Those hands were so long and slender, so fine boned. A musician’s hands, she thought. Rather like Philip’s. But Philip had been more hesitant in his movements, less sure. He would not have handled arms the way Owen d’Arcy did. As if the rapier and dagger were extensions of himself.
“Do you live here?” she heard herself ask in an attempt at ordinary conversation.
“Mostly, when I’m in London . . . although tonight I had other plans.”
“I disturbed them then?”
“They’re all the better for being disturbed,” he responded, his eyes smiling. “Would you remove your headdress? It will be easier for me to work.” He spoke casually as he shrugged off his black velvet cloak. The crimson lining glowed in the candlelight as he tossed it carelessly onto the bed. He turned to the basin of hot water on the table. The firelight sparked off the gold thread in his black doublet, gleamed in the black enamel clasps of his black silk shirt.
Such a contained figure, she thought. Contained and yet surging with vitality and purpose. Such a man could be irresistible if he chose to make himself so.
Almost as if she were dreaming Pen stood up and removed the jeweled circlet that adorned her hood. She laid it carefully on the wide mantel above the hearth, then unpinned the hood and the crisp white coif beneath. She laid the long gold pins beside the circlet, and the hood and coif on the chest at the foot of the bed. She felt curiously naked. Her hair was parted and looped over her ears, and a whisper of a draft from the shuttered window touched her bare neck and throat.
In the same silence she resumed her seat on the stool before the fire and folded her hands in the lap of her gray damask gown.
Owen came over to her holding a steaming cloth that he’d dipped in the hot water. “Could you tilt your head to one side?”
Pen did so, closing her eyes because it seemed easier not to look at him as he bent over her, so close she could feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek.
He worked swiftly, surely, offering no apologies for hurting her as he cleansed the dried blood from the open wound. The stinging was inevitable and Pen was glad that he didn’t refer to it, merely got on with the task as quickly as he could.
“What instrument do you play?” she asked, breaking the silence that had become uncomfortable for her, although not, she suspected, for him.
He paused in his ministrations and asked with a note of surprise, “What makes you think I play at all?”
“You do, though, don’t you?” she challenged, opening her eyes and turning her head to look at him so that his hand dropped from her neck.
“Yes,” he agreed. “I play the harp. Could you bend your head again? I’m almost finished.”
Pen obeyed. “The harp. That’s an unusual instrument. I thought maybe the lute or the lyre.”
“It’s the Welsh in me,” he said with a soft laugh, and Pen realized what it was about his voice: those lilting cadences were Welsh. “I sing a passable tenor, too,” he said, and now it sounded as if he were teasing her.
“But your name is French and Mistress Rider gave you the title of chevalier. A French knight’s title.”
He put a hand on her head, a warm palm steadying her, and the sudden intimacy of the touch sent a jolt through her belly and brought the fine hairs of her nape on end. “Hold still, please.” He bent closer, applying the hot cloth like a compress.
“How bad is it?” Pen asked, struggling to regain her composure.
“Not as bad as I first thought. But it’s ragged and I’m afraid it might scar.” He straightened and dipped the cloth in the basin again. The water turned pink.
He continued to talk in his calm fashion as he returned his attention to her wound. “Anyway, to answer your question, my father was French, my mother is Welsh. I spent most of my growing years in France, mostly at court, but when I speak English my mother’s accent takes over.”
“I like it,” Pen said, wincing at the sting of witch hazel as he splashed it into the wound.
“Why, thank you, madam.” He laughed a little and she found she liked his laugh too. It was light and soft and seemed to indicate that he found more than the issue at hand amusing. In fact she was beginning to think that he was the most relaxing person she’d ever been around. Which was a curious paradox when she was also utterly convinced that he was the most dangerous person she’d ever been around.
He smoothed soothing cool salve into the cut, and the contrast after the heat of the water made her shudder. “So what were you looking for in the Bryanstons’ library?” he inquired casually.
Pen’s head jerked upright. “What makes you think I was looking for anything?”
