The Warrior's Game (7 page)

The laundresses failed Ami. An hour after the bells for Sext had rung found Ami yet wearing her third best as she, Maud and their single soldier-escort made their way along the lanes of Winchester town. To compensate for her modest dress Ami had donned every piece of jewelry she owned on the assumption the richer a goldsmith thought a person, the better said person would be treated. A thick gold bangle decorated each wrist, while every shift of her mantle allowed a glimpse of her father’s heavy golden chain where it draped across her breast. Rings decorated three of her fingers. Ami thumbed the one with the large red stone, her wedding ring.

Her sheerest wimple was held in place with a pearl pin instead of her gold band. That's because she'd bent her band. Since new work was beyond the scope of her purse and she needed a reason for visiting the goldsmith, she'd created something for him to repair.

“Oh, my lady, I’m so sorry your band is dented,” Maud cried for the hundredth time as they picked their way down mucky High Street. “I don’t know how it happened. Truly, I’m always careful with it.”

Ami shot Maud a swift, sidelong look. She hadn't expected her maid to be this upset over it. “Sweetling, I know how careful you are and I don't hold you at fault. I think I must have done it this morning when I put away my grooming case.”

Hurrying a little to avoid yet another plea for forgiveness from her maid, Ami lifted her hems and started down the lane only to look behind her and discover she was alone. Maud had ducked beneath the overhanging second storey of a tailor’s establishment to avoid an oxcart. Beside her stood a housewife and her maid. The servant carried her mistress's shopping basket in which a chicken, its gaudy feathers stirring but its neck limp in death, sprawled atop a loaf of bread. From open shop windows up and down the lane, merchants shouted to them to come inspect my fine wares. Across the way two workmen sang as they applied a new coat of plaster to a cook shop’s front while the scent of stewing lamb wafted out of the shop’s open door.

Yet standing in the lane torn between his two charges, Ami's escort signaled to her to come back. Ami gave breath to a frustrated sound. At this rate they wouldn't reach the goldsmith's shop until long after None. She started back, rounding the oxcart's end. An apple seller darted around her. Ami gave a cry as his handcart’s wooden wheel spewed mud at her.

Catching Maud by the arm, Ami shot a look at the soldier. “Keep pace,” she warned them both.

Robert Atte Cross’s establishment sat where High Street intersected the lane that lead to the cathedral. Like any other merchant his workshop occupied the lower level of his home, but that was its only similarity to the other dwellings on this street. The goldsmith’s house was a monument to his success. At three storeys tall his house towered over its neighbors. No mold or cracks marred its gleaming plaster walls, and, although his roofing was only reeds, the thatch was new and its crest trimmed into fanciful scallops.

Between his house and each of his neighbors' was an alley wide enough to admit a horse and rider. Ami peered down the nearest alley as they strode past. Just as she expected a fine courtyard opened up behind the house.

And, just as she expected, men wearing the red of the de Martignys sat or crouched in that courtyard, aiming their dice at the garden wall at the courtyard's back.

Excitement soared in Ami, only to crash back to earth. Now that she was here, what next? She didn't even know yet whether she wished to seduce him as Millicent suggested or hope for an attack as Roheise required.

As if either were going to happen! The mercenary hadn't so much as glanced at her these past days. She was mad if she thought he'd do anything other than ignore her now.

It didn't matter what was mad or sane, possible or impossible. She had to try. As their escort took up a stance at the end of the house, Ami strode up to the long window cut into the house's lower storey to survey the shop within.

Riches beyond her ken filled its space. Fine coils of gleaming gold and silver wire streamed from a brass-bound chest in one corner of the workshop. Sheets of the precious metals lay across one work table while even finer leaf was stacked in a basket, fabric separating the golden tissue. Despite the lure of treasure in the shop, Ami's gaze shifted to the stairway that crawled up the far side of the shop into the house above it. It, not gold or silver, was what she wanted most. But how to get herself invited into the goldsmith’s hall?

Three men perched on tall stools, all three using tiny hammers and even smaller pincers to create their pieces. “Master smith,” she called, not knowing which of the men bent over their work was the one she needed to address. “I pray you, do you do repairs?”

