The Rogue's Princess (7 page)

Diego shrugged, throwing the scrap into the workbasket. ‘Is that so bad a quality? You Englishmen seem to think oak the only wood, where others may say a more pliable tree has virtues in other circumstances. Do we not prize the yew to make the bending bow?’

Milly patted her husband’s arm as a gentle prompt to give over the argument, which he gave every sign of enjoying far too much – it was seldom Kit laid his heart open to anyone. She stood up and took Kit’s hands. ‘This is deep matter for such hours. I’m pleased you’ve found her, Kit. And, as for constancy, you are as firm a friend as any in all England.’

He smiled into her upturned face with its bright hazel eyes and dash of freckles. ‘Thank you.’

‘Bring her to meet us when you can.’

‘I will.’

‘And,’ here she squeezed his fingers painfully to make her point, ‘do not hide who you are. She may reject a player, but you have noble connections now that her family will doubtless value.’

‘I don’t want her on such terms.’ Kit had spent most of his last few years being fiercely independent of the Laceys.

‘Oh, Kit, be practical: that is how the world works.’

Diego tugged her away from Kit, bussing her neck with his lips. ‘You waste your words, my love. Never try to speak sense to a lover: it is as welcome as talk of the succession to our Queen.’

Aware he had outstayed his time, Kit turned to go.

‘Oh, I forgot!’ Milly called him back. ‘Tobias came by earlier. He went to find you.’

Kit groaned. This was all he needed. His half-brother, Tobias Lacey, the youngest of the legitimate Lacey boys, had fallen into the habit of seeking sanctuary with him whenever he was in disgrace with their eldest brother, the earl.

‘What is it this time?’

‘Could he not be here just to pay you a visit?’

Diego snorted and resumed dotting nibbling kisses along his wife’s collarbone.

‘Unlikely.’ Kit folded his arms.

‘He did mention something about a horse race to me,’ Diego offered, looking up momentarily. ‘Nothing too serious.’

‘God’s nails, that means the jackanapes will be snoring in my bed, hiding from Will until someone settles his debts.’

‘Surely not. The earl is a reasonable fellow,’ said Milly.

‘Exactly. But Tobias drives all of us beyond reason.’

Despite his disapproving words, Kit privately relished feeling responsible for someone, for family, having been without such connections for so long. Not that he was going to confess that to anyone; he enjoyed playing the part of wearied older brother. ‘Oh well,’ he sighed. ‘I had better go back and see what he’s done now.’

4

Rose got up early hoping to be first in the kitchen, but Faith was there before her, stirring a pot of oatmeal while the maid bustled about tidying the place.

‘Good morrow, Aunt.’ Faith lifted the spoon to test the porridge.

‘Good morrow.’ Rose saw there was nothing for her to do. A newly laid fire glowed in the hearth, a fine set of polished firedogs standing guard on the flames. Curls of smoke rose up the brick-lined chimney, the scent mingling with that of the fresh manchets the maid had fetched from the bakers, already placed on the table for breakfast. It was a carefully arranged scene of domestic efficiency that all but shouted that Rose was not required. It was a difficult situation to be sure: Faith as oldest daughter wished to stamp her command on the household, but Rose had fifteen years and much experience on her and in other circumstances would have expected to run things. She was too often left feeling the unwanted guest in her brother-in-law’s home.

‘The cabbage you bought yesterday is touched with blight.’ Faith nodded to the net in the pantry where Rose had hung the vegetables.

‘I pray your pardon. It was the pick of those available.’

Faith gave her that infuriatingly gentle smile she was so skilled in, doling it out like alms to all petitioners. It would have been easier for Rose if it had not been sincere. ‘I do not mean to criticize, Aunt. I bring it to your attention in case you wish to try elsewhere next market day. That stallholder clearly carries inferior goods.’

Rose squeezed her temper into a corner of her heart. She wanted to shake her niece, mess up her appearance until her fine blonde hair looked a bird’s nest and her prim ruff wilted, bring her down into the dirt with the rest of humanity. No wonder poor Mercy spent all her time trying to curb her natural spiritedness; her sister was as perfect and heavy as a marble angel hovering over the family. Faith was so utterly good and patient that Rose could not endure being in her presence for long.

‘I think I’ll walk to meet Mercy.’ Rose plucked a wrinkled apple from the pantry to make a portable breakfast.

