“John, you must call out the archers.”
“I have.” He added with a snort, “A precaution only. He cannot possibly be considering an attack. He’s a killer, not a suicide.”
That calmed Frances somewhat. Grenville Hall, with its battlements and moat, had stood for almost three centuries against all attacks—not even a madman like Thornleigh would attempt an assault. Especially against the Grenville Archers, so heroic in their defense of London during last year’s rebellion against Frances’s dear friend, Queen Mary. Keeping pace with John, she asked, “Then what in the name of heaven is he coming for?”
“I have no idea. But he must think he’s invincible with his bought pardon.”
It made no sense. She knew, of course, that Thornleigh and his wife had come home. Their estate bordered the forest backing that of Grenville Hall, and one heard the servants talking. And she was only too aware that Winchester, the lord treasurer, had wangled a pardon for her father’s killer. Bribes had been involved, she did not doubt. Typical, given the corruption rampant in the royal council, a fractious body that poor Mary had inherited upon taking the throne. The blatant duplicity and politicking of so many of the councilors disgusted Frances. But that was London, and the court. Here at home in Colchester, common sense said that the Thornleighs would stay clear of John.
She gripped her brother’s arm to stop him. “It’s some kind of trick. Don’t let him in.”
He frowned, exasperated. “How can I know what to do until he gets here?”
“John, the man’s a devil. He cannot be trusted.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” he shot back. “I hate Thornleigh every bit as much as you do. But I will be the judge of how to handle him. Now stay here, Frances, and let me deal with this.”
She watched him go, passing the outbuildings and the stables, heading into the house. She turned and looked across the low stone wall at the snowy, deserted fields that led to the Thornleighs’ lands at the Abbey. It would always be that to her—the Abbey. She could never use the name that upstart family had given the house they had thrown up on the Abbey’s sacred ground. Their encampment was a desecration. And the new name itself, Speedwell House, was grotesque for sounding so homey and harmless. She felt again all the horror of her father’s death a year ago in that very house, beside their very hearth. His mashed face. His bloodied body. And then, the misery of her mother’s melancholic decline, her quick slide into death. Her parents lay in their graves while the one-eyed devil who had put them there was galloping to her door.
She closed her eyes in fury and frustration. Men’s work. Must let John handle it. She prayed he had the spine.
But she would not cower in the barnyard, waiting for word. He had interrupted her in the midst of her morning rounds, and she set off now, anxious to keep busy. The bishop was to be their guest tomorrow, and he and his entourage must be entertained in style. John’s wife, pregnant again, idled in her bedchamber most days with her female cousins, eating sweetmeats and marzipan and teaching tricks to her spaniels, leaving most of the work to Frances. But she did not mind. Arabella understood little about managing a great house. Frances was very good at it.
Crossing the yard, she had to tread carefully on the slick cobbles filmed with the night’s hoarfrost. She looked in at the stone shed where the men were butchering an ox carcass. They were taking their time, some chatting as they stood around the bloodied butcher blocks, others lounging against the walls. She was about to lift the whistle that always hung from her belt, its screech a summons to her steward, Dyer, but the men noticed her and jumped to their business. She would have a word with Dyer about their lazy behavior. Right now, though, she could not keep her mind off the house. Here among the outbuildings she couldn’t see anything at the main gate. Had Thornleigh already arrived? She looked toward the kitchen doors, itching to know what was happening in the great hall. When could she go in? What wickedness was the man up to?
Cart wheels squeaked behind her. She glanced around. A cart delivering the sheep carcasses. Good—mutton was the bishop’s favorite. She made a mental note to check on the supply of mustard and prunes. Grenville Hall had a reputation for the best festive fare in the county and she was determined to do justice to her late mother’s memory. This year’s twelve days of feasting would not disappoint.
Moving on to the bake house, she passed through a cloud of clove-scented steam billowing into the cold air. Inside, teams of women, their aprons streaked with cinnamon and golden saffron, were busy turning Frances’s orders into Christmas puddings, custard pies, and mince tarts. She looked across at the brew house, where the yeasty aroma from the vats reassured her there would be plenty of ale for the many thirsty guests to come.
