Martin had a natural skill with the sword and was improving daily. But instead of following through as he should, Martin checked
his swing and dropped the point of his sword.
“What is the matter?” Jamie said. “I did not call a halt.”
Martin widened his eyes and began making an odd motion to the side with his head.
“By Saint Wilgefort’s beard, Martin, just say it!”
“She is here,” Martin said in a whisper loud enough to carry a mile.
There was only one woman who could make his squire act like the village idiot.
That made two of them.
Jamie steeled himself to see Linnet before turning around, but his effort was for naught. The sight of her made him wretched
with longing. Aglow in a cream and gold gown, she looked like an angel sent from heaven to brighten the world for lowly man.
He reminded himself she was no angel. This was Linnet.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Martin make his escape. No lesson needed; the lad knew when to beat a hasty retreat.
Was Linnet here to attempt to change his mind? He told himself she could not do it… but he knew he lied. One brush of those
long, slender fingers, and he would weaken. He missed her like the devil. Her absence was an ache that never left him. Perhaps
he was wrong to hold out against her. Would he suffer more with her than he did without her?
“If you’ll sheathe your sword,” Linnet said without a hint of humor, “I would speak with you.”
Clearly, she was not here to pledge her undying devotion and beg him to take her back. He heaved a sigh as he slid his blade
into the scabbard at his belt. Then he folded his arms to indicate he was ready to listen.
“Something unexpected has happened,” she said, her voice pitched high with tension.
What was this?
Linnet was clutching her skirt, and her knuckles were white.
“Unexpected?” he asked.
“I cannot speak of it here,” she said, glancing up at the dark windows overlooking the empty courtyard. “We must be somewhere
private.”
He narrowed his eyes, taking in the rigidity of her stance, the lines of tension in her face. Something had upset her enough
to swallow her pride and come to him.
It seemed unlikely anyone could overhear them in the courtyard—but apparently it was not private enough for what she had to
tell him. His curiosity grew.
“There is an old armory off the courtyard that is no longer in use,” he said, gesturing to a weathered wooden door. “No one
will hear through the stone walls.”
The door creaked as he opened it for her. In the gloomy light that filtered in from the small windows near the roof, he saw
broken shields and other weapons beyond repair piled against one wall. Two long benches were covered in a thick layer of dust.
“I have no cloak for you to sit on.” Puffs of dust filled the air as he swiped at one of the benches with his sleeve.
“I don’t wish to sit, thank you.”
What made her so nervous? It was so unlike her. He watched her closely as he waited for her to tell him. As her gaze flitted
around the room, a thought began to grow in him.
When she still did not speak, he prompted her. “You had something unexpected to tell me?”
“Aye, quite unexpected. At least to me.” Her gaze came back to rest on him for a moment and then flitted away again. “I thought
you would want to know. That you would want to help me. You see…” She paused to lick her lips. “You see…”
It hit him like a thunderbolt. Jesus and all the saints protect him. Linnet was with child.
His
child. A swell of joy and wonder rose up in his chest, almost lifting him from the ground.
“This changes everything,” he said, because it did. “You see that, don’t you?”
He never thought he would be a man who would keep his wife under lock and key, but he would do what he must to keep her safe
until the child was born. Surely she would settle down once she had a babe in her arms?
“Aye, it changes all,” Linnet said, wringing her hands. “The difficulties are boundless.”
She took a step toward him. Her soft blue eyes were full of worry.
“A child should not be cause for despair, but of hope,” he said.
Her fine-boned shoulders relaxed a bit, and she graced him with a tentative smile that lanced open all his wounds.
“That is what the queen says,” she said. “But how did you guess the reason I came to you?”
“You told the queen about the child before telling me?” This hurt more than he could admit to himself.
She furrowed her brows and examined him. A moment later, her eyes flew open wide.
And they both knew the mistake he had made. It was not Linnet who was with child, but the queen.
