Silken Threads (47 page)

“It must have been something of a shock,”
she said, “finding out you were the son of Gilbert de
Montfichet.”

“It took some getting used to. On
reflection, though, I should have suspected him
—
or someone
of his rank. Why else would Lord Gui have been willing to betroth
his beloved daughter to a baseborn serjant? In his eyes, I was
Graeham fitz Gilbert, the son of a baron.”

“I imagine ‘twas a bittersweet meeting
between you and Lord Gilbert.”

“More sweet than bitter...until he gave me
your letter.”

“Ah. My letter.” She squeezed his hand.

“You gave no indication of where you might
have gone off to. I
had
to find you. I immediately returned
to London.”

“Really?”

“The fellow who bought your house told me
I’d only missed you by a few days. He had no idea where you went
to, and neither, of course, did anyone else. I questioned Olive and
Damian, Robert of Ramswick, Brother Simon, all your neighbors...I
was at my wits’ end. I left London and spent a fortnight just
riding from one village to another, asking if anyone had seen
you.”

“Oh, Graeham.”

“Finally I had to return to Beauvais so I
could take Phillipa back across the Channel. When I got there, I
discovered that Lord Gui had a houseguest who’d shown up
unexpectedly a few days before
—
one Hugh of Wexford.”

She gaped at him. “Hugh?”

“He’d come looking for me while I was in
England searching for you.”

“
Hugh?
But...but he vowed that he
wouldn’t seek you out.”

“Actually, what he swore to
—
as he
tells it
—
was that he wouldn’t separate me from my privy
parts. And, indeed, he made no attempt to do so. He did try to beat
me to a bloody pulp.”

She reached up and touched the scars on his
face. “He broke your nose.”

“I returned the favor.”

“You broke Hugh’s nose?”

“I wasn’t about to just stand there and let
him pummel me to death, even if I did admire his motives.” Graeham
grinned. “He thanked me for it afterward. Said he’d been too damned
handsome.”

“That sounds like my brother. I take it you
two came to some sort of an understanding.”

“Aye, after I finally managed to explain to
him what I’ve just explained to you. He cheered right up, slapped
me on the back and told me where to find you. Then he set off for
the Rhineland.”

Joanna laughed. “He told me he’d stay angry
at you till he drew his dying breath.”

“Hugh said that? He could never hold a
grudge.”

“I know.”

Graeham trailed his callused fingertips
lightly over her face, stroked her lips. “God, it’s good to see you
smile, Joanna. I’ve missed your smile. Please tell me you don’t
hate me anymore.”

“I don’t hate you anymore. I don’t think I
ever did, not really
—
although I tried very hard to.”

He searched her eyes, his penetrating gaze
seeing right through to her soul. “Tell me you love me.
Please.”

“I love you,” she said, her throat suddenly
tight, her eyes burning with impending tears. “I love you, Graeham,
I do.”

He grabbed her and kissed her, hard.

“I never wanted you for my mistress,” he
whispered hoarsely against her lips. “You know that, don’t
you?”

She nodded.

“I want you for my wife,” he said.

She nodded again; hot tears spilled from her
eyes. He brushed them away with his thumbs.

“I don’t deserve you,” he said, “not after
the way I’ve mucked things up. And I know you must be concerned
about my prospects. There’s the baby to think about,
and
—
”

“We can live here,” she said, curling her
hand around his neck and kissing him. “It doesn’t matter where we
live. I’d live in the humblest mud hut with you. I’d sell eggs and
take in laundry. It doesn’t matter, Graeham. I love you. I want to
be your wife.”

“Truly? Even if I could offer you
nothing?”

She touched her stomach. “You’ve already
given me so much. I can’t imagine anything better than to live with
you right here and fill this little cottage with children. That’s
all I want
—
I swear it.”

He rested his forehead against hers and
grinned. “Then I suppose you’ll want me to turn down the holding my
father has offered me.”

She felt herself gaping at him. “Lord
Gilbert, he...”

“He said it was high time he did the right
thing by me. He granted me the manor of Eastingham, not far from
London. It’s twenty hides of some of the best farmland in the area,
with a charming little village right in the middle of it. And there
are orchards, ponds, woodlands, sprawling pasturage for sheep and
cows
—
”

“This...this is all going to be yours?”

