Masques of Gold (26 page)

The boys were playing some game at one side of the hearth while Paul and Oliva sat talking at the other side. Even the abrupt way the conversation terminated when they heard her footstep was familiar, for she had often seen that happen when she was in the workroom already and her father came to the door. That she was the “intruder” this time was evidence enough to Lissa that the subject of the conversation was Justin or herself or both, since Paul and Oliva had never before felt the need to curtail their talk in her presence.

Lissa had no objection to talk between Paul and Oliva so long as it spread nowhere else, so she did her best to seem unaware of the sudden silence, merely beckoning Oliva to her and stepping into the shop. There she unfastened her purse from her belt and put it into the maid's hands.

“Go to Joseph's cookshop,” Lissa said, “and buy the best he has—roast, stew, soup, and enough for all, for six. Sir Justin will eat his evening meal with me. If you think you will need help in carrying the food—remember, you must buy bread and cheese also—take Paul along. Oh, and if Joseph should be curious about the reason for the feast, tell him only that it is a celebration of my father's departure and my homecoming to oversee the business in his absence; Joseph will believe that. Sir Justin, who has high responsibilities, does not like to be the subject of gossip. I would not like it either. Do you understand?”

To Lissa's surprise, Oliva shuddered visibly. “Never you fear, mistress. It would take red hot pincers to drag his name from my lips.” She swallowed. “Don't go back up, mistress, stay here. I'll say—I'll say you went out.”

“I am not afraid of Sir Justin,” Lissa said rather sharply. “He has always been very kind to me, and he is a good man. There is nothing for you to fear either”—she stopped; in her desire to defend Justin and reassure Oliva, she was losing the point, which was that it would be far better for the woman, and for Paul too, to fear Justin—“unless your tongue wags too freely. Gossip can do great harm to a man in Sir Justin's position. Make sure that Paul understands that also. I want no talk of being favored by the mayor's officer among the apprentices and journeymen.”

“No, mistress.”

“Good. When you return, bring up some of everything for us. After that, you are free to do as you like.”

Having stated her lack of fear so firmly, Lissa did not dare linger and display any reluctance to return to the solar. And in a sense she did not wish to delay; certainly she did not fear Justin in the way Oliva meant. Only that last touch of the lips had set off a turmoil in her—not desire, and yet it was desire…

Lissa turned away from Oliva briskly and mounted the stairs at a steady, sensible rate. It was fortunate, she thought, that the maid could not see inside her chest where the beat of her heart was neither sensible nor steady. That made her utter a tremulous chuckle, which caught in her throat as she opened the door. Habit had turned her head to the right, for her father was often lying in wait at the foot or side of his bed. William Bowles was not there, of course, but Justin had laid out his mail shirt, with the two hind tails folded back away from the central split and the arms upthrust. Even to a woman as ignorant of fighting as Lissa it was apparent that in an emergency Justin had only to push his head and shoulders under the turned up tails with his arms extended, stand up, and his hauberk would slide down his body into position.

“Why—” she cried, turning her gaze from the ready fighting garment toward the chair by the fire, and then had to catch her breath again.

Justin had removed his arming tunic too, and now wore only a loose shirt over chausses and braies. In sitting down, the shirt and loose pants had been pushed up and Lissa's eyes were caught by the powerful thighs outlined by the chausses.

“Why?” Justin repeated. “Why what?”

Lissa raised her eyes to his face, fear momentarily driving out all other emotions. “Why is your hauberk laid out to be donned at any moment?”

“It always is,” Justin said, watching Lissa's face. “That is part of my life, Lissa, and something you must think about. It is not often I am called out, but when I am, it is my way to lead my men, not stand back and call out orders from behind.”

“I know that,” she said. “I remember how you were scraped and burned from working with your own hands at the fire. There were not many knights and burghers so marked.”

“There were more than you think, my love, but that is not the point. The fire was every man's work and every woman's too. Keeping the peace in London is
my
work and it does mean that sometimes I must put on that shirt and wield a sword. I have killed”—he shrugged—“many times. It is no pleasure, but it is no horror to me either.”

“I do not care whom
you
kill!” Lissa exclaimed. “What I fear is that someone else will kill you.”

Justin shrugged again, but he was smiling as he said, “I am nearly thirty years of age and I am still alive. I am skilled in my profession. I have tourney prizes to prove my prowess in arms.”

“That is horrible,” Lissa snapped. “Not content with killing those who deserve it, you must take to murdering total strangers?”

Justin laughed aloud at that and held out his hand, and she came to him and took it. But when he spoke his face and voice were very sober. “You prefer to turn all ugly things to jest, but you cannot put this question aside that way. I am a merchant, but I am also a knight. If you cannot accept my position, if you see me spotted and splotched with blood or followed by grinning ghosts, your love will sicken and a canker will grow between us.”

She was shaking her head even while he was speaking. “What I said about killing and being killed was no jest. I have no silly notions about such matters. My grandfather died in a fight aboard his ship, and my uncles wear harness and bear swords. One does not sail the world without meeting those with evil intent. I am afraid for you, that is all. I love you. I fear to lose you.”

“That is better than feeling I am a leper, but—” He hesitated and then said quickly and harshly, “If this fear will grow and poison your life, Lissa, it is better that we part friends and do not again meet. I wish I could offer, as you once asked, to come to you as a friend only or as a brother, but I cannot. You are too much a desirable woman to me. I must have you in all ways or not have you at all.”

“So I feel also, Justin, but you are unreasonable to ask that I predict the future. How can I say whether the sight of your mail laid ready will grow more and more hateful, and I more fearful, or whether I will grow hardened and see it no more than I would see a pair of slippers by the bed?”

“Then what should we do?”

