the once-captive birds rose. The sound of beating and whirring feathers filled the sky above the fair. It was an awesome sight, darkening the sun for a moment, then turning light as the flock of liberated birds dispersed.

Oohs and aahs issued from nearby fairgoers.

“‘The stars compel the soul to look upward,”’ Oliver de Lacey recited, “‘and lead us from this world to another.’ Plato.”

“I know.” She squinted up at the birds, now mere specks in an endless field of marbled blue. And against her will, a smile unfurled on her lips.

“Eureka!” Oliver spread out one arm like a seasoned showman. “She smiles. Eureka! Archimedes. When he first said ‘Eureka,’ he went running naked through the streets.”

“That,” she said, “I did not know.”

“It is said he made his discovery about the displacement
of water while in his bath. The insight so aroused him that he forgot to dress himself before running to tell his colleagues.” Oliver lifted his face to the winter sun as the last of the birds disappeared. “There, you see, my angel. They can soar. I have set them all free.”

“All of them,” she agreed, feeling strangely content.

“Well, not quite.”

She peered at the cages. Not a single bird remained. The bird seller was already stacking his crates in a two-wheeled cart.

Oliver slipped one arm around her waist, and his other hand rested on her bodice, the fingers drumming on the stiff corset of boiled leather.

“There is still one little lark in a cage, eh?”

His barb hit home with a sting of unexpected pain. She tried to look imperious. “Sir, I am insulted. Unhand me.”