Isobel gave her husband a sidelong glance.
“I’ll see what’s keeping the groom with your horse,” Stephen said. “Meet you at the gate.”
Isobel took Jamie’s arm, and they began to stroll toward the gate.
“At least you need not worry about hurting Lady Agnes’s feelings,” Isobel said.
“That is for certain.” Jamie laughed. “As soon as I left her house, she ran away to the nunnery.”
“It was kind of you to stop to see her there before leaving.”
“She is hell-bent on remaining at the nunnery,” he said with a smile. “If the abbess fails to persuade her father through
reasoned argument, Agnes intends to chain herself to the altar.”
Isobel held her belly as she chuckled. “Pray, do not make me laugh, or I may have the babe right here in the yard.”
As they walked, Isobel’s expression grew thoughtful. “Tell me, what went wrong with Linnet this time?”
Jamie blew out his breath. “Simply put, Linnet wants revenge for something that happened years and years ago more than she
wants me.”
“I see,” Isobel said and nodded to herself.
“Tell me, how can I convince her to forget the past?” Isobel stopped and turned her serious green eyes on him. “Did you never
consider helping her settle her old scores?”
“What? Help her with such foolishness?”
Isobel raised her eyebrows at him and then began walking again. “ ’Tis not foolishness to her.”
“But it is foolish nonetheless—and dangerous besides.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Why can she not leave it
alone and be happy to be a wife and mother like other women?”
Jamie turned in time to catch Isobel rolling her eyes. “If she were like other women, she would not be the woman you love,”
she said. “Try to understand her. If you felt a great wrong had been committed against, say, your mother, could you rest?”
Isobel knew precisely how protective he felt toward his mother; she always made her points with razor-sharp accuracy.
“But Linnet promised me she would let the past be.” Breaking her word to him still rankled.
“You know how it was for her,” Isobel said. “When Stephen and William found her and Francois, they were living by their wits,
stealing food and protecting themselves with an old sword. It cannot be easy for her to forgive the men who put them there.”
“But she thinks nothing of poking a stick at these men,” he said, raising his hands in the air, “no matter how powerful they
may be.”
“All the more reason she needs you,” Isobel said.
Who knew women were such bloodthirsty creatures? “I suppose I shall have to help her. God knows she cannot do it alone, no
matter what she thinks.”
Stephen caught up to them then, leading Jamie’s horse. “My wife put you on the right path?”
“Do you doubt it?” Jamie put his arm around Isobel’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “Wish me luck, for I fear we shall
have our wedding in the Tower.”
Isobel grinned at him. “At least you shall be together.” He bid them a final farewell and mounted his horse.
As he made the long journey to London, Agnes’s strange words of parting nagged at him, drawing his mind again and again, like
an infected wound.
“Pray for God’s protection,” Agnes had said, “for I have seen demons hovering over the lady you seek.”
L
innet was beneath the water, rocked by the motion of the sea. Her heart began to race because the sea was too dark for her
to see the surface, and she did not know which way to swim.
Gradually, she realized the rocking motion was not the sea, but someone carrying her. Her head pounded. She recalled someone
grabbing her from behind… and the strong medicinal smell of a cloth over her face. She sniffed. Damp wool now. Was she wrapped
in a blanket? She felt confined, swaddled as tight as a babe.
A voice came out of the darkness. “Any trouble?” “None.” She felt the rumble of the deep voice of the man carrying her.
The voice sounded familiar… A jolt of indignation ran through her: This was Carter, the very man she had hired to protect
her.
She forced herself not to struggle. There was nothing she could do wrapped up like this—and letting them know she was awake
might squander a later opportunity to escape.
“The others are waiting,” the first man said.
He spoke in vernacular English, but his voice was cultured. An educated man, someone of the noble class or in frequent contact
with the nobility.
“You take her an’ give me the rest of my money now,” Carter said. “I already risked more’n I like. I don’t want nothin’ more
to do with you lot of devil-worshippers.”
Devil-worshippers?
“Put her in the wagon, and you can go.”
