Defiant (22 page)

“You do not appear it.”

“I was looking for you.”

“I am not surprised.”

“We had word you were in on this little hunt.”

“What hunt?”

She smiled slowly and glanced over his shoulder. “Where is your Ry?”

“Napping.”

She gave her feline smile. “You are never without him.”

“I am now.”

“He will be missed. Lucia pines for him.”

“We left Baynard’s service years ago.”

“So did she.”

“I see you’ve brought an army. What are you going to do with it?”

Her smile expanded. “You have not heard?” She tipped forward a little, and the silvery embroidery at the collar of her gown shivered in the torchlight. “We have taken London.”

He felt deep winter coldness rush through his chest. “Ah.”

“Armies are marching from every corner of the realm to join the rebels at London. FitzWalter is seeking allies. He is
willing to show great mercy to those who seek his goodwill now.”

“How unlike him. Do you mean me?”

“That depends on your reply.” She smiled her cat’s smile. “I have a proposition for you.”

E
VA
sidled along the wall in the tavern making no attempt to look like a servant this time. This time, she would be invisible.

It was quite crowded, making it simple to disappear. She inched her way along toward the back where a small divider wall separated the room into two sections. On one side was Eva and all the smelly, armed men, and on the other was Jamie and that woman, the one from his past whom he must oh-so-desperately see.

He was half resting his hips against a stool, one boot on the ground, the heel of the other hooked over the low rung. His cape hung, deceptively casually, around his shoulders, flowing down over the stool, hiding what Eva knew was a battery of blades.

So why was she here, being invisible in this grimy little tavern? In truth, she did not know. She only knew why she was
not
doing it.

She could have been doing it to save Father Peter’s life, for she had no chance of regaining him without Jamie. But that was not it.

She might have been doing it because of the smallest shred of curiosity—so minute it was barely detectable, really—about the willowy woman from Jamie’s past. But that was not the reason either.

She might have been doing it because she’d heard in Ry’s voice a thing she recognized: the sound of someone caring desperately for a person they could not protect.

Perhaps she was doing it, in part, because of the confused
wash of deeper emotions she felt with Jamie, which went far beyond being propped against walls by his capable male hands.

One thing was certain; she was
not
doing this because Jamie might need her help. The enemy who had abducted her, tied her up, and held her captive was now intent on accomplishing the very thing that would destroy her and everyone she loved?

That would be a ridiculous reason to risk one’s life.

She sat down on one of the wall benches, as close as she could, and aimed her hearing the way the one might aim a fishline, reeling in their words.

I
have a proposition for you.”

Jamie finished his visual inspection of the tavern and looked at Chance. “I have one for you as well.”

The woman’s smile went brittle. “Now, no biting, Jamie. We are not speaking of me. Baynard wants you back.”

“Why?”

A glint of rushlights shimmered on her hair band. “Who can say what moves him at times? Coin, cunts, power.”

That did bring a harsh laugh. “None of those reasons are compelling to me. The answer is nay.”

“You are always so impulsive, Jamie.” Eva was fairly certain Jamie was the opposite of impulsive, but Jamie didn’t bother to point that out, so neither did she. “Wait until you hear what Lord Robert has planned. Mayhap I can get an aye out of you yet. For this”—Chance reached out and touched his forearm—“is an alluring offer.”

He glanced down at her fingertips. Eva edged half out of her seat to do the same. “Nay.”

“Why not?” Chance asked.

“Because Fitz would have me tied and splayed with picks under my fingernails before I made it through his outer gates.”

“Not so, Jamie.” Chance pitched her voice low and persuasive.
She’d learned the concoction at Baynard’s feet. Jamie knew the tone; it generally preceded beatings. “Lord Robert is . . . repentant. For the way things went. For the way he treated you.”

Jamie shook his head. “He has not the inner coffers for such a sentiment. He is all acquisition. I am done with him, with them.”

Eva sat up a little straighter. Done with the rebels? He could not mean that. She must be misunderstanding.