Jamie rubbed his temples, trying to roll back all the thoughts and plans that had suddenly formed in his head.
“Could you be with child?” he asked, because he needed to know.
She bit her lip and shook her head. His chest tightened as he thought of the children he would never have with her. He looked
away; he could almost hear that door close forever.
“Your future wife would not have been pleased with such a surprise,” she said in a tight voice.
His wife? God help him, he had forgotten all about Agnes. He never could think of another woman when Linnet was near.
“A man takes care of his children,” he said, his anger with himself making his voice hard. “Lady Agnes would accept that.
As an obedient wife, she would respect my judgment.”
“Hmm.” The sound she made conveyed disagreement, which he chose to ignore.
“You were right to come to me,” he said, trying desperately to focus on the problem she had brought to him. “ ’Tis no simple
matter to find a place where Queen Katherine can have the child without anyone discovering her secret.”
“Hertford is among the properties the Council granted the queen for her own use,” Linnet said. “She says it is out of the
way and too small to accommodate many visitors. She could be left alone there.”
He nodded. “That might do. An even more difficult task will be finding someone trustworthy to raise the child.”
“The queen will not give up this child,” Linnet said. “She and Owen intend to marry.”
“God’s beard!” Jamie ran his hands through his hair. “That Owen has bollocks, I’ll say that for him. I pray we don’t see him
drawn and quartered before the babe is christened.”
“ ’Tis the queen who surprises me,” Linnet said in a soft voice. “She believes that if she has children with someone as lowly
as Owen, she will be allowed to keep them.”
“ ’Tis an awful risk for her to marry without the
Council’s permission,” he said. “But now that there is to be a child, one can hardly blame them.”
“Her confessor has agreed to marry them in secret at Hertford. She wants you to be a witness to their marriage.” Linnet dropped
her gaze to the dirt floor. “It is dangerous, but one day they may need someone to attest to it whose word will be trusted.”
Dangerous, indeed. He could be accused of treason.
“I have business in Northumberland that cannot be delayed,” he said. “But I will come directly to Hertford as soon as it is
concluded. It should take me no more than a week.”
She startled him by touching his arm. It was just a light touch, but it sent a rush of hot lust through him.
“Pray, do not wed Agnes Stafford,” she said, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “There is no lack of women who could love
you. Yet, you seem bent on marrying the one who cannot.”
It was so hard not to believe she cared enough to change for him when she was looking at him with so much warmth and longing
in her eyes. She was so close he could smell her skin and hair. His fingers itched to touch her.
Linnet had taken hold of him as a young man—heart, body, and soul. So long as they both lived, he would want her. He understood
that now. But once he gave his vow to another, he would not succumb to the temptation. By the Virgin, he needed to get himself
wed as soon as possible. He would send Martin home to visit his mother and leave with Stephen on the morrow.
“Is it not enough to punish me?” she asked, her touch scorching through him again. “One of us should be happy.”
He took one last look at the face that could make him forget every other thing that mattered to him in this world.
“Tell the queen I shall join her at Hertford.” He lifted his gaze to the trees on the far side of the river. “I shall be betrothed
when next we meet.”
“P
raise God you are here.” Linnet threw her arms around Francois���s neck as soon as he walked through the door of her London
house. “I could not live through this without you.”
Francois patted her back and asked, “What has happened?”
“Jamie is getting married,” she said into his neck. “To someone else.”
Francois blew out a deep breath. “I feared as much.” He unhooked her arms from around his neck. “ ’Tis your own fault. Twice
now you have tossed out the best man you will ever have.”
“I did not toss him out.” Indignation helped her fight the sting of tears at the back of her eyes. “Jamie left me. Both times.”
“Christ above, Linnet,” Francois said, raising his hands into the air. “You had to know Jamie would not stand for what you
did with Gloucester.”
“I was trying to get information, nothing more.”
