The Maiden's Hand (6 page)

“Oliver?” Her voice sounded thin and bewildered.

“Hush.” His fingers brushed a wisp of hair from her cheek. “Let not words get in the way.”

“In the way of what?”

“Of this.”

He moved his knees apart so that she leaned snug against him, and then he kissed her.

The very idea that he would actually do such a thing so stunned her that she stood there, as rigid and unresponsive as a hearth broom.

Until the heat started. It was a slow, searing burn that seeped through her body, warming the cold, empty places inside her.

She gave herself up to sensation, not thinking, only wanting. The hand still clinging to his within the sleeve tightened, and she felt the answering pressure of his fingers. Her free hand crept up his bare chest. He was
smooth and hard there, and the hair was slightly coarse. He was warm, so warm, she wanted to melt against him. She hooked her arm around the back of his neck. His fine, silvery hair felt as downy as it looked.

His lips were soft yet firm, and gentle, not grinding and demanding. They brushed slowly back and forth over her mouth, softening and moistening her lips until they parted. Then he did a most unsettling thing—he ran his tongue across her lower lip.

The shock first numbed her, then awakened her from the torpid, kiss-induced dream.

“Stop!” she shouted, and jumped back. And suddenly they were all entangled by shirtsleeves. The thin, white fabric tore as she tried frantically to disentangle her arm.

On fire with mortification, she backed away, staring at him as if he held a mirror to her own wickedness. He could never know what a sin it was for her to covet him.

He looked as pleased as a fox in a dovecote. “Don’t play the Puritan, sweetheart. I could have given you much more than a mere kiss.”

A mere kiss. She clung to those words. People kissed when they said hello or goodbye. When they gathered for holidays or met each other after prayer services.

But not the way Oliver de Lacey had just kissed her.

Not as she had just kissed him back.

“That was an evil thing to do,” she said, then braced herself, half fearing a bolt of lightning would strike her dead on the instant.

He chuckled. “Pity you favor Reformed principles, Lark. If not, you could wear a crown of thorns or a hair shirt.”

“You’re a wicked man,” she said.

“And you are an excessively good woman. Don’t you ever get bored with being so virtuous?”

If only he knew. She was not virtuous at all.

She could stay no longer, not with him still sitting half-naked and tousled, eyeing her as if she were one of his lightskirt doxies. Without another word, she turned and fled.

It was the first time a woman had left him voluntarily. Oliver stared at the empty space. Lark had glared at him as if he had raped her.

“It was merely a kiss,” he repeated to himself as he gingerly donned his doublet. “A kiss. ’Tis not like I swived the saintly wench.”

Wincing from the hot pain in his side, he slid down from the table and found a small cask of wine. He filled a clay mug and took a deep, cleansing swallow. “I’ve kissed half the women in England,” he declared to the empty room, to the rows of pots hanging from the rafters, and to the iron tongs hanging over the hearth. “Or if I have not, it wasn’t for lack of trying.”

Yet he could not deny that holding Lark in his arms had caused a peculiar and unwelcome sentiment to rise within him. Sentiments that a man like him had no business feeling: tenderness and devotion and the utter certainty that he could be happy with this woman and this woman alone.

He was no stranger to wanting a woman, to having one. But the idea of being with anyone other than plain, shy little Lark was suddenly repugnant to him.

Holding her in his arms had given him a notion that had never before occurred to him. He wanted to live forever.

Forever.

And that, he knew as he took a glum sip of the cheap wine, was impossible.

In his finer moments, he was philosophical about his own mortality. His disability had been a part of him. He accepted it. Sometimes he managed to convince himself that he was healed.

But then he’d get that horrible tightening in his chest, that insatiable hunger for air, that dark glimpse of eternity, and he remembered he was marked for an early death.

In some ways the knowledge had made him a better man—more daring, more bold.

Then he had kissed the prim, thin-lipped, disapproving Mistress Lark—the most unlikely of women—and suddenly he was desperate not to die.

He had entranced her with his kisses, had felt the desire emanating from her small, clutching hands. There was no surprise in that. He might be deficient in some skills, but kissing was not one of them. Aye, he could manipulate her body, could bring her to a state of near rapture if he chose to do so, but could he win her heart?

“Aye, that I could,” he decided, draining his mug and slamming it down on the sideboard. Her aversion to his embrace at the last did not trouble him. He simply needed more time to convince her of his wonderfulness. “I could indeed. I could make her love me.”

A painful dilemma, that. For if ever he won her heart, he was doomed to break it.

“You never finished explaining to me what you meant about the brigands,” Oliver said the next day.