“You have not even heard the offer. It concerns retribution, Jamie. Or, if you please, reparations.”

“It does not please.”

The woman’s hair was like a sheet of white-gold in the torchlight, shimmering as she leaned closer to Jamie, a tone of glee in her voice. “We have taken London, Jamie.”

Jamie’s face remained unreadable, hard and implacable.

“Come join us,” she urged in a voice at once coaxing and steely. “’Tis time to force the king’s hand, as he has repeatedly refused to extend it. We shall parley no more. Archbishop Langton was useful, but the time for peacemakers has passed.”

“I am sure it has,” Jamie agreed coldly. “Seeing as you are en route to barter for Peter of London.”

Her face extended into a delighted grin. She touched his arm again. “We are close, Jamie. Much closer than your lord. Do not think Mouldin will ever sell Peter of London to the king, not after what John did to him. He would sooner slit his own throat. All these maneuverings, they are playacting for coin. Mouldin will sell to us, then we will have the priest, and everything inside his head.”

“Which is . . . ?”

“The heirs,” she whispered, almost sounding gleeful. Eva felt her stomach turn. She swallowed the thick spit filling her mouth. “Peter of London is the only one who knows where the missing heirs of England are.”

Not the only one. Jamie knew too. Eva’s heart slowed. Jamie knew precisely where Roger was.

“And whoever has the heirs, has the crown,” the woman concluded.

Jamie pursed his lips. “Is that what fitzWalter is planning? No more charters, big or small? He wants the throne?”

Chance shook her head. The silver and gold threads woven in the narrow band around her head glinted in the torch- and candlelight. “If you wish to concern yourself with the travails of the rebels again, Jamie, you will have to come with me.”

Eva’s head was spinning, her heart falling, her belly churning. She was in a maelstrom.
Again?
What was this
again
?

Jamie burst into low laughter. “To London?” He tipped his head toward the guards. “It will take more than four of them to ever get me through the gates of London again.”

“Come, Jamie. I can assure you, fitzWalter can make it worth your trouble. Should you recall your loyalties, he knows you can be of use again.”

“My loyalties?”

Eva saw the edge of what she could only describe as a cat’s smile. “And in return for such a pledge, he promises to rectify the situation that has plagued you so long and ensure you are invested with lands. Many lands.”

“My pledge? Of fealty?”

The woman nodded.

“My pledge, to a man who has renounced his oath? My fealty to a man who tried to commit regicide?”

The woman’s fingers tightened around his forearm, like a cat’s claws. “You misremember, Jamie Lost,” she hissed, but Eva heard the wet syllables as clear as a stab. “
He
did not try to assassinate the king.
You
did.”

Eva sat back as if struck.

Jamie?
Regicide?

T
he tavern air chilled around Jamie, colder with each beat of his heart.

It was not that he was surprised to hear the truth; he knew his past well enough, as did Chance. It was a splinter of something deeper than shock or even fear, a small dart, barely visible, sharply painful, a small dark shadow untouchable without peeling back the skin of his heart.

After years of surviving on the streets of London as a child, with the occasional visit to Ry’s home for patching up his head and heart, Jamie had found himself a mentor in the aggressive, ambitious Robert fitzWalter, powerful lord of Dunmow and, moreover, Baynard Castle in London.

Perceiving the urchin’s ruthlessness and skill with weapons on the streets, Baynard took Jamie in and shaped his proclivities into fearsome proportions, for a precise purpose: to be his royal assassin.

FitzWalter ensured Jamie gained employ as part of John’s personal guard, but Jamie himself ensured he rose quickly through the king’s ranks, a junior among the likes of men such as Engelard Cigogné and Faulkes de Bréauté, Brian de Lisle, and John Russell. Eventually he became favored even among the favorites, until the king trusted Jamie with everything. He
was sent on missions of utmost secrecy and gravity, reporting back only to the king. Paymaster, diplomat, counselor, captain of his men—come a time, Jamie knew everything that passed in King John’s realm. Every court case involving high justice, every baronial wife John lusted after, every invasion planned, every expense recorded: Jamie knew it all.