She looked up at the house again. John had been firm—stay here—yet her curiosity burned. It was no good. She
must
go in.
She tugged off the buckram apron protecting her gown, balled it, stuffed it under her arm, and set out toward the house. She was passing the stable when the clatter of the sheep cart became suddenly very loud and someone shouted “Look out!” Frances whirled around to see the wheels sliding on the cobbles and the cart careering toward her, the drayman frantically hauling back on his horse’s reins. The cart rattled past her, but its rear board struck her wrist with a sharp blow that knocked her back on her heels. The bundled apron under her arm fell and she stumbled, groping the air for balance. Servants rushed to her, calling out, asking if she was hurt.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she said, mortified at the indignity of almost losing her footing. The drayman had stopped his cart and leaped down. He stood wringing his cap in his hands, fear in his eyes. Careless idiot, Frances thought. “Go on about your business, all of you,” she said. They slowly dispersed. The drayman took his seat again and tapped his horse, and the cart squeaked on toward the butchers’ shed. Frances stooped to pick up her apron.
That’s when she saw blood trickling from her wrist. An exposed nail on the back of the cart? The cut didn’t hurt, but the sight of her own blood always made Frances queasy. A wave of dizziness rocked her. Her vision went cloudy. Her legs buckled and her knees hit the cobbles with a sharp pain. She lowered her head, afraid she might be sick.
“That’s right, keep your head down,” a man’s voice called from a distance. “Take slow, deep breaths.”
The quiet authority in his tone made her do as he said. She breathed in deeply, grateful for the cold air. It cleared her head enough to look up.
The man was coming toward her, his back to the rising sun as it crested above the outbuildings, leaving his face in shadow and the sun gilding the edges of him. Through her slowly clearing vision Frances saw a tall, sturdy body, broad shoulders, narrow waist. A short, dark beard neatly trimmed, and dark hair whose lazy waves were pushed straight back as though to inconvenience him the least. He wore a black cloak and a tunic of fine blue wool, the blue as dark as the ocean at dusk.
“You’re shivering,” he said as he reached her, unfastening his cloak. He whirled it off and gently draped it over her shoulders, then crouched down in front of her. “Let’s see,” he said, taking hold of her hurt wrist. Frances glanced at the dribble of blood. Then looked quickly away.
The man reached up higher, right into her sleeve. She shivered at the shock of his fingers. Then saw the tip of her handkerchief peeking out from the sleeve. That’s what he was after—the handkerchief. He tugged it out and pressed it gently against her wound. “You should wash this cut. And can your kitchen maid fetch a good salve?”
“I have a tincture…sage boiled in wine.”
“Drink the wine, forget the herbs,” he said with a smile that crinkled the skin at his eyes. The eyes were dark as molasses. “But, of course, the very best remedy is powdered horn of unicorn, if you have some handy.”
A spurt of laughter escaped her.
“Ah, that’s good,” he said. “A laugh’s the best remedy of all.”
The sun warmed an auburn cast in his dark hair. Its tumbled waves reached the nape of his neck and glistened with the morning’s moisture, making her think of chestnuts pulled from a stream.
Footsteps. Voices. Her servants were back, men and women, surrounding her with questions and concern. The dark-haired gentleman disappeared.
By the time Frances came through the kitchen with her cut bandaged, and reached the great hall, she had composed herself, if not the flutter in her breast. She needed composure, for there stood Richard Thornleigh. Her father’s murderer, standing at her blazing hearth.
John stood across the hall, glaring at him. Ranged behind John were five of his liveried men, all with their fighting hands poised on their sword hilts. Behind them stood seven of the Grenville Archers. Their skilled young captain, Giles Sturridge, looked on, calmly alert. Only flickers of their eyes told Frances they were aware of her. In the tense silence, the fire’s oak logs sparked, but not a single man flinched.
Thornleigh slowly raised his hands as though he were facing highwaymen. “My lord,” he said to John, “I come in peace.”
But not alone, Frances saw. A wiry, ginger-bearded man about Thornleigh’s age stood beside him, almost certainly a kinsman. And Thornleigh motioned to four other men behind him, who stepped forward, each holding a wooden box almost larger than he could carry. These four were unarmed, mere household servants, harmless. But Frances saw that Thornleigh himself wore a brightly polished and very lethal sword.