“Just because you can dangle men from your fingers, does not mean you should do it,” Francois said. “And
did it have to be Gloucester, second in line to the throne? What was Jamie to think?”
She crossed her arms and tapped her foot. “He should have trusted me. I can manage Gloucester.”
“You can manage Gloucester? Then how is it that Jamie found the two of you grappling in the duke’s damned bedchamber?”
She should not have told her brother that part.
“You are supposed to be on my side.” She turned away, angry that her lower lip was trembling.
Francois heaved a sigh and put his arm around her. “Sorry, sweetling.”
She swallowed. “I cannot let him marry Agnes, truly I cannot. The woman has no spark at all.” ’Twas simply wrong for Jamie
to be with a woman who would not appreciate his passion. If only…
“Come, I have news of my own to share with you,” Francois said. “You’d best sit down for this.”
The grave expression on Francois’s usually cheerful countenance sent a tremor of foreboding through her. Once they were sitting
side by side on the bench under the window, he pulled a thick stack of folded parchments from inside his tunic. The edges
were curled with age.
“I’ve arranged them with the oldest on top,” he said as he flattened them on his knee.
She touched his arm. “But what are they?”
“Letters.” Francois cleared his throat. “Letters from our father to our grandfather.”
The breath went out of her. She looked into her twin’s face, unable to form the question.
Francois pressed his lips together and nodded. “Aye, he did not forget us as we thought.”
All these years, she had believed they did not merit the slightest consideration from their father. But here was proof to
the contrary—proof that he had at least remembered them from time to time. Tears streamed down her face. From the time she
was little, she had told herself she did not care that he had forgotten them. But it had always been a scar upon her heart.
“What does he say in the letters?” she asked. Francois set the stack in her lap. “The ink has faded, but you can read most
of them.”
She untied the twine that held them together and picked up the first one. As soon as she unfolded it, she recognized Alain’s
seal and signature at the bottom. The parchment was torn along the fold, and her eyes blurred when she tried to make out the
words.
“Tell me, Francois.”
“He asks Grandfather to send us to him,” Francois said in a quiet voice. “He also writes that the messenger carries enough
money to pay for our journey—or for our upkeep, should Grandfather refuse again.”
“Again?”
“Apparently, these are not all of the letters,” Francois said. “Only the ones he sent to London.”
Francois pulled a bulging leather bag out from under the bench and untied the strings that held it closed. Gold coins glimmered
and clinked as he poured them onto the low table in front of them. Two or three lone coins spilled over the side and rolled
across the floor.
“Grandfather had this much gold here in London?”
Francois nodded, his expression grim.
“But… we could have paid our debts. We would not have had to flee in the middle of the night. We…” She
closed her eyes and touched her fingertips to her forehead. All that suffering for naught.
“Grandfather was a wealthy man and did not need our father’s money—not for a long time, anyway,” Francois said. “By the time
we did need it, he likely forgot he had it.”
She nodded. “His memory grew worse and worse those last two years.” After a long moment, she said, “But why did Alain never
tell us he did this?”
“Pride, perhaps.” Francois shrugged. “He may not realize we did not have the benefit of the funds.”
Linnet rested her hands on the letters scattered in her lap. If she had known, how would her life be different? She had been
angry for as long as she could remember. Angry that her father left their mother pregnant without a backward glance. Angry
that he did not deem his bastard children worthy of his notice, much less his support.
She would not trade her early years with her grandfather for the constrained life of a nobleman’s daughter. But if she had
known about the letters, surely she would have made different choices these last years. If she had known of his attempts to
support them and to bring them into his household, she would not have felt compelled to punish him for failing her.
Perhaps she would not expect everyone important to her to desert her. Everyone except for Francois, of course. He was the
one person she had always believed loved her enough not to leave her.
Perhaps she would have trusted Jamie.
“He told me he tried to find us after Grandfather died,” Francois said. “When he could find no trace of us, he assumed we
died during the siege.”