Silken Threads (27 page)

He squinted at the sun. “‘Tis a hot
one.”

“Would you like a drink of water?” she
asked.

He brightened. “Aye. Very much.”

She fetched a ladle from the kitchen, filled
it from the well and handed it to him. He drank it in one tilt,
sighed and returned the ladle to her.

“Some more?” she asked.

“Nay. That was...fine. I’m...fine.” He
nodded.

She smiled tentatively.

He returned the smile.

Graeham clenched his jaw until his teeth
throbbed.

“My lady,” Robert began, taking a step
toward her. “I...I’m not quite sure how to go about this. By
rights, I should, well, I should speak to your father, negotiate
this through him.”

Joanna’s eyes widened. She glanced toward
the window, meeting Graeham’s gaze for a mere instant before Robert
took her hands, drawing her attention back to him.

“But I know about your father,” Robert said,
“about how things have been between you since...”

“My lord...”

“So I asked Hugh to take care of it, but of
course, he just laughed at me. He told me I should speak to you
directly, so...here I am. I suppose you already know what I want
to
—
”

“Not here,” she said.

He looked toward the house. “Inside?”

“Nay! Not in there. Let’s go for a walk.”
Clearly flustered, she fumbled with the knot of her apron. Graeham
sympathized with her plight; how could she let him overhear this
fellow’s marriage proposal when she was supposed to be a widow? At
the same time, something inside him was curling up in anguish.
No!
he wanted to scream.
You can’t marry him! I won’t let
you!

Idiot!
As if he could offer for her,
would even want to offer for her, considering what he’d be giving
up. He should be happy for her. It was a good match for
her
—
superb.

Be happy for her,
he told himself as
he watched her walk away with Lord Robert, rolling down her
sleeves. He must forget what he wanted and couldn’t have, what he
thought he needed but could live without. He must put aside his
fevered dreams, his restless longings, disregard that void inside
him that she could have filled, and find it within his heart to be
happy for her.

* * *

Standing alongside Robert in a grassy field
at the edge of the Walbrook, which flowed southward through the
middle of the walled city, Joanna gazed downstream at three girls
of about eight or nine cavorting in the shallow water. They giggled
and shrieked as they chased and splashed each other, not caring
that their humble kirtles were soaked through.

“They’re trying to stay cool in the heat,”
Joanna observed.

“Gillian used to do that.” Robert’s smile
was shaded with melancholy. “On hot days she would wade into the
fish pond in naught but her shift. Her mother would scold her, but
I always took her side. I used to do the same thing when I was her
age.”

Gillian had been only ten, and he’d adored
her. He pulled her body from the river himself.

“I’m sorry,” Joanna said, touching his arm.
“It must have been...I’m sorry.”

“I try not to think about it,” he said.
“I’ll never get her back.”

Curious, Joanna thought, that he said “her”
and not “them.” But then, his marriage to Joan had been but a union
of duty; Gillian had been his firstborn, his flesh and blood.

“I’ve still got two other daughters to think
about,” Robert continued. He took Joanna’s hand. “They need a
mother, my lady.”

They need a mother,
not
I need a
wife.

“I would be deeply honored,” he said, “if
you would consent to marry me.”

She took a breath. “‘Tis I who am honored,
my lord
—
especially considering...that our stations have
grown apart in recent years.”

“That means naught to me. You’re a lady in
every way that counts
—
more so than those silly young girls
my parents have been trotting out.”

“Ah. Prospective brides?”

He nodded ruefully. “And not one over
fourteen, nor with a whit of sense. I have no intention of giving
my children over to the care of another child.”

Quietly she said, “What of the lady
Margaret?”

He released her hand. “What of her?”

Choosing her words carefully, Joanna said,
“She’s wonderful with your daughters, and they’re obviously very
attached to her.”

Robert shifted his gaze to the three girls
romping in the stream. “She’s always loved children.”

“I was wondering, if you do remarry...if we
were to marry...” Joanna hesitated, then forged ahead. “Would
Margaret remain at Ramswick?”

