Knight of Passion (31 page)

Agnes’s face was flushed. “You criticize the judgment of men of God?”

They were having a real argument now.

Jamie took a deep breath. She was speaking from ignorance. Once she experienced “conjugal relations,” she was bound to change
her mind.

“While the church encourages husbands to forgo their marital rights,” she said in a calmer voice, “it does permit the activity
on more days than is necessary for procreation.”

Jamie remembered laughing about this with his friends. One long evening during a siege, they had attempted to count the prohibited
days as they sat around their camp-fire drinking. They had stopped at three hundred.

He was not laughing now.

Agnes sniffed. “That is the church’s preference. A wife, however, is not permitted to refuse her husband.”

Just to be contrary, Jamie said, “Under the law, a wife may demand her conjugal rights as well.”

Agnes made a very unpleasant sound through her nose. “I shall have to discuss this with the abbess at length when next I see
her.” She furrowed her brow, apparently lost in contemplation of sin and marital conjugation. “It seems unfair that I should
be tainted by my husband’s sin if he is weak. And yet, it would be a sin to wish my husband would satisfy his carnal lust
elsewhere.”

Jamie swallowed. “Avoidance of sin is the only reason you would not want your husband to lie with other women?”

She blinked several times, as if she was trying to puzzle through some great mystery. “What other reason could there be?”

“Time for us to return to the house.” He took her arm and started walking, determined not to think about what she had said.

As they crossed the field to the house, he felt as if stones weighed on his chest, making it hard to breathe.

L
innet heard a knock on the front door, followed by her maid’s feet on the stairs. There was not one person in all of London
she wished to see. When her maid appeared on the solar’s threshold, she held her breath, waiting to hear who it was.

Lizzie clenched her skirts and darted her eyes about the room. “A priest is here, m’lady. He says he must speak with you.”

Linnet wondered at her maid’s unease. Though she could not imagine why a cleric had come to see her, she could think of no
harm in it. She revised her opinion when she went down and saw the black-robed man waiting outside the door. What did Eleanor
Cobham’s clerk want with her?

“Father Hume.” She dipped her head slightly, but she did not invite him inside.

She had forgotten meeting him and Margery Jourdemayne on the stairs to the undercroft at Windsor almost as soon as it happened.
The memory of it now made her uneasy. She’d never liked this sinister priest, who followed Eleanor like a shadow.

The priest glanced up and down the street before he spoke. “I have come to bring you a warning from a friend.”

Linnet raised her eyebrows. “Lady Eleanor considers herself my friend?”

“I did not say it was Lady Eleanor,” he said through tight lips.

So it was Lady Eleanor. “What is the warning my mysterious ‘friend’ wishes to give?”

“There are rumors traveling about the City that you are engaged in sorcery and witchcraft.”

“What?” Her hand went to her chest, and she was unable to keep the tremor of alarm from her voice. “I have heard nothing of
this.”

“But others have heard the rumors. Powerful people. Men in the church,” the priest said, drawing out the last word.

Fear clawed at her belly. After Pomeroy accused her of killing her husband with sorcery, she had lived under the shadow of
the accusation for months. She remembered how the villagers backed away and made the sign of the cross when her carriage passed.
The memory of the black fear on their faces sent a frisson of terror up her spine.

Now she understood her maid’s unease and furtive glances.

“They are saying,” the priest said, leaning forward, “you used sorcery to make the queen fall in love with Edmund Beaufort.”

Her mouth went dry. This had to be Pomeroy’s doing. “Sir James Rayburn’s family is a powerful one. While you were ‘under his
protection,’ certain persons were afraid to act.” The priest cleared his throat. “They are no longer afraid.”

“I have means to protect myself,” she said.

“They will prove insufficient. Your friend recommends you leave at once for your homeland.”

“Leave for France?” she asked, startled.

“You haven’t much time.”

As a child, she had been forced to flee London in the dead of night. She was sorely tempted to do so again. But she could
not leave England until she saw Jamie again.

Or heard news of his marriage.