She bit her lip to keep from crying out as she was tossed through the air. A sharp pain shot through her shoulder as she landed
with a hard thump. Wooden slats creaked beneath her as the wagon rocked from the impact of her weight.
“Mind you keep your mouth closed,” the man with the cultured voice said. “I warn you—I know spells that would leave your cock
limp for the rest of your days.”
Carter spurted a string of oaths. Then she heard the clink of coins, following by receding footsteps. The wagon rocked again,
this time with the weight of someone getting in the front. With a lurch, it moved forward.
As the wagon bumped along, she rocked herself from side to side, intent on rolling off the back of the wagon. Once, twice,
she rolled over, and then… damn, she hit the side of the wagon. She gathered her strength and bounced herself. She was wrapped
so tightly, it was slow going. Inch by inch, she moved until her feet fell off the end.
“Halt, John!”
At the woman’s shout, the driver brought the wagon up sharply, which sent Linnet sliding forward away from the end of the
wagon. She wanted to scream in frustration.
The next thing she knew, there was someone beside her, unwrapping the blanket from her face.
She saw a flash of starlit sky, and then a cloth was over her face. It had the same distinctive odor as before.
“Noooo!” Her scream was muffled by the cloth. In vain, she struggled against the bindings that held her fast.
Linnet awoke with a blazing headache. For a long moment, she lay on her back, staring at the ceiling with no notion of where
she was or what had happened to her. Yet her skin prickled with the knowledge that she was in danger.
Slowly, it came back to her. How long had she been in the wagon? How many times had they reapplied the cloth? She had no sense
of either.
She lifted her head and had to grit her teeth against the throbbing pain in her head. A hint of light filtered in around the
edges of a single barred and shuttered window, and even that hurt her eyes. She was lying on a pallet in a narrow room. The
weight she had felt on her hands and feet were chains. When she tried to sit up to see better, she was hit by such a wave
of dizziness that she was forced to drop her head back down.
A tear slid down the side of her face into her hair. What was she doing here? Kidnapped, drugged, and chained like a dog!
If she had listened to Jamie, done as he begged her, they would be at his parents’ castle now, planning their wedding feast.
But nay. She had to poke her stick into the hornet’s nest once more. After that disastrous encounter with Gloucester, however,
she had done nothing to pursue her enemies. She had been too despondent to care. Once Master Woodley confirmed the mayor’s
spotless reputation for honesty, she had no notion where to look next in any
case. Regardless, her earlier actions must have threatened someone powerful—and evil.
No matter what she’d done to bring this on herself, Jamie would come save her if he knew. No matter his wretched betrothal
to someone else, no matter his fury with her, no matter his determination never to cross paths with her again—Jamie would
come if he knew she was in danger.
To keep her courage up, she imagined Jamie coming down a long corridor to reach the door to this tiny room, fighting his way
past twenty men. Such a warrior he was! How magnificent he would look, his sword swinging left and right, high and low, as
he struck down one after another.
Then he would kick the door open with a great crash. He would stand for a long moment in the doorway, his chest heaving, praising
God he had found her still alive. And finally, he would drop to his knee beside her narrow cot, take her in his arms, and—
Click. Click. Click.
Linnet turned her head toward the sound of a key in a lock. Her heart stopped in her chest as the door latch slowly lifted.
“S
omeone put it about that Lady Linnet was doing witchcraft,”
Mistress Leggett said. “Black witchcraft.”
This was the third time Jamie had heard this since he arrived in London to find Linnet gone and her house empty. There had
been whispers for months about nobles in the highest circles being involved with witchcraft and dark arts, but he’d never
heard a word about it in connection with Linnet. Until today.
“I didn’t believe it for a moment,” Mistress Leggett said, fanning herself, though the room was far from warm. She sat with
her knees apart and her bulk overflowing the small stool on which she sat. “But if any noble lady was going to be accused
of sorcery, ’twas bound to be her.”
“Why Linnet?” he asked.
“She doesn’t act as men think a woman ought. And she won’t pretend they know better. That’s enough to put a woman at risk.”
