“Good. Then go to it.” He turned and threw more logs on the fire.
Pen sat on the bed and surveyed her sandaled feet. They seemed to be a long way away from her, all the way down on the floor. Just the thought of bending to take them off filled her with a kind of desperation. With a sigh she fell back on the bed.
Owen straightened from the fire. He came over to the bed and slipped the sandals from her feet. She murmured something but didn’t stir. He threw over her the fur coverlet that was folded at the end of the bed, then resumed his seat at the fire.
What an extraordinary story she had told. Could there possibly be any truth to it? He stretched his feet to the andirons, linking his hands behind his head. Owen d’Arcy had a great understanding of the depths of human depravity. He would not discount Pen’s story out of hand. And he could begin to see a way to turn it to good use.
Four
Pen came awake with a jerk. Disoriented, she stared up at the unfamiliar pattern on the tester. She turned her head on the pillow, wondering for a moment why her neck hurt. She put up a hand and felt the bandage. Then she remembered.
She pulled herself up against the pillows, aware of a general soreness throughout her body. She had fought hard during that wild struggle with the beggars.
The chamber was empty although the fire burned brightly with fresh logs. The shutters were closed against the cold but sunlight shone through the cracks. It was well past dawn, Pen realized. A hue and cry would start up if she didn’t soon appear at Baynard’s Castle in Thames Street, where Princess Mary was presently residing as a guest of the Earl of Pembroke.
She pushed aside the fur coverlet and stood up groggily. Her sandals were laid neatly side by side at the end of the bed. She sat on the stool before the fire to put them on. Her eyes felt gritty, her gown was hopelessly creased, her hose were twisted. There was no mirror in the chamber but she had little difficulty imagining how she looked.
Her eye fell on her discarded coif and hood. She glanced up at the mantel, where the jeweled circlet and pins still lay. She touched the loops of her hair. They had come loose and tendrils were escaping the pins. She had no comb, she had no mirror.
Impatiently Pen released her hair and shook it down her back. Better that than half up and half down. She ran her fingers through the thick mass to get rid of the tangles.
All of these things she did with little attention. Her mind was a welter of emotion. She was confused, excited, apprehensive. Owen d’Arcy had believed her, or at least had not disbelieved her. She was so accustomed to having her obsession gently but firmly dismissed that she didn’t know quite how to respond to someone who accepted it as possible.
But it wasn’t just that that confused her. The man himself confused her. Sometimes she felt as easy and comfortable in his company as in Robin’s, and at others he disturbed her so powerfully it almost scared her. He had some motive in pursuing her, of that she was certain, but what could it be?
Pen had few illusions about herself. She had not her sister’s mischievously flirtatious manner that drew men like flies to the honeypot. She was pleasant enough to look at but nothing startling. Philip had loved and desired her but he had not been the kind of man to draw swooning women to his feet. They had loved and desired each other. There had been passion and companionship but never this confused turmoil of contradictory emotions.
Why
was a man of Owen d’Arcy’s ilk interested in her? He was an exotic. A man of sophisticated elegance, one who moved through the courtier’s world with supreme confidence and competence. A man who counted tavern keepers among his friends and whose skill with a rapier was that of a trained assassin. It was a conundrum.
And the thought of solving it brought goose bumps tingling over every inch of her skin.
Pen turned abruptly as the door opened. Owen came in carrying a laden tray. “Good morning,” he greeted cheerfully, setting the tray on the table.
“Good morning,” Pen responded in the same tone. He looked immaculate, as if his black silk shirt had been freshly laundered, his doublet and hose new pressed.
“I’ve brought breakfast. You’re probably hungry.”
Pen thought about it. “I suppose I am. But mostly I ache and I feel filthy. I must look terrible.” Suddenly self-conscious, she pushed her hair away from her face. Her untidiness seemed even more noticeable when compared with her companion’s morning freshness. It was unreasonable and inconsiderate of him, she decided resentfully.
“You are not in your best looks, I would agree,” he replied. “But that’s hardly to be wondered at. Should I carve you some ham?”
He might have had the decency to lie, Pen thought. But there wasn’t much she could do about it. “If you please.” She stood up and went to the table. She poured a cup of small beer from the pitcher on the tray and drank thirstily. “Did you sleep at all?”
“A little.” He gave her a quick smile as if to reassure her that he didn’t begrudge her the bed. He handed her a bread trencher thickly piled with ham.
