The Widow's Kiss (13 page)

She turned aside for a minute, then said in a voice that sounded stifled, “Lord Hugh, I must have the magister at my side in London. It will take him at least a day to crate the books I’ll need. Surely you’ll not deny me the chance to defend myself.”

“That was never in question.” Hugh had the feeling that more lay beneath this conversation than was apparent, and yet he couldn’t identify it. Everything she said made sense, and he had no brief to deny her right to defend herself. If she needed books and her mentor he wouldn’t keep them from her. “You know the county better than I, madam … by the bye, Matlock is on the Derby road, is it not?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Mmm,” he murmured. Passing through Matlock would enable him to make some inquiries into Timothy Hadlow's death. Even though he had sufficient cause to accuse her of Mallory's murder, and he only needed one murder to bring her to Privy Seal, the circumstances of Hadlow's accident, if such it was, intrigued him. As indeed did the circumstances of Guinevere's marriage to Hadlow. He would like to discover whether it had been considered happy, and there would be tenants in Matlock and the surrounding countryside who would know things, and who would certainly have opinions.

“Very well,” he said with a brisk nod. “We will take the Derby road.”

“Then I’ll tell my people that they should try to catch up with us when we break the journey at Kedleston,” Guinevere said, her voice calm. “I assume you’ll permit us to rest for a day every so often? My children can’t be expected to ride day after day without respite. Every second day, they’ll need a break.”

“I had assumed as much,” Hugh said. “But when and
where we break the journey will be for me to decide. It’ll depend on weather conditions as much as anything else.”

“My daughters are not campaigners,” she said tartly. “You cannot expect from them what you expect from Robin.”

“I understand that,” he said quietly. “You need have no fear that I’ll expect more from them than they can manage.”

No, she thought. Whatever else she might fear it wasn’t that. She offered him a neutral smile. “I thank you, Lord Hugh, for your understanding.”

Hugh nodded, then said in a different tone, “What have you told Pen and Pippa?”

“What I imagine you’ve told Robin.” Her voice was sharp.

“There's no need for them to be alarmed,” he said in awkward agreement.

“Isn’t there, my lord?” Her eyes defied him to deny it. “Have you thought for one minute what will happen to my children?”

She turned in a swirl of dark red silk and walked away.

Hugh swung away into camp. He would take her daughters. He would fight for them in the proxy courts and he would win them. But how could he say that to Guinevere? Telling her that he had made determination for her children was tantamount to agreeing that she was about to end her life on the scaffold.

Just before dawn the next morning Hugh rode into the lower court. He sat his black destrier, one hand resting on the hilt of the sword at his hip, as he looked around at the bustle of departure. Two men were strapping wooden trunks onto the back of a packhorse. Grooms held Guinevere's milk-white mare, two ponies, and a sturdy mule. The mule was presumably for the tiring woman. It looked strong enough but it would slow them down. The ponies were of good blood, but they too wouldn’t have the speed of his own horses, or, indeed, of Guinevere's beautiful mare. And once the servants with their carts of provisions and books joined them the procession would slow even more.

He had close to two months to make the journey before the shortening days of autumn. He was going to need all that time, Hugh reflected grimly. Heading up a combination of nursery and traveling library was a far cry from commanding a brigade of hard-riding soldiers.

He glanced up at the lightening sky. His horse shifted beneath him, sensing his rider's impatience. Hugh wanted the business over and done with. He was wrenching a woman and her children from their home, and he had no wish to drag out the process.

Guinevere appeared from the house. She was with the magister and Crowder and did not immediately acknowledge Hugh's presence.

Guinevere knew he was there, though. It was impossible not to be aware of him in the early-morning gloom. He was such a … such a
substantial
figure, she thought, groping for the right word to describe him. Substantial, powerful … she could well imagine he inspired fear and awe in his men, and the mental image of him with drawn sword on a battlefield sent a shiver down her spine.