The three of them headed north, wary now in the winter sunshine, watchful for signs of more highwaymen. In the distance, pink-tinged clouds melted down onto the gentle Chiltern Hills, and forested mounds rolled out endlessly on either side of the road. Dry, frozen grass clung to the
sloping sides of the hills, and sleepy hamlets huddled in thatched clusters along the river.

Lark held her neck stiff and her chin high. Kit trotted up beside her. Saddle leather creaked as he leaned toward her. “Did you know them, Mistress Lark?”

She could talk to Kit. She did not look into his eyes and feel as though she were drowning.

“Not exactly. I think they were sent to stop us from reaching Blackrose Priory,” she said.

“Really?”

“Aye.” She had no choice but to admit her fears. “Spencer’s sole enemy must have learned what he plans.”

“What does the gentleman plan?”

She was keenly aware of Oliver’s presence behind her. She felt the heat of his stare like a ray of the sun.

“I must let Spencer tell you that.”

“You say he has an enemy. Who is that?”

“Wynter Merrifield.” Lark paused as a cloud passed over the sun, then gave way to dazzling brightness. “His only son.”

Kit gasped. “The man’s son is his enemy?”

“Sadly, yes.” She remembered the coin Kit had found. Of Spanish origin, it had been. “More I cannot say. Spencer will explain all you need to know when we arrive.” She trotted on ahead, wishing the kiss had not happened, wishing she had not lain awake half the night thinking about his lips upon hers.

When Lark moved out of earshot, Kit glared at Oliver. “What in God’s name are we doing?”

“Helping a damsel in distress?”

Kit studied her stiff figure riding in the fore. Mistress Lark rode as if she had a ramrod up her back. “She doesn’t look distressed to me. Why is she being so secretive?”

“Because we’re a pair of rogues. She doesn’t trust us.”

“And you trust her? Oliver, I need hardly remind you that she almost got us killed.”

“It was exciting, was it not?” Oliver smiled, savoring the memory. “Swordfights have ever made my blood run hot.”

“I worry about you, Oliver. I truly do.”

He nodded at their silent leader. “She makes my blood run hot, too.”

“Anything in skirts has that effect on you.”

“Out of skirts is even better.” Oliver studied her. To the undiscerning eye, she resembled her namesake—a small, drab bird. Yet he knew better. He knew there was softness beneath her rigid exterior, the heart of a woman beating in her breast, and a host of dreams inside her, just waiting to be set free. “That one’s special.”

Kit pushed back his hat and scratched his forehead. “Her? You’re mad. Look at her.”

“I’ve been looking, and I know what you’re thinking. She’s small and dark and plain. She’s about the least worldly wench we’ve ever encountered. She has the disposition of a badger. And she bites her nails and quotes the scripture.”

“And she fires your brand?” Kit demanded incredulously.

“The challenge of her stirs my blood, Kit. It is no great feat to desire a woman who is fair and charming. But this one.” He nodded ahead, feeling a curious rapture. “If I could love her, I’d be capable of anything.”

“She helped save you from hanging. It’s disturbed your judgment,” Kit said stolidly. Suspiciously.

“That’s always been your problem, my friend. You lack imagination. You see only what is there on the surface. Mind, I don’t blame you for loving my sister, but Belinda’s
easy to love. She’s pretty, she has a charming temperament, and she loves you in return.”

Kit thumped his fist against his chest. “She does?”

“Of course she does, you muttonhead, though I trow ’twas not your brains that won her.”

“Why do I endure you?”

“To keep yourself from running quite mad with boredom. Tell me, Kit, how do you endure toiling away at the law day in and day out?”

“Such toiling does earn me a living. Not all of us are born to wealth and idleness.”

The laughter drained from Oliver. Most of the time he enjoyed the advantages of his rank. Every once in a while he wondered if he might be a better person were he forced to fend for himself. Fortunately his moments of doubt were few and far between, easily banished by thoughts of his own splendor.

Could he have been, even so slightly, wrong?

A short time later they reached the estate of Blackrose Priory. Oliver eyed it with appreciation. The long road, winding northward and westward, was kept free of deep ruts and holes and stones. The hedgerows were freshly clipped and alive with the music of thrushes.

Thick-coated sheep grazed on the gentle hills that rose behind the main building. The priory itself, once a haven for Bonshomme monks, had a good-size almshouse and a broad lawn with fountains and knot gardens. The path to the front had been paved with pebbles. The old Gothic hall, echoing with ancient, ghostly voices, had sprawling wings added on each end. It was built of native stone, which gave it a warm, brownish hue.

