Suzanne Robinson (34 page)

“And I’m not sharing her.”

Derry grinned at him, and he grinned back.

“Fare you well, Lord Derry. And be wary in Scotland. I don’t wish to hear of you ending up slit from neck to groin on some barren mountain.”

“I go to the court of the Queen of Scots, who cultivates poets and musicians and French food. God’s blood, I wish her noblemen were as civilized as she, but I fear you’re right. The Scots nobles are rabid and untamed wolves. I will take heed. Fare you well, Blade, and your lovely Oriel.”

He watched Derry vanish into the crowd on the docks and felt a small hand on his arm. Oriel joined him, slipping her hand into the crook of his arm.

“He’s gone?”

“Yes,
chère.”

“He kissed me farewell and—”

“Kissed you!”

She smiled at him. “A most brotherly kiss.”

“Brotherly my arse.”

“Blade.”

He fumed and swore. “Someone should teach him—”

“Blade, look.” Oriel pointed to a group below on the docks.

Closing his eyes, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Is it the whole of your family?”

“Not Joan and her sisters, but the aunts have come breathing fire and pawing the ground. Saints, there’s George. He must have had men watching the docks. And there’s René with your horse.”

He lifted his head and turned to her. “Ah well,
chère
, this battle won’t be as terrible as those we’ve just survived.”

“Your ordeal has made you simple if you believe so.”

“Then come, we’d best charge and rout them before they gather their legions.”

Taking her hand and placing it on his arm, he guided her down the ramp to the dock. He nodded at René, who saluted him but remained a good distance from the others. As they stepped down, Aunt Faith saw them, raised an arm to point, and screeched. He winced, for the noise was like the scraping of metal against metal. George, Robert, and Livia rushed at them, and they were surrounded.

“By the rood, Fitzstephen, I’ll hang you by your privy parts from my highest turret.”

“A good morrow to you, George.”

George lunged at him. He dropped Oriel’s hand, touched his sleeve, and flicked the point of his dagger at George’s nose. Robert grabbed his brother and pulled him back while Livia shouldered both her sons aside with little effort.

“Oriel Richmond, you’ve disgraced the family,” she bellowed. “After all I’ve suffered with dear Leslie’s death, now you cavort abroad just to shame me.”

Faith joined her and whined. “The whole kingdom will know of your harlotry.”

“We’ll never be able to go to court again.”

“My daughters will grow old in spinsterhood.”

“My sons will never get worthy brides.”

“I shall die of dishonor and shame.”

Blade saw Oriel cover her ears and flush. “Silence!” He was gratified that he could roar louder than Aunt Livia. The woman’s mouth popped open, then snapped closed when he rounded on her and stared.

“A great misfortune befell me. An
old
enemy from France attacked, and Oriel was caught up in the fray. We’ll amend the mishap at once by—”

“God’s sacred arse, Nicholas, what have you done?”

Blade turned to see his father shouldering his way through dockhands and sailors. His father. The world seemed to fade from his perception, which fixed upon the dark-haired man looming in front of him.

He stared at that working mouth and remembered a time when he’d been so small that he had had to look up into that gaping maw. His ears filled with humiliating taunts from the past, with his mother’s screams, with his own. And in that moment his father’s face seemed to alter, and it seemed to Blade that he was looking at his own face in years hence.

“No,”
Blade said under his breath, his hand closing around the handle of his dagger. He wanted nothing more than to sink the dagger deep into his father’s gut.

Then Oriel touched his arm. He looked down at the small, vulnerable hand on his sleeve and jerked away from it.

A chill settled over his body and spirit. Oriel touched his hand, but he could not bring himself to meet her gaze. He did not want to be like his father. But the moment he’d encountered the man, he’d nearly killed him. He would be a danger to Oriel as long as she was married to him. What madness had led him to take that risk?

His father was bellowing. “Cursed brat, you’ll marry this girl at once or I’ll beat some honor into your skull with my fist.”

“Please,” Blade said softly, “do try. I’ve longed for a chance to ram my boot into your face.”

“You’re a caitiff puling wastrel, and you’ll marry at once.”

“I think not, dear Father For one sight of your loving face has convinced me that I will never marry. Good morrow to you all,” he said and shoved past George, leaving behind a white-faced Oriel.

Sending René to collect his possessions, Blade rode to the Bald Pelican. He would attend to the button ciphers. Finding five traitors would keep him busy and catching them without getting killed himself would require all his attention, leaving little time in which to feel pain, or to feel at all. But first he had a letter to write.

After a short ride that skirted the riverbank, he found the Bald Pelican. He slipped inside quietly, but as he did so, the patrons of the tavern fell silent. Gamblers, harlots, and pot boys stared at him. A wanton named Nan whispered, and his name hissed around the room. Mag emerged from the kitchen into the unaccustomed silence. Wiping her hands on her apron, she grinned at him.

“Ah, it’s my lovely, come home at last.”

Everyone resumed his own activities when she pursed her lips and sent a kiss floating toward him. She came to him as he headed for the stairs and trapped his arm, crushing it to her bare breasts.

“You vanished like one of them pixies, lovely.”

“You never complained before.”

“You never sent Inigo back with two black eyes and a broken nose. Why do you think these sods mooned at you? Word is you’ve run afoul of Jack Midnight again. He’s been looking for you.”

“If he’s fortunate, he won’t find me.”

