By Design (9 page)

She thought about what waited for her across the river. There wasn't really any choice but to go back today. He might tempt her from the poverty and worry, but never from the purpose and goal. It was why she lived now. Hot baths and feather beds would never assuage the spiritual needs. Even kisses of surprising pleasure could not do that. They might help her to forget for a while, but until she got justice she would know no peace.

She had liked forgetting. She had not thought it possible. He had created a fantasy of pleasure that had obscured everything else. For a time. Up to a point.

Boot steps paced from the house. She looked up, dismayed that Rhys had returned so quickly. Only it wasn't Rhys. A red-haired youth walked over to her.

“Is your master here?”

He thought her a servant. “Nay. He works today.” It
seemed a sensible lie. She did not want the youth waiting here.

He looked her up and down. “A dedicated man if he leaves such as you to wield his hammer.”

Not just a servant, but a leman. Well, that was common enough, too. “He will not eat if he does not work.”

A wolfish grin broke over his face. “Who needs bread if there are other delicacies.”

“Leave this property now, you rude boy. If you have business with him, come back later.”

He resented her tone. Rich or poor, high or low, they always did, as if they expected her to be flattered.

He pulled a parchment out of his sleeve and tossed it on the table. “See that your master gets this, woman.”

He strolled back to the house.

She picked up the parchment. Its folded ends were sealed. She recognized the device impressed in the wax. She had seen it before, on the banners unfurled by Guy's army.

The seal belonged to Mortimer himself. And it appeared that Rhys knew him well enough to receive private messages.

An unholy fury reddened her mind. That device had always heralded disaster for her. The power behind it had ripped her life from her grasp.

Hot resolve instantly stiffened her. She would get it back, all that she could, for Mark if not herself. She would avenge the crimes, at least. She could not touch Mortimer, but she could demand justice about the bastard pig Guy Leighton who served him.

Nothing else mattered, suddenly. Not the kindness nor the care. Not the sweet pleasure under the tree. The last day might never have happened. Rhys was what she had accused him of being, a lackey to an evil man who hired butchers to do his bidding. It had been a mistake to forget that.

She carried the parchment into the kitchen and set it on the table with a cup holding one corner. Her old grey gown lay folded on the bench by the hearth, and she picked it up. She glanced down at the green robe she wore. It had come not from him, but from that lady friend. She would keep it, but not the others.

She looked around the kitchen, and fought off the memories of last night. His hands undressing her and his arms lifting her to the bath. His concern when he found her naked by the fire. The sense of protection last night, and the flutters of excitement when he looked at her.

In her desperation she had clung to the help, forgetting the cost and danger. Nor had his generosity been pure. He had just been biding his time. The giving had not been selfless. He admitted that himself, and had proven it just now.

He wanted her to stay. She knew why. She was not reduced to that yet, though. And if she ever bartered that way, she would expect more than simple comforts in return. She would demand much more than this mason even knew how to pay.

She hurried through the hall. She stepped out on the street, and ran down the lane.

C
HAPTER
6

A
MASON
WHO
WANTED
TO LIVE
did not refuse Roger Mortimer's call. Still, Rhys waited a day before responding to the summons. He decided that would be long enough to remind Mortimer that he dealt with a free citizen of London, but not so long as to anger the most powerful lord in the realm.

He found Mortimer on a bench in his private garden at Westminster, alone with a young woman. The lady appeared distraught, as if she feared that she was being forced to play a game which she could only lose.

Rhys knew that look. Its familiarity evoked painful images from his youth.

Relief veiled her eyes when his arrival interrupted them. Mortimer dismissed her, and she darted to the garden portal.

Rhys experienced an intense, visceral reaction to the little scene. The way that Mortimer used women disgusted him. He brought all his power to bear on the weak in order to get what he wanted.

He was not alone in it. Many lords thought it their due to have whatever women caught their eyes. But Rhys had first seen it happen to a woman desired by Roger Mortimer. He had been only fourteen at the time, and the injustice had branded his young heart. He had watched that woman's anguish as Mortimer trapped her into submission. He had heard her screams while she birthed the dead bastard of the man whom she loathed.

Details surged, specifically and clearly, out of the place in his memories where they had retreated long ago.

A beautiful woman, dark haired and fair skinned, slowly descending a staircase …His uncle sitting by the fire, refusing to watch … A silence so deep that one could hear the starving stomachs growl.

No one went to support her in the short walk to the waiting knight outside. Everyone's life depended on her accepting the shame, but the women did not want to be touched by it. The men did not want it to appear that they agreeably handed her over.

This final injustice infuriated him. If his father and uncle would not fight, they could at least give her comfort. And so he had gone to her, so she would not be totally alone.

Before they reached the knight, she had spoken. “Tell my husband that I will remain untouched in the ways that matter.”

He had admired her strength, but the cost of that resolve had been high. When Mortimer finally tired of her, she returned with a soul so numb that nothing could ever touch it again.

He stood in the grass twenty paces from the bench. The vivid images had dazed him, and had darkened his mind the way they still could when they unexpectedly emerged.

Mortimer gestured him forward. “You take your time, mason. I sent a summons for you two days ago.”

“I was not there, and had other matters to attend as well. Please do not send messengers to the city again. I am at Westminster often enough for you to find me here.”

Mortimer's mouth pursed in annoyance. “You are overbold for a craftsman.”

“A timid man is of no use to you.”

