Silken Threads

“Patricia Ryan moves
Rear Window
to
medieval London, and does things Hitchcock never dreamed of! Fresh,
swift and sexy,
Silken Threads
strengthens Ms. Ryan’s
reputation as an outstanding author of medieval romances.”
New
York Times
bestselling author Mary Jo Putney

Recipient of Romance Writers of America’s
RITA Award for Best Long Historical Romance and a
Romantic
Times
Reviewers’ Choice Award nominee

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 1999 Patricia Ryan. All rights
reserved. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book
may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means
existing without written permission from the author.

Originally published by New American Library,
a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal
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of this author.

Other Electronic Books
by Patricia Ryan

Medieval Romances:

Falcon’s Fire

Heaven’s Fire

Secret Thunder

Wild Wind

The Sun and the Moon
(the companion
book to
Silken Threads)

Nell Sweeney Historical Mysteries by P.B.
Ryan:

Still Life with Murder

Murder in a Mill Town

Death on Beacon Hill

Murder on Black Friday

Murder in the North End

A Bucket of Ashes

For my dear friend and critique partner,
Kathryn Shay, with love and appreciation

* * *

May 1165, London’s West Cheap District

How do you tell a man you’ve come to take
his wife away?
Graeham wondered as he knocked on the
red-painted double door of Rolf le Fever’s Milk Street town
house.

He’d pondered the matter at some length
during his storm-ravaged Channel crossing and the two-day ride from
Dover to London, but no easy answer had come to him. It was a dicey
business, removing a woman from her husband’s home, one that might
call for the most silken finesse...or savage force. Graeham
automatically touched the horn handle of the dagger sheathed on his
belt, hoping he wouldn’t need to use it.

The iron door knocker was shaped like the
head of some unidentifiable beast with a gaping mouth, from which
curled a long, demonically pointed tongue. Graeham reached for it
again, but hesitated as footsteps thudded from within, accompanied
by a man’s voice. “Where the devil are you, you bloody worthless
wench? Didn’t you hear that knocking?”

The door swung inward with a squeal of
corroded hinges. The fair-haired man who had opened it looked about
Graeham’s age, although Graeham knew him to be, at five-and-thirty,
fully a decade his senior. He was taller than average, though not
as tall as Graeham. Pale, smooth-boned, clad in a calf-length tunic
of emerald silk trimmed in sable and cinched with a jeweled belt,
Rolf le Fever more closely resembled a royal courtier
—
or
his own notion of one
—
than a merchant, however prosperous
he might be.

Le Fever assessed Graeham up and down with
eyes the color of water, his expression that of a man contemplating
an insect. Little wonder; unwashed and unshaven, his split-front
riding tunic and leathern leggings grimy from the road, his unbound
hair hanging limply, Graeham must have looked as if he were there
to empty the privy.

“Rolf le Fever?” Graeham inquired, although
there was no quesion in his mind whom he was addressing.

“Tradesmen enter round back.” Le Fever
stepped away from the door and began to swing it shut.

Graeham slammed a hand on it before it could
close. “Gui de Beauvais sent me.”

At the mention of his father by marriage, le
Fever slowly reopened the door. “Lord Gui sent
you
?”

Graeham opened the hardened leather case
resting against his hip, suspended by a cord across his chest. He
pulled out a folded sheet of parchment bound in gold cord that had
been sealed with the baron’s insignia, and handed it to the
merchant. “His lordship’s letter of introduction.”

Le Fever broke the waxen seal, slid the cord
out of the slits in the crisp parchment, and unfolded the letter,
his mouth silently forming the words as he struggled to decipher
them.

Opting for tact
—
at least for the
time being
—
Graeham said, “I apologize for my appearance.
I’ve been traveling for the better part of a week, and I’ve only
just arrived in London.”

“Indeed.” Le Fever refolded the letter and
tapped his chin with it. “Where’s your mount, then?”

“I left them
—
”

“Them?”

“I have two.”
One for me and one for your
wife.
“I left them at St. Bartholemew’s.” It was on Lord Gui’s
advice that Graeham had chosen the renowned monastic hostelry,
located outside the city wall, over Holy Trinity or one of London’s
many public inns. His lordship had extolled the priory’s
hospitality, but Graeham hadn’t been there long enough to sample
it. Upon his arrival a short while ago, he’d stabled his exhausted
horses and proceeded by foot through Aldersgate
—
one of the
seven gates that provided access into London proper
—
and
through the bustling city streets to the retailing district of West
Cheap, mindful of his mission. Too mindful perhaps, for le Fever
might have proven more receptive had Graeham taken the time to
clean himself up and dress as befitted the emissary of a
distinguished Norman baron.

He was overeager. Little wonder, considering
the urgency of his assignment...and his stake in its success.

“May I come in?” Graeham asked. “I have a
matter of some importance to discuss with you.”

Le Fever drilled his eerily transparent gaze
into Graeham. “Lord Gui describes you as a retainer. That’s not
very specific.”

“I’m one of his serjanz.”

“Ah. A military man,” le Fever said, as if
that explained Graeham’s appearance. He tucked the letter beneath
his belt. “Come.” Turning, he strode through a small entrance hall
and up a flight of stairs to a second-floor landing, with Graeham
following; the stairs continued upward to a third level, Graeham
noticed.

“You’re English,” le Fever observed as he
led the way into a sizable chamber, opulently furnished and
bedecked in silken hangings, its floorboards plastered with smooth
white clay.

“Aye.” Graeham couldn’t help smiling,
gratified that the eleven years he’d lived in the Frankish county
of Beauvais hadn’t completely erased the native accent with which
he spoke the Anglo-Norman common tongue of his homeland.

