Rose Bride (28 page)

He looked her up and down with dark, intelligent eyes, his smile admiring. ‘Munro is not a fool. He will come back to you once the girl is safely wedded and bedded. Meanwhile, you have a comely face and a figure worthy of one of the Graces. You need not sleep alone, Mistress Croft,’ he said pointedly, offering her his arm, ‘not while this poet is still searching for his Muse.’

Margerie ignored his outstretched arm, her brows raised at his impertinent suggestion. To her knowledge, Wyatt already had both a wife and a mistress. Perhaps several mistresses.

‘Good Master Wyatt,’ she said softly, gathering her skirts, ‘I admire your stamina, but to speak truth, do you not already have your hands full with your wife, and all your other ladies? I would not wish you to muddle our names in bed, sir.’

With that, she turned and left the hall, feeling his angry stare on her back all the way.

The narrow corridor was busy, courtiers spilling out from the dancing, rowdy in their drunkenness, safe here out of sight of the queen. She pushed her way through the crowd, then saw Sir Christopher ahead.

She took another step forward, meaning to pass the knave with her head held high. Sir Christopher was laughing with two younger gentlemen, the three sharing some loud debauched tale about ‘a whore and a bishop’.

She realised he must be in his cups, and likely to accost her. Courage failed her, and she turned aside before Sir Christopher could notice her.

There was a chamber with its door standing open. Inside, a few elderly statesmen were standing about, drinking idly and talking in murmurs. They turned to stare as she hurried through, her face averted, her heart thudding. Beyond that room Margerie found a smaller chamber, cold and unlit, and halted there in the darkness, her face in her hands, teetering on the edge of control.

The room was thankfully quiet. It was a place to be alone, to strip off that other face and be herself, if only for the breathing space of a moment.

Too much. It was all too much.

Virgil.

Now where was the use in thinking about Master Elton? He was another woman’s rightful possession. Besides, he thought her a whore.

God’s blood, now she was crying.

She would go to Lord Munro in the morning and beg him on her knees to let her take the house he had promised her before the twelvemonth was complete. She would have to seek the queen’s permission to leave court, of course, perhaps claiming to be sick and in need of rest in the country. But if Queen Jane took pity on her, she might be able to disappear within a month, always assuming the house was ready to receive her.

Though she would happily live in a cave if it meant she could escape this terrible place and never return.

‘Margerie?’

She turned, her hands dropping from her face, and stood in shock, her heart suddenly picking up speed.

‘Sir Christopher!’

The knight came into the darkened chamber, a young page walking behind him with a flaming torch. With him were the two young men she had seen in the corridor, one fair-haired, the other darker and well built, both staring at her in a lecherous, predatory way she recognised.

‘Ah, Mistress Croft. How fortuitous to find you alone. I was just telling my cousins about you. They are most desirous to make your better acquaintance.’

One of these young men took the torch and summarily dismissed the boy, kicking the door shut behind him.

She backed away. ‘What . . . What are you doing?’

‘And I was told you have a fine mind,’ Sir Christopher drawled, dragging off his gloves. He looked her up and down, sneering. ‘Did you think I would not follow, madam, when you issued such a bold invitation, slipping away from the mob to this . . . Where are we, would you say?’ he asked, turning to the young man to the right.

‘I do not know, sir,’ the fair-haired young man said, his watery blue eyes on Margerie, ‘but it is private enough, to be sure.’

The other young man had thrust the smoking torch into a high sconce on the wall. He came towards Margerie, grabbing her arm, and dragged her towards the other two. His bulging eyes were already undressing her. ‘Come, Cousin Christopher, let us waste no more time in talk. You promised us sport if we followed you.’

Margerie tried to scream, but the fair-haired young man clamped his hand over her mouth. He dragged her hair loose from its net, laughing as it tumbled in wild disarray over her shoulders and down her back.

‘Hold her for me,’ Sir Christopher told them, and reached calmly for her bodice, no doubt meaning to drag it down.