“Ours. It already is. I’ve been there. They
call me Lord Graeham.”

“Lord Graeham,” she said softly,
disbelievingly. “Graeham of Eastingham.”

“And you, my lady, are now Joanna of
Eastingham. Or you will be as soon as I can find a priest to marry
us. Oh, and best of all, there’s a ridiculously huge manor
house
—
a
stone
manor house, with room for lots more
children than we could ever fit in here.” He adopted a look of mock
gravity. “But if you’d like, I’ll tell him we don’t want it.”

“There’s no need to do that.”

“No, really.” He rubbed his scratchy jaw
against her cheek. “If you’d rather stay here, it’s perfectly all
right with me. I only want to please you.”

“You do, do you?” She kissed him, took him
in her arms.

“Oh, yes.” He trailed a hand from her throat
to her chest, closing it over a breast straining the confines of
her kirtle. “Pleasing you is all I’ve been able to think about of
late.”

“Do you know what would please me right now,
my lord?” she murmured in his ear.

“God, I hope so,” he said, lowering her onto
the bed.

And as it happened, he did.

###

Read on for more about the author and her
books, plus an EXCERPT from Hugh of Wexford’s story, THE SUN AND
THE MOON...

Author’s Note

The premise for
Silken Threads
came
to me while I was presenting a workshop on The Story Idea at a
writers’ conference. I was discussing a method of story generation
popular with screenwriters wherein you take some element from an
existing story—be it a novel, movie, or television show—and start
playing with it. You twist it around, switching genders, time
periods, or any other factors that will give it a fresh spin, then
use it to launch an entirely new—and hopefully fresh and
original—story. A well-known example of this is
West Side
Story,
a modern
Romeo and Juliet.

To illustrate this concept of plot-morphing
with one of my favorite films, I said, “For example, you could take
Alfred Hitchcock’s classic romantic suspense movie,
Rear
Window,
in which Jimmy Stewart, sitting by his apartment window
with a broken leg, tries to investigate a murder he suspects was
committed across the courtyard. Instead of a modern city, you could
set the story in, say, medieval London. Ooh! The heroine could be
the woman the hero rents his room from...”

A murmur of excitement rose from the
audience. “Dibs!” I shouted, and went home to pitch the idea to my
editor, who was just as intrigued by it as I was.

Of course, the final result—this novel—took
on a life of its own from the very beginning, and differs from the
movie that inspired it in many significant ways. Nevertheless, in
homage to
Rear Window,
and in light of the fleeting cameos
that Alfred Hitchcock played in all of his films, I’ve given the
great filmmaker a small walk-on role in
Silken Threads.
He’s
easy to spot if you look for him. Just look for that famous
silhouette in Chapter 19.

Joanna’s brother, the charming and dangerous
Hugh of Wexford, stars in this book’s follow-up,
The Sun and the
Moon.
Inspired by
Notorious,
another great Hitchcock
romantic suspense movie—and my favorite film of all time—it won the
Romantic Times
Reviewers’ Choice award for Best Historical
Romantic Mystery/Suspense, as well as a RITA nomination. And yes,
Alfred makes an appearance in that book, too—right in Chapter
1.

If you enjoyed
Silken Threads,
be
sure to check out my other medieval romances and historical
mysteries, which are listed at the front of this book.

Chapter 1 of Hugh of Wexford’s Story

THE SUN AND THE MOON

by Patricia Ryan

Awarded the
Romantic Times
Reviewers’
Choice Award for Best Historical Romantic Mystery/Suspense and
nominated for Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award for Best Long
Historical Romance. Featured in the Doubleday Book Club and
Rhapsody Book Club. Available as an electronic book.

“Patricia Ryan holds readers in her grasp
with mystery and suspense worthy of a Hitchcock film. Once you
start this nonstop read you won't go to bed until you’ve turned the
last page. Kudos to Ms. Ryan for bringing such a satisfying tale to
life and pushing the boundaries of the genre once more.”
Romantic Times

June 1172, Oxford, England

“That’s her,” the young man whispered,
pointing toward a bench in the rear of the candlelit church, packed
this evening with scholars listening intently as an earnest young
lector held forth on the application of reason to faith. “That’s
the one you’re looking for.”