“I have eyes and can in general put words to what they’re seeing. . . . There now, I’ll put a bandage over it and a physician can decide when you get home whether it needs to be stitched.” He suited action to words, binding a soft pad over the cut with a strip of bandage that circled her throat.
“You were married to the Earl of Bryanston, I understand?” he continued in the same casual tone.
That would not be hard to discover, Pen thought. It was perfectly common knowledge.
Why was he interested in her?
“Yes,” she agreed.
“Perhaps you were looking for something that had belonged to your husband,” he suggested, turning to the door as Cedric entered with a tray. “Good lad, put it down there and then find yourself a bed in the kitchen. We’ll not be going anywhere until it grows light.”
“But I must go home!”
“I’ll escort you as soon as it’s light.” He brought a pewter tankard over to her. “This will soothe whatever aches and pains you still have.”
“Thank you,” Pen said faintly, taking the fragrantly steaming tankard from him.
“I see no virtue in going back into that frigid night when we can sit and drink companionably before a warm fire,” Owen pointed out, hitching another stool to the fire with his booted foot. He sat down with his own cup of strong distilled waters and took a deep draught.
“Your husband died nearly three years ago, I believe. Did he fall ill?” His melodious voice was so gently interested, his tone so intimately confiding, that Pen found herself answering him without hesitation.
“Yes, it was very sudden. One day he was fit as a fiddle . . . he was never very strong, quite the antithesis of his brother.” Scorn laced her tone. “Miles has a weak brain and a strong body. Philip was the opposite.”
She paused, then continued into the inviting silence, “But he was well that autumn. Stronger than I’d ever seen him, and he was so delighted about the baby. . . .” Her voice faltered. She drank from the tankard.
Owen waited peacefully, his steady gaze revealing nothing of his thoughts. He believed he had found the key to this seduction. This was not a woman to be swept off her feet with flattery and passion. But if he once gained her friendship and confidence, then she would be open to temptation. She was a woman in whom emotions ran deep, he decided, and she was holding something close to herself, a sadness and an anger that he must understand before he could approach her.
“There was a child?” he prompted softly when it seemed she would not continue.
Pen raised her eyes from the fire and he almost flinched at the blaze of fury in the look she gave him. It was so fierce as to be almost mad, he thought.
“I had a son,” she stated, turning her gaze back to the fire. “Six months after Philip’s death. Philip was well and happy one day and then suddenly he was sick. He died in three days, no one could do anything for him.” Her voice was now cold but the fury was still there. The white bandage around her throat accentuated her pallor and the flaring mélange of color in her eyes.
She looked up at him again and spoke clearly, articulating every word. “And then I was told that my son died, that he was dead before he was born. But I heard him cry.”
She stared at him fixedly and he read the challenge she was throwing. “No one will believe me. But I
know
my son was born alive. They wouldn’t show me the body. It was as if they wanted me to believe that he had never existed, that I had not carried him for eight months.”
No little brown mouse this!
Owen leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his cup held loosely between his hands.
This was a woman capable of deep and abiding passions.
“So what were you looking for in the Bryanstons’ library?” he asked, looking intently into her eyes.
“I don’t know. Something . . . anything . . . that would tell me what happened the night my child was born.” She lifted her embroidered purse and unfastened the little gold clasp. “I tore this page from the accounts ledger for that day. There are names and payments; I thought maybe I’d be able to track down someone who was there. One of the midwives, perhaps.”
She looked at the paper that she held between her hands. Now that she’d started on this tale it seemed she couldn’t stop, although why it would interest the calm, attentive man sitting opposite her she couldn’t imagine. “Towards the end I was barely conscious. It was a long and difficult labor, brought on early by something . . . I don’t know. These things happen. . . .”
She shrugged as if trying to dispel the intense concentration in the chamber. “He was born before my mother could arrive from Derbyshire. Only my mother-in-law was in attendance, and some women she hired.”
She looked across at him. “Of course everyone says grief and exhaustion played tricks on my mind; that I couldn’t have heard my son’s cry because he was born dead. But I
did
!”