Then, three years ago, the fruit had ripened. King John planned an incursion into Wales, and his murder was plotted to the smallest detail. Jamie had been ready, prepared to execute his destiny—even now he recalled the dull throbbing that had filled his ears—until, at the last moment, he learned whom Robert fitzWalter and his ilk planned to put on the throne instead: the brutal, canting butcher of the holy war against the Albigensians in southern France, Simon de Montfort. This crossed some line Jamie had not understood and could not, even now, put into words. But he did not need to name it to know it.

So he turned. He revealed the assassination plot to the king, betrayed his mentor, aligned with the king he’d sworn to murder.

John had turned almost rabid with fury and fear. Heads rolled, estates were seized, the rebel leaders fled into exile, and an escort of crossbowmen with quarrels cocked and ready had surrounded the king ever since.

Jamie’s role was never discovered. Once the king’s assassin, he was now John’s reluctant protector, the only one who stood between him and a legion of nobles who would like nothing better than to draw and quarter their anointed king and bury his innards in a pile of manure, then place his crown on their own heads.

Chance’s feline eyes glittered at him.

“And yet Lord Robert spoke no word of it, did he? He took you in off the streets as an orphan, raised you up, found you service in the king’s employ, and you had to do but
one errand
in
repayment. Instead, you betrayed him. He left the realm, left his lands, fled in ignomy.
You owe,
Jamie.”

Something happened to Jamie’s eyes, something not so much of hardness but recoil, and his reply was twisted in its low-pitched fury. “I have paid, Chance.”

“Not yet you haven’t. Tell me, do your illustrious,
loyal
companions know of your role in the plot? Archbishop Langton, William the Marshal—do they know you are an
assassin
?” She hissed the word. “Shall we tell them? I do not think the king would be happy to learn of your past. I think he would be positively murderous.”

She leaned forward. “’Tis is a well-deep debt, Jamie. FitzWalter is giving you a chance to repay, before you are made to recall exactly who created you. Do you understand?”

Jamie leaned forward suddenly and she jerked back, banging into the wall.

“I understand you, Chance. Now understand me: should Fitz wish to speak with me on matters of loyalty, let him come and find me himself. If he dares.”

In her corner, Eva felt like cheering, an odd and utterly inappropriate response, surely.

Chance tipped her head to the side and a thoughtful tone entered her words, but beneath it was fury. “Who is she, Jamie? She was comely. In a rare way. And yet, so petite and . . . windblown. Earthy. I am surprised. You always went for the rarefied sort.” Eva heard the snake-smile in Chance’s voice. “Oh, not that you wouldn’t taste the rest of us, but I saw you, I watched. And your eye always tracked the nobles.”

Eva felt a tiny pinch at the corner of her heart, as if something heavy had been dropped upon its edge.

She must have moved in response, for Jamie’s gaze snapped away from Chance’s like a whip and locked on hers.

It was a physical thing, this look. It grabbed hold. Jamie saw
her, knew her, then let her go, released her the way a hawk drops its prey, snapped his gaze back to the woman who so clearly wished Jamie were hunting her instead.

“You have had a great many chances to crawl out of the muck, Chance, but you will die there,” Jamie said coldly. “And you are foolish to have your men stand so far off when you are delivering threats to
me
.”

She lifted her pale brows. “Surely you would not lay a hand on me, Jamie?” On the surface, her voice was filled with disdain and threat, but clearly, underneath that lay hope.

Jamie pushed up off his stool. “My fealty is a defiled commodity, Chance, as you have pointed out. In any event, I have none to give. Let us bypass it for what truly matters: how much is fitzWalter offering for the priest?”

A sickening feeling began in Eva’s belly, as if she were on a boat crossing the Channel.

The woman angled her head to the side, considering him. “A great deal. Why? Do you know something?”