Danger's Kiss (8 page)

Her words were like punches pounding him in the gut, for they were more accurate than she knew.  The only people who ever spoke to Nicholas Grimshaw at any length were his constable and the unfortunates called up before him on charges.  Nobody willingly trafficked with the shire-reeve of Kent.

With his eyes smoldering and his hands fisted, after a long silence, he stepped aside and let her pass.

To her credit, her tone softened as she picked up her satchel and murmured grudgingly, “My thanks for the frumenty.”  As she pulled the door open and stepped out into the hostile frozen world, she called over her shoulder, “Adieu, Snowflake.”  Then she closed the door with a hollow finality.

For a long while, Nicholas only stared at the door.  Then, out of mindless habit, he walked straight to his keg and dispensed himself a cup of ale.  Slumping onto his bench, he downed the brew in a series of deep gulps, slamming the empty cup down beside him.

He belched, and Azrael fled the room with his tail twitching in irritation.

What the lass had said was true.  Nobody liked Nicholas Grimshaw.  He served a purpose.  He was good at his work.  The king was grateful for his services, mostly because it kept the royal coffers full and his own hands clean.  The folk of Kent had Nicholas to thank for keeping the streets safe.  But who could truly appreciate the man who confiscated their earnings and threw their neighbors into the stocks?

Men never looked him in the eyes, and women clutched their children to their skirts when he passed.  He inspired violence in young lads, terror in young lasses.  Indeed, only innocent babes, too pure of heart to recognize the power he wielded over life and death, ever smiled at him.

It had never bothered him.  He’d learned to bear disdain like a monk wearing a hair shirt.  At times he’d even encouraged their loathing and fear, for that was what kept the population civil.

He’d taken on the mantle of justice, embraced the aloofness of his position, and grown accustomed to seeming more than a mere mortal.  He’d elevated and distanced himself from the mob by choice.

But now one nettlesome slip of a wench, with her snapping eyes and fearless tirades, had reminded him that he was, after all, human.  That somewhere beneath his menacing black cloak and magisterial chest beat a human heart with human dreams.  Dreams of marriage.  And babes.  And a laughter-filled home.

“Pah!”

He couldn’t afford to start thinking like that.  Shite!  He had two outlaws going in the stocks today and three prisoners to question.  He was the damned shire-reeve, for God’s sake.

He pushed himself up and poured another cup of ale.  For the unpleasant day ahead, he needed all the fortification he could get.

Desirée thought she must be the biggest fool to walk the earth.  Slogging through the silent snow, she imagined she could hear Hubert bellowing at her from the grave.

Why hadn’t she taken the man’s coin?  He’d offered it to her willingly.  And from the looks of the silver scattered across the floor, it was a considerable amount, enough to provide her a room and meals for the rest of the winter.

Stupid pride had gotten in her way.  That and the niggling knowledge that she’d already stolen enough from the man.  After all, he’d given her a night’s lodging, a decent burial for Hubert, and a hearty breakfast without charging her a farthing.

But now, of course, she had nothing.  She’d be reduced to begging, borrowing, or stealing.  Of those three options, stealing was always preferable.  But where would she find a gullible target in this foul weather?

Even if she found a target, it was nearly impossible to pull off good sleight of hand without an accomplice.  When Hubert and she engaged in such games, Desirée had usually been the distraction.  She’d be the one clapping her hands with glee, fluttering her lashes, flashing blinding smiles at the players while Hubert slipped the pea under another shell or made the exchange of a weighted die.

She pulled the cloak tighter about her face, peering surreptitiously down alleys and into shops as she sauntered along the streets, searching for opportunity.

A few chill hours later, she began to think on the shire-reeve’s cottage with a desperate sort of wistfulness.  It hadn’t been so bad.  The man knew how to build a fire and make frumenty.  Despite the fact she’d been chained to it against her will, his bed had been remarkably comfortable and extravagantly large.  Aside from the horrible display on the wall, his furnishings had been pleasant enough.  And he had a friendly cat to keep the vermin away.

She began to think seriously about swallowing her pride before she froze to death tonight.  Indeed, she’d turned her feet in the direction of the shire-reeve’s house when two drunkards came stumbling toward her out of an inn, their purses bulging with coin.

It was a sign, she decided, abandoning all thoughts of returning to Grimshaw.  She greeted the men with a disarming smile that would have made Hubert proud.

L
ady Philomena peered from the window of her solar at Torteval Hall, watching the distant spires of Canterbury Cathedral disappear in the waning daylight.  Ignoring the pathetic whimpering of the servant groveling behind her, she thumped her fingers casually atop the ledge.  Her father-in-law might be a useless dullard, but at least he’d had the wisdom to choose a perfect location for the family demesne.  It was sufficiently distant from the town to avoid rubbing elbows with the rabble, yet close enough to wield a powerful influence over the local government.

The constable, the justices, even the priests of Canterbury knew very well it was Lord William Torteval who so generously endowed their coffers.  And very soon that responsibility would pass to Philomena.

Closing the shutters against spying eyes and prying ears, she wished she could just once get Lord William’s dimwitted servants to do her bidding without mucking things up.

She examined the throbbing knuckles of her right hand, resting upon the shutter.  Beside her ruby ring, there was a tiny streak of blood.  She licked her thumb and rubbed gently at it.  Thank God, it wasn’t hers.

It was the blood of that simpering pig of a man who held the title of steward of Torteval Hall, the fool who’d once again dared to disappoint her.