‘It’s a long walk, Aunt. I’m sure the Belknaps will send a servant to accompany her home.’ Faith gathered the utensils for the family breakfast while the maid set the board on the trestles in the parlour.

‘All the same, I wish to go. Will you see to my mother when she wakes?’

‘But of course. I have the porridge ready for her.’

Rose had to allow that Faith was unflagging in tending Mother Isham, her only failing there being her strict adherence to truth. But what could Rose’s poor distracted mother do with ‘truth’ when her mind had become a ragbag of snippets, the past far more real to her than the present?

Stepping outside the Harts’ house felt like escaping a prison. Rose wrapped her cloak about her, this day considerably colder. February had snapped icy jaws again after the sunny yawn of yesterday. She liked living on the bridge: it was neither one thing nor another – not serious-minded, money-orientated City; not pleasure-seeking, immoral Southwark – suspended between the two like a maiden unable to choose between two suitors. Houses covered the entirety of the bridge, leaving only a narrow street down the centre. This passage was thronged with people crossing into the City, lingering to buy goods in the many shops. You could get everything from a pair of fine leather boots to a fashionable plumed cap within a short walk: all you need do was look overhead for the sign denoting each craftsman. Here the sober guildsman could head south, shedding his respectability for a scarlet cloak and dive into the Southwark stews; travelling the other way, the drab could spend her earnings on a prim bodice and petticoat and fool the folk of the City that she was an irreproachable goodwife.

Rose paused outside her favourite shoemakers. She had a weakness for elaborate footwear and recently she had fallen into the habit of admiring a pair of red pointed slippers that sat in the window awaiting collection. Not that she wanted to buy them, for they reminded her too much of her own shame. After her lover Henry Talbot had cast her over five years ago without making good his promise of marriage, she had plucked all her own plumage, got rid of her gaily embroidered petticoats, gaudy shoes, jaunty caps and even cut her blonde hair off at the neck in a fit of self-punishment. These gewgaws had become a symbol of her stupidity to fall into the
pattern of the silly maiden gulled by the handsome, but selfish man who cared for none but himself.

Rose wiped the fog of her breath from the pane, thinking it an apt image of how blind she had been. She hadn’t even had the excuse of youth. She had been twenty-five when Talbot had swept into her life in her home town of Norwich and waited until she was thirty still thinking they would be married when he got round to it. Oh, his excuses had been plausible enough, and she had thought herself in love. First he had told her that they had to move so could not stay long enough to have the banns read; next he could not afford the special licence; then the priest in their parish was too disapproving; and so the excuses went on. It had taken Henry no more than three weeks to meet, woo and wed the woman who now called herself Mistress Talbot, the final stab in Rose’s dying love for him.

She could have sued him for breach of promise, of course – they had been handfasted when she first left her parents’ house to move in with him, which for the common people was almost as good as a wedding – but the humiliation of a trial was not to be borne. After fleeing to London, it hadn’t taken her long after that to realize she had loved an idea of the man, not the reality, but the return to earth from her make-believe heaven had not been any less painful as a result. Swallowing her pride to ask if she might live with her brother-in-law, John Hart, had not been the softest of landings as, without him saying anything, she had felt judged and condemned for her weakness.

‘Back again, mistress?’

A handsome, but tough-looking older man with pepper-and-salt hair stood at her shoulder sharing her view of the
shoes. She judged him fairly wealthy from the quality of his clothes. This was no importuning beggar wheedling a penny from her.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Rose was convinced she did not know the man and he certainly didn’t look like a shoemaker with his blacksmith’s build.

‘I’ve seen you here every morning at about this time as I go to buy my bread. Curiosity is one of my sins and I had to know what it is that holds your attention.’ He peered in at the little window. ‘Shoes, is it?’

‘Aye, sir.’ Rose smiled at her folly. The man did not seem dangerous and she could afford a moment of neighbourly conversation.

‘For me it is swords. I own far too many – more than I can use.’ The man leant against the window-frame and crossed his arms. ‘My son-in-law says I have no more sense than a salmon.’

‘We are all apt to swim upstream into the net of foolishness over some matter or other. I imagine your son-in-law has his faults.’

The man chuckled. ‘Aye, he does – and I enjoy telling him about them.’ He straightened and bowed to her. ‘Silas Porter, mistress. I own the fencing school by the Southwark gate.’