She dealt him a violent kick in the shin, then struggled hard against her captors while he staggered backwards, swearing under his breath.

‘The king was right,’ Sir Christopher snarled, recovering, his thin cheeks flushed, ‘you are a vixen. So we will use you like an animal. Down on your hands and knees!’

To her relief, the door was suddenly thrown open, and the chamber lit brightly by several men with flaming torches.

‘There she is!’

Sir Christopher looked round sharply at this interruption.

The young man holding Margerie’s arms behind her back loosened his grip, his voice faltering. ‘Who . . . Who’s this?’

Margerie blinked at the newcomers, half-dazzled by their torches. But she recognised the page in the doorway, his arm pointing at her. One of the men tossed the boy a coin, then ruffled his hair in passing.

‘Good lad,’ he said, and she gasped as the man came clear of the shadows.

It was Lord Wolf.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Virgil knew it was over between them. Margerie had made things plain last time they spoke. She was no longer his mistress and would not welcome any further communications. Not even the note he had struggled several times to write to her, eventually tearing it up and throwing the paper on the fire. A stronger backbone was what he needed, he had told himself, watching his confused words of need and anguish darken and curl up into ash. Not a mistress. Not, at least, if one beautiful but heartless wanton could reduce him to this constant state of pain.

Standing on the edge of the dancing after the feast in honour of the French ambassador, he glanced about the Great Hall and caught sight of Margerie in conversation with Lord Munro. Virgil stared, abruptly forgetting to be angry with her. Margerie was so tall and slender-hipped and unbearably perfect, her beauty cleared everything else from his mind.

He watched her head dip, and her smile – for another man, damn it – and watched how her pale, long-fingered hands clasped each other at her waist. He imagined those hands clasping Munro’s smooth shoulders as she lay beneath the young nobleman in bed, and fury coursed through him.

It became hard to breathe. Virgil suddenly realised he would cause gossip if he kept staring at them like a madman. So he turned his head to watch the dancing, not wanting her to think he cared whom she bedded – though in truth, it was eating him alive.

Glancing back a moment later, unable to help himself, he noticed at once that Margerie had vanished, and not with Munro, for the nobleman was now leading a pale-faced girl into the dance.

Some prickling sense warned him that all was not well. So he ignored the bitter voice inside telling him to leave well alone, and went in search of her.

Catching a glimpse of Margerie in one of the thronging corridors beyond the Great Hall, he stopped and grimaced, thinking she was going back to the women’s quarters. He would only make a fool of himself by pursuing her. But then she turned inexplicably into a side room, and almost immediately he saw Sir Christopher, accompanied by two young men, follow her with a look of evil intent on his face.

Pushing urgently through the crowd of courtiers towards the spot where he had last seen her, Virgil knocked into someone.

He backed away, grinding his teeth in impatience when the man did not budge, but stood blocking his path ahead. Only then did he recognise Lord Wolf, a nobleman high in the king’s favour, and the man who had famously taken Margerie’s virginity as a youth, then been jilted by her before they could marry.

Lord Wolf arched a dark brow at the collision, cold blue eyes unsmiling, one hand resting lightly on his sword hilt as he surveyed Virgil.

‘Forgive me, sir,’ the nobleman addressed him with a sardonic air, ‘am I in your way?’

Virgil knew Lord Wolf only very slightly, and given his history with Margerie Croft, at any other moment would have stepped aside with some insincere apology, then continued his search for Margerie.

But then he saw who was with Lord Wolf.

‘Mistress Langley?’

Kate looked at him, frowning at his sharp tone. ‘Master Elton? What is the matter, sir?’

‘Have you seen Mistress Croft?’ Not waiting for an answer, he searched the faces around them, hoping to see Margerie again at any moment. His stomach clenched as he remembered the look on Sir Christopher’s face. ‘I fear she may be in danger.’

