Masques of Gold (20 page)

“You picked up my clothes and folded them,” Lissa whispered, and dropped all the parchments on the floor and ran to kiss him.

He felt absurdly pleased, as irrationally delighted by her emotional response as he had been irrationally enraged when he heard that she had gone to face the destruction of her home without him. “I could not bear to see them crushed and crumpled,” he said when their lips parted, his voice growing husky with remembered rage. “I kept seeing your poor swollen face. When I find the man who did that to you, I will kill him. Do you think a blow like that was not dealt in hate?”

“Probably not,” Lissa said, frowning thoughtfully. She took the box from him and after an exasperated glance around, set it down atop a pile of rubbish. “Not that I wish to dissuade you from your purpose,” she went on, her voice sharpening and her hand coming up to touch her bruised cheek. “I will help you all I can, but I do not think he struck me out of hate. I told you last night; I believe he did it to deprive me of my senses, to render me blind and deaf, and the only reason for that would be that if I saw him or heard his voice I would know him. But Justin, surely a common thief would not need to fear that, and I have thought and thought and I cannot call to mind any person who is like the man on the stair.”

“But if this was, as you think, a search, the men likely were not common thieves,” Justin pointed out. “Also there were two men, at least two. Aside from what I noted about the wood on the parchment, there was too much done here for one man to have managed alone. Perhaps it was the second man or some other you never saw who was afraid you would know him.”

“But if I did not know the man who hit me, why did he hide his face?”

“So if he was seen in company with the man you did know, you would not recognize him.”

That was a most uncomfortable thought. Lissa closed her eyes for a moment and shuddered. If what Justin said was true, one of the men who had invaded and destroyed Peter's house could have been her father. If he sometimes hired Hubert to do dirty or dangerous things for him, could he not have hired another man to do this? No, that was silly. He would not take a chance on a second henchman having power over him. Besides, suspicion was nothing. There was no evidence that her father was involved, and no love or loyalty to Justin required her to ruin herself.

“It might be so,” she admitted, “but I do not see how that gets us any closer to whoever did it.”

“Nor do I. And if you are right and this was a search, I fear we will never find those guilty. Most often it is through recognition of what was stolen that thieves are caught, but if their purpose was search, these men will be in no haste to dispose of your trinkets. Moreover, I am almost certain that they did not find what they sought.”

“Why do you say that?” Lissa asked. “I am sure they left some time before Halsig found me. I am not certain how much time, but they could have searched longer.”

“No,” Justin said. “They had come to an end of what to search, if not to an end of their allotted time. I say they did not find what they sought because the trail of destruction goes right through the workshop. They covered the whole house, and they would not have done that if they had found—” He stopped and looked down at her with lifted brows. “What?”

“I wish I knew,” Lissa snapped. “If I had found it, I would have sent out the crier to say I would give it to the rightful owner if he would then leave me in peace.”

“But I doubt the searchers are the rightful owners,” Justin remarked, and then, as Lissa's chuckle caught on a sob, he put his arm around her again and said, “You are tired, my love. Let me take you home.”

“Home?” She drew a deep breath and then sighed. “Where is that? Is there any hope of clearing this house and making it livable in a few days? I could bring my own furniture from my father's house.”

“No,” Justin said. “The house could be cleared and even repaired, but I will not have you living here alone. Beloved, do you not understand that if what you think is true, if you were not struck in hate but to prevent you from seeing and hearing what you should not, that may prey on the minds of the men who were here. He who struck you might wonder whether you will recognize him when he is with the person known to you, even though his face was hidden. He who is known to you may wonder whether perhaps you came to yourself and heard his voice, recalled the sound of the way he walks. God knows what other fears they might dream of, but if you are living alone, there must be a strong temptation to silence you. I can set guards, but not forever, my love, and guards will only increase the fear that you
do
hold information. Your greatest safety will be to live in a busy household among those who care for you.”

“Then I must go back to my father's house,” Lissa said, her words barely audible.

