He asked with a slightly ironic edge to his voice, “Pray enlighten me, Pen. Just why did you put yourself at the mercy of unsavory characters on the Horseferry in order to wake me from my slumbers?”
Pen did not answer directly. “I know it must have been late when you reached your bed, but I had thought you would at least be ready to leave by
now,
” she said.
“Ah.” Comprehension glimmered and he didn’t like what he understood. “You have come to see me on my way to High Wycombe?”
“Not exactly,” Pen said judiciously. “I’ve come to accompany you on your way.”
Owen absorbed this in silence. Pen intrigued him, aroused him, amused him, confused him. But before last night she had never angered him. Now he looked at her calm, determined countenance and understood that she was permitting him no leeway in this matter. She would compel him to do
what
she wanted,
when
she wanted.
He had struck a bargain. But he hadn’t expected to be driven like an ox at the plow. “Just let me get this straight,” he said slowly. “Am I right in assuming that you don’t trust me to fulfill this commitment I’ve made to you?”
Pen was not deceived by his calm tone. She realized that she had insulted him and made haste to explain herself. “It’s not that, Owen, indeed it isn’t. But I find that I need to be there,” she said reasonably. “This is
my
quest. You see it only as part of a contract. I need your help, but I’ve realized that I need to play my part.”
“And just how are you going to leave the princess for such a time?” But even as he asked the scornful question he realized that Pen, of course, had already managed the details.
“I’ve taken care of it,” she replied, shrugging.
A knock on the door interrupted them. He spun around, opening it with less than his usual controlled grace.
Cedric stood there with a jug of hot water sitting in a basin. “I took my lady’s horse to the stable,” he said. “Mistress Rider sent me up with hot water. She said we’re going on a journey, sir.” His eyes slid around Owen to where Pen stood before the fire.
“Leave the water, Cedric, and bring the horses around,” Owen instructed.
“My lady’s too, sir?”
“Yes, Lady Bryanston’s too,” Owen stated. “Lady Bryanston is returning to Greenwich Palace. John Rider will escort her. Tell him to saddle up as well.”
“Aye, sir.” Cedric deposited the jug and basin and left, casting an interested glance at Pen. The chevalier’s clipped orders told the page that his master was dangerously close to anger and Cedric could only assume that the lady was its cause.
“No,” Pen said as the door closed on the page. “I am coming with you, Owen.”
“Don’t be absurd.” He poured hot water into the basin. “There’s no need. I can do your errand for you perfectly well. You will return to Greenwich. Mistress Rider’s son will provide you with more than adequate protection in case of further menace on the Horseferry.”
“No,” she said again with the same finality. “No one can do this for me. I need your escort . . . and your . . .” She hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “Your professional expertise,” she said. “I have helped you, now you will help me.”
Owen dipped a towel in hot water and held it to his face. He was too angry at her uncompromising tone to respond immediately, concentrating instead on the methodical routine of his ablutions. He draped the towel around his neck and began to sharpen a flat blade on a leather strop.
To her dismay Pen realized that she was disturbed by the intimacy of his actions, an intimacy that deepened as he began to shave. Philip had worn a beard, a neat triangular beard that suited his thin face. She held on to the image of Philip’s face; she conjured memories of the times she had watched him shave, and slowly her composure returned. She was doing this for him. For
their
child.
She removed her cloak and took a stool by the fire. It was the one she had sat on while Owen had dressed her wound.
The recognition came and went. She waited quietly. He was angry but that didn’t matter. Indeed it helped to increase the distance between them that she so desperately needed if she was to stay single-minded, focused only on her quest. The answers were so close now. Nothing else mattered.
Owen cast aside the loose gown and reached for his hose. Pen stared into the fire, forcing herself to think of anything but Owen d’Arcy and his nakedness.
Owen glanced over at her and his anger faded. He could read her reactions as clearly as if she had written them out. Every muscle of her rigid back told him how hard she was fighting to keep herself from responding to him. She had clearly not thought through this situation. It had not occurred to her that there would be anything disturbing about mounting guard in a man’s bedchamber while he performed such personal tasks.
His lips twitched in a slight albeit reluctant smile. Single-minded she might be, but she hadn’t anticipated every possible problem.
He buttoned his shirt, considering. What harm would it do for her to accompany him, at least on the first leg of the journey? Obviously she couldn’t be around while he was asking questions around the Bryanston estate. She would be recognized, and then they’d never get any honest answers. But up until then, they could travel together.