“You look as if you slept the sleep of the just for a full night and awoke to freshly laundered clothes,” Pen observed, not troubling to conceal her tart note.
“Appearances can be deceiving,” he said mildly.
“I imagine Mistress Rider has an accustomed hand with your wardrobe. Since you lodge here.”
“She looks after me very well,” Owen agreed. “I’ve sent Cedric to summon a wherry to the steps. I imagine people will be worried about you.”
Pen regretted her momentary sourness. It had been ungracious and smacked of ingratitude. She smiled and said, “The princess will assume I stayed at Bryanston House.”
He raised an eyebrow. “An uninformed assumption no doubt.”
“Completely,” Pen agreed. She took her bread and ham to the window and unlatched the shutters, flinging them wide. Frigid air flooded the chamber, setting the logs flaring in the hearth. The day was bright and sharp as ice crystals. The bare branches of skeleton trees stood out, etched against the pale clear blue of the sky. She could see the river, a silver-gray stream crowded even at this hour with boats.
Owen glanced sideways at her as he sliced more ham. He liked the way her hair tumbled down her back, liked its thickness and the little kinks and curls that a brush would smooth out. It was brown, at first sight a very ordinary brown, but it was enlivened with streaks of gold, little rippling lights in the cold pale sunlight.
Pen shivered and pulled the shutters closed again. “It’s a pretty day but it’s too cold to have them open.” She went to the fire to warm her hands.
Owen noticed that the bandage around her neck was bloodstained. “It might be wise to look at the wound and change the bandage. It’s been bleeding while you slept.”
Pen put her hand up to her neck. “It feels stiff and sore, but ’tis not throbbing anymore.”
He came over to her and caught up a swatch of her hair in one hand, lifting it clear of her neck. He twined it around his hand, savoring its soft silkiness.
Pen stood very still. There was an intimacy to this touch that was much greater than his earlier ministrations, greater even than the kiss he’d given her. The fingers of his free hand worked the bandage loose and unwound it. Gently he lifted the pad that had covered the gash.
“Why do I interest you?” Pen asked abruptly.
Owen debated his answer for only a second. Flattering lies would do him no good with this woman. “I don’t know,” he said with a rueful laugh. “I don’t mean to offend you, but I honestly don’t know.”
Now why, Pen thought, did she find this response so reassuring? Except, of course, that it was so credible. “I’m not offended,” she said.
“No, I don’t imagine you are,” he responded. “And that, I think, is one reason why I’m so drawn to you. You’re different, Pen Bryanston. In the midst of this serpentine world of deceit and lies and affectations you’re straight, I believe, and honest.”
Pen turned her head against the pressure of his hand and looked up at him. “How could you know that? You couldn’t have known anything real about me before you followed me to the library yesterday.”
“Ah, well, there I was following a hunch.” Still holding her hair, he leaned sideways to the table where the basket of salves and bandages remained from earlier. “If you could hold your hair clear for me, I’ll dress the wound again.”
Their fingers brushed as she took the swatch of hair from him and her spine jumped with a sharp current of energy. “And where does this interest take you, Chevalier?” She bent her neck sideways under the gentle pressure of his ministering hand.
“That rather depends upon you, madam.” There was a laugh in his voice. “As I said, I like my partners willing.”
“And awake, as I recall,” Pen returned in the same bantering tone. It was mad to be having this conversation, and yet with that energy racing through her it seemed perfectly natural.
“Certainly awake,” he agreed, winding a fresh bandage around her throat. “There, at least you won’t return to your friends and relatives looking like a bloodstained veteran of battle.”
Pen let her hair fall again. She touched the bandage with her fingertips. “Is it healing?”
“The wound is closing nicely. I doubt there’ll be a scar. Let us go now. Cedric will have a wherry waiting.” He picked up her heavy furred cloak and draped it around her.
Pen pulled up the hood and tucked her loose hair out of the way. The high collar was torn where her neck had been gashed. The jeweled circlet and gold pins of her discarded headdress were still on the mantel. She selected a pin and craned her neck to fasten the rent material together.
“I’ll do that.” He took the pin from her, brushing her hands aside as naturally and easily as Robin would have done.