“The servants defer to her,” Kit muttered, watching Lark.

It was true; the grooms who came to look after their
mounts obeyed her murmured instructions. The pair of footmen who appeared at the main door bowed low to her.

“Who is she to this Spencer?” Oliver wondered as they followed her up the broad steps to the huge arched doors.

“Some relation,” said Kit. “You ought to ask.”

“I don’t think she enjoys being questioned.”

She stopped inside the door and turned to them. The weak light in the great hall leached her complexion of all color. The marble hardness of her face startled Oliver. He could scarcely remember how she had looked last night when she had kissed him. She had been soft and warm and alive, a vivid contrast to this whey-faced stranger.

“Wait here,” she said. “I’ll see that you get something to eat and drink. His Lordship will receive you shortly.”

She turned like a soldier obeying an order and marched through a low door to the right of the hearth.

A door on the opposite side of the hearth opened, and in stepped a remarkable young man. “Charming, isn’t she?” he said, a sardonic curl to his lip.

“Indeed,” Oliver said. Without moving a muscle, he took the measure of the man. Of medium height and build, with glossy black hair and a pointed beard, he was dressed in black velvet, with a rapier at his hip and a wide smile of welcome on his face. His dark eyes flashed with the promise of a quick, observant wit. When he moved, it was with lithe, unconscious grace.

Oliver felt a shock of instant dislike as he fixed an equally charming smile on his face.

The newcomer held out a well-tended hand. “Welcome to Blackrose Priory. I am Wynter Merrifield, Viscount Grantham.”

Ah, thought Oliver as he introduced himself and Kit. The heir. The enemy. The man who had sent hirelings to
stop them from reaching Blackrose Priory. Was he the man who caused the hardness on Lark’s face?

Oliver kept a bold grin in place. “My lord, we’ve already had a taste of your welcome.”

W
ynter Merrifield strolled to the hearth and propped an elbow on the massive mantelpiece. The hall must have once served as the refectory for the Bonshommes, for it was long, with a high, vaulted ceiling. Figures carved of stone and blackened with age-old soot leered down upon the tables and cupboards. Two low doors flanked the hearth, and above it hung a pair of crossed swords.

Wynter subjected the swords to a moment of contemplation. “I don’t understand, my lord. Have we met?”

“The bridge at Tyler Cross,” Oliver said. “Your welcoming party bared its talons.”

Wynter turned, and his austere, handsome face went blank. “Welcoming party? I have no idea what you mean.”

Kit regarded Wynter with unconcealed dislike. “We were attacked,” he said. “Mistress Lark thought perhaps the brigands were in your hire.”

“Mistress Lark is a strange bird.” Wynter spread his arms to convey his bafflement. “She has ever been a victim of rampant imagination. Suspicious little mort. My father has done his best to reform her, but to no avail.”

“Is she your sister, then?” Oliver braced himself. To think that Lark was kin to this smooth, cold creature made his hackles rise. Or worse, was there a marriage in the works? He refused to dwell on the horror.

Wynter laughed, his amusement genuine and oddly seductive. He seemed a man who cloaked himself in shadows, hiding his true essence, showing only a chiseled and icy charm. “No.”

“A cousin, then? Your father’s ward?”

“I suppose you could term it that, after all these years.”

Oliver went to a trestle table, pressed his palms on the surface and leaned forward, forcing out the words. “Then is she betrothed to you?”

This time Wynter threw back his head and roared with laughter. “And I feared being bored today. My lord, you are too amusing. Lark is not betrothed to me. Far from it, thanks be to God.”

Oliver’s shoulders relaxed. He pretended it did not matter, that his question had been an idle one. “Just wondering,” he commented.

Wynter pushed away from the hearth and strolled gracefully toward Oliver and Kit. He held Oliver’s gaze for perhaps a heartbeat longer than polite interest dictated, and in that moment they clashed.

They didn’t touch, nor were any words exchanged, but Oliver felt ill will emanate from Wynter like a breath of wind before a storm.

“Now then,” Wynter said, a smile playing about his thin lips, “you must forgive my manners, but might I inquire as to your purpose here?”

“You might inquire,” Kit said, beefy fists tightening, “but—”

“His Lordship will see you now.”

Oliver turned to see a pale, soberly clad retainer at the main doorway, gesturing for them to follow him up a wide staircase.

Oliver bowed to Wynter. “Excuse us.”

Wynter bowed back. Perhaps by accident, perhaps by design, his slim fingers brushed the hilt of his sword. “Of course.”