Besides, she had done nothing wrong. She would not let her enemies force her to leave this time. She had no intention, however,
of sharing her plans with this weasel of a priest—or his keeper.

“You can thank my ‘friend’ for her counsel,” she said as she eased the door closed.

“They will arrest you tomorrow.” The priest stopped the door with his foot to give her his parting words. “And here in England,
they burn witches.”

Linnet paced her solar, considering what to do. It seemed foolish to stay. Jamie wanted a wife who could give him a quiet
life and a peaceful home. Even if she were not arrested, tried, and burned, she could never persuade Jamie she could be that
sort of wife—not with accusations of sorcery whispered about her.

Who was behind this? At first, she assumed it was Pomeroy. But now, she wondered if she had ruffled too many feathers among
the powerful London merchants. They were suspicious of her, just as they were of the queen.

As a foreigner, she should have walked softly. Instead,
she had fanned the flames of their resentment by her success in trade. And then, she had used the leverage her success gave
her to pursue one of their own.

Whether it was Pomeroy or the merchants spreading these accusations, she would not just sit here, waiting for her enemies’
next move against her.

“Lizzie!” she called, wanting her maid to help her change.

When Lizzie did not answer, Linnet went looking for her. After finding no one belowstairs, she went behind the house to the
kitchen. Carter, the rough man Master Woodley had hired to escort her about the City, sat on a stool eating an apple. Master
Woodley must have hired Carter for his size alone, for the man was huge.

“Where is Lizzie?” she asked.

Carter cut a slice from the apple and ate it off his knife. “The other servants are gone.”

They must have heard the rumors of sorcery. Apparently Carter was too surly to be frightened.

Fighting back the sour taste of nausea at the back of her throat, she said, “I will need you to escort me to Westminster in
an hour.”

Carter nodded but did not get up. “I shall be here.” Linnet went to her chamber to dress for the occasion. She would dare
them to make the accusations to her face. Damn them! She was so angry that her first instinct was to wear a bold, blood-red
gown. Instead, she made herself think carefully about the impression she wished to make.

She was well aware her looks could be both an advantage and a disadvantage. Rather than the red, she chose a delicate eggshell-colored
gown embossed with intricate embroidery. The trim was a warmer shade of the same
creamy white shot through with silver threads. A thin ribbon of the trim ran along the top edge of her bodice, while wider
bands were sewn at the high waist, at the wrists, and along the bottom of the gown.

It was not easy getting into the gown and matching headdress without a maid, but when she looked at herself in her polished
steel mirror, she was satisfied. The snug bodice, set off by the trim, subtly showed off her breasts and the whiteness of
her throat. When she walked, the trim along the hem drew attention to the movement of the skirt and made it appear to float
about her.

Coils of fair blonde hair were visible through the delicate silver mesh on either side of her face. Most important, a heavy
silver cross rested just above the top of her bodice. Everyone knew witches could not wear crosses. On a longer, more delicate
silver chain, Jamie’s pendant hung out of sight between her breasts. She touched it and closed her eyes, wishing with all
her heart that he was here.

Never in her life had she felt so alone. Jamie was gone. Francois, too. She could not call on the queen without putting her
in danger. It was up to her to save herself, as it had always been.

After slipping on her cloak with the silvery-gray fur trim, she took one last look in the mirror. She was ready for them.

She was no angel, but she looked like one.

“ ’T
is good to see you,” Geoffrey said, pounding Jamie on the back.

Geoffrey was a big, barrel-chested young man who would have been mistaken for a warrior, save for his tonsured hair and habit.

“What shall I call you now?” Jamie asked. “Brother Geoffrey?”

“That will do,” Geoffrey said with a broad smile. “I have my prior’s permission to accompany you to your uncle’s, since he
is an important benefactor of our abbey. But first, I thought you would want to see where your father spent much of his life.”

“Do not call him my father,” Jamie said.

“Brother Richard, then,” Geoffrey said, ever the peace maker.

“Visitors are not permitted in the dormitory or the chapter house, but I can show you the church and grounds.”

