By Design (29 page)

Rhys watched the inner debate. He hoped that he had swayed Addis. Joan could not afford to wait for the King to gather an army.

“It might work,” Addis said. “Not at Westminster, but at another castle. A small band, as you say. If they can gain access to the Queen's chambers, it can be done.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Aye, it might work. It may have to. If Mortimer has called Guy Leighton to him, it could be that he is considering a quiet move of his own. Such men do not have the scruples about assassination that I do.”

Guy had not come for that. He was not called. He came on his own, to find the son and daughter of Marcus de Brecon. He came to kill the boy he had already promised was dead. And the sister.

“Is the door in the King's anteroom completed?”

“Aye, it has been cut.”

“Good. I think that before I take my family out of London today, I will have some business with the Keeper of the Privy Seal. But if I am going to do it, I must attend to it now.” He grasped Rhys's arm in friendship. “I asked you to speak of uncomplicated things, and you have done so. We barons assume it takes an army to battle for a cause, but your simple plan appeals to me. If you can, speak with Mortimer again. Tell him there is unrest in the city, so he thinks himself unsafe at Westminster. Let him know the King has expressed impatience.”

“Is there anything else you want me to do?”

Addis cocked an eyebrow. “You are with us, then?”

Aye, he was. Not for the realm, and not for high principles. Not for anything lofty or complicated. He was with them because of Joan. If Mortimer fell, then Guy
Leighton fell, and she would have her justice. She would be safe. More than that, she might have her life back.

“I am with you, but I pray it will not be like the last time. I do not want to see another bloodbath.”

“Edward has known nothing but strife in his young life. He seeks to heal the realm. There will be no campaign of revenge. Except against Mortimer, of course. The King is very bitter there, and he will treat the usurper as he should.”

“Then I will speak with Mortimer tomorrow, and warn him as you request. And if there is need of me, send word.”

They went down to the courtyard together. Moira stood at the threshold to the hall, and waved her farewell.

Addis smiled ruefully. “She will be relieved that you are committed. She does not trust the fleeting loyalties of highborn people. She says they are like straw, quickly scattered when the wind shifts.”

“You have told her?”

“She already knew. She misses little, watching from the shadows as she does.”

Aye, she missed little. She had seen Joan more clearly in one afternoon than he had after several months.

Do you know her?

“She worries,” Addis said. “For her sake I would like to finish this quickly.”

“Let us truly finish it this time, Addis. Let us complete what we began, and finally be done with it.”

C
HAPTER
20

T
HE HOUSE WAS DARK
and silent when Rhys entered the garden. No glow came through the kitchen window to penetrate the gathering twilight.

Joan was gone. He knew that she would be. She could not stay any longer. Not just because of their argument, and the words with which he had parted. She needed to run away again, to hide from the devil.

He stopped between the hawthorn tree and the workbench. He did not want to go inside. She might be gone, but her presence would not be. The ghosts of her scent and laugh waited for him. The garden was not devoid of her either, but it would be worse in the kitchen and the hall. It would be unbearably intense in his chamber and his bed.

Feeling as hollow as the quaking silence that surrounded him, he sat on the workbench. Something fell off the plank with his movement, and he groped on the ground for it. His fingers closed on one of Joan's little tools, a tiny piece of iron that she used to line patterns on
her clay. A few other metal pieces still lay where she had left them, here at the spot where she straddled the bench to form her statues. Rhys pictured her, her expression intent and her hands moving, the afternoon sun revealing the shape of her body beneath the thin shift.

She must have left very quickly if she forgot to take the tools. Of course she had. She needed to get away fast if she was going to protect her brother. And maybe she thought that she protected someone else, too. Maybe she wanted to sever her connection with this house immediately in order to shield the man who owned it.

That notion left a bitter taste in his mouth. It was one thing to accept that she did not think that he could protect her. It was much worse to admit that she felt obliged to protect
him
.

She was probably very frightened. It hurt his heart to think of how she had forced herself to hide that from him. The whole time that they rode back to this house, all during their dreadful confrontation, she had been holding terror inside her. Worse than that, she had been living anew the old memories of her bargain. He did not doubt that Sir Guy had reopened the healing wounds, and probably intended to inflict new ones.

She should have told him. She should have let him help her. Did she doubt that he would? Did she think that he would run from the danger and leave her on her own? Did she worry that if he knew who she was, and what followed her, he would abandon her to save his own skin?

She should have told him, damn it. If not weeks ago, then today.

The upright plank of the workbench shielded him from the sight of the house. Early this morning he had come out and finished the saint. She waited rigidly now, in all her calm dignity, for him to cart her to the church where she would watch generations pass through its portal.
As so often in his life, he soothed his inner turmoil by turning to his craft. He rose and pulled the canvas off the stone. She loomed there, almost life-size, a black column in a darkening world. He ran his fingertips over the eyes that he had smoothed today, checking the surface to be sure it needed no more work.

His hand paused. In his blindness he felt more than he had ever seen. He slid his fingers lower, over nose and cheeks, to lips and jaw. The strokes summoned wrenching memories of touching this face before, many times, in passion and affection. Not hard stone then, but velvet flesh and pulsing life.

Saint Ursula, a virgin martyr. The daughter of a king, and of noble birth. He had carved her in rich, embellished robes as befitted her station, and he had given her the dignity and face of a highborn woman whom he knew intimately.