Mistress Leggett’s jowls shook as she nodded her head. “Believe me, I know.”
Jamie tapped his foot, but Mistress Leggett took no notice of his impatience.
“I praise God I wasn’t born with her sort of beauty,”
Mistress Leggett said as she refilled his cup from the pitcher of ale without asking. He refrained from shaking her as she
refilled her own and drank down half of it. “Such rare looks can lead men to a dangerous sort of lust.”
Mistress Leggett wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and shook a thick finger at Jamie. “Then, if she won’t have him,
the man will go half mad. And you can bet a pretty penny, he’ll blame her for it. Next thing you know, he’ll be saying she
bewitched him.”
“Are you saying you know who is behind the rumors? Who accuses her?” Jamie asked, still hoping she might give him something
useful.
She puckered her lips as she pondered his question. “All the men looked at her, so ’tis hard to say. But where I heard the
rumor was at the Guild Hall. I’d start there, if I were you.”
God’s beard! Any merchant in London might visit the Guild Hall. Jamie stood to leave.
“ ’A course that won’t help you find her.”
Jamie waited, nerves taut, halfway to the door. “People say she caught wind she was going to be charged and got on a fast
ship for France,” Mistress Leggett said. “Must be true, for she was gone when the guard went to arrest her two days ago.”
Jamie returned to Linnet’s house, determined to search every inch of it. Master Woodley wrung his hands and followed on Jamie’s
heels, while Jamie searched from room to room.
The clerk cleared his throat as Jamie rifled through
Linnet’s shifts and stockings. “Should you be looking through her… personal things, sir?”
“Goddamn it!” Jamie shouted. “She must have left a clue here somewhere.”
He had looked everywhere—even under the floor-boards—for something, anything, that might tell him where she had gone or who
might have taken her.
“Lady Linnet would not leave London without telling me,” Master Woodley said. “She is very good about keeping me informed—unlike
her brother, I must say. When she goes, she always provides precise instructions on how I may exchange messages with her.”
Jamie returned to the solar and dropped down onto the window seat amid Linnet’s colorful pillows.
Where was she?
He held his head in his hands, trying to think.
“Truly, this is most unlike her, Sir James.”
Fear gnawed at his belly, for all evidence suggested Linnet did not leave by her own choice.
Jamie looked up as Martin came into the solar, his young face taut with worry.
“I found nothing in the kitchen,” Martin said. “No hidden letters, nothing out of place.”
Damnation. “Tell me again, Master Woodley, what did she have you looking for regarding her grandfather’s old business?”
“I was following the trail of gold,” Master Woodley answered. “The path his fortune traveled—and through whose hands—all those
years ago.”
“What did you find?”
“The trail forked and forked and forked again. No matter which route I took, I came to a stone wall.” He raised
a finger. “But the same stone wall, mind you, which is telling.”
“Can you not save time and simply tell me what you know? Lady Linnet may be in danger.”
“All trails led to the Mercer’s Hall. That is the stone wall.”
“That is the oldest and most powerful of the London guilds,” Martin put in.
“I am not a foreigner. I know what the mercer guild is.” Jamie blew out a breath, annoyed with himself for snapping at the
two of them.
The old clerk cleared his throat. “The lad is correct. Why do you suppose the mayor is most often a mercer?”
“You cannot mean the mayor of London is behind this shady business with her grandfather,” Jamie said. “I know Mayor Coventry,
and I do not believe it.”
“I did not say he was.” The way the little man raised his white brows reminded Jamie of his old tutor. “But I believe the
man behind the scheme was a mercer—and a powerful member of the guild.”
“Then I shall go to the Hall of the Worshipful Company of Mercers,” Jamie said, rising to his feet, “and knock some heads
together until someone tells me what I wish to know.”
“But Sir James…,” the clerk said behind him as he headed down the stairs, but Jamie was done with talking. He needed to do
something, and knocking mercer heads together seemed as good as any.
Just as he reached the front door, someone pounded on the other side. He flung it open to find two girls on the step, looking
up at him as if he were a wolf about to eat them.