After several days of keeping close, indeed intimate, company he could surely wear down this resistance. Seduce Pen Bryanston anew.
And this time Owen d’Arcy would be conducting a business that had nothing to do with French diplomacy.
“Well, I suppose if you must you must,” he said carelessly, sitting down to pull on his boots.
Pen turned abruptly, surprised at such sudden capitulation. “What changed your mind?” She stared at him suspiciously.
Owen shook his head. “There’s no pleasing you, it seems. You insist. I agree. And now you question my motives.”
“You’re not insulted then?” Pen asked. “Not anymore, I mean.”
He shrugged. “As you said, it’s your quest. You have the right to see it through.”
“Thank you,” Pen said, the wind quite taken out of her sails.
Owen merely nodded and silence fell. He completed his dressing and when Mistress Rider brought him a substantial breakfast he ate in the same silence. At one point he gestured in invitation to the table, but Pen merely shook her head. She was impatient to be gone. She only had four days. One and a half days to get there, the same back. There was no time to waste on coddled eggs and sirloin.
She sat on the stool and stared into the fire, wondering just why he had capitulated without further argument. He had been so definite, and so definitely angry. What had happened to change that? A faint suspicion niggled but she couldn’t think how to broach the subject before he did. She didn’t want to invite a mortifying snub. And yet if she said nothing, she might be implying consent. Which she most certainly was not!
Owen finished his breakfast and gathered his possessions, packing into a leather bag a night robe, a change of linen, a razor, a pair of boots.
Pen turned from the fire, watching his preparations curiously. She found that if she concentrated on his actions she was less affected by his presence.
He took a folding leather standish from the dresser and packed it in the bag. Pen wondered why he thought he was going to be writing letters on such a journey but she didn’t ask.
Cedric came back and announced that the horses were saddled and ready. “I gave my lady’s horse some oats,” he said. “He seems very high strung.”
“He gets nervous in strange places,” Pen said. She smiled at the page. “Thank you for taking care of him.”
Cedric blushed. “My pleasure, my lady.”
“I’ll need to take one bird, Cedric,” Owen stated, clasping his short cloak at his throat. “You can carry the cage. Strap my bag to my horse. We’ll be down in a minute.”
“Aye, sir.” Cedric picked up the bag and hurried away.
Pen’s curiosity got the better of her and she broke her resolute silence. “Bird?”
“A homing pigeon,” he explained. “Believe it or not, I have work to do that is not directly related to your interests.”
“Oh,” she said. She now understood the need for the traveling writing case. “You mean reports to write, dispatches, things like that?”
“Precisely.”
He had hoped to discomfit her just a little, to bring her to some recognition of how importunate she had been, but he failed.
Pen merely said, “Well, then it’s good that you have everything you need. Your standish and such like. We won’t be able to reach High Wycombe until tomorrow so you’ll be able to work this evening. . . .”
She hesitated, praying that her color would not betray her. “You will be glad to spend the evening on your dispatches wherever we stop . . . stop for the night. I shall be no company for you, I fear.”
There, she thought, that should have made all clear.
Owen drew on his gloves. His black eyes sparked with lively amusement. “Indeed?” he murmured, before turning on his heel and striding from the chamber.
Exasperated, Pen swung her own cloak around her shoulders and followed him downstairs. That exchange had not gone as she’d intended. She would be forced to tell him straight out that if he had any ideas he had best forget them.
Mistress Rider bustled from the kitchen regions when she heard them on the stairs. “So y’are going away for a few days, sir?”
“Yes. I’ll be back in a few days.”
“Aye, Cedric said as much. Our John’s ready an’ waiting to escort miss.”
Pen smiled at Mistress Rider and said, “Actually, I won’t be needing your son, mistress. I go with the chevalier.”
The innkeeper looked confused. “But the chevalier said—”
“My error, Mistress Rider,” Owen said cheerfully. “It appears I didn’t quite understand the situation.”
A young man stood holding William in the lane just beyond the front garden. A broad-backed placid mare cropped the dry winter grass of the verge. Cedric was strapping Owen’s bag behind the saddle of a handsome black horse. A cage containing a ringed pigeon was on the ground beside the page’s smaller horse.
Pen came down the path. “I thank you, Master Rider, but I shall not be needing your services after all. I explained to your mother. But you may help me to mount, if you would be so good.”
“There’s no need, John. I’ll assist the lady,” Owen said as cheerfully as before. “Come, Lady Bryanston.” He put his hands at her waist and lifted her bodily into the saddle.