A tall, reed-thin man shifted on his stool at her call. Robert Atte Cross’s nose ended in a bulbous knob, his eyes watered and his chin receded. Dressed in functional brown, a thick leather cap upon his head and an equally protective apron covering his torso, he stepped to the window. He blinked when he saw Ami’s escort and recognized the dress of the king’s soldiers. His gaze shifted to Ami in new consideration.

“Aye, that we do, my lady,” the smith said. If Ami’s French had told him she was from England’s ruling class, his own words held hints of the English that was his native tongue. “How is it I can aid you this day?”

Maud laid Ami’s dented band upon the window's lower shutter, that length of wood braced upon legs to create a table of sorts, then stepped back behind her mistress. Ami pushed her band closer to the smith. “I fear it needs straightening.”

He nodded, lifting the band to inspect it nearsightedly. “So it does. It wouldn’t hurt to do a little regilding as well. The foil’s worn.”

“Then regild it,” she commanded without hesitation. God help her but she couldn't afford this any more than she could afford Sir Michel in her home.

The smith smiled. “Happily so, my lady. It won’t take long, being such a small job. Would you care to wait in my hall whilst I work?”

Ami caught back her happy gasp. Whatever the job cost her it was worth it. She smiled. “How very kind of you, master smith. I would, indeed.”

The man moved to the outer door at the far end of his long window, opened it from the inside, then beckoned for Ami to enter. “If it pleases you, you may look upon my samples while you wait. Perhaps something will catch your eye? I hope you don’t mind that I have another guest in residence just now. He should be no bother as I believe he intends to depart shortly.”

Depart? So soon? Ami cursed to herself as she realized what she'd forgotten. Each day before the meal he met with Sir Hubert, Winchester's castellan. “I would be pleased to view your samples,” she replied, mentally urging the man to haste. “Come, Maud.”

Leaving the soldier to wait for them outside the shop, Ami and Maud followed the smith up the steps to the first landing. There the stairway turned back on itself and continued up toward the next floor. Roger Atte Cross opened the door off the landing and stepped inside. “Welcome to my hall, my lady. I’ll fetch my wife.”

As the smith strode across the room toward a door at the chamber’s opposite side, Maud gasped. Ami would have done the same save she’d already lost her breath. If the exterior of the goldsmith’s house announced his wealth, the interior screamed of it.

Three arched windows cut into the east wall. Their openings were filled with expensive glass that kept out the chill yet admitted light enough even at midday to make the rushes strewn upon the hall’s dark wooden floor gleam like the gold stored in the shop below them. Stenciled in red upon walls the color of butter was a crosshatch pattern. At the center of each diamond sat a bright blue flower. Unlike the raised hearthstone at the center of the king’s halls, this man’s hearth was built into the back wall as was the newest fashion. It was a clever contraption, drawing a fire's choking smoke out of the house through one stone channel while feeding the flames the air it needed through another. Adjacent to the hearth stood a tall cupboard painted bright green with red trim, the household’s best dishware displayed upon its shelves. A silver tray and two golden drinking cups stood among the soup bowls and spoons.

As in every hall Ami had ever visited, the tables used for eating stood in pieces against one wall, waiting for the midday meal when they would be reassembled. Holding the tabletops against the wall were the benches used by the diners. That left two chairs in the room for the time being. Set before the wall hearth, their tall curved backs were meant to catch the heat from the fire.

“So they are,” Ami said, then sighed. “I love that chair.” Even on the coldest winter nights it kept its occupant warm. Or occupants. On more than one night Ami had shared that chair with Richard, seated on his lap.

“Here is my wife, Mistress Hughette,” the smith called out as he reappeared through the doorway.

The plump woman wore heavy gowns of golden yellow almost the same color as her thin blond braids. The fabric was patterned, the design outlined with golden threads that had no doubt been spun in her husband's shop. The housewife's veil was as thin as Ami’s, the silk tissue clinging to her round cheeks. Her bulging eyes were a bright blue.

That her hands glistened from a recent rinsing recommended her to Ami at once, for it meant she was truly a housewife. London had merchant-wives as haughty as Roheise, who lifted no finger in the daily management of their homes.

“I’ll leave you to her and be on to your repair, then,” the smith said and departed, leaving the door to the hall open behind him as he went.

The smith’s wife smiled widely at her guest. The change was stunning, the dumpling of a woman giving way to a consummate hawkster. Ami caught back a laugh. No wonder the smith had so swiftly offered to bring her up here. It was his wife who sold what he made.

