Suzanne Robinson (14 page)

She rested her hot cheek against the open face of the book and scolded herself. For three days now he’d assisted her in ordering Uncle Thomas’s library, and for two of them she’d found herself more interested in Blade than her work. Already unhappy with herself for being unable to accept Thomas’s death as God’s will,
she was even more disgusted with her perversity now that she looked forward to every moment spent in the company of this half-foreign and seductive young man.

Raising her head, she released the book and picked up her quill to record its contents. This was the first day she hadn’t wept upon entering the library. No, she didn’t cry all the time now. It didn’t matter because she cried inside. She cried when she looked at Uncle’s printing press model. Her heart ached when she read Greek, knowing she would never read aloud to Thomas again.

She carried her pain with her day and night, and sometimes it seemed as fresh as the night Uncle had died. So new and unabated did it seem that she’d almost decided not to allow Blade to assist her in this sad task. Then she changed her mind. After all, it hardly mattered who bore her company.

She shifted her position in her chair, and a sunbeam cast a patch of gold on her writing hand. She’d been foolish to assume it mattered not who assisted her. It mattered a great deal when her assistant was Blade. The contrast between his youth and strength and Uncle Thomas’s age startled her. She hadn’t thought how different it would be to sit across from a vibrant man who had but to raise his starlight eyes to her to cast her into turmoil.

Now that she was calm, she’d had time to dwell upon his startling behavior at Uncle’s death. She had been drowning, and he had swept her up and protected her from the maelstrom. Never had she expected him to give comfort; still less had she expected to welcome it. He’d held her tightly and stroked her hair that terrible night, and his soft voice and unyielding body had kept her from ultimate despair.

A noise from the bookshelves gave her a start. She stuck her nose over her book. Blade was poking at the back of a half empty bookshelf. Odd how ofttimes he seemed more interested in shelves and chests than
books. He made a sound of vexation and stepped down from the stool on which he’d been perched.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“No.”

He dusted his hands and took up his doublet. When he’d donned it and his short cloak, he stood looking at her, and Oriel hastily directed her gaze to the catalog she was composing. He fetched a stool and sat beside her. She felt a blush rising from her neck and tried to fasten her attention on her writing. She failed when he whispered her name and caused a tremor to crawl through her body.

“Mistress Oriel?”

“Yes.”

She dipped the quill in a pot of ink and kept her gaze on the catalog. There was a moment’s silence; then he chuckled and plucked the quill from her hand.

“Peace,
chère
. I’m not so dissolute and depraved that I would approach you in your grief. That is, I’ll try to remember me of chivalry and courtesy.”

“Uncle Thomas has a book about manners.”

“What?”

She pretended great concern with the papers in front of her, patting them into an orderly stack. “I’ve often wondered why manners of other peoples are different.”

“Pardon?”

“And have you ever wondered what light is?” She pointed to a patch of light on the table. “I can see it, and it gives warmth, but I can’t hold it. Think you firelight is the same as sunlight?”

“Hold!” He put his hands to his forehead and winced. “Marry, I do believe you’ve given me an ache in my head.”

“Haven’t you ever wondered such things?”

“I don’t know, but I wanted to talk to you, and you’re going to make my thoughts vanish if you don’t stop.”

“Oh.” She folded her hands in her lap and looked at him.

“I haven’t wanted to speak of this, but it seems I have no choice.” He leaned closer, and she leaned away from him as he did so. “But you must understand that what I say is privy between us. Will you give your word not to speak to anyone else about it?”

“That I can’t do until you tell me.”

He regarded her for a long time without speaking “I must trust you, it seems, now that your uncle is gone.” He seemed to have decided something, for he breathed deeply. “Marry, if he finds out I’ve confided in you, he’ll throw me in the Thames. Oriel, I’m concerned about how your great-uncle died.”

“Yes, a terrible accident. I hold on to the banister when I’m on the stairs now.”

He shook his head and lowered his voice. “You’re a girl of much wit. Think a moment. Your uncle was found in the stairwell, not on a landing or at the foot of the staircase. In order to land there, he would have to topple over the banister. He was old, but hardly that unsteady. He would have to have jumped over or—”

“Or been pushed.”