Pen caught her breath at this unorthodox assistance, but it was accomplished with such speed and absence of fuss that she decided to ignore it. She busied herself arranging her right leg over the knob on the sidesaddle and settling her skirts decorously around her. William tossed his head and whinnied.
Owen frowned. “I don’t like the temper of this beast. Was he the best you could find?”
“He’s the fastest,” Pen replied. “It seemed to me that speed was the most useful quality on this journey.”
“More haste, less speed,” Owen observed, still frowning. “An adage often proved right.”
“William will do very well,” Pen said, taking a firm grip of the reins. “We shall not delay you, Chevalier. That I promise.”
“Well, bear in mind that I’ll hold you to that,” he said aridly. “The horse is your responsibility.”
He mounted his own horse and turned him in the narrow lane. Cedric fell in at his side, and Pen set William to follow.
Twelve
“It’s such a shame we weren’t able to see Pen this morning,” Guinevere said as she dismounted outside the half-timbered stone house that was their residence in Holborn. It was modest when compared with the great stone mansions that had been constructed along the banks of the Thames in recent years. But Guinevere and Hugh despised the newly rich who made such show of their wealth, a wealth for the most part stolen from those who lost it with their loss of power and influence in the turbulent politics of the Tudor court.
No one, however, confused the Kendals’ unostentatious London lifestyle with lack of resources. Guinevere had long shared her vast wealth with her husband, and she continued to devote her legal knowledge and her accounting and administrative skills to the management of their estates and to building that wealth.
“The princess must be gravely ill,” Pippa said, dismounting beside her mother, “to keep Pen with her all the time.” She brushed down her skirts, lowering her head to hide her eyes as she wished that she was a more accomplished liar. She’d never had much need for deception and was quite unpracticed.
“You’re back early.” Robin came down the steps to greet them. “I thought you were to spend time with Pen.”
“Oh, Pen had to stay with the princess,” Anna informed her brother importantly. “The princess said she couldn’t possibly bear it if Pen were not at her side.”
“She didn’t say anything so dramatic, Anna!” Pippa declared. “Pen’s message simply said that she couldn’t leave. There was little point to our staying at the palace when Mama couldn’t see Pen or the princess.”
“And the Duchess of Suffolk was there,” Anna piped up. “So—we came away quickly, before Mama was obliged to speak to her.”
“Anna, you mustn’t say such things,” Guinevere scolded gently as she mounted the steps to the front door.
“But it’s only to Robin,” the girl protested.
“That may be, but it’s still indiscreet,” her father declared, propelling her ahead of him into the house.
Robin remained on the step, regarding Pippa with a frown. “The princess’s summons must have been very sudden. Pen was enjoying herself so much at the revels, you’d never have thought she was worried about Mary’s health.”
“Perhaps she wasn’t then,” Pippa said, moving past him as she entered the house. “Mary didn’t send for her until dawn.”
She knew that the more she was forced to discuss the subject the more likely it was that she would trip herself up, and most particularly to Robin. “I have some letters to write.” She hastened up the stairs to the privacy of her own chamber.
She was not left alone long enough to do more than greet the dainty silver cat curled up on the window seat. Pippa’s Moonshine was as old as her litter mate Nutmeg but much sprier in her dotage, despite countless litters. She was a slender, dainty feline who merely closed her eyes and raised her chin for the expected caress.
Robin entered on a perfunctory knock.
“I might have been standing here in my shift!” Pippa protested, sitting beside her cat on the window seat.
“I was on your heels, you’ve barely had time to take off your gloves,” her stepbrother replied carelessly. He had never stood on ceremony with his stepsisters any more than they had with him. He leaned against the door, running both hands through his hair so that it stood up in a halo. “Where’s Pen?”
Pippa couldn’t help a startled little jump. The cat expressed annoyance. Hastily Pippa resumed her attentions.
“I told you already. Pen’s closeted with the princess.”
“Something’s not right about that,” Robin stated. “Come on, Pippa. You can’t fool me. What’s going on?”
Pippa gently pulled the cat’s ears. It would be a huge relief to share the burden, and Robin would no more betray Pen than she would. But Robin was so hostile to Owen d’Arcy and he and Pen had been at odds over the chevalier for weeks. But if this flight
did
have anything to do with Pen’s dead child perhaps Robin would have some idea how Owen d’Arcy was involved.
“You won’t like it,” she said after a minute.
“D’Arcy?” he said instantly.
Pippa nodded. “She said it was a tryst, four days of passion.”
“Passion!”