She leaned forward and kissed his brow. “Eat the meal I have ordered my maid to fetch from the cookshop—”

He pulled her forward roughly so that the fronts of her thighs were pressed against the side of his right leg and her hip collided painfully with the arm of the chair. “Lissa—” was all he said.

“And go to bed,” she finished.

“Lissa—”

“Whatever comes after,” she said, “I wish to know you in every way. If it be only for a little while and then my fear for you grows too great to let us be happy, then we will part and I will endure afterward what I must.”

“And I?”

“Are you afraid?” she asked wonderingly.

“Yes.”

“You face wounds and death and fear love?”

“I know the pain of wounds, and in death there is no pain. I trust the mercy of my Lord and His Mother. But love…To have it, and then have it torn away…”

She put a hand on his shoulder and pushed herself back so that her position was less uncomfortable. “You will not suffer, I promise,” she said, chuckling. “I will follow the true path I have heard of lovers parting, and by the time we have trod it to the end, you will be delighted to be rid of me. I will take to nagging you to give up your work, and you will tell me to mind my own business, and I will say my lover's life is my business, and you will say you are a man and well able to guard your own life, and I will say—”

“Lissa!” he roared, letting go of her so he could gesture more freely. “Is nothing sacred to you?”

“Nothing silly,” she said, stepping just out of reach. “And you are being silly. You must know that no matter how great my fear, I could never part from you because of it. How could parting reduce the fear? Instead of being afraid for you only when you were away from me, I would be afraid all the time. You might grow tired of my tears or fearful looks, though I promise I will try to hide them, and decide to end our—”

“Decide? How could I decide to end a marriage? I am not poor, but I am not rich enough to buy an annulment from the pope—”

“Especially when I will be so unreasonable that I would give you no cause—although, of course, I might prove to be barren so that—”

“What are you talking about?”

“I have no idea,” Lissa said. “You have not even asked me to marry you, and you are already annulling your marriage to me. I do not take it kindly.”

First Justin made a grrr-ing noise in his throat; then he folded his hands together and tapped the fingers of one on the fist of the other. Finally he said, “I am very sorry I made you no formal offer. Actually, I thought I had that night in Goscelin's house, but perhaps I did not.”

“No. It is something a woman tends to remember.”

“Well, you were very shocked and hurt, but I will take your word for it.” Justin's voice remained soft, but the tapping fingers moved faster. “But I did believe as I did, and also that you had accepted me. What sort of a man do you think I am to come into your home in the company of one of your servants, speak to another of them, come up here, and remove my clothing uninvited?”

“You were invited to take off your hauberk.”

There was a brief pause and Lissa swallowed. That last remark had been unwise.

“Lissa, what sort of a man would expose a woman in that way without intending marriage?”

“Justin, I did not misunderstand you. Truly I never thought you one to use a woman and cast her aside. But you must believe that you have not exposed or endangered me in any way. My servants will not speak of your visit to me, nor will they speak if you make many more visits.”

He stared up at her, all emotion gone out of his face. “You bedazzle me, Lissa. You wrap me round and round in a cloud of glittering words and laughter so that I am dazed with a kind of joy I have never known—but I am lost also. Have I asked you to be my wife and been refused? Or is this another of your mad conversations where one annuls before one marries?”

“It is the usual way,” she said, unable to resist, “if one desires a second marriage.” And then she stepped forward and bent over him and kissed him. “You have not been refused, my dearest, most beloved. I cannot think of anything, except your long life and good health, that I desire more fervently than to be your wife. And yet I will not accept either lest you feel bound in some future time. No”—she put her fingers over his lips—“do not swear you will love me forever; I think it very likely you will because you are as single-minded and stubborn a person as I have ever seen.”

Justin was suddenly light and warm and extraordinarily happy. He might not always be able to match Lissa's verbal acrobatics, but he was no fool. He knew Lissa had a secret and it still troubled him that she would not tell him, but now he thought that she was trying to protect him, not herself. She cared for him too much to want him tarred with whatever black brush was poised over her, but she also wanted him too much to send him away to safety. He grinned up at her.

“You mean you dress your hair without looking in a mirror?” he asked.

Lissa laughed, but her voice was sober when she said, “My caution about acceptance is nothing to do with you or with me, Justin.” She hesitated and then went on with a rush. “You know my father's reputation is not—not without stain.”

So it was fear for him that made her cautious. “That is nothing to do with you,” Justin said forcibly, recalling with real shame as he said it that he himself had thought it would not be wise to marry William Bowles's daughter.

“Perhaps, my love,” she said, sighing because she knew her father would make it something to do with her. “But that you might be smirched with that reputation troubles me deeply.” Again she put her hand over his lips. “No, do not, I beg you, quarrel with me over this now and spoil what we have. Let us put it aside. My father will be away for some time. I have, as you know, an agile mind. Let me try to think of some way to keep him and his doings utterly separate from us. And Justin, you simply
cannot
announce to the world that you are going to marry the chief suspect five days after the latest important murder.”

“According to the mayor, there was no murder. Flael did not die of a blow or a cut, and Roger FitzAdam does not see why his death should be further investigated.”

“And the attack on Peter's house did not change the mayor's mind?” Lissa asked caustically. “Well, it has not changed mine either. Someone killed Peter, whether with a knife or a threat makes no difference. Peter was a decent man, and I would like to see that person caught and punished.” She turned and sank down on Justin's lap. “That is nothing to do with us, except that I could not accept a formal offer of marriage for a few months anyway, to show respect for Peter, so let us just enjoy being together for a little while without thought of tomorrow.”

“But that is not fair to you—” Justin began, only to be interrupted by a voice craving admittance at the door.

“Get the table, Justin,” Lissa cried, jumping from his lap to go to the door and pulling it open to find, as she expected, Paul with both hands so full that he could not scratch or lift the latch.