Mortimer did not invite him to sit on the bench, but Rhys did anyway, to show just how overbold he could be. He resented this summons. Like that woman, he sensed that he was being drawn into a game that he could not win.

“I have nothing to tell you. It has only been several days,” he said.

Mortimer considered that. “It is too quiet.” He squinted thoughtfully. “Do you know Addis de Valence?”

“I have met the Lord of Barrowburgh a few times.” He had more than met him. Addis was married to Moira, the woman who had given him the garments for Joan.

“I am told that he is in the city. In the heat of the summer. No lords use their London houses now.”

“Sir Addis is no enemy to you. He fought bravely for the Queen's cause. He held London for her. He took no part in Lancaster's uprising against you two years ago.”

“But he has not come to court. He has not presented himself to the Queen.”

“He is a rough man, not given to little courtesies. He has a new son. Perhaps that distracts him.”

“You know much of this man whom you have met only a few times.”

“His house is in my ward. And I know his wife fairly well, from before their marriage.”

Mortimer grinned lewdly. “Do you now? A lush woman, nay? Serf-born, it is said. Such women are the best, the most passionate. She caught my eye, I will admit. If you know the wife, you can visit there. I am most
curious about Addis. He keeps his own counsel too well. One never knows where he stands.”

“I doubt that he will confide in me. We are not friendly.”

“You served together in the Queen's cause. That makes a bond. Use it, and your friendship with the wife. See what you can learn. Something is brewing. I can smell it.” Mortimer appeared truly concerned. “Find out what it is, and you will have more than you ever dreamed. Whatever you want.”

There was nothing more to discuss, so Rhys gladly left. The meeting had unsettled him. Even without the Queen's favor, Mortimer was lord to a quarter of the realm. He was not a man to cross. He was also the kind of patron every builder needed if he sought to make his mark.

More than you ever dreamed. Whatever you want
. He dreamed of palaces and cathedrals and town halls. He dreamed of carving statues the way he imagined them and not the way the priests demanded. He dreamed of leaving a legacy in stone that would stand through time, so that ages hence people would see it and wonder whose mind and art had brought it into being.

Whatever you want
. The words repeated in his head, over and over. He would not be the first man to align himself with power for his own purposes. Nor the first to put aside principles to achieve his goals.

Fortunately, he would not be tempted to. Nothing was brewing, and if anything ever did, Addis de Valence would not be in the middle of it.

He collected his horse and headed home. He took a long route, meandering from market to market, more aware than he wanted to admit that he was hoping to see a blond woman selling crockery.

She had been filling his head for two days. He kept seeing her face and body. Images of her breathless surprise
always provoked an immediate arousal. The parted red lips and the glistening eyes and startled gasps could immerse him in a sea of desire.

I have never wanted to
. Maybe not before, but she had wanted to with him. It had been very natural to have her in his arms under the tree. She fit in them as surely as her body had molded against his in her sleep.

He could not remember ever being so interested in a woman. Not just in bedding her, although that impulse also was stronger than normal. He wondered about her. She had been seasoned by loss and life, and experience had produced a rich complexity that intrigued him. He worried, too. Twice now she had needed help. If it happened again she had no one but a young brother to look after her.

Certainly that tiler she worked for would not aid her. He might even send her into the city again with more flawed goods, and her punishment the second time would be worse than the first. Someone should explain to George Tiler that letting a woman answer for his bad craft was cowardly, and that abandoning her to be thrown in the gutter after a day in the stocks was despicable.

Aye, someone should definitely have a few words with the man about that.

It was all that he needed. Just an excuse, like his consideration this morning that he needed new cups, and that fired, thin-walled ones would be nice.

He abruptly turned his horse and retraced his path. He aimed for London Bridge, and the town of Southwark.

The tile yard stood on a finger of land that jutted into the Thames about a mile upriver from Southwark. As Rhys neared, he could see workers carrying trays of tiles out of a long thatched building, and others waist deep in a huge
vat, stomping to separate clay from soil. The workers were women, all of them wearing nothing but sleeveless shifts and kerchiefs.

A small cottage backed up on the road, and tiny shacks flanked the water's edge around the works itself. Rhys tied his horse to a dead tree behind the house and walked around it to its door.

A sandy-haired man rested in the shadow of its eaves, slouched on a bench beside a bladder hanging from a peg near the door. His red-stained beard and liquid eyes declared him drunk already, and it was barely past midday. He watched the women while he sipped from a chipped crockery cup.

He did not notice his visitor until Rhys stood beside him. For a moment he appeared uncertain whether to welcome or resent the interruption of whatever he contemplated about the women. Rhys had no trouble imagining what it was, and that sent his temper churning.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Rhys. I am a mason and builder.”

George brightened. “Then you come looking for tiles. Welcome, welcome.” He gestured to the bench for Rhys to sit, then held up his cup with a questioning expression.

Rhys looked down on the dirty, wine-stained drunk. He remembered Joan suffering from thirst in the stocks, and deadly anger leaked into his head. “I find wine too drying in the summer. In fact, I find it over-warm out here. Can we speak in your cottage?”

“There's a fine river breeze here, and the view is very pleasant.” George smirked lewdly toward the half-naked women.

“I would prefer the cottage.”

George shrugged and led the way into his home. Rhys followed, and closed the door behind him.

“Now, how many tiles you be needing, Master Rhys?”