With that cropped iron-gray hair beneath a flat black cap, the piercing light of his brilliant blue eyes, his square shoulders accentuated by the leather doublet he wore beneath a short gown of gray worsted, he struck her as a veritable Genghis Khan, raiding and dispossessing innocent women and children. Even if she succeeded in escaping him, she was still going to be driven from her home, reduced to relative penury, condemned to lose everything she’d worked so hard for, to spend the rest of her life in
some form of exile. It was a recognition bitter as wormwood.

“We’ll be waiting for you at Cauldon, my lady,” Crowder said in a whisper.

“God willing,” she returned. “Where are the girls?”

“They wanted to say farewell to the dogs,” the magister told her.

Guinevere glanced across at the man on his horse. She could feel his impatience from here. “You’d better send someone to fetch them, Crowder.” She walked slowly towards the massive destrier. “Lord Hugh, you’re anxious to complete this dispossession, I see. ’Tis not yet dawn.”

He looked down at her, noting how pale and composed she was. But there were bruised shadows beneath her sloe eyes. She was wearing the gown of emerald green silk that she’d been wearing when he’d first seen her hunting in the woods; the same dark green hood with its jeweled edge set well back from her forehead revealing the pale shimmer of her hair.

“I see little point in delaying the inevitable, madam.”

“No.”

“Mama … Mama … is it time to go?” Pippa's voice preceded her flying appearance from the upper court. “We’ve been saying good-bye to the dogs and the stable cats. The big gray one, the one we call Wolf … her kittens are old enough to leave her now. Pen and me, we’re going to take one each with us. Oh, good morning, Lord Hugh. See my kitten.” She greeted him sunnily, holding up a tiny bundle of silver fur. “Pen's is ginger. It's a male and mine's female, so when we get to London they might have kittens together. We haven’t thought up names for them yet.”

God's bones! A nursery, a library, and now a farmyard!

He glanced at Guinevere and saw that she was regarding him with sly challenge, waiting to see how he was going to deal with this one.

“Your mother will explain to you why it's impossible for you to bring kittens on such a journey,” he said, with a decisive nod at Guinevere.

“Oh, but Mama, they’ll remind us of home,” Pen said, coming up to them clutching her own soft parcel of ginger fur. She was looking distressed, as if the reality of leave-taking had suddenly hit her. “We have to leave everything behind, couldn’t we just take these two? They won’t be any trouble. They’re so tiny.”

“Yes,
please!”
Pippa chimed in. “They won’t be any trouble, we’ll look after them, and they’ll remind us of home.”

Guinevere regarded Hugh with an undeniably malicious glimmer in her eye. “Just a memento,” she murmured. “It's so very hard for them to have to leave
everything
behind.”

Hugh glared at her. He could feel two pairs of pleading hazel eyes fixed hopefully upon him. How could he possibly refuse them in the circumstances? As Guinevere damn well knew, he reflected savagely. She was watching his dilemma with undisguised enjoyment.

He turned away from the mockery in her gaze and said curtly to the girls, “Very well. But they’re your responsibility and I don’t want to lay eyes on them,
ever.
Is that understood?”

“Oh, yes,” Pen said, her expression transformed. She tucked the kitten into her cloak. “Thank you.” She gave him a smile that was so like her mother's it took Hugh's breath away. No wonder Robin was smitten.

The sun rose above the horizon and the soft pink light filled the lower court, setting the mellow stone of the house aglow. “Mount up!” he commanded curtly. “I wished to leave at sunup. We’ve a good many miles to cover today.”

He turned his horse and rode through the arched doorway and out onto the gravel path. At the bridge he drew
rein and waited for them. The small procession of women and children emerged within minutes from the house and Hugh again felt that inconvenient stab of remorse … of fear for what lay ahead for them.

Supposing he just abandoned his mission. Just turned and rode away.