He looked sharply at her. “Nay. ‘Twouldn’t
be...” Clearly unsettled, he looked away. “‘Twouldn’t be necessary,
for one thing.”
‘Twouldn’t be right.
Joanna suspected that’s
what he’d been about to say. “The girls would have you to provide
for them as a mother would. They wouldn’t need Margaret.”

“Will she return to her family, then?”

He shook his head, gazing across at tiny St.
Stephen’s Church, built right on the bank of the stream. “We’ve
discussed it, she and I. When I marry, she’ll take holy vows.”

“She’s going to become a nun?”

He nodded without looking at her; a muscle
tensed in his jaw. “A teaching nun, so she can be with
children.”

“I...didn’t realize she was that pious.”

Robert didn’t answer that, nor did he look
at her.

“Catherine and Beatrix will miss her,”
Joanna said.

“Children adapt
—
better than we do.”
Smiling in a way that looked forced, he took her hand again.
“You’re a good woman, Lady Joanna, and I would like you to marry
me. I’ll be the best husband to you I can be. I’d never...” He
paused, seemingly discomfited. “Hugh told me about your husband. I
would never treat you like that.”

“I know that. ‘Tisn’t in you.”

“You needn’t give me your answer today,” he
said. “I know there’s much to think about. You’ll be uniting
yourself not just with me, but with my children
—
and with
Ramswick as well. ‘Tis a farming manor, and I tend to get the earth
under my fingernails. I dress in braies and russet shirts, like my
villeins, and I’m afraid there’s always a bit of manure on me
somewhere.”

She laughed; it sounded like heaven after
Prewitt. “I wouldn’t try to change you, if that’s what you’re
worried about.”

“I didn’t think you would.”

Perhaps, she reflected, that was one reason
he’d chosen her over the vacuous young girls his mother and father
had tried to betroth him to. Not that his parents didn’t still
wield a powerful influence over him, for it was because of them
that he continued to forsake Margaret, but at least he’d decided to
select his own bride this time.

He took her other hand and faced her
squarely. “May I kiss you?”

“Aye.”

Leaning down, he pressed his lips lightly
near the edge of her mouth, but not actually touching it. She felt
a little ticklish warmth, the light scrape of his jaw against hers,
and nothing else. Her heart didn’t speed, her breath didn’t
quicken. She didn’t want more.

Graeham Fox didn’t even have to touch her to
make her hunger for more. She had but to stand near him, and the
very air between them crackled, like the atmosphere before a
violent storm. The few times they’d been in physical contact, she’d
felt the lightning charge of his touch right down into her deepest,
most hidden places. When he looked at her, her skin prickled hot
beneath her clothes.

Robert of Ramswick, handsome though he was,
and noble of character, did not have the power to make her quiver
with longing. Could she learn to love him? Possibly; she liked him
immensely. At the very least, she would grow quite fond of him. How
could she not? He was as nearly perfect a man as she’d ever
known.

Robert would never use or exploit
her
—
except as a substitute mother for his children, and
he’d been frank about that from the beginning. And she couldn’t
imagine his ever bringing another woman into their home. He was
incapable of such base behavior. She would never have to bear that
pain again.

“I’m bringing the girls into the city on St.
John’s Eve to see the Midsummer Watch,” he said. “That’s the
four-and-twentieth day of June, ten days from now. Is that enough
time for you to make up your mind, do you think?”

“Aye
—
you’ll have your answer
then.”

He smiled. “You’ll join us for the
festivities, won’t you? You and Hugh?”

“Aye, I’d like that.”

“Shall we meet at nones at the cross in
front of St. Michael la Querne?”

“We’ll be there.”

* * *

“I’m going marketing,” Joanna told Graeham
the next morning, a bald lie.
If he can lie straight-face to me,
I can do the same,
she rationalized, but lying always had made
her queasy.

“What about the shop?” he asked, wiping his
razor on his wash rag. It was beyond her how he managed to look so
devilishly handsome with his face half-covered with soap
lather.

“I’ll just open it a little later than
usual. I don’t get that many customers this early in the morning.
As a matter of fact,” she added, fiddling nervously with the handle
of her marketing basket, “now that money’s not such a problem, I
thought I’d start opening it later every day so that I’d have more
time beforehand for my chores and errands.”