“Which one is she?” Hidden in the shadows of
the nave, Hugh of Wexford squinted toward the bench, on which sat a
handful of women amid a sea of males clad in identical black
academic robes, most with tonsures shaved into the crowns of their
heads, some in clerical skullcaps.

“The pretty one,” said the young man, a
mendicant scholar judging from the shabbiness of his black cappa
and his eagerness to earn the tuppence Hugh had offered in exchange
for pointing out his quarry. “The one without the veil.”

Seven women occupied the bench. Four looked
to be nuns, if their wimples and black tunics were any indication.
Two, also veiled but not quite as severely attired, were probably
local matrons whose husbands indulged them by allowing them access
to Oxford’s
studium generale,
a loose association of
students and masters still in its infancy but already renowned
throughout Europe for its enlightened scholarship.

Then there was the unveiled woman.
“
That’s
Phillipa de Paris?” Hugh frowned as he studied her.
He’d been told she was five-and-twenty, but with her petite stature
and enormous, dark eyes, she looked far younger. Clad in an
unadorned but well-made blue tunic, her black hair plaited in two
long braids falling over her chest, she more closely resembled an
unworldly young girl than a self-sufficient, free-thinking woman
scholar—or what he’d imagined such a creature to look like, this
being his first encounter with the rare breed. The only real
indication of her scholastic calling was the document case of
tooled leather that hung from her girdle.

“Aye, that’s her,” the youth said. “She
comes to most of the arithmetic and geometry lectures, and all the
disputatios
on logic. Sometimes she even gets up on her
bench and argues points along with the others. I’ve seen it with my
own two eyes!”

“Indeed.” Hugh rubbed his jaw, coarse with
nearly a week’s growth of beard. He’d expected her to be not only
older-looking, but plainer, perhaps even mannish, given her
immersion in the male domain of academia. And, too, she defied
convention by living so independently. For a maiden of noble birth
to make her own way in the world, with neither father nor husband
nor overlord to guide and protect her, was remarkable even in
broad-minded communities like Oxford. That this delicate waif had
managed such a feat was downright extraordinary.

It didn’t sit right, his having been sent
for the likes of her. Still, he had an assignment to fulfill, and
fulfill it he would.

The boy’s gaze lit on Hugh’s unkempt,
overgrown hair, on the wineskin and worn leather satchel slung
across his chest, and finally on the sharply curved Turkish dagger
sheathed in its ornate silver scabbard on his hip. “You mind my
asking what business you’ve got with the lady Phillipa?”

“Nay.” With his good left hand, Hugh dug two
silver pennies out of the kid purse hanging on his belt and handed
them over. “As long as you don’t expect an answer.”

“It’s just that...well, I don’t often see
your kind here in Oxford.”

“Nor did you tonight,” Hugh said, extracting
two more pennies from his purse. Hugh gave the boy a meaningful
look as he pressed the additional payment into his hand.

“Ah.” The young scholar nodded nervously as
he slid the coins into his own purse. “Right. Of course. I
under—”

“Carry on,” Hugh said dismissively,
returning his attention to the woman on the bench.

“Aye, sir. Good night to you, sir.”

Hugh lurked in the dimly lit nave until the
young lector switched from Latin to French—proper Norman French,
not the anglicized common tongue spoken in less rarified circles—to
announce that he was done with his presentation and that anyone who
cared to debate these matters was welcome to return for a
disputatio
at terce tomorrow. A drone of conversation filled
St. Mary’s Church as the scholars rose from their benches and filed
out into the night.

Hugh ducked behind a pillar as the lady
Phillipa passed by him, pinning a gray mantle over her shoulders as
she chatted with two lanky young men about what they had just
heard. “Ah, but is it really so critical to understand the nature
of universals,” she was saying in a soft, girlish voice, “if one
accepts the nominalist position that universals are but one element
in the realm of logic, which is really more about words, or how we
express concepts, than about absolute reality, which is to say
matters of metaphysic...”