“Please, accept my peace offering,” he said, motioning his men. They set down their boxes and lifted the lids, revealing trays laden with Christmas delicacies. A whole, cooked suckling piglet, its mouth crammed with a bright red crabapple, its crackled skin studded with cloves. A small bay tree hung all over with dozens of red-ribboned oranges. A baked pheasant, re-plumed in all its glory. A pyramid loaf of pure white sugar a foot high, studded with candied violets.
The sickly sweet smell of the pig’s flesh turned Frances’s stomach. Did the man think that John’s grief and fury, and hers, could be eased with scraps of food? She wanted Captain Sturridge to fire his whole quiver of arrows into Thornleigh, wanted to see arrows pierce him like the stuck pig he had brought into her home.
Thornleigh said cautiously, “Your family has suffered, my lord, and for the loss of your father I am truly sorry. My family has suffered, too—my wife so grievously injured she was brought to the brink of death. And all for what? A pointless feud.”
He stopped as though waiting for some response, his expression anxious with anticipation. But John said nothing.
“But those hurts, hard as they were, are behind us now,” Thornleigh went on, “and that is where our feud belongs as well. My wife and I have come home, and we long to live in harmony with our neighbors. At this sacred time of year, it is my hope that we can forgive each other, as Our Savior taught us. Come, sir, shake my hand.”
He stretched out his arm. John’s men stiffened.
John did not move. Frances knew that his hatred ran as deep as hers. Deeper, if possible, for he had been the one to claim their father’s broken body from Thornleigh’s parlor, bludgeoned by this smiling devil.
Thornleigh turned to Frances. “Mistress Grenville,” he said, and bowed. “Will you accept my heartfelt entreaty for peace between our houses? At least, do accept these meager offerings for your Christmas table? It is a start.”
If she had been the man of the house she would have spit in Thornleigh’s face.
Instead, John astonished her. “Master Thornleigh, you are wise to speak of Our Lord,” he said with icy civility. “It is no good thing for a country when neighbors live in discord. Nor for our souls.”
“Bravely said, my lord,” Thornleigh replied, again extending his arm in friendship.
John stepped forward and clasped Thornleigh’s hand.
The armed men relaxed. Thornleigh smiled and guided John over to examine the gifts. They murmured together, looking like old friends, Frances thought. She felt her stomach roil and she thought she might be sick. Her brother had not asked her opinion.
“Frances,” John said. “Have the maids take these things to the kitchen, would you?”
She turned on her heel for the kitchen, glad to be going. She heard the far door open.
“And now,” Thornleigh said eagerly, “the final gift.”
Frances turned. A man walked in from the passage, rubbing his hands from the cold. It was the young, dark-haired man who had stood over her, tended her cut, taken her breath away.
“My lord, I don’t believe you’ve met my son, Adam. He has just delivered a fine, white, Arab stallion from our stable to yours, which I hope you will accept as the seal of our accord.”
Frances found herself walking toward the young man.
“Adam,” Thornleigh said, “may I present Mistress Frances Grenville.”
Adam bowed to her. “I trust that wound does not pain you, madam,” he said with a knowing smile. He took her hand and examined her forearm with the mock soberness of a doctor. “Did the horn of unicorn help?”
For the second time he took her breath away. But he was wrong about the pain. The jolt of joy she felt at his touch brought an ache more acute than she had ever known.
Riding home at a trot with his father and his uncle Geoffrey, their horses snorting steam, Adam took a bracing breath of the cold, crisp air. He’d never spent much time in England, had lived most of his adult life either aboard ships or managing his father’s shipping interests in Antwerp. But something in these silent, snowy hills and dales touched a heartstring he’d never felt vibrate until they had moved back home for good. For this was truly home. England. Colchester. Their manor house, their fields worked by diligent tenant farmers, their cloth works centered in the old abbey whose lead roofs were just visible now beyond the wooded horizon, all of it managed in their absence by his uncle Geoffrey. The storm of near bankruptcy was behind them, and Adam felt the happy relief that every seaman feels when he sails out of the blow and into the protected waters of his home port. He had a sense that he could make a life here. A life all his own.