Wolf’s blue eyes narrowed on his face, the frozen demeanour dropping away at once. ‘Margerie? Speak, man. What has happened to her?’

He looked cautiously at Wolf, but Kate Langley urged him to speak freely. ‘Lord Wolf is a friend, Master Elton. You can trust him.’ She nodded to the other man at his side, a tall and broad-shouldered man with fair hair and eyes almost as green as Margerie’s, who shook his hand with reassuring strength. ‘And this is Hugh Beaufort.’

So Virgil told them briefly what he had seen, and what manner of man Sir Christopher Dray was where women were concerned. He then waited in an agony of impatience while Wolf disappeared into one of the side rooms.

His lordship returned a few moments later with a young page, who told them in a stammering voice how he had seen a comely red-haired lady alone in one of the privy chambers with three gentlemen.

‘Quick, lad, show me this private room. I thank you for your help, my lord Wolf, but it is perhaps better if . . .’ Virgil glanced at the others, but it seemed they had no intention of letting him go alone, Hugh Beaufort already loosening his sword in its scabbard, Lord Wolf’s face dark and intent. ‘Let us hope we are not too late, then.’

Virgil followed Lord Wolf into the privy chamber, and stopped just inside the door, taking in the scene before him. Margerie Croft, her flame-red hair wild and loose about her shoulders, her face shining like a heretic about to face the bonfire, arms held behind her back by some young fool . . .

Standing before her, a vicious sneer on his face, was Sir Christopher Dray. His codpiece was swollen out with lust, and the man was fumbling with it, his eyes on Margerie.

It took maybe three seconds for Virgil to understand what they had interrupted, and to be sickened by it. Fury turned to relief that he was not too late, then instantly back to fury.

‘Get away from her, you bastard!’

He ran straight at Sir Christopher, not thinking of the likely consequences of such an attack, and rammed the man to the floor. There were a few confused moments where he was aware of slamming his fist into Sir Christopher’s face, but not of much else, except a few blows which landed on his own face and were shrugged off in the heat of his rage.

The chamber seemed to have erupted behind him too, men fighting around them, yelling and scuffling. Suddenly one of the other assailants collapsed across them, breaking Virgil’s fixed determination.

Sir Christopher rolled free and jumped to his feet, red-faced and panting. ‘You’ll hang for daring to touch me, you whoreson.’

Virgil launched himself after him, but Sir Christopher darted away, surprisingly light on his feet. He turned abruptly, wrong-footing Virgil, and threw a punch that landed on his jaw, only slightly awry.

Virgil staggered back into Lord Wolf, who righted him and pushed him back towards his opponent.

‘Not done yet, sir?’ Wolf demanded, laughing, then ducked as one of the young men with Dray hit out at him.

Slowly circling Sir Christopher, whose nose was bleeding, his cheek a dull red, Virgil could not help noticing how Margerie had backed up against the wall as though to watch the fight, her cheeks flushed, her green eyes unreadable. But there was a wildness in her face that told him how badly she wanted him to win.

God forbid he should fail her now.

Sir Christopher was looking at him with disdain. The man lifted a sleeve to wipe away the blood trickling from his nose. ‘So, Master Elton comes to defend his whore. I should have known you were tupping her yourself, you damn leech. And you have struck me now,’ he said thickly, and drew his sword meaningfully, ‘so I must make an end of you. As a lesson to other upstart physicians tempted to forget their place.’

So he was to die, was he?

Virgil looked at the sword, glinting in the torchlight with grim intent, and half-wanted the knight to make an end of him. Better a quick death now than a slow and more torturous one, growing old alone. He felt rage and misery in the same instance, and a creeping sense of futility that made it hard to focus on what was needful to stay alive.

‘Here, catch!’ Hugh Beaufort called out cheerfully, and threw his sword across to Virgil, hilt first.

To his own surprise, Virgil caught the sword hilt in a firm grasp and turned, prepared to fight.