He left his fingertips on her lips, and they almost seemed real beneath his touch.
Do you know her
? His heart had known. His soul and his essence had seen all of it. The truth of her birth, and what she had lost, and what she fought to regain. It had guided his chisel without his realizing it. His craft had expressed what his mind did not want to acknowledge. He had not wanted to admit how hopeless his love would be.

She should have told him
. Except that she had. She had never really hidden her nobility from him. The first time that he saw her in the marketplace, it had garbed her more surely than her tattered grey gown.

A vague sound penetrated his absorption. He glanced over his shoulder, then turned. Another dark column stood in the thickening shadows near the house. Another draped female form, unmoving and rigid, faced him. Not made of stone, though. Fear and worry and relief did not pour out of stone.

Joan was not gone. She had not left yet.

He did not know what to say to her. She did not trust him, and he could not help her unless she did. Even then, his interference might cause more trouble than aid. She might indeed be safer if she and Mark just disappeared again.

He realized that he did not have to say anything, because it would not matter. She had already chosen her course. She ran from the past toward her future, and neither included him.

She had not left yet. But she would be gone forever very soon.

He knew.

It was in his stance and his silence and in the way he looked at her. Joan could not see his face in the darkness, but she did not doubt that those intense blue eyes glinted with his new knowledge of how she had deceived him.

She would have given anything for Rhys to have never known. Already it changed things. He faced her differently. Not with sudden deference or restraint. Nay, Rhys did not think of nobles as his betters. It was not shock or dismay that stretched from him to her across the garden yard. She felt something much sadder coming to her. Something poignant. Acceptance and regret. Resignation, and maybe some anger.

He stood there like a man who calmly realized that he had been wasting his time.

“You are not gone.”

She grimaced. He had delayed all day in returning so that he would not find her here. “I thought to be, but I could not find Mark. He should return soon, and we will leave at once—”

“I am glad that you are not gone.”

He meant it. Her heart stretched. She was glad that she was not gone yet, too, even though it would be much harder now. Terribly hard.

“Come and sit with me while we wait for your brother, Joan.”

She walked over and they settled on the bench side by side. She basked in the final security of feeling his warmth and strength. She was glad that their last few moments would be here in the garden, on this bench, at the spot where they had shared their deepest moments and known the soul together.

“How long do you have before he starts looking again?”

Aye, he knew. He had guessed it all. “One day. We can be out of the city by then, and well on our way.”

“Where will you go?”

“North.”

“Let me take you to Edward. Instead of running again, go to the King and get the justice that you want.”

“I can not risk that. If I enter Westminster, I will never see the King. Nor can he do much for me. He is only a pawn. Another holds the power.”

“It will not always be so, I promise you.”

“Perhaps not, but it is so now. If Edward ever claims his place, I will be the first in line to petition him.”

“I think that he will very soon.”

“Not soon enough.”

He sighed deeply. Sadly. Her own heart responded in kind. The whole garden seemed drenched in melancholy, as though the plants and trees awaited the death of something beautiful.

“I will go with you. I will take you and your brother out of the city, and bring you to Sir Addis. He knows of your story, and he will give you sanctuary.”

“We can not even prove who we are. The world thinks
us dead. We will bring Sir Addis and Moira nothing but trouble, and the enmity of the Queen and Mortimer.”

“Then we will flee north as you planned.”

“I do not want you coming with us, Rhys. Today Guy saw me as a long-lost love, but very soon he will see me only as the woman who betrayed him. In either view, he will retaliate against you if he learns of the time I spent here.”

Rhys took her hand, and stretched his fingers between hers in a firm grasp. “I do not care about that. He frightens you, but he does not frighten me. We will go together.”

“Nay.” She squeezed his hand to emphasize her resolve. “
Nay
.”

Silence surrounded them, but unspoken words filled it. Accusations of deception, but also promises. She wished that the latter ones could be said. Her throat tightened and her heart burned from the effort to keep strong.

She longed to embrace him and say that one day she would be safe and she would return, and they would start over, and finally discover just what this might be. Only it would not happen that way, and Rhys knew it. She wished that it could, though. She wished that she owed nothing to the past and future. She ached with the imminent loss of what they had shared. She prayed that he understood how happy Joan the tiler had been with Rhys Mason.

He pulled her into his arms. His strong embrace defeated her. She sank against him and inhaled all that he was, and tears brimmed in her eyes.

“You might have told me,” he said. “You might have trusted me.”

“I could not, at first. And then … I knew that I would only have you for a short time, Rhys. If you knew who I was …”

“If I knew who you were, I would also have known that
we would have each other only for a short time. You had always warned about that, but I had hoped for more.”

“And I let you, and lied to myself that maybe it could be more, too. A year at least. Maybe I wanted us to believe it while we could, so this day would not shadow our time together. It was selfish and heartless of me.”

“Nay, not selfish. Maybe I am glad that you did not tell me.” He caressed her face, and turned it up to him. “And I am glad that you were not gone tonight, so that we can part with a kiss, and not the harsh words we spoke this morning.”

The touch of his lips seared her whole being with warmth. He tasted of goodness and fairness and all that she had lost years ago. He kissed her beautifully, for the last time, lingering in a way that stirred her soul and her womanhood.