The King's Daughter (30 page)

He pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it on the bed. The wound actually was not painful. The knife had only grazed him. The fresh bleeding had already stopped. He was unwrapping the blood-stained bandage as she came to him. He caught her staring at his bare chest. He had seen that look before in other women’s eyes. He knew what it meant. Maybe that was the answer. Maybe if he took her, now, he could get her out of his blood for good. He allowed desire to surge back.

In one sudden motion he grabbed the back of her head, grabbed her buttock with his other hand, and yanked her to him. He pressed her hard against his groin. His top hand slid down to her breast.

She jerked violently out of his grasp. “How dare you!” she cried.

“What? I thought—”

“Thought what? That I’d swoon at your feet? My God, I’ve seen more finesse in coupling dogs!”

He flushed with anger. ”
Mira!
I thought—”

“Well,
don’t
think! You’re a hired brute. I’m not paying you to think.”

He resisted the urge to strike her. The other urge, inflamed by the softness of her body against his, was not so easy to subdue. And its very power in the face of her insults made him feel ridiculous—and more angry.

“I am betrothed!” she was saying. She had moved halfway across the room. Did she think he was going to rape her, for God’s sake? For a moment the raw appeal of it held him. He could do it. Force her, here and now. Make her insults whimper to a stop. It would be easy. But it would also be stupid. He was dependent on her. Until he found Thornleigh.

“I am betrothed,” she repeated, like a catechism to keep her from harm.

“I heard you,” he said, snatching up his shirt. “But I see you are alone in searching the rat holes of London, so maybe your man changed his mind.”

“He was called away. He doesn’t know what’s happened.”

“Lucky for him.” He was wrestling with the shirt, trying to find the neck opening, but he only succeeded in making a stubborn ball of twisted material. And a thin line of blood was trickling from the scab on his shoulder.

“Stop,” she said, more gently. “Don’t. You cannot leave your wound like that.”

“I’ve had worse,” he growled.

“But this you suffered for my sake. What happened was my fault. In the Fleet, I mean. Let me tend it. I owe you that much. Please,” she urged. “Stop.”

He did, and stood motionless, as much in anger as in compliance. She approached him warily, the way he himself would approach a half-wild horse that he knew had only paused in its fight. She extended the bandage like a peace offering. He lifted his arm and let her wrap the bandage over his shoulder and under his arm. She wrapped it several times. Her eyes were fastened on the bandage as she worked, but her breathing was still agitated. He stared across the room, trying not to notice the rise and fall of her breasts. Trying not to breathe in the scent of her hair, of her skin.

“There,” she said, tying off the bandage. But she did not move away from him. She looked at the floor. She spoke very softly. “I am betrothed. It is a vow I hold more dear than my life.” She looked up. His eyes met hers. He suddenly saw in their troubled depths what she was really saying—that she would be faithful despite the temptation. Faithfulness. It was a quality he had never encountered in women. Once again she had astonished him.

Her lips parted slightly as she took a breath as though to say more, and he felt desire for her course through him again. He
would
take her.
Have
her. The impulse jolted through him. But he did not move. He could not move. Because even more strongly, and far more strangely—for never in his experience had such a sensation competed with carnal desire—he wanted her to look at him and smile.

He twisted away from her, unnerved.
Madre de Dios,
there was only one way to get her out of his blood. Kill her father, take the money, and get clear of this country. Today was the twenty-eighth. The rendezvous was for Candlemas. Still a few days left. He would find Thornleigh tomorrow and do it, while she was away.

He heard her behind him as she walked out of his room.

Night torches flared in a Whitehall courtyard as a troop of men-at-arms on patrol marched past below Queen Mary’s window. The noise made the Queen look up from the devotional Book of Hours she was reading. She set the book in her lap and gazed up at her betrothed. Philip of Spain was hanging in glory on her wall, a huge, full-length portrait by the master painter Titian.