“Welcome to my hall, my lady,” Mistress Hughette said, then nodded to Maud. “Would your servant care for a slice of cheese and bit of barley water while you wait? The barley water’s fresh, just this morn.”

Maud shot Ami a hopeful look. Ami nodded. If Sir Michel did appear Ami would have witness and chaperone both in Mistress Hughette.

“Then make yourself at home, lass,” the smith’s wife said, pointing to the door she’d just used. “The kitchen is just through there and my servants will see to you.”

Offering Ami a quick bob, Maud hurried for the door, eager to claim what was promised to her. At the same moment the floorboards over Ami’s head began to creak. The sounds suggested two people, moving toward the stairs. As these two made their way down the stairs Mistress Hughette lifted her hand to indicate the chairs that Ami and Maud had just admired.

“Will you sit and perhaps take a cup of wine?” she offered as the sound of footsteps stopped on the landing as if whoever it was paused before entering the hall.

“But, before you do, might I know your name, my lady?”

There was a scornful snort from the landing behind Ami. She didn’t question why a mere breath was all it took for her to identify who it was. Every muscle in her body tensed against his presence.

“Her name is Lady de la Beres,” Sir Michel said, the richness of his voice and the clipped precision of his Continental French sending a shiver down Ami’s spine.

She swallowed. Here he was and she still had no idea how to get what she needed from him.

She turned to face Sir Michel. His form filled the doorway, his shoulders nearly brushing the jamb at either side of him. Rather than his black armor he wore a knee-length tunic beneath his dark cloak, this one the red of his family’s house, a hue that suited his coloring. His boots reached to his knees, dark garters holding their soft uppers to the line of his calves. His long sword was belted over his tunic, his hat and gloves tucked into the belt. With no hat to disturb its fall, his dark hair curled lightly against the sharp lift of his cheekbones. For this instant there was no tension in his body.

“Ah, so you know the lady, sir?” Mistress Hughette didn’t sound particularly pleased over this turn of events. She glanced between her paying guest and her husband’s paying customer.

“We are acquainted,” Sir Michel replied, starting into the room, followed by the second man.

Against his handsome master this man was stunning in his ugliness, with his hair cropped short, mud-brown eyes, and the scar that crossed his face from left brow to right cheek. Two fingers were missing from his left hand. Nearly as tall as his master, he wore a brown tunic and chausses, and a leather capuchin for a mantle, its hood left to dangle down his back.

The two men stopped arm’s length from Ami. Sir Michel eyed her. The left corner of his mouth twitched in what could only be amusement. Ami wanted to frown. Damn him, but he wasn’t surprised to see her here.

“See that my horse is saddled and ready. I’ll be down in a moment,” Sir Michel said to the ugly man beside him.

“Sir,” the man answered with a nod. He crossed the hall for the kitchen door and was gone.

The mercenary turned his gaze on Mistress Hughette. Although Ami saw nothing that might be a sign pass between them, the goldsmith's wife gave a single nod. She looked at Ami. Disapproval glinted in her hostess's gaze.

“My lady, if you will excuse me for a moment, I’d like to see your maid settled.” The housewife turned rudely on her heel and strode to the kitchen door.

Ami opened her mouth to protest, then shut it. Here it was, the opportunity Millicent had told her to pursue. And if Sir Michel was impervious to that ploy, Ami could do as Roheise urged. The kitchen was but steps away. Ami would hardly have to raise her voice to bring help running.

Dear God, it all felt so wrong. She didn't want to trade her virtue to leash this man any more than she wished to pretend he'd taken her virtue to destroy him. All she wanted was her home, safe and sound.

From the kitchen came the sound of voices, Maud’s, then a man’s. Sir Michel watched her, his expression flat. But his eyes had softened from frigid gray to dark blue.

“You trespass greatly in coming here, my lady,” he said, his voice low.

“What makes you believe my presence has anything to do with you?” Ami countered. “Below stairs the goldsmith is repairing my veil band for me. I was invited into this hall by the householder himself.”

He took another step toward her until he was almost as close to her as he'd been in the alcove. Ami refused to shift even an inch. She willed him to touch her, or even to threaten to touch her. Then she willed him to stay where he stood.