“Makes sense.” He hunkered down to peer into
the little propped-up looking glass, raised his chin and skimmed
the blade over his throat.

“Just so you know where I am,” she said,
backing out of the storeroom.
Shut up, you dunderhead. Just shut
up and leave.

He looked at her without pausing in his
shaving, holding her gaze for a moment that seemed just a hair too
long. “Thank you.”

Leaving by the back door, she detoured to
the kitchen, in front of which Thomas Harper sat, his empty bowl in
his lap, having finished the porridge she’d poured for him
earlier.

“More porridge, Thomas?”

“Nay, mistress.” He patted his stomach.
“‘Twas quite enough. I’m just resting here for a while before I
have to get up and start trekking about.”

“Sit there as long as you like,” she said,
ducking into the kitchen. People like Thomas didn’t have too many
places to sit, because no one wanted to touch anything that had
been touched by a leper, so Joanna had set a barrel out in front of
the kitchen that could be his alone. She kept a bucket of fresh
water next to it, which Thomas used for drinking and washing.

In the cool, dim stone kitchen hut Joanna
wrapped a hunk of rye bread and a piece of cheese in waxed linen
and set them in the bottom of her basket. Ladling some porridge
into a small iron pot with a tight-fitting lid, she tucked it in
next to the other food. She filled a goatskin flask with well water
and put that in, covering the contents of the basket with a
napkin.

“Who’s the food for?” Thomas asked when she
came out of the kitchen.

“Shh.” Joanna glanced toward the storeroom
window, wondering if Graeham was watching her from within; he was
hard to see from outside. “A friend,” she whispered. “I don’t want
the serjant to know.”

Thomas frowned. At least, she thought he
did; it was hard to tell, what with his disfigured face. “There’s a
great deal you don’t want him to know, it seems,” he said softly.
“I don’t like keeping secrets from friends, mistress. Especially
when it’s another friend asking me to keep the secret. Secrets are
naught but lies one is too cowardly to tell outright.”

Joanna nodded, touched despite Thomas’s
gentle censure that he considered her a friend. “I know. I’m sorry.
I won’t put you in this spot again.”

His one good eye took on a faraway look.
When he spoke, his voice was low and raw. “Seven years ago, when
the first few sores appeared on my face, they wrapped me in a
shroud, read the burial service over me and pronounced me dead to
the world. I was told I might never again enter a church or
monastery, an inn or tavern or bakehouse, a shop, a mill, a home
such as yours
—
anywhere healthy people might be about. I’m
not to bathe in streams nor walk on narrow footpaths. I’m forbidden
for the rest of my earthly existence to eat with others, take a
child in my arms, make love to a woman.”

Joanna was speechless; Thomas had never
discussed his plight with her, except to make light of it.

“That’s the worst of it,” he said. “Not
being able to touch, or be touched. The rest...” He shrugged. “One
learns to make do. But to be so...apart from others that you can’t
reach out and take someone’s hand...” He shook his head. “Of
course, even if someone did touch me, I wouldn’t feel it, the
condition I’m in
—
but at least I’d know I was being
touched. I never gave much thought to being close to people when I
was healthy. I took it for granted. You may find this hard to
believe, but there was a time when I didn’t lack for the company of
women.”

“I don’t find that hard to believe at all,”
she said.

“‘Twas the harp, I think
—
women were
drawn to the music. Everywhere I played, ladies were eager to grant
me their favors. I fell in love with one once, in Arundel. Her name
was Bertrada. She wanted me to stay there and marry her.”

“What happened?”

“I was young and arrogant and foolish. Much
as I loved her, I decided I wasn’t ready to settle down. I liked
traveling about, playing my harp in grand castles and seducing
beautiful women. So I pushed Bertrada away, using lies and secrets.
It worked
—
I was a free man again. I missed her horribly,
but I kept telling myself that someday, when I was ready to be tied
down, I’d meet another woman, someone just as sweet and giving and
quick-witted. Four years later, the first signs of my disease
ap-peared. The service of the dead was read over me and I was told
I could never touch a woman again
—
unless, of course, I was
already married to her. But I’d seen to that, hadn’t I?”