Oriel stared at him, her thoughts following the import of his logic. He was nodding, but she could only gape at him with her mouth hanging open. At last she found her voice.

“But, but that means he meant to die, or someone …”

“Killed him.”

“Uncle Thomas wouldn’t commit so grievous a sin!”

Blade held up his hands. “Peace,
chère
, I agree with you.”

“How charitable.”

“Now,
chère
, you mustn’t lose your temper.”

“Don’t you speak to me as if I were a child.”

He grinned at her, but she only scowled back at him. He suppressed his grin and continued.

“Do you see the reasoning of it?”

She looked away, frowning, and tapped her fingers on the catalog. Finally she nodded. “And you’re right. We must keep this news privy until we know more.” She looked down, noticed her tapping fingers, and spread them flat on the paper. “Yes, I see the sense of what you say, though the idea seems fantastical to me. Who would want to harm Uncle Thomas? Even my aunts would never kill someone, and they are full of spite and hate.”

“There must have been a reason.” He put an arm on the table and cocked his head to the side. “There are many reasons to kill someone, but ofttimes murder is done out of passion, or for gain, or to keep a secret.”

“Passion?” Oriel shook her head. “I don’t think so. I still find it hard to believe. Highwaymen murder people, and so do men who want power. Uncle Thomas wasn’t robbed, and he had no power anyone would want.”

Blade was looking at her now as if she were an oracle. “And what about secrets? Did your uncle have secrets, perilous secrets?”

“Fie, my lord. Uncle Thomas had lived in the country for many years. He was a scholar, not a purveyor of intrigues.”

She jumped when he thrust himself off the stool. “God’s blood, think’ As infernally clever as you are, you must have noticed something that would give us a hint as to why he might have been killed. Use your wits, girl.”

“You’ll not address me as if I were a serving maid, sirrah.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “You’re not as clever as I thought, or you’d realize there may be a killer at Richmond Hall.”

“None of my family are killers, and neither are our
servants.” Oriel stopped, rose, and turned to face him. A shiver of alarm raced through her body. “But what do we know of you?”

He laughed, took her hand, and kissed it. “God’s blood, you’ve got courage if you face me thinking I’m a murderer. But think further. If I had killed Thomas, would I then arouse suspicions when no one seems to think his death anything but an accident?”

“Oh.”

She resumed her seat and tried to think of all he’d said. The idea of someone killing Uncle Thomas was still hard to credit.

“I must have time to reflect.”

“You want to ruminate while a murderer runs free?” Blade whirled away from her, his cloak billowing around him.
“Sacré Dieu
, you may have the wit of a man, but you teeter and totter like any other woman when faced with a perplexity. Don’t you understand? You could be in danger.”

She was on her feet again, her cheeks blazing and her fists clenched. “Teeter and totter? You, a stranger, come to me and talk of murder and danger and suspicion, and then chide me when I take the time to ponder the matter carefully?”

“You aren’t taking heed.” His voice rose.

She raised hers. “What would you have me do?”

“Think, girl, think.”

“Saints, I don’t wonder you need me to think for you, since you clearly can’t do it for yourself.”

His jaw dropped, and for once it was he who turned red.

“God’s patience,” he said. “I’ll not have a virginal, prating, light-headed witch of a girl jibe at me.”

“No, sirrah, you’d much rather consort with my cousin Joan and make music for hours and hours.”

She wished she could box his ears, for he crowed at her.

“Here’s richness,” he said. “She’s jealous.”

“I am not!”

“You are, and I’m most pleased.”

“But not pleasing, my lord. You’re a haughty jade, over full with self-contentment and too ready to believe the cozenings of dissolute Frenchwomen.”

He leered at her, nodded, and began to come toward her. She slipped around her chair so that it formed a bulwark between them.

“Stay away,” she said.

“How can I when you taunt and tease me into proving all those French ladies weren’t deceiving me?”