Robin exclaimed in disgust. “Pen would never say anything so . . . so unlikely!”
Pippa shrugged. “Well, she did.” Then she said almost to herself, almost as if she didn’t want Robin to hear, “But I don’t think she meant it. I think it was an excuse.”
Robin’s brilliant blue gaze raked her face with an electric intensity. “For what?”
Pippa hesitated. She needed so much to confide in Robin. She needed his opinion. She said in the same low voice, “I’m afraid it might have something to do with the baby.”
Robin paled beneath his weather-bronzed complexion. “Not again?”
“I don’t think she’s ever put it away,” Pippa said. “She doesn’t talk about it anymore because we all get so upset, but it’s still there.”
She chewed her bottom lip in the ensuing silence, which told her that Robin also believed that Pen had not let go of her obsession. Then tentatively Pippa broached the one aspect of the subject no one had ever discussed before: “Robin, do you think it’s possible . . . I mean I just wonder . . .”
“Wonder what?” Robin prompted in sharp concern. It was so unlike Pippa to beat about the bush.
Pippa took a deep breath. “I just wonder whether there could be anything in it . . . in Pen’s obsession, I mean.”
Robin stared at her. “What are you talking about, Pippa?”
Pippa met his fixed gaze. “I think you know, Robin. Just
why
would Pen hold on to this all this time if there’s absolutely nothing in it? It’s not as if she’s out of her mind or anything. She’s the most rational, sensible person I know. Even more than you, I think,” she added.
Robin heaved the sigh of a man who carried the burdens of the world upon his shoulders. “I won’t say it hasn’t occurred to me,” he muttered. “But it doesn’t make sense, Pippa. Why would anyone tell her the child was born dead when it wasn’t?”
“Perhaps she’s gone to discover the answer to that,” Pippa returned. “But how can Owen d’Arcy help her do that?”
“More to the point,
why
would he?” Robin demanded.
“Passion?” Pippa suggested, almost immediately wishing that she could keep a firmer handle on her mischievous sense of humor. Robin did not look at all amused. But in fact, she reflected, it had not been an altogether frivolous suggestion. Something powerfully out of the ordinary was going on between Pen and the chevalier.
Robin began to pace the chamber, from the window to the door. He had made up his mind to tell Pen what he knew of d’Arcy, but now she’d gone away with the man before he could even open his mouth. And he couldn’t tell Pippa the truth about the Frenchman before he’d discussed it with Pen. It was all so damnably complicated.
“All we can do is wait for Pen to come back,” Robin said. “What else can we do? I wouldn’t know where to start looking for her.”
Pippa heard his desperation. She went over to him, laying a hand on his shoulder. “She’ll be all right, Robin. Pen’s stronger than any of us give her credit for.”
Robin wasn’t counting on it. In fact, he was going to look further into Owen d’Arcy. There was one man who could tell him every discreditable secret there was to be known about the French agent. If Pen chose to continue her
passion
—God’s bones but the word stuck in his craw—then she would do so with her eyes open.
He spoke with soft-voiced savagery. “I swear to you, Pippa, that if d’Arcy injures her in any way I’ll run him through.” He laid his hand on his sword hilt as if in emphasis, then turned without a word of farewell and left Pippa.
As if that would solve anything,
Pippa thought. Just like a man, in this situation that cried out for delicacy.
“I don’t think he’d get very far with Owen either,” she observed to the cat. The chevalier had never been anything less than charming in her presence, but Pippa, like Pen, had sensed the danger, the contained power, beneath the sophisticated, elegant facade.
Owen chose to leave London through Aldersgate. The crowds along Fleet Street were thick and Pen had to keep a tight rein on William, who was inclined to shy and prance at any strange smell or unexpected movement in the throng, of which there were many. She should have brought the docile mare, Lightfoot, Pen realized, as they were surrounded by the jostling crowd waiting to cross London Bridge with its gruesome frieze of severed heads on spikes staring out over the river.
The lanes leading out of London were crowded with local traffic, but as they left the city behind them they rode among laden pack trains and groups of well-dressed merchants heading for Oxford’s gleaming spires. Farm carts loaded with turnips and cabbages rumbled towards them on their way to the London markets.
It was close to noon when they had passed through Aldersgate and Owen rode as fast as the traffic would allow. He intended to stop before dark at Gerrards Cross, twenty-two miles from London. It was a reasonably comfortable distance for the horses and would leave only twelve miles to cover the following morning. A day at High Wycombe should give him what he needed, if indeed there
was
anything to discover.
