Suzanne Robinson (20 page)

“It’s a leaf,” he said.

“Yes, a leaf that is just floating there. The background is plain. There are no trees or bushes. Why is a leaf hidden in the background of the queen’s painting?”

“Mayhap it’s a device of the artist.”

Oriel shook her head until her curls flew in his face. “It wasn’t there when Uncle hung the portrait. I know because we inspected the painting thoroughly.”

“Wondrous strange. Think you it’s another of your uncle’s hints?”

“Perhaps. But why a leaf?”

Blade studied the faint design. “It’s an oak leaf.”

“Uncle Thomas loved oaks. He used to say he’d spent the happiest hours of his youth in the north country dales, lush with oak and hazel.”

Blade threw up his hands. “Another fine hint from your uncle. No doubt he meant us to search an entire dale.”

“I think not,” Oriel said.

“We haven’t time for such machinations. I’m losing patience with your uncle,
chère.”

She smiled and patted his arm. “He did love puzzles.”

“Ha!” Leslie burst into the library and stopped before them, beaming with merriment. “George grew worried because you both left the table. I’m here as I promised, Fitzstephen, your faithful hound.”

“Damnable oaf, you’re as welcome as a cutpurse in the merchants’ guildhall.”

Leslie bowed, laughing at him. “I know it well, and therefore I suggest that we go riding. The exercise will distract you from thoughts of further seducing my fair cousin.”

“Leslie!” Oriel batted him on the shoulder.

“Don’t chastise me, coz. You’re the one with the great appetite for grey-eyed wastrels.”

“Close your mouth, Richmond,” Blade said, “and lead the way to the stables before I box your ears for insulting my lady.”

They followed Leslie out of the library. As they walked down the gallery, Oriel snapped her fingers.

“Oak leaves! Uncle used oak leaves to mark his place in books.”

“Then there must be quite a number of oak leaves in the library.”

“Yes. Let’s go back.”

Blade shook his head and pulled her along with him. “We can’t. Leslie would come with us. We must find another opportunity to sneak away.”

“You know,” Oriel said. “There’s one place more than any other where there are oak leaves aplenty in the library.”

“Where?”

“In Uncle’s journal. The binding is covered with embossed oak leaves. Oh!” Oriel clutched his arm as they walked. “Do you think Uncle was killed because of something in his journal?”

“Mayhap,
chère
, and if he was, and we find it, we will be in danger as well.”

To be in love and in danger at the same time made her shiver with fear and excitement, or mayhap it was the cold. She was riding beside Blade in the forested dale surrounding Richmond Hall. She might as well have been riding on a cloud, for in spite of Blade’s warnings of danger, her happiness wafted her along as though she was flying.

She’d lost her senses and allowed him to make love to her, and it was the most fortunate thing she’d ever done. Even now she could imagine the pressure of his hands on her body. She still tingled from this new passion that banished all others. She loved him.

Stealing a glance at Blade, she watched his legs flex as he rode, saw the ripple of thigh muscles. Her gaze
wandered to his lips. She thought of all the places they’d been, and she blushed. Best turn her thoughts to less arousing matters since Leslie rode behind them.

Where had she put Uncle Thomas’s journal? Shortly before his death she’d come across it while piling books out of the way. She remembered being surprised that it was among the works on mathematics, history, and other texts to be cataloged, for Uncle always kept it in his room. Before she remembered to ask him about it, Uncle Thomas was dead. It was still there, somewhere, among the hundreds of books still to be looked at.

Uncle must have believed someone wanted the journal, someone evil, or he wouldn’t have hidden it by placing it in the library. She shied away from the idea that someone in the household might have killed him, though she knew it was a possibility. She turned her thoughts instead to Anne Boleyn, dead for so many years. What about her could be so important? Anne Boleyn was only of note because she was Her Majesty’s mother. King Henry had gone to great lengths to make their liaison official so that Elizabeth would be born legitimate. He’d been furious that she was a girl, legitimate or not. Legitimate.

“Legitimate!”

“What did you say,
chère?”

Blade was regarding her inquiringly. She looked over her shoulder at Leslie, and he grinned at her. She shooed him away with her hand, and he slowed his horse so that the distance between them widened. She nudged her horse closer to Blade’s stallion.

“I have an idea—something that Uncle Thomas may have known and written in his journal.” She stopped and glanced back to make sure Leslie was too far away to hear. “Perhaps he knew something about Her Majesty’s birth. Something that might cause her legitimacy to be questioned. Perilous knowledge to have. If so, no wonder he never spoke of it.”

“Think you so?” Blade frowned and appeared to
consider her suggestion. “God’s blood, we’d better find that journal soon, for who knows what evil purpose the murderer intends for it.”

“The murderer,” she said. “Surely he must be one of the servants. I can’t believe anyone in the family would kill Uncle Thomas. Why, families don’t do that to each other.”

He leaned down to pat the neck of his stallion before he answered. “You’d stand amazed at what people of the same family can do to each other. Think of what old King Henry did to his wives, and to his daughter Mary. Your cousin Robert is a Catholic,
chère
, and one who thinks the Queen of Scots is the rightful queen of England. Mayhap he’s decided to help her gain the throne by destroying the legitimate claim of our good Queen Bess.”