Oliver paced back and forth in the master’s chamber, a long, narrow room with a bank of shrouded windows at one end and a fireplace at the other. Spencer Merrifield, earl of Hardstaff, had banished everyone save Oliver from his bedside. But even the old lord’s imperious command failed to evict the shadows that haunted the deep corners. Oliver guessed it had once been the abbot’s lodgings. The draperies over the tall windows held the sunlight at bay and cloaked the chamber in mystery.

“You move like a caged wolf,” Spencer observed in a calm voice from his bed.

Oliver forced himself to slow down. Spencer could not know it, but the darkness and the stale, lifeless smells of the sickroom were all too familiar to him. He had spent the first seven miserable years of his life in such a place, exiled there by the superstitions of his doctors and by the impotent grief of his father. It took the unexpected love of a most unusual woman to induce Stephen de Lacey to bring his ailing son into the light.

“Could I open the draperies?” Oliver asked.

“If you like.” Spencer stirred, making a vague sweep of his arm. “My physician claims sunlight is noxious, but I feel equally ill in light or in dark.”

Oliver parted the curtains. For a moment he savored the view, a beautiful valley cleaved by the silvery river, a
patchwork of fields and meadows, all embraced by the forested hills.

Then he turned to get his first good look at the man who had saved him from hanging and then summoned him from a perfectly good day of gaming and wenching. Afternoon light showered through the lozenge-shaped panes of glass, making shifting patterns of black and gold on the flagged floor. Long, dappled shafts fell on a frail man whose skin hung loose upon his skeletal frame. He had wispy hair that might have been black at one time, proud aquiline features and keen eyes.

He hardly looked the hero or the crusader, yet there was something about him. The aura of a powerful mind that had outlived its useless body.

“Why did you tell Kit to leave the room, my lord?” asked Oliver.

“We’ll need him, but not yet. Do sit down.”

Spencer had a pleasant way of giving orders. He was, taken as a whole, a rather pleasant man. The fact that Oliver owed his life to the earl made it easy to like him.

“I should thank you,” he said. “I thought I was done for, that it would all end at the gallows. My lord, I am in your debt.”

Spencer nodded. “The life of an innocent man is payment enough. Still, I do need your help.”

“What is it, my lord? What can I do to repay you?”

Spencer stared at the foot of the bed, where a great chest with an arched lid stood. “The deed is possibly illegal. At best, it’s a manipulation of the law.”

Oliver grinned. “I’ve been known to break a statute or two in my time. In sooth, Oliver Lackey was not wholly innocent. I did indeed incite riots and mayhem when the mood took me. Tell me more of this task.”

“It’s dangerous.”

“My forte.”

“It involves a great deal of record searching.”

Oliver’s spirits fell, for such work bored him. “Not my forte.”

“That is why we’ll need your friend Kit.”

Oliver was suddenly impatient with the whole affair. He resisted the urge to start pacing again. Even in sunlight the room held the dank promise of death. Blackrose Priory was a strange place indeed, peopled with strange inhabitants, not the least of whom was Mistress Lark. He much preferred the rollicking atmosphere of London.

“My lord,” he said, “I cannot help but wonder what you require. Mistress Lark went to a great deal of trouble to find me and bring me here.”

Spencer clutched the tapestried counterpane as if he wished to leave his bed. “You gave her trouble?”

The ferocity of the question took Oliver aback. “No, my lord. But I do confess I wasn’t sitting at home waiting for her to come calling. She found me—” he dropped his voice to a mumble “—at a Bankside tavern.”

“God’s shield,” Spencer snapped. “I expected better from you.”

He sounded like someone’s father, Oliver thought. “She is incredibly loyal to you, my lord,” he observed, hoping to turn the subject.

“Of course she is,” Spencer grumbled. “I have raised her from infancy. Given her every advantage, taught her a woman’s duties—”

“A woman’s duties? And what might they be, my lord?” Oliver had a few ideas of his own, but he wanted to hear Spencer’s answer.

“Obedience. That above all things.”

“Ah.” Oliver had to remind himself that Spencer was his host and responsible for saving his life. He had to content himself with the mildest comment he could muster. “My lord, I have never subscribed to the view that women are inherently sinful and need to be brought to heel like mongrel puppies.”

Spencer wheezed out a long-suffering sigh. “You still do not understand, do you, my lord? You believe I summoned you here to help me. It’s Lark, you jolt-head. I brought you here to help Lark.”

“He wants us to what?” Kit demanded.

They strolled in the parkland north of the old priory. The forest in the distance covered the rising hills with skeletal gray trees. Archery butts and a quintain, long idle, rose from the yellowed lawn amid a tangle of wild ivy. An abandoned well, surrounded by rubble, stood amid the disarray. A broken stone pedestal lay near the well, where doubtless some saint or other had once reigned in serenity.