“What?” the mercenary challenged, his voice now so low that his word was barely more than a whisper. “No protest that you didn’t know I resided here? Tut, I thought you more clever than that. Heed my warning, my lady. Retreat to the castle, departing this very moment never to return.”

That piqued her right painfully. Ami glared up at him. “What is it about men?” she demanded at a whisper for no other reason than he had whispered to her. “What makes all of you think you have the right to command any woman you see?”

The coldness in his gaze wavered for an instant. Although his mouth didn’t move, she recognized the amusement that almost wafted from him. In his own way he was laughing at her.

“Because you are women and we are men,” he replied quietly, then lifted his hand until his bare fingers were poised a hair's breadth above her face. He cupped his palm above her cheek. A taunting warmth flowed across the gap between his flesh and hers. His heat reached past her skin and bone to stir that which had so long lain banked deep within her, a heat that only Richard de la Beres had ever called from her.

Ami caught a sharp breath. “What are you doing?” she cried, her voice yet held low.

His brows lifted. His eyes were that almost-blue again. “This is the second time you’ve posed me that question,” he replied, his voice a bare murmur, “when you know very well what it is I do.”

Ami caught back a shiver. He was right. She knew exactly what he was doing; he was seducing her.

Before she knew what he was about, Sir Michel lowered his head until his lips once again hovered over her ear. A tissue-thin veil was no barrier. Just as had happened in the alcove his breath against her flesh sent longing racing through her.

“You stray too far from the boundaries of your game by coming here. Enter my world again and you’ll pay my forfeit for your error,” he breathed into her ear.

Startled by his strange message Ami turned her head to look at him, her movement so swift that her lips met his retreating cheek. Although it was nothing but a glancing brush of flesh to flesh, it was contact enough for Ami to know that he’d shaved this morn. His skin was smooth and warm against her mouth.

With a gasp she looked up into his face. The promise of pleasure, the sort Ami had known so well in her marriage bed, filled his gaze. Unwanted and unstoppable, that heat within her exploded into new and starving life. The need to be touched and to touch, to love and be loved, wove its languorous tendrils around her.

Her gaze dropped to his lips. Never in all her life had she wanted to taste a man the way she wanted to taste him. All sense dissolved. Of a sudden seduction, his of her or her of him, was all that mattered.

Nay all that mattered was to feel his mouth on hers. She leaned toward him, lifting her head in invitation.

Instead of pursuing, he drew a long, slow breath then stepped back from her. His rejection broke her heart, then tore through what little dignity she had left. Gone was the virtuous Lady de la Beres. In her place stood a tart who had brazenly offered herself to a commoner to satisfy her base lusts.

He took another backward step, and another, his eyes once again that frigid gray, until they were more than two arms' length apart. In that growing distance Ami heard his message clearly. This man would never allow her to leash him as Millicent suggested. That left her nothing but Roheise's solution.

But what might have worked for Roheise, given her rank, would not work for Ami, not here, not in this house or with these people. Mistress Hughette was obviously closely allied to Sir Michel and already convinced Ami was a lightskirt. Any charge Ami made in this hall would never leave its walls.

She would not squander the only hope left to her, not here, not yet. So instead she begged. "Please. What little I own I cherish. I pray you, have a care with what is mine and do not take from me what I cannot replace."

The mercenary's eyes hardened even further. In his gaze Ami read how deeply her words had struck him. No man liked to be called a thief even if he was a thief. She had lost. It was done. Would he take all now to repay her for her blow?

Pivoting, Sir Michel strode toward the stairs that led to the street instead of following his man into the kitchen. To Ami's surprise he paused at the landing and looked at her from over his shoulder. His face owned no more expression than a stone. His eyes were as hard as the glass in the windows and just as cloudy.

“Those gowns suit you. In them you look like what you are, a fresh-faced country lass.” With that parting shot he started down the forward stairs, his footsteps ringing in the quiet.

His words tore through Ami with the same painful intensity her charge of thievery had struck him. How many times during her first year at court had someone sneered at her over her rural roots, pointing out her backward behavior, laughing at her manners?

Why, that condescending bitch’s son! First, he'd stripped her of her pride by declaring her worthless. Then, he’d stolen her dignity by stirring her desires against her will and leaving her in a quivering puddle at his feet. How dare that pompous commoner also strip her of the sophistication she’d worked so hard to cultivate?