“Is he cruel to you?” Justin asked. His voice was soft, but there was such threat in it that Lissa turned cold and could not speak. “I will speak to him,” Justin went on, equally softly, “and you may be sure that he will not even look coldly in your direction after that.”

“No!” Lissa exclaimed, finding her voice.

The last thing she wanted was any contact at all between Justin and her father. She did not know whether she feared more that Justin might discover her father's possible involvement in Peter's death or the search of the house or that her father might discover that Justin was in love with her. She knew that William would try to use that knowledge to put pressure on Justin and that, no matter what Justin's reaction was, disaster for her would follow.

“No,” she repeated more calmly. “My father is not pleasant company, but he does me no harm. That was settled years ago when he beat my mother very harshly. Her father and brothers nearly killed him when they heard of it and told him that any injury done to mama or me would bring worse upon him. Grandfather is dead, but my uncles, Gamel and Gerbod, still come to the Steelyard. And even if father did not fear that they would break his bones, he would not dare cross them. Half our wealth comes from the herbs and spices they permit me to buy at special prices, and they will not sell to him.”

“The uncles from the Hanse!” Justin's voice went flat. “I had forgotten them. Of course, you would not want my interference. But I do not understand then why you are so reluctant to return to your father's house.”

“Justin, do not be an idiot.” Lissa burst out laughing. “As long as I lived alone in this house, you could come to me whenever you liked. How am I to get you past my father, whose bed is in the solar between my bedchamber and the stair?”

For a moment Justin just stared at her with his mouth half open. Then he shut his mouth and swallowed hard. “Oh,” he said. “Ah…well…”

“Yes? Well?” Lissa managed not to laugh aloud, but her eyes sparkled and her voice quivered with amusement as she delivered the challenge.

“Well, there is no need to consider that subject just at present,” Justin retorted with enormous dignity. “You are all bruised and in no condition…” His voice wavered. “There is always my house,” he muttered, looking at the floor.

“Will that be safe?” There was no amusement in that question, and Lissa took Justin's hand in both of hers and clasped it tight. “Not for me, my love. The worst that can happen to me is that tongues will wag about the widow taking her pleasure. It will not hurt my business. But my father…” Her voice faltered. “If he discovered I was your leman, he would hold it over you—”

“I have a nearer problem,” Justin interrupted, wishing to spare Lissa the pain of describing her father's character. “I had forgot when I said that…I had almost forgot my name…that my servant is not trustworthy. And you must think me a monster to say it anyway, to act as if I would expect…Only…I am so hungry for you.”

“I find that no fault in you,” she said, lowering her head to his breast above the hand she held and resting her whole body against his.

Justin stood quite still, then gently freed himself and stepped back a pace. “I find it a fault. I am not a green boy. I have known women before.”

“I said I would accept your terms.”

“Why?”

Lissa lowered her eyes, then lifted them again and they were full of laughter even though her face was sober. “I will not lie to you, Justin. I will accept your terms because I think I can change them into my terms as we go along together.”

A choked sound made its way up Justin's chest. He struggled with it, glaring balefully, but Lissa continued to regard him with a nearly perfect bland astonishment, seemingly nowise intimidated by the glare, until Justin erupted into laughter. “Go.” He pointed to the ladder. “Ask Goscelin as a favor to me if he will keep you one more night.”

“Adela will not like it if you fetch me out and—”

“Woman!” Justin roared, and then as Lissa frantically pointed below and he remembered the men, he lowered his voice to ask, “What the devil gave you the idea that I intended to fetch you out of Goscelin's house?”

“Forgive me,” Lissa murmured. “It was my own indelicate thoughts and your indelicate…er…member, which was rather…ah…pressing in its attentions during our embrace.”