Rose dipped a curtsy. ‘Rose Isham.’ She waited nervously to see if her reputation had preceded her, but the man gave no sign. ‘My brother-in-law is John Hart.’

‘Ah, then my son-in-law has had the pleasure of teaching your nephew, Edwin, to ride and I instruct him in the blade.’

‘Aye, John thinks the skills will be of use to Edwin in his travels.’

Silas raised an encouraging eyebrow, prompting her to continue. ‘Edwin is like to go to many foreign places in the pursuit of business and John does not want to send him out unprepared.’

‘Sound reasoning, though I pray Edwin never needs to draw a sword in defence of his life.’ Silas’s grey-green eyes shone with amusement. ‘He’s a peace-loving fellow, your nephew, and has not the thirst for blood of many rapscallions who come through my doors. With them, I spend all my time urging restraint; with Edwin, it has all been about summoning up the appetite for violence.’

Rose found it almost impossible to think of her quiet, sober nephew calling up a blood-curdling yell and driving a sword through any man’s guts. ‘Aye, I imagine he must be a most reluctant pupil.’

‘But the better man for it. I’ve seen too many lives wasted for little cause due to a hasty recourse to the blade.’

Rose judged she had been talking more than was decent for a first meeting of a neighbour. Regretfully, she curtsied again. ‘I am running an errand, sir. I must bid you good day.’

Silas saluted her in military fashion, betraying his former profession. ‘I hope to see you again. I pray the shoemaker keeps his window full of such flies to draw the salmon each morning.’

Rose laughed. ‘Indeed. Or need I linger outside an armourer to find you?’

He shook his head. ‘Nay, I’ll be fishing here, never you doubt it.’

Somehow the pleasant discussion had taken a sharp turn on to the path of flirtation and Rose was not certain if she
welcomed the direction even if she had unwittingly encouraged it with her jest. Friendship with men was all she aspired to now. She had shed tears and sighed enough over the perfidy of lovers. No longer at ease with him, she moved to win through to a new road, one she could walk alone and gather her thoughts.

‘Well then. Good day, sir.’

‘Good day, Mistress Isham.’

Weaving quickly through the crowds, Rose hurried to put a distance between herself and the distracting master swordsman. She didn’t need to look: her instincts told her that he was watching her swim away.

‘Aunt Rose, you need not have bothered to come fetch me!’ exclaimed Mercy on seeing her outside Belknap’s house.

Rose waved up to her niece who was hanging out of the upper casement, wild curly hair falling around her face betraying that she had still been abed at nine with half the day already over. ‘Get within, sluggard. Make yourself decent so we can go home. I’m sure Mistress Belknap wants her house back to herself.’

The mistress in question was standing at the door. ‘Nay, Mistress Isham, Mercy is always welcome here. I think of her as an honorary daughter.’

Rose accepted the invitation to step inside for a moment. ‘How was yester eve?’

Mistress Belknap beamed. ‘A wondrous success thanks to your niece and another guest. They entertained us most charmingly with madrigals after supper.’

‘
Mercy
did that?’ marvelled Rose.

Mistress Belknap took alarm at her scandalized tone, knowing how strict the Harts were about such matters. ‘I pray your pardon if you think it wrong of us to encourage her.’

‘Nay, you mistake me. I’m pleased she’s not hiding her light under a bushel as she does at home. I am just surprised you persuaded her to do so.’

‘I think we have our other guest to thank for that.’

Mercy clattered down the stairs to hug her aunt. ‘Good morrow!’

Rose squeezed her in return, wondering what had prompted this gush of high spirits. Mercy was like the gargoyles on Westminster Abbey after a downpour. ‘Good morrow to you. But have you not forgotten something?’ She tapped her niece’s head.

‘Oops, my coif. Back in a minute.’ Mercy bounded back up the staircase taking the steps an indecorous two at a time. She reappeared with her corkscrew curls now decently hidden. ‘I’m ready to go.’

‘Bag?’

Mercy huffed a sigh at her own forgetfulness. ‘
Almost
ready to go.’

Before she could return upstairs, Ann appeared at the stair door and threw the bag to her. ‘Here it is, Mistress Leave-her-own-head-if-it-wasn’t-attached-to-her-shoulders.’