Frances Grenville relaxed the needle she had been plying over the embroidery frame standing before her, and followed the Queen’s gaze up to the portrait of the Prince. The painting had been brought by the Emperor’s special envoys after New Year’s, a part of formalizing the betrothal arrangements. Frances knew how much its arrival had meant to the Queen. Mary had never set eyes on the man she was going to marry, at least not in the flesh. She and her council had been embroiled for months in haggling over the terms of the marriage treaty with the Imperial ambassador—articles spelling out Philip’s precise titles in England; the quota of Spanish grandees to receive positions in the royal household; inheritance rights of any children of the marriage so as not to be in conflict with the rights of Don Carlos, Philip’s son from his first marriage; agreement that the English treasury would be wholly under English control—terms that Mary’s council felt would be acceptable to touchy Englishmen. The process, Frances knew, had left the Queen feeling like a commodity in a commercial transaction. It was this portrait that had given her betrothal a human face, had made the man real.

And the Prince did look splendid. Tall, young—at twenty-seven he was a decade younger than Mary—and displaying an air of grave responsibility that perfectly matched Mary’s ideal of a pious ruler.

“It is clearest in the eyes, don’t you agree, Frances?” the Queen asked, still gazing. “A noble soul shines through the eyes.”

“True, my lady.” Frances pushed to the back of her mind the nasty rumors that had reached her. The Prince, they said, had kept a lady, Doña Ana de Osorio, as his mistress since he was eighteen. And Frances could not help thinking that the look in the royal Spaniard’s eyes seemed more arrogant than noble. But then, she told herself with an inward smile, her own concepts of such things were so colored by Edward. Edward—so truly aristocratic in carriage, and his character so generously, so familiarly, English. But she would never utter a word that might mar the Queen’s devotion to the Prince.

“Master Titian is too expert an artist to invent character, my lady,” Frances said with a smile. “He can only paint a noble soul where a noble soul exists.”

Mary nodded with satisfaction and sighed. The women exchanged a contented glance and went back to their sewing and reading as the troop of men-at-arms marched through the courtyard below.

From his chair Edward Sydenham stared at the naked girl across his parlor. She was on her hands and knees in front of his fire, terrified, awaiting his pleasure. But though Edward’s eyes were fixed on her pink flesh, he regarded her almost without seeing her. He was listening for sounds on the stairs outside the door, hoping to hear his steward returning from the prison. Until Palmer reported that Richard Thornleigh had been dispatched, Edward could concentrate on nothing else. Nothing except how Thornleigh’s testimony, if he lived, would blight Edward’s life forever.

He picked up an ivory letter opener on the desk before him and toyed with it, distractedly scraping its point over his thumbtip. The tall clock in the corner ticked, eking out the moments in a rhythm out of harmony with the crackling of the fir logs in the grate. Damn it, where was Palmer?

There was a whimper from the girl. Edward blinked, focusing on her almost for the first time. She was shaking slightly. He studied her. She was perhaps fourteen, plump, and very frightened. Her farrier father had been paid generously to deliver her, and Edward’s chamberlain had instructed her in what to do, and in the consequences to her family if she refused. The chamberlain managed such negotiations deftly. Edward had not been pleased with the man’s predecessor; the fellow had once brought him a girl with her nose bloodied. It had revolted Edward. Violence was the response of peasants.

The girl glanced at him then quickly looked down. But Edward had caught the fear in her eyes. It was usually enough to arouse him. But tonight it was not good enough. He could do nothing until Palmer arrived and set his mind at rest.

The girl was sniffling. A tear dropped onto the Turkish carpet beneath her. Edward noticed that her dirty hair was a mousy brown, not glossily dark as he had remembered it after first spotting her the other day. Another disappointment. He looked away.

At least, he thought, there was beauty in this room. He had meticulously organized the decor after buying the house in the summer, and he was proud of the result. Here in the parlor, illuminated by the pure glow from fine wax tapers burning in the Florentine silver candlesticks, the beauty was almost palpable. Lapis lazuli spirals inlaid among tiles around the hearth glistened like the sunlit waters of the Aegean Sea. Firelight glinted off the million threads of gold, ruby and emerald hues in the costly Flemish tapestries on the wall, and off the painted stars and half-moons artfully spangled across the ceiling. A silver chalice that slowly burned coals laced with fragrant herbs perfumed the room. A shelf displayed three rare books, all exquisitely bound, their leather covers glinting with gilt letters. These books were his most precious objects; gifts from the Emperor Charles himself.