Behind Ami, the kitchen door creaked as it opened. The smith’s wife came to stand beside Ami, her hands folded. “My lady, whatever it is you plan for him, know that you can but fail.”

Startled, Ami pivoted toward her hostess. “What say you? I only came here to have my veil band repaired.”

Mistress Hughette’s brows jerked upward in dismissal of Ami’s protest. “Don’t forget that I read your face as you looked at him. It wasn’t any of my goods you came looking to buy this morn.”

Shock replaced Ami’s anger. “Nay, you mistake me, this I vow. My reason for confronting Sir Michel is wholly decent. The king has just named him administrator of my estate. Knowing nothing of him and having no way to confront him directly, I admit I used pretense to gain his attention. Call that brazen if you may, but I’ll name it desperate. I’m no rich woman. I cannot afford a guardian who might make free with what is my only support.”

The goldsmith’s wife shook her head at this. “Then my lady, you couldn’t have erred worse by coming here. Try to match wits with him, or to control him in any way, and he’ll eat you up, spitting out your bones after without a shred of remorse over how he treats you. He has no patience with your kind.”

“My kind?” Ami asked in startled question. “What do you mean?”

“You are gently born. He is not,” the woman replied, using the same patronizing tone that the noblewomen adopted when they reminded Ami she was but a knight’s daughter and unworthy of their notice.

By God, but she wasn’t going to let the whole world trample her esteem into dust beneath its heels. “I cannot care what patience he has with me. I won’t let him destroy what little I own in this world,” Ami retorted, her shoulders squared.

Mistress Hughette shook her head, rejecting the idea. “I doubt he’d do that.”

Ami crossed her arms. “Thus do you reveal how little you know of those above you. In a world where men are born to battle rather than to trade, looting another’s property is a means of income. Why, I know knights who take their neighbor's sheep for no other reason than to provoke a battle and exercise their skills at war. Barons happily besiege the homes of their inferiors trying to win dowries for their younger daughters. Trust me. Your boarder will take what he wants of mine without care or concern that he leaves me destitute.”

Lifting her hands before her in a gesture of acceptance, Mistress Hughette said, "Enough, my lady. I am convinced, trusting you meant no wrong by seeking him out. Now why not join me in my kitchen? We’ll share a bit of something wet between us while you wait on Master Robert to finish your band. While you linger perhaps you’ll explain more about your world to me so I can understand it better.”

Satan’s own imp perched like a hawk on Michel’s shoulder as he started down the stairs. That wee devil shouted that Michel should return to the hall. Once there, he should accept the lady’s invitation and kiss her into yielding all.

There wasn’t an inch of Michel’s body that didn’t agree with the imp’s suggestion. Somewhere, no doubt about the time Michel caught the scent of roses on the lady's skin, everything he intended went awry. That brush of her mouth against his cheek had been deadly. However brief the touch, it had been enough to make the floor beckon, offering itself up as a temporary bed. Indeed, it was for that reason Michel chose to leave the hall through its front door rather than making the shorter trip to the courtyard through the kitchen. As long as the hall floor seemed a perfectly logical place for coupling Michel couldn’t afford to be within reach of Lady de la Beres.

Jesu, but she craved lovemaking the way a starving man longed for bread. Michel hadn’t anticipated the enormity of her wanting. He wondered, if so great a hunger gnawed at her, why she hadn’t already given way and satisfied what ate at her? He was certain she hadn't; all the gossips agreed the lady held tight to her virtue despite the many men who'd tried to breach the pretty woman's defenses.

Michel caught his breath in understanding. It was him! He stirred her where no other man had.

And that thought was so seductive Michel nearly turned on the stairs and climbed back to the hall. Almost.

He was already more vulnerable to her than he could afford to be, especially when one word of complaint on her part would give John the opportunity to destroy Michel's future. Nor was the lady's lust for him any guarantee she'd ever tolerate marriage to a commoner. Rank, and the pretensions that went with it, were all that mattered to folk like her.

That thought brought with it the ideal way to keep her at a distance until Michel at last won John's agreement for the wedding.

At the base of the stairs Michel paused, eying the smith, his journeyman, and apprentices all at their work in the shop. A goldsmith tapping away at some bit of frippery was what Michel might have been save for Lord Amier and his squiring.