But why should he? Guinevere Mallory was no innocent. She had seduced four men, and four men had gone to their deaths. He had evidence of conspiracy, of deceit, of motivation for murder. She should be given the opportunity to defend herself from the charges, but it was not his business to absolve her.

Guinevere rode onto the bridge, then she turned her horse and looked up at her home. So beautiful, so peaceful, under the soft light of early morning. She could smell the roses from the gardens beyond the bridge. She looked across at the river, at the silver flash of a jumping fish, the widening ripples of its disappearance beneath the water. A dragonfly, brilliant blue, whirred above the water meadow.

She looked up at Hugh of Beaucaire and said coldly, “Well, my lord, if this forms part of your reward for my persecution, I trust you’ll cherish it.” Then she nudged her horse into motion and rode past him towards the gatehouse.

Robin and the soldiers were mounted and ready for departure just beyond the gatehouse. Hugh, still stinging from her remark, was tight-lipped as he instructed the children and Tilly to ride between two lines of his men. Robin eagerly took up his place beside Pen.

“My lady, you will ride with me,” Hugh said distantly.

Guinevere shrugged. “I am obedient to your orders, my lord.”

“It will be easier for everyone if that remains true,” he said, riding up to the head of the small cavalcade.

Guinevere followed him, contemplating a response,
but one look at his expression convinced her to remain silent, at least for the moment. She refused to glance behind her, to take one last look at her home. Anger and bitterness helped to keep the sorrow and fear at bay.

“Don’t expect any sympathetic help from me when one of those wretched kittens runs off and you have a wailing child on your hands,” Hugh said, unable to hide his continuing irritation.

“Why would I expect such help from you?” She was genuinely surprised he could have such an idea. “I can manage my daughters myself, Lord Hugh. As I always have done.”

“What of their father? Did he take no part in their upbringing?” Despite his annoyance, he waited with interest for her response.

“Pippa was a babe-in-arms when he died. Pen was barely three,” she replied in a low voice.

Hugh kept his eyes on the road ahead as he asked, “Did you love him?”
Now, why had he asked such a question? What difference did it make to anything?
And yet he wanted to know.

“I thought I was supposed to have had him killed,” she returned sarcastically. “Or did I shoot the arrow myself? I forget.”

“Did you love him?” Hugh repeated, and this time he turned to look at her.

Instead of answering, she asked her own question. “Did you love Robin's mother?”

“Yes,” he said simply. “I loved Sarah.”

“I loved Timothy Hadlow.”

The two statements lay between them in a silence that was somehow light, freed of resentment and irritation. It was almost as if they’d had a furious quarrel that had cleared the air, Guinevere thought, puzzled.

After a minute, she changed the subject. “Where do you intend to stop for the night?”

“Wherever we get to by late afternoon,” he said. “Somewhere between Matlock and Ambergate, I would think.”

“The convent at Wirksworth was once renowned for its hospitality to travelers,” Guinevere observed. “It would have been the ideal rest stop if Privy Seal's men hadn’t burned it to the ground. They raped the nuns too.”

“Be careful what you say. ’Tis known that Stephen Mallory adhered to the Church of Rome,” he warned her. “ ’Tis known that he had dealings with Robert Aske. Pitch sticks and it won’t help your cause.”

“Stephen knew the man, yes. But I did not,” she declared. “And as soon as Robert Aske's Pilgrimage of Grace ran into trouble, Stephen dropped Aske like a hot brick. Aske's in jail in York now, or so I heard.”

Robert Aske had started the Pilgrimage of Grace in the north of England to protest the dissolution of the monasteries. The risings had succeeded for a while the previous year, but had been put down by the Catholic Duke of Norfolk with a savagery that was fueled by self-preservation, by his need to prove himself loyal to the king even if it meant persecuting those who were defending his own faith.

“He’ll be executed,” Hugh said grimly. “And it won’t be an easy death. Take my advice and steer clear of the subject in London. It reeks of treason.”