Pen found she was becoming accustomed to this confident and friendly manner. It seemed absurd to think of him as a stranger now, even though common sense told her that he remained so. She knew a little about him, but probably less than she knew about any other of the myriad slight acquaintances she had among the king’s courtiers. But she had never before spent such a curiously intimate night with a bare acquaintance. At the thought she was aware once more of that strange sensation of energy prickling her spine.
Owen gathered up the rest of her pins and gave them to her. Pen opened the little purse at her waist, dropping the pins inside. The folded sheet of paper from the accounts ledger rustled against her fingers.
Would Owen d’Arcy help her? He seemed to believe her. But would he help her?
“What is it?” he asked as she stood in reverie, immobile, a tiny frown drawing her brows together, her lower lip caught between her teeth.
“I was wondering if you would help me try to discover what happened to my child,” she answered slowly.
“How could I help?”
She met and held his gaze. “You talked of going into High Wycombe, asking some questions. . . .”
“I suggested it as a possible avenue,” he agreed.
“One that you might help me take?” Pen asked directly.
He was silent for a minute and she could hear her heart thump in the stillness. “I will think about the problem,” he said finally.
Pen would have preferred a more definite response but she would take what was offered. She felt that in this man lay her only hope. How or why that should be was a mystery, but it was true, and her spirits lifted.
She said simply, “My thanks, sir.”
She withdrew a silver coin from her purse but hesitated a second before laying it on the table. The circumstances had been so peculiar that it might be considered offensive to offer to pay the landlady for her services. But Mistress Rider was still a woman in business and Pen knew her obligations. “I would like to leave Mistress Rider some token of my thanks.”
“Of course,” Owen said easily. “She will not refuse, I assure you.”
Pen nodded, laid the coin on the table, and dropped the circlet into the deep pocket of her cloak. She picked up her ruined gloves and drew them on, wiggling her fingers comically through the torn leather. “These will do me little good.”
“Wear mine.” He handed her a pair of black gloves. The leather was the softest doeskin. “My hands rarely feel the cold.”
Pen was not going to argue with this. Her hands and feet chilled far too rapidly for polite remonstrance. His fingers were longer than hers, she noticed absently as she drew on the gloves, longer and very slender; the gloves enclosed her fingers very tightly.
Cedric waited at the wherry, stamping his feet, blowing on his hands. The boatmen grumbled at their oars as the boat knocked against the water steps. It was too frigid a morning to be sitting still.
“Where to, m’lord?”
“Baynard’s Castle.” Owen stepped into the wherry and offered Pen his hand. She jumped lightly in beside him. The sun glittering on the water was almost dazzling and the frosty air hurt when she drew it deep into her lungs.
She was going to find explaining the events of the night rather difficult, Pen realized as the little boat shot across the river, darting in and out of the traffic. Her reckless decision to plunge off into the night to make her own way home was not going to be popular with her nearest and dearest. And she didn’t know how to explain it. She knew she couldn’t confess to the truth, that the theft of the ledger page from the Bryanston library had driven all thought of danger from her mind.
And then she would have to explain what had happened during the remainder of the night. The truth was awkward, but a lie was impossible. She had a wound on her neck to make nonsense of any peaceful fabrication. Besides, she was a hopeless liar.
The wherry turned into the mouth of the Fleet River and drew up at the water steps of the imposing Baynard’s Castle, once a royal palace, now the home of the Earl of Pembroke. Princess Mary, in her childhood, when she was King Henry’s pearl, as he’d liked to call her, when her mother, Catherine of Aragon, was still his beloved wife, had spent many happy times in the palace with her mother. In memory of those times she had asked her half brother King Edward for permission to reside there during her visits to London. The request had been granted, and Pembroke himself turned a diplomatically blind eye to the clandestine Catholic masses said in his royal guest’s private apartments.
“There’s no need to accompany me any farther, Chevalier,” Pen said, hearing the sudden formality of her tone. “You have been very kind.”
Owen looked at her in amusement. “Afraid I’m going to be hard to explain, madam?”
Pen flushed slightly. “As it happens, yes.”
He laughed and jumped ashore, offering her his hand. “I will not rest easy until I see you safe inside.” Pen Bryanston was to be his password to the tight circle around the princess. It stood to reason the princess would gratefully receive her friend’s rescuer.
Pen hesitated, unwilling to seem ungracious, and yet certain that she could explain what had happened to her much more easily without his presence. Facts could be simply described when not muddied by emotional confusion.