She didn’t answer at once. At first she was angry with him for impugning Robert, but then logic demanded that she acknowledge the truth. Robert made no secret of his opinions, which was the chief reason George and Aunt Livia disliked him so. Afore God, she wasn’t used to intrigue and machinations, and found it difficult to think in the twisty, deceitful ways necessary to divine the secrets of this mystery. Blade, however, seemed at ease with plots and danger.

Something about this last thought gave her pause. Blade Fitzstephen seemed to take to intrigue and mystery as if he were born to it. And now that she thought about it, he had spent all those years at the French court. He’d told her he’d even met the Queen of Scots when she was married to the French King Francis II. He’d been there when her husband died and she had to go back to Scotland, the queen of
only
one country instead of two. He had said he stayed in France because of his French possessions, and because he and his father didn’t bide well together. She knew little of his father, except that he must have a cruel nature to have made so dire an enemy of Blade.

“Chère
, we must find the journal quickly.”

“What? Oh, yes, we must, but Leslie won’t leave us alone, so I will search later by myself.”

“You will not. What have I been telling you about the peril of searching for something for which your uncle was killed?”

She cast an irritated glance at him. “I must search. I know what the journal looks like and I also know the library better.”

“Then we must search while Leslie is with us.”

“But you said we must be secret.”

Blade assumed an air of innocence. “True. Therefore Leslie will sleep while we search.”

“What mean you?”

“Have you ever heard of the root called All Heal?”

She nodded, then gasped, “Saints, you mean to put some in his drink?”

“We’ll send for ale when we return to the Hall.”

“This root—it won’t harm him, will it?”

“Marry, think you I would poison him?”

“Of course not.”

She looked back at Leslie and found that her cousin had stopped and was talking to a peddler bearing a large pack and wearing layer upon layer of tattered and patched clothing. As she watched, their voices raised, though she couldn’t make out what they said. Suddenly Leslie’s booted foot shot out and jammed into the peddler’s chest.

“Blade, look!”

As they turned their horses, Leslie jumped from his mount and landed on the prostrate peddler. Blade’s stallion leaped past her, and she watched as he galloped back down the path to the men, who were rolling on the snow-packed ground. Without waiting for the horse to halt, Blade dropped from the saddle, raced to the fighters, and shouldered his way between the two.

“Out of my way!” Leslie backed up and drew his
sword. “I’m going to teach this bastard a lesson in manners. He’ll learn not to mock his betters.”

“Sodding caitiff, it was you started it, calling me a bloody whoreson lout.”

“God’s breath,” Leslie said. “I’ve never met a common wretch with such a desire to die.”

Leslie tried to lunge past Blade, who rammed his shoulder into the younger man’s chest. Leslie bounced back and cursed. The peddler meanwhile was shouldering his pack. He tramped through the snow past Oriel. As he went by he grinned at her, placed a wooden box in her hands, and winked. She stared at him as he left, but Leslie’s curses distracted her. Blade had her cousin in a bear grip.

“Release me!”

“Master yourself, you fool. Would you shed blood in front of Oriel?”

Leslie stopped struggling, and Blade dropped his arms.

“I forgot myself,” Leslie said “But the foul jade wouldn’t show me his papers. I’m sure he hasn’t got permission to sell his wares. No doubt he’s a thief.”

“Someday,” Oriel said, “someday your temper will land you in a fine mess, Leslie Richmond.” She glanced around. “The peddler’s gone.”

Blade whistled to his horse and held out his hand to the stallion as he came trotting up. “In any case, I’ll have no quarreling and bloodshed in Oriel’s presence And now that you’ve trounced him, we’ll not see him again.”

Oriel looked down at the box in her hands. “He gave me this.”

Both men came to stand beside her horse as she opened the box.

“Comfits,” she said.

“Comfits,” Blade repeated. “Comfits. No doubt he meant them as atonement for his misbehavior.”

Oriel picked up a piece of candied fruit, a date, and popped it in her mouth.

Later, after they had returned home, Oriel waved a serving man out of the withdrawing room next to the library and grasped a flagon of ale by its handle. The silver vessel knocked one of the goblets on the tray that was on the side table.

“Let me help you,
chère.”

Blade came to stand beside her while Leslie picked up an ivory lute he’d found resting in a chair and sank to the pillows beside it. Oriel’s hands were shaking. She was glad when Blade took the flagon from her and poured the ale. She couldn’t stop herself from sneaking a glance at Leslie. He wasn’t watching. He plucked at the strings of the lute.

She returned her attention to Blade and watched, fascinated, as he touched the heavy signet ring on his right hand. The bezel slid aside to reveal a compartment filled with fine, dark powder.

“Know you a tune?” he asked calmly as he tipped the ring and emptied its contents into a goblet of ale.

Swallowing hard, Oriel watched the powder dissolve instantly.

“I prefer,” Leslie said, “to listen to you, Fitzstephen, rather than embarrass myself by singing before one so gifted.”

Blade swirled the ale in the goblet and handed it to Oriel. She took it, and their eyes met. He was no more disturbed than if he were a priest serving communal wine. He’d done this before, she realized abruptly, perchance many times.

“Who are you?” she whispered, suddenly frightened.

He looked from her to the goblet and back again. “Why, I’m Blade. Serve the ale,
chère.”