She felt no remorse.  He deserved her wrath.  This was the second time Godfry had disappointed her in two days.  Yesterday, he’d failed to ensure that Hubert Kabayn suffered on the gallows, squirming in agonizing death throes.  He’d allowed the shire-reeve to show mercy to the murderer.

And today...

“I pray you, my lady,” he sobbed obsequiously, cradling his injured nose, “don’t send me away.”

She curled her lip.  If he continued to cower in the corner, blubbering over his bloody nose like a wee lass, she’d show him what a
real
beating was.

Instead, exercising great self-control, she addressed him in a deceptively magnanimous voice.  “Don’t be silly, Godfry.  You’re Lord William’s oldest, most loyal servant.”

She crossed the solar at a leisurely pace, tapping her fingers along the immaculately polished Spanish oak table, plucking the strings of the small gilt harp perched there, pushing the silver chalice half-filled with claret back from the edge, finally stopping to stand over him like a hungry wolf over a wounded lamb.

Despite her best efforts to appear sweet, innocent, and charitable, Godfry trembled as she neared, his red face sweaty with strain.

She crouched so she could look him in his piggish eyes and spoke slowly, as if to a child.  “As long as you do as you’re told, you’ll have a place in my house-, the Torteval household.”

He swallowed visibly.

“And what I’ve told you to do, dear Godfry, is find that key.”

“But my lady, I’ve looked high and low, and
—
“

She raised her fist again, and he cringed, covering his head with his arms.

Philomena clamped her teeth together hard enough to shatter them, willing her rage to subside.  As much as she enjoyed the thrill of power that beating her father-in-law’s servants afforded her, it would serve little purpose.

Besides, she might break a nail.

When her calm was restored, she rose and turned away from him.  “Go.  Out of my sight.”  He scrambled to comply with all haste.  “And keep looking.”

When he was gone, when there was no more need to keep up appearances, dread overwhelmed her again and she half swooned, catching herself on the table’s edge.

Lord, what if she couldn’t find the key?

She’d been working on this plan for months.  If something went awry now, when she was so close to her goal...

Blessed Mary, she needed a drink.  She eyed the chalice of wine on the table and almost made the mistake of reaching for it.  Withdrawing her hand, she erupted into giggles.  That would have been a
grave
mistake indeed, she thought, and her laughter became near hysterical.

That chalice was for her father-in-law.  She took him claret every night, to help him sleep.  At least, that was what she told him.  But even the soothing effects of the wine couldn’t dispel the sickness that gripped his bowels and made him weaker by the day.

When her laughter subsided, she reached again for the chalice, this time with no intention of drinking it.  She swirled the liquid around the cup, marveling at what a perfect poison arsenic was.  It had no color, no odor, no flavor.  Even better, no one questioned her frequent purchases of the powder to kill rats, for she couldn’t keep a cat to do the task.  Cats were unbearable to Philomena.  They made her itch and sneeze and turned her eyes red.

Still, Lord William’s demise was taking much longer than she’d anticipated.  He’d almost foiled her plans, suddenly summoning his lawyer to alter his will, giving everything to his nephew.

But fortune had smiled on her.  The very night the lawyer arrived, a robber broke into Torteval Hall.  While the unknowing thief ransacked the place, Philomena stabbed the lawyer to death and pinned the blame on the intruder.  After the shire-reeve and his constable dragged the culprit and the corpse away, she’d simply tossed the new will into the fire with no one the wiser.

There remained but one problem.  The key.  Somehow in the chaos of the murder, it had gone missing.

She dug her fingernails into the waxy rim of the table.  Without that key, she wouldn’t be able to unlock the cell.  If she couldn’t unlock the cell...

She let out a shuddering sigh.  It would do no good to panic.  She hadn’t gotten this far in her ambitious twenty-four years by letting her nerves get the best of her.

She patted her sleek auburn hair into place and pinched her cheeks for color, then practiced a frown of compassionate concern as she started toward the door.  Her poor father-in-law was growing steadily worse and worse, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

Thank God.

“Not now, Azrael.”

With one hand, Nicholas picked the cat up from his lap and plopped him back down on the floor.

He’d had a miserable day.  Indeed, he’d had several miserable days, starting with the day he’d hanged Hubert Kabayn.  Since when had the shire become so overrun with criminals?

He’d had to put a boy in the stocks today, a lad as starved and bony as a broomstick.  The wretch was fortunate he hadn’t been ordered to hang, for his crime was thievery, and in Kent, punishments were severe.  The poor lad had managed to wolf down the loaf of bread before the baker caught him, thus destroying the evidence.  The stocks were a warning.

Nicholas hated the stocks.  It wasn’t that they were particularly distressing or painful, in and of themselves.  But when a victim was thus displayed in the village square, the severity of his punishment was determined by the mercy or brutality of the populace at large.  And in Nicholas’s experience, people were more likely to be cruel than kind.

He did his best to regulate what transpired by standing guard over the stocks, creating an ominous presence that discouraged more than the usual mischief of yelling insults and hurling garbage.

But he was still haunted by the memories of the times he’d let his guard slip.  Once, a pack of three lads had stolen past him to cut off a man’s thumb.  Another time, a sweet-faced maid had burned her sister’s bare feet with a candle.  And the hurled stones...

Nicholas ran his thumb over the scar along his jaw.  Standing watch over the stocks came with its risks.

No one had thrown anything today, but their taunts had cut the lad in the stocks to the quick, driving him to tears of humiliation.