She turned and raced to the end of the table, but he kept coming toward her, slowly, with that evil smile still curling on his lips.

“We were speaking of murder, my lord.”

“Yes, and now that you have reminded me, I must needs stay close to you, so that I can protect you from danger.”

He reached the end of the table as he finished and lunged for her. Oriel cried out, snatched up a large book, and thrust it into his stomach. He grunted and clutched at the book with both hands while she snatched up her cloak and hurried out of the library into the gallery. She risked a look back at him to find he was coming for her. Holding out a warning hand, she forestalled him.

“I’ll call George.”

He kept coming.

She retreated down the gallery. “I’ll call Aunt Livia.”

He grinned and stepped into the gallery.

Donning her cloak, she gathered her skirts in her hands. “I’ll call Joan.”

He halted. “Joan? Joan is a haddock with arms and legs.”

“And Jane as well.” She headed for the stairs.

“Come back here.”

“As I said, my lord, I need time to think.”

“If you must needs think, think in my presence.”

Oriel shook her head and ran down the stairs before he could reply. She would rather eat slugs than tell him how impossible she was finding it to think clearly when he was in the same room. No doubt he already had guessed.

Fearful that he would chase after her, she left the Hall and went to the chapel. It was past midday, and the sun was shining through the stained glass of the rose window. After saying a few words to the family chaplain, she walked toward the altar and stopped in a pool of azure light cast by a pane of Chartres blue.

Breathing deeply, she tried to calm herself, for Blade had set her body afire and then scattered her wits with his revelations. Try as she would, she couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to kill Uncle Thomas. Yet Blade had been right about how strange his accident had been. Thomas had fallen down the gap formed by the twisting angles of the staircase as it rose to the second and third floors. Oriel shook her head, but it felt stuffed with cobwebs.

Dear Uncle Thomas, he’d said when she was troubled she should visit his tomb and read the inscriptions upon it. She decided to take his advice, and went down into the darkness of the crypt. A lone torch shed uneven light in the cold chamber beneath the chapel. She stood in front of Thomas’s tomb and regarded the finely carved letters on the face of the stone.

“O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, who taketh away the sins of the world,” she said.

The words were comforting, but she didn’t see why Uncle thought it necessary for her to come down into the crypt and read them when she knew them by heart. After a few minutes of contemplation that gained her
nothing, she returned to the chapel. Lighting a candle for Uncle Thomas, she knelt at the altar and prayed for him.

After a while her thoughts strayed back to her bewitching suitor. It had slowly come to her that, in spite of his perverse taunts, Blade had returned to Richmond Hall of his own will. She was certain no threats by his father could have forced him to become her suitor again, and he had no need of her wealth. Therefore … therefore, he must truly desire her.

Oriel gasped aloud at this new thought, and a great warmth spread over her body. Images of Blade, his graceful, long-limbed body, came to her. Quick of mind, possessed of a voice that would lure mad beasts, he had come to dominate her thoughts. Never had she imagined that she would attract the interest of so alluring a creature. And yet he must want her, for there was no other reason for him to return after she had sent him away so rudely; no reason for him to remain in the face of her disdain; no reason for him to subject himself to the gloominess of a house of mourning.

He must want her. Mayhap he even loved her. Unused to such ideas, she struggled to believe in her good fortune. She wished Uncle Thomas were here. He’d said Blade loved her, but she hadn’t believed him, and now she needed his counsel and assurance that what she suspected was indeed true. Mayhap if she prayed, Uncle Thomas would send her a sign that she was right.

Having only her cousins and suitors as examples, she hadn’t realized that a young man could possess both a quick wit and great beauty. Yet Blade could converse with her in any language, match wits with her, and loved learning. If only he weren’t so—so tyrannical. If only he didn’t roar and rampage like a maddened Viking when she refused to obey him Ah, well, she couldn’t ask God for perfection.

When her knees grew sore from kneeling on the flagstones she rose and left the chapel. Back in the Hall
she encountered Livia, who trumpeted at her from the second floor gallery.

“Where have you been? Joan tells me you haven’t memorized one line of your part in the masque.”