There was a brief silence, in which Lissa heard Justin draw breath, but when he spoke, his voice was gentle and wondering, almost as if he were musing over some interesting question to himself. “It is true,” he remarked, “that I have a growing wish to be in a dark and secret place alone with you. I am curious whether my head's desire to strangle you would triumph or my rod's desire to…for something else. Now, if you will go back to Goscelin's house and wait until I come, so that I can quiet this war between my body and my head, perhaps I will be able to think of some solution to our problem. Go. Now.”

Defiantly Lissa flung one arm around his waist, caught his head with the other hand and pulled it down, and kissed him hard. She felt a surge, an increased stiffening in the “indelicate member,” and stroked his cheek as she let him go and turned to flee to the ladder. Lissa was a little troubled about what he would think of her, but she did not fear that he would account her a whore so much as she feared he would ask her to marry him. If he did, she had come to the conclusion that she must refuse him. A proposal to marry would be flattering, but she would only have the choice of hurting him by refusing without reason or exposing her shame beyond the brief reminder she had given him about her father. It would be far better if Justin did not, at least for the present, think of marriage.

The decision that she must refuse marriage had not come easily to her, but it had come swiftly because much of the reasoning behind it had been done during the days when she believed Justin had decided to avoid her because she was William Bowles's daughter. She had chewed the bitter cud of that knowledge over and over until it was well digested and she understood how terrible it would be for a man like Justin to be bound to her father. Justin would then have the choice of concealing her father's crimes and thus being party to them or exposing William's wrongdoing and having the smut cling to him too. So it would not matter which he did; either path would ruin him, blackening his own name, his wife's, and when they came, his children's blood. Thus the great joy of their mutually declared love had lasted no longer for Lissa than her restless sleep.

At least she had hardly felt the pain of her bruises when she woke and remembered that Justin had named her beloved. The pain of knowing that, far from avoiding her because of what her father was, Justin had not yet wakened to that problem overwhelmed all physical discomfort. Lissa knew that she should point out the difficulties that would make any relationship between them impossible and send him away—but she could not. Justin was her dream, her vision of the ultimate perfection that a human man could achieve. In his kindness, his integrity, his sacrifice of self to duty, he was the absolute opposite of her father.

That would have been enough, but Justin offered more. He offered stability, a love that would always be present, not warm and protecting for a few weeks and then gone for many months. Her grandfather and uncles were good men and they did the best they could, but they were bound to their will-o'-the-wisp lives. It had been their need to set sail on a new voyage that had pushed them into accepting William Bowles as a husband for Sigurth, for her mother had died and they had nowhere to leave her. And, even after they knew what William was, they could not provide a refuge for her and Lissa.

Lissa walked slowly back to Goscelin's house, thinking about the urgency in Justin's body. It had awakened something in her, a kind of uneasy restlessness quite different from the mild distaste she had felt when Peter indicated he intended to exert his marital privileges. What she felt did not matter, she thought, smiling at Goscelin's journeyman as he made way for her at the door of the shop; she could pretend to be whatever Justin wanted—and Justin himself would show her that. He would not be at all sorry to know that Peter had not given her any pleasure; he would be delighted to teach her the joys of coupling.

***

Justin did not turn to watch Lissa go down the ladder. He stared straight ahead at the hearth, where the dead ashes of the fire lay, not knowing whether to laugh or to weep. Slowly, the tumult in his body died, but it made no difference. Already he desired nothing so much as to follow her, just to be with her, to speak to her, to have her infuriate him—and make him laugh. That was much worse, much more serious than any desire to lie with her, no matter how urgent his lust. The lust could be satisfied somehow, the other need had only one solution—marriage.

Clearly Lissa did not intend to ask that of him before coming to his bed. She understood that it would be impossible for them to marry until the noise about Flael's death died away. To have the seeker of justice announce his intention of marrying the widow of a man only four days dead, mysteriously dead, was asking for scandal. And Lissa had said she only feared the scandal for his sake; she must know the mayor was seeking an excuse to be rid of him, and she had said the scandal could do her little harm. That was true enough. Hints of a lover could only increase her business in women's lotions and—