He glanced over his shoulder to where Pen was riding on the verge, where her skittish horse had less to distract and disturb him. The animal was the very devil, he decided. Pen was so fully occupied in holding him that there was no opportunity for conversation. And without conversation one could not expect to renew intimate companionship. He would have to do something about it when they stopped for dinner.
“Are we going to stop for a bite of dinner soon, sir?” Cedric spoke Owen’s thoughts with uncanny accuracy.
Owen laughed. “Are you hungry, lad?”
“Well, it’s close to two o’clock and I was thinking the horses could do with watering and a feed.”
“Ah, yes, the horses. Of course,” Owen agreed solemnly. “How right you are to remind me. We’ll stop at Northolt, it’s the next village.”
He turned in his saddle and again looked at Pen. He wondered when she had last eaten; she’d refused to share his breakfast.
He called over to her, softly so as not to spook her horse, “Pen, we’re going to stop at Northolt for dinner. Are you hungry?”
“Famished,” she said succinctly. It seemed an eternity since she’d shared her sister’s bread and bacon at dawn. She tightened her hold on William’s reins.
They were approaching the village of Northolt and the sound of church bells came across the fields. A gibbet stood at a crossroads, a nearly fleshless carcass hanging in chains, swinging forlornly in the wind. Crows on the crossbar set up a violent chattering as the travelers approached.
William shied, then plunged off the verge and into the roadway. Pen hauled back on the reins and the horse reared in terror as the crows soared into the air in a wild gaggle of noise, protecting what remained of their feast.
Pen hung on grimly until William got all four hooves back on the ground. “That is the most unschooled horse!” Owen declared, leaning over and grabbing the reins. “He’s quite unsuitable for a woman’s mount.”
“He’s well enough behaved on his own land,” Pen replied defensively. “There’s no need for you to hold his reins, Chevalier.” She flicked indignantly at his hand with the tip of her whip.
Owen twitched the whip from her fingers. “There are some things I don’t take kindly to,” he observed with a distinct chill to his voice. “You’ll find another mount when we stop, or you go no farther on this journey.” He handed her back her whip and moved away.
Pen grimaced at the curt instruction but made no comment, deeply regretting that derisory flick of her whip. It had been automatic, but very unwise.
The Rising Sun stood on the green in the village of Northolt. It was a commodious inn, well placed to cater to travelers on the busy London to Oxford road. Owen dismounted at the main entrance, handing his horse to an ostler who came running from the stables.
“I’ll join you in the inn,” Pen said, her tone rather subdued. Without waiting for a response, she directed William around the inn in the direction of the stables at the back.
The negotiation and instructions for William’s care took a little time and a little more coin, and when Pen entered the inn’s busy taproom she found Owen and Cedric at the common table addressing a fricassee of mutton with buttered greens and roasted chestnuts.
She stood in the doorway, tossing back her hood before unclasping her cloak. The rustic fare on the table made her mouth water. Owen beckoned her over and slid over on the bench to give her room.
Pen hesitated but could detect no hint of his earlier vexation in his calm countenance. She had been forgiven for that ill-considered gesture, it seemed.
She hung her cloak on a peg by the door, and hitched up her orange skirts to climb over the bench.
“That’s a most elegant gown,” Owen observed as the skirts settled around her. “More suitable for a palace than a tavern.” He stuck the point of his dagger into a thick bread trencher on the board in front of him and passed it to her.
“I don’t have any gowns suitable for a tavern,” Pen responded. But she realized she should have resisted Pippa’s choice. In the dark-raftered taproom among the rough homespuns and somber country hues of their fellow diners, the orange dress was as conspicuous as a sunburst in a stormy sky.
“No reason why you should have,” Owen replied with a neutral smile. He continued in an equally neutral tone. “Have you found a substitute horse?”
There were no utensils at the table. Before answering, Pen folded her bread expertly into the shape of a shovel. She dipped it into the common dish of fricassee and carried a generous scoop of meat and gravy to her mouth.
“Yes,” she replied through a full mouth before scooping greens onto her trencher. “A dull-looking animal, one used to traffic.” She nodded decisively. “He won’t give me any trouble. Would you pass the ale jug?”
Owen obliged. “Then perhaps we can ride rather more companionably this afternoon,” he observed.
Pen couldn’t see how that could be avoided. But she would use the time to discuss how they would proceed in High Wycombe. She wondered if he had a plan. She certainly had her own ideas. They would pool their suggestions, that should make for a productive and relatively safe journey.