“Break the entail on this estate,” Oliver explained. “He doesn’t want Wynter to inherit.”

“Wynter must inherit, since you say he’s the eldest—and only—son.” Kit picked up a rock and tossed it at the ragged target. It hit dead center, tearing a gaping hole in the weather-worn leather. “Unless he’s been declared illegitimate. There’s always that. Wasn’t Spencer’s marriage to Wynter’s mother annulled?”

“Yes, but Spencer refuses to declare Wynter a bastard.” He grinned. “Legally, that is. According to the old man, Wynter is not trustworthy. I gather the lordling’s a bit too Catholic for his very reformed father.”

“Then the old man should have raised him in the Reformed faith.”

Oliver watched a flock of rooks take flight from the trees that fringed the park, black wings beating the pure white of the winter clouds.

Ah, but he did like Kit. Simple, solid as the earth beneath his feet. In Kit’s mind there was no question as to what was right and what was wrong. Kit knew.

“I expect Spencer would have done just that,” Oliver said. “But Wynter’s mother had other ideas, and did her utmost to instill them in her son. She was Spanish.”

The one word explained all, and Kit nodded. “A servant of the queen, was she?”

“Aye, one of Catherine of Aragon’s ladies. Passed away a year ago, but she’s having her revenge on Spencer now. She lives on in Wynter. Apparently her devotion to Queen Catherine is reflected in Wynter’s allegiance to Queen Mary. If he inherits this place—” Oliver swept his arm to encompass the rambling priory “—Spencer fears it will once again become a Catholic stronghold, perhaps placed at the disposal of Bishop Bonner.” He winked. “Perhaps given back to the Bonshommes, the religious order that once inhabited Blackrose. I understand they were a naughty lot.”

Kit shuddered. “Bonner. Just the thought of him clouds a sunny day.” He picked up another stone and hurled it, hitting the archery butt again. “Lord Spencer does not wish his property to fall to his son. Where shall it go, then? To Lark?”

“Yes. To Lark. He claims it is a fairly simple legal procedure.”

“When legal procedures become simple, people will no longer need my services,” Kit said. “But why you? Why us? There are a thousand London lawyers he could have chosen.”

“I pointed that out. He claims to know my father. Claims I inherited his deep sense of honor.” Oliver bowed with a mocking flourish.

Kit laughed. “Little does our host know.”

Just for the smallest fraction of a second, the comment bothered Oliver. He recovered instantly. “It matters not. He arranged for me to be saved from the gallows. He needs our help. So we’ll help him.”

“We?”

“You and I, dear Kit.”

“I haven’t agreed to anything.”

Oliver crossed his arms over his chest. “You will.”

“I won’t.”

A bell sounded.

“Let’s go in to supper,” Oliver said, striding toward the priory.

He ignored Kit’s protests all the way to the dining hall. Sparsely furnished, it was a cavernous room with a hammer beam ceiling and painted hangings on the walls. Not exactly a warm, relaxing place in which to take supper.

More chilly than the room were the two people who waited to dine with them.

Oliver had not thought it possible that there could exist a gown plainer than the one Lark had been wearing earlier. Yet she had managed to find one. It was dyed unevenly in shades of black and ash-gray. The bodice was flat and unadorned, the sleeves so narrow and tight he wondered how she managed to move her arms.

Yet it was her face that disturbed him most. Framed by the ugliest of coifs, it was stone-cold, the light gray eyes empty, the mouth stiff.

Oliver strode across the room and snatched her hand. As he sank to one knee and bent to brush his lips over her chilly
fingers, he whispered, “Where did she go, the woman of fire and spirit who all but dragged me from London?”

He was beginning to fear she was not Lark, but a cold, look-alike stranger. Then he felt it: the profound connection he had experienced the first time she had touched him. It was like the throb of a heart or a spark rising from a fire. Instantaneous, unmistakable, deeply felt.

Her face showed only brief recognition; then she blinked and the icy mask fell back in place. He wanted to ask her what was wrong, why she acted so strangely, but not in the present company.

He straightened, released her hand and turned to greet Wynter. “My lord.” He offered a nonchalant bow. “I see you bring out the best in Mistress Lark.”

Wynter sent him a conspiratorial wink. “Then I shouldn’t like to see her at her worst, should you? Welcome to my table.” He nodded at Kit to include him.

“Your father’s table,” Oliver corrected with his most pleasant smile. “Lord Spencer is an admirable man.”