The abbey was situated in a lovely spot next to a river bordered by giant yew trees. Despite its beauty, impatience tugged
at Jamie as Geoffrey led him behind the kitchens to show him the gardens.

Geoffrey stopped before a desolate piece of ground no more than twenty feet by ten. “Brother Richard spent most of his time
tending this herb garden, when he was not in prayer.”

Jamie stared at the small plot tucked between the kitchen block and the ditch that carried water from the river into the abbey.

After a long silence, Geoffrey said, “There is not much growing now, but you should see it in high summer.”

“This is where he spent his days? For more than twenty years?” Jamie was appalled. In the name of heaven, the man was once
a knight.

“I understand he took care of the goats during his first years here,” Geoffrey said. “But their unpredictability distressed
him.”

“Goats? Goats distressed him?” He would have accused Geoffrey of jesting, but the sympathy in his friend’s eyes stopped him
short.

“I believe Brother Richard was content here,” Geoffrey said in a quiet voice.

Jamie’s gaze roved over the brown stubble of the miserable patch. Content? More like, half dead.

“Come, his brother lives a short distance from the abbey.” Geoffrey put a hand on his shoulder. “We must leave now if I’m
to be back before compline.”

A tall, strongly built man with a warrior’s stance met them at the gate. “I am Charles Wheaton, lord of this castle,” the
man said. “And your uncle.”

“That is yet to be seen,” Jamie said.

“You would call your mother a liar?” Wheaton said. “I’d heard better of you.”

If Geoffrey had not been so quick to grab him, Jamie would have planted his fist in the man’s face. “Take care how you speak
of my mother.”

Wheaton did not turn a hair. “Calm yourself, laddie; I was not the one who called her a liar.”

“I never said she lied,” Jamie said, temper prickling at his skin. “But she could be mistaken.”

“I wanted to see you to be sure myself,” Wheaton said. “You’re a right bit more handsome, but the likeness between us is there
for any fool to see.”

From the first moment, Jamie had been trying to ignore that Wheaton had the same unusual shade of blue eyes that he did. Wheaton’s
hair was streaked with gray, but it must once have been as black as his.

“If you’ve forgotten what you look like, son, I can have a mirror brought out for you.”

Jamie was not amused. “I have fought in France since I was fifteen. Do not call me son. Or laddie.”

Jamie flinched as the older man put a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Since the only two people who could know the truth said
it was so, you may as well accept it.”

“I do not see where it is any business of yours what I believe.”

“Come, Jamie, give the man a chance to explain,” Geoffrey said. “Let us go inside and talk over a cup of ale.”

“Thank you, Brother Geoffrey,” Wheaton said and turned to lead them across the bailey yard.

The castle had an old square keep, but it was well-maintained. Jamie scanned the walls and outbuildings and saw that these,
too, were kept in good repair. Charles
Wheaton may be a disagreeable character, but a man who took good care of his property merited some respect.

They settled into the hall, which had a blazing fire in the hearth, an impressive display of weapons on the wall, and clean
rushes on the floor.

“Charles, you should have told me they were here.” Jamie turned at the sound of a woman’s voice behind him. A frail woman,
who looked to be about his mother’s age, had come into the hall and was walking toward them, leaning heavily on the arm of
a servant.

Wheaton rushed to her side and took the servant’s place. When he turned back to face them, Jamie was startled by the transformation
in the man’s expression.

“Meet my wife,” Wheaton said, beaming down at the delicate woman. “A better woman, God never made.”

“Charles, please,” she said.

She had a light, sweet voice that reminded Jamie of music from the high strings of a harp. But her pallor made it plain as
day that Wheaton’s wife was in poor health.

“This is your aunt, Lady Anne Wheaton,” Wheaton said, then quoted Chaucer: “ ‘Any man worth a cabbage all his life ought to
thank God on bare knees for his wife.’ ”

Anne Wheaton’s hand was icy and as light as a feather in Jamie’s as he bent over it, but there was warmth and laughter in
her hazel eyes.

“We have waited a very long time to meet you,” she said.

Jamie was confused. “But I only just heard…”