Owen nodded. He spoke with softly melodic sympathy. “To be disbelieved on such a matter must have made your loss unendurable.”
“Yes,” she agreed, her hand passing restlessly over the paper on her lap, smoothing out the creases where it had been folded. “Even my mother . . . my sister . . . Robin even, think that I was unhinged by grief. But it was not so.”
“Robin?” he queried. He knew perfectly well, of course, but it wouldn’t be wise to reveal the depths of his knowledge about her family.
“My stepbrother. Robin of Beaucaire. When his father was created Earl of Kendal, Robin took Lord Hugh’s previous title. His father and my mother have been married for fifteen years. Or is it sixteen? I can’t remember exactly.”
Owen nodded again. “I see.” Then he frowned. “Do you believe your child is still alive?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head wearily. “My goal is very simple at this point. I would like to talk to someone who was there.”
“Your mother-in-law is no help?”
Pen gave a short bitter laugh. “My mother-in-law was all too happy with the outcome. Miles is now the earl and under her thumb. She could not control Philip and she detests me.”
“An unpleasant picture.” A moment’s silence followed the arid comment, then Owen extended a hand to the paper in Pen’s lap. “May I look at that?”
She handed it to him in surprise. It almost seemed as if he believed her. The novel thought nonplussed her and she watched in startled silence as his eyes ran down the list.
“Are any of these names familiar to you?” he asked.
“One or two of the men. Tradesmen who supplied the household. But I don’t recognize any of the women’s names. And the women who attended me at the birth were all strangers . . . with the exception of Lady Bryanston, of course. My mother was to have been with me at the birth but I went into labor before she and my stepfather could arrive.”
“I see,” he said again. He glanced down the list once more. “There are three women mentioned here. It would be interesting to see if their names appeared on any other date in the ledger. If they were often employed by Lady Bryanston in some household capacity, one would expect to see regular payments made to them.”
He didn’t disbelieve her!
Astonishment, excitement, gratitude tumbled in her head. She understood that not disbelieving didn’t mean that he actually believed her, but it was going a great deal further than anyone else had done.
“Perhaps I can get back into the library and take another look,” she said, her eyes glowing in her pale face. “There must be some way.”
“Alternatively, one could go to High Wycombe and find these women,” he mused. “They would presumably be local. In my experience, village gossip can be most enlightening.”
“What kind of experience?” Pen sat up very straight on her stool, fixing him with an intense gaze.
“Oh, the Welsh can never keep secrets,” he responded with a smile. “The village where I spent summers in my childhood was a hotbed of gossip and scandal. Reputations were ruined as easily and as frequently as a batch of scones.”
“I know what you mean,” Pen agreed slowly. “But I don’t see how I could go to High Wycombe without the Bryanstons’ discovering it. And they’d know immediately if I started asking questions.” Fatigue suddenly swamped her. Her shoulders drooped and she rubbed her eyes with the tips of her fingers.
Owen rose and went to the window. “It wants but an hour until dawn. Why don’t you rest on the bed until daylight?”
Pen glanced at the deep feather bed with its tapestry curtains and tester. It looked very inviting. She hesitated, glancing back at him.
“Go on,” he said. “I assure you I’ll not disturb you.”
“But I’ll be taking your bed. What will
you
do?”
“Sit by the fire and drink,” he returned, folding the paper. He handed it back to her and with his head he gestured to the bed. “Go on,” he repeated. “I have little need of sleep. If I do, Mistress Rider will find me a cot. It’s been a rough night for you and you’re dead on your feet.”
Still she hesitated, then she asked, “You don’t think I’ve made up some mad tale, do you?”
He shook his head. “Why would you do that?”
“Grief, they tell me.”
“I think you’re too strong, too levelheaded, Pen Bryanston, to lose your wits in an orgy of grief,” he replied. “I also think you have enough common sense to take the bed that’s offered you without worrying that you’ll be raped or murdered in your sleep.” He smiled and lightly touched her cheek. “Believe me, I like my partners to be both willing and awake.”
To her annoyance, Pen felt her cheeks warm at this. “I was not worried about that at all,” she denied.