“It’s the talk of the streets. Every cutpurse and bawd in the city knows he’s on to you. He says you ruined a bargain he’d struck. He’s prowling around like a baited bear complaining you’ve destroyed his plans for his old age.”

“No doubt.”

Blade freed his arm and mounted the stairs. She caught up with him on the landing.

“Jack Midnight’s a bad man to cross, lovely.”

He paused at the door to his chamber. “Mag, Jack Midnight’s a sodding angel compared to the man who made me his guest these past few days. And now, if you will send for a barrel of ale, I would like to drink until I can’t see or stand.”

“God’s wounds, this is all your doing!”

Oriel’s voice boomed throughout the hall of her cousin George’s house on the banks of the Thames River. She paced back and forth before Lord Fitzstephen, her cousins and aunts, her skirts whipping about her legs. She poked a finger at Livia.

“We were to be married this very day.”

“I’ll find him,” Blade’s father said.

Oriel rounded on him. She advanced upon Lord Fitzstephen, pinioning him with her gaze. “If you don’t quit this city at once, I’ll pay a cutpurse to slit your throat. I’ll pay a hundred cutpurses, and I can pay the price to have the work done quickly.”

“You little harlot, you need a whipping.” Lord Fitzstephen raised a fist.

George barked at him and would have stepped between the man and Oriel, but she shoved him aside Planting her feet apart, she doubled her fists and put them on her hips.

“Lift a hand to me, and I’ll tear it from your arm with my teeth. I know about you. You’re a beater of women and children. You may thank God I was raised a Christian, or I’d have cut off your privy organ for what you’ve done to my Blade.”

Her relatives gaped at her, mouths working silently. She jabbed a finger into Fitzstephen’s chest. By now the man was so swollen with repressed fury his head looked like a ripe apple.

“Get you gone, sirrah, or I’ll have my cousins toss you out in the streets so hard you’ll land among the sops and dead dogs of Houndsditch.”

Lord Fitzstephen sputtered and gave an impotent roar. He eyed George and Robert, whose hands had touched their swords, then stomped out of the hall.

“O—ri-el!” bellowed Aunt Livia.

Faith wailed. “The disgrace. I shall be mortified.”

She ignored them and turned on George and Robert. Buffeting George on the shoulder, she snapped at him.

“Cease your mewling. You’re going to find my betrothed or I’ll hire those cutpurses to slit your throats instead, and remember, I’ve five caskets full of baubles to spend on the task. Off with you.”

George shoved Robert out of the hall before him.

Livia gawked at her son’s retreating back, then threw back her head and howled. “Geeooorge!” George vanished, and she scowled at Oriel. “You shameful little trollop.”

Oriel raised her fist until it floated in front of Livia’s nose. “It has been my dearest wish to poke you in the nose these eight long years.”

Livia’s eyes rounded and swelled to the size of pomegranates. “You dare not.”

“You’ve cost me my love. I would dare far more.” Oriel drew back her fist.

Livia squawked, turned, and fled. Oriel spun about and marched on Faith, who picked up her skirts and scampered after Livia. Slowly, she lowered her fist, but both hands remained clenched. She closed her eyes and saw again Blade’s storm cloud eyes looking at her, but not seeing her for the cloying mist of pain that surrounded him. Those eyes, they had shown her a glimpse of hell, of a self-hatred she’d never dreamed existed.

He believed himself a danger to her, and would destroy himself rather than imperil her with his presence. She had watched him transform once faced with the specter of his own father. He’d closed up, marshaling his unyielding will, and she had been left alone.

She wouldn’t allow him to abandon her again. She would hunt him down and crack that armor of resolve before he took himself off in search of some new intrigue. She would hunt him down and make him face her, and quickly, for the longer they were apart, the stronger his rage and fear would grow until they would engulf his love for her, and burn it to ashes.

George and Robert searched for three days before they found the man she knew only as Inigo. Shoving him into her presence in the hall, they grinned at her like two hounds presenting their master with a pheasant. He peered at her over the thick bandage that covered his nose. He sported two black eyes and still spoke as though someone had stuffed wool up his nose.

“You are Inigo.”

“Yes, lady, and you’re the one what tried to save, er,” he glanced at George and bobbed his head. “Yes, lady.”

“You will take me to Blade at once. He’s not at his house, and you no doubt frequent the same foul haunts.”

“I can’t do that, lady.”

“Inigo, I’ve been abducted, stabbed at, hied me clear across the channel and back, slept in leaves and dirt, and all to lose my lord once I got home again.” She drew a dagger she’d stuffed in her girdle and tapped it on Inigo’s bandage. “If you don’t tell me where he is, I’ll show you that my lord isn’t the only one worthy of the name Blade.”

Inigo put his hands over his nose. “God save me, you’re just like him.”

“No, for he would give you a moment to think. I am going to slit your nose.” She moved the dagger.

“Wait, lady!” Inigo shrank away from her. “You won’t like where he’s gone. It’s not a place for you.”

“I’ll slit each nostril.”

“He’s at the Bald Pelican”

“Show me.”

“He’ll do more than slit my nose if he finds out I’ve told you.”

Oriel picked up her cloak from a chair. “Then you have a choice. I can slit it now, or you may put off the ordeal a while. George, you and Robert will escort me.”

“I’m not challenging him,” Robert said as he followed her.