Le Fever motioned Graeham into an ornately
carved chair, one of two facing each other before a hooded
fireplace set into a stone chimney. A hellish blaze roared within
it, out of keeping with the mild spring afternoon. The merchant
crossed to a corner cupboard painted with leopards and
fleurs-de-lys. “Do you have a name, serjant?”

“Graeham.”

A ring of keys dangled from a chain attached
to le Fever’s belt, much like a lady’s chatelaine. Sorting through
the keys, he chose one and unlocked the cup¬board. “Graeham
of...?”

“Some in France know me as Graeham of
London
—
I was born here. But I’m also called Graeham
Fox.”

“For your cleverness?”

“For my hair.”
And
for his
cleverness, but sometimes it was best to be underestimated. “In
sunlight, it has a reddish cast.” When it was clean, which it
hadn’t been since his last bath, back in Beauvais.

Le Fever’s expression hovered somewhere
between indifference and disdain. “One must take your word for
that, I suppose.” He retrieved a flagon and a silver goblet from
the cupboard. “Something to cool your throat after your
journey?”

“Ale, if you have it. I’ve missed English
ale.”

“Wench!” le Fever shouted. After a moment’s
silence, he snarled, “God’s tooth,” and stalked to a corner
stairwell. “Aethel! Where the bloody hell are you?”

Something scraped on the ceiling
overhead
—
a chair?
—
and then came the hurried
descent of footsteps on the stairs. A doughy serving wench
appeared, clutching her apron in one hand and a spoon in the other.
“Beg pardon, Master Rolf. I was upstairs feeding Mistress Ada, and
I didn’t hear
—
”

“Go down to the buttery and bring our guest
some ale. Step lively.”

“Yes, sire.” Aethel cast Graeham a swift,
curious glance as she darted back into the service stairwell.

“Pointless creature.” Le Fever filled the
goblet with wine and sat opposite Graeham to sip it. Rings glinted
on his fingers and thumbs. When he crossed his legs, Graeham
glimpsed, beneath the hem of his tunic, the intricately embroidered
garters that secured his chausses just above the knees. The snug
hose were fashioned not of wool, but of gleaming plum-colored
silk
—
an understandable affectation, Graeham supposed,
given that his host was not only London’s most prominent silk
merchant, but master of the newly established Mercer’s Guild.

“I can’t help wondering,” le Fever said as
he eyed Graeham over the rim of his goblet, “what ‘matter of some
importance’ could prompt Lord Gui to send a soldier to his
daughter’s home.”

Tread carefully.
“His lordship misses
Mistress Ada, and is eager to visit with her. Given his advanced
years and ill health, it would have been unwise for him to attempt
such an arduous journey himself. He sent me to escort his daughter
across the Channel to him.”

Le Fever’s eyebrows quirked, just slightly.
“He wants you to take her back to Beauvais?”

Slowly Graeham said, “To Paris. He’ll visit
her there.”

“Ah, yes,” le Fever sneered. “Ada has never
set foot in her own father’s castle, isn’t that right? Tell
me
—
does the baron’s lady wife even know about the twin
daughters her husband sired on that Paris whore?”

“Nay,” Graeham said evenly. “And, as I
understand it, their mother was a dressmaker.”

Le Fever snorted contemptuously. “They call
themselves all sorts of things.” He took a long swallow of wine and
wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “I’m afraid your journey
has been for naught, serjant. I have no intention of consigning my
wife to the care of a complete stranger, especially...” His frosty
gaze took in Graeham’s disreputable appearance.

“I assure you she’ll be entirely safe with
me.”

Le Fever smiled thinly. “That’s really not
the point. ‘Tis quite irregular for a married lady to travel abroad
without her husband. ‘Twould reflect badly on me, and I do have a
reputation to maintain. I’m a man of consequence in this city,
after all, regardless of what his lordship may think of me.”

Something clattered on the floor upstairs.
Le Fever did not avert his unnervingly steady gaze from
Graeham.

“Are you aware,” Graeham said, “that your
wife has maintained a steady correspondence with her father since
your marriage to her last year?”

“What of it?”

“Six months ago, the letters stopped
coming.”

Aethel reappeared with a stein of ale for
Graeham, at whom she smiled shyly before disappearing back into the
corner stairwell. A moment later, there came footsteps on the floor
above, and another grating of chair legs. Listening closely,
Graeham heard Aethel saying something apologetic in muffled tones,
followed by the much softer voice of another woman.

Tracking Graeham’s gaze to the ceiling, le
Fever said, “My wife has been ill since Christmastide. When she’s
recovered, she’ll resume her correspondence with her father. Is
that why he wants to see her? Because she stopped writing?”

“That...” Graeham gained a moment by taking
a slow sip of ale. Too bitter, but it tasted like ambrosia; it
tasted like England. “And because of what she communicated to him
while she was still writing.”

Setting his stein on a little table next to
his chair, Graeham reached into his document case and brought forth
a short stack of letters. Le Fever eyed them uneasily, as well he
might have.

Graeham said, “Your marriage appears to have
soured within days of the wedding.”

Le Fever made a sound of derision. “We were
married in Paris. Three days later, while we were in a boat
crossing the Channel, she told me what her father had declined to
mention before the nuptials
—
that the daughter whose hand
he’d so generously offered me had, in fact, been born on the wrong
side of the bed. He’s never publicly acknowledged Ada and Phillipa,
never even owned up to their existence. I thought I’d negotiated a
union with a baron’s daughter, but what I ended up with was a wife
I daren’t speak of, lest someone inquire after her parentage. How
could such a marriage possibly benefit me?”