Surveying these surroundings Edward felt a moment of peace. He loved beautiful things. Not just to amass them and horde them, as so many oafish rich men did. He loved beauty for what it represented: a plane of sensibility far above the mire of ordinary life.

He looked back at the girl. She was crying outright now, but was still so terrified that she was trying, quite ineptly, to control it. Edward felt a spark in his loins.

“Come here,” he said.

She stiffened at his command.

“Come,” he repeated.

She started to rise, shaking miserably.

“Stop. Not like that. Crawl.”

She crawled across the carpet.

Edward instructed her. She closed her eyes in revulsion, but she obeyed and shuffled closer between his legs. He sat still as she fumbled at unfastening the red silk ribbons of his codpiece.

A door downstairs creaked open. Edward snatched the girl’s hands to still them, and strained to listen. There were muffled footsteps below. Then an imperious female voice. Edward slumped with disappointment. It was only his housekeeper berating the boy bringing in firewood.

Edgily, he sat back, trying to relax. He motioned for the girl to continue. She closed her eyes more tightly, her tears spilling. Her cold hand reached inside his breeches. Her clumsy, trembling fingers should have been enough. But Edward’s worries would not release him.

Where in God’s name is Palmer?

18
Whit’s Palac

A
satanic clanging of bells assaulted Richard Thornleigh in his sleep. He thrashed his arm at the nightmare—a giant bell that swung over Honor and fired a monstrous cannon, exploding her in flames—and he felt pain like a red-hot brand sear his shoulder.

“Forgot the chain, did you?” a deep, sonorous voice asked.

Thornleigh blinked awake in a sweat. He had indeed forgotten the iron cuff and chain. Forgotten even where he was. Groggily, he sat up from the bunched cloak he’d been using as a pillow. He turned his stiff neck toward the voice and squinted in the sunlight that shafted through a high window. A silver-haired man sat beside him on a wooden platform like a long, narrow bed. One of the man’s wrists, like Thornleigh’s, was cuffed to a chain attached to a ring bolt in the stone wall. Thornleigh glanced around. The small stone room was bare except for this platform running down the length of one wall. On his other side a boy of about fifteen—an apprentice, by the look of his blue smock—sat huddled in the corner of the platform, shivering in his sleep. Directly across the room from the three of them stood a closed door.

Then Thornleigh remembered. He had been brought to this prison room last night after the long cold ride with the guards; driving snow had kept them a day and night on the road after leaving Colchester jail. It had been late and dark when they’d arrived, and the porter’s torch had only briefly illuminated these two prisoners asleep on the platform as the porter chained Thornleigh between them. Thornleigh had sat in the dark listening to the man’s snoring and the boy’s unconscious whimpering, until he, too, had fallen into a tortured sleep.

The clanging erupted again, startling him.

“Bells of St. Sepulcher’s,” the silver-haired man said ominously.

If Thornleigh had been unsure before of where he was, he was certain now. Everyone who knew London knew what those bells portended. Hard by Newgate prison, St. Sepulcher’s tolling iron voice was the first solemn clamor on a Newgate hanging day.

“Time to make peace with the deity,” the man said. He spoke calmly, resting against the wall. He was cleaning his fingernails with a wood splinter, performing a slow and meticulous job.

“They’re hanging us?” Thornleigh asked.

“Aye, sir. We who are condemned will be carted to Tyburn this morning and hanged.” The man studied his cleaned fingernails as though unperturbed.

Thornleigh took in the information. He felt no fear. He felt little of anything.

The man glanced at him. “An objectionable word, is it not—'hanged'? Puts one in mind of hams, curing. Personally, I have always preferred that striking phrase of the commonfolk: turned off.’ No-nonsense, crisp, and concise. As I hope the hangman’s skills will prove once we reach the fatal tree.”

“Condemned? I wasn’t even tried,” Thornleigh muttered. Not that he cared.

“I was, if you can call that farce of blind prejudice a trial,” the man said with a snort. “The judge was an oaf of the first order. Show me a legal purist who cannot understand the passions of a man in love, sir, and I’ll show you an oaf.” He looked hard at Thornleigh, his eyes narrowing under his bushy silver eyebrows. “Not been tried, did you say?”