The Maiden's Hand (13 page)

“You’re wicked, Oliver de Lacey!”

“But I’d never bore you, dear. And in truth…” He raked a hand through his hair and gazed at her, looking genuinely perplexed. “I’ve never known anyone like you, Lark. Here’s the truth. I’ve never, ever felt so aroused as I do at this moment.”

She felt a thrill in spite of herself. “That is your problem. You won’t solve it by harassing me.”

“If I did not revere each and every member of your fair sex, I would fling you onto the riverbank and touch you in all the places I described a few moments ago.”

Though she would have died rather than admit the truth to him, his words summoned an image that excited her. At the same time, she knew that she was perfectly safe. For all of his faults, Oliver did truly respect women. She could not imagine him doing harm to her or any other.

He began to pace, restless as a stallion. His tall knee boots crunched over the loose sand and gravel of the bank. “I’m confused, Lark. I know not why, but kissing you is
more fun than bedding a legion of willing wenches.” He swung around and challenged her. “Why don’t you want me?”

“Why should I?” she shot back.

“All women want me,” he said with a surprising lack of conceit. “I’ve never encountered rejection before.”

“Then you have led a charmed life,” she answered primly.

“And why
you?
I’ve known women more lavishly beautiful and, God knows, more worldly. I’ve known women of lofty accomplishments who have the confidence of queens.” He seemed almost to be speaking to himself. “Why
you?
”

“Ah.” She was able to hold the hurt at bay, but her temper had reached the boiling point. “That is what galls you. Veritable princesses have fallen into your lap. And then there is me. Lark. Mousy and brown and timid.” She glared at his codpiece, the contents of which he had modestly referred to as “His Highness.”

She tossed her head and said, “I am surely too much an oaf to appreciate the near-sacred gift you offer me.”

“Lark, that is not what I meant.”

“It is what you meant, and you know it!” she shouted. Lord, it felt good, sinfully good, to vent her temper. She had always been instructed to keep hers in check. Now she knew the disgraceful pleasure of pouring it all out. She stalked back and forth on the bank. “I could give you a hundred reasons why I do not want you to seduce me. You are spoiled, conceited, irresponsible.” She counted them off with her fingers. “Faithless, truthless, lawless—”

“But enough about me.” He caught her raised hand in his. “You are quick to enumerate
my
faults. Have you none of your own? No reason of your own to deny yourself a perfectly good night of love?”

“I have a reason.” The old shame seized her in its grip. She tore her hand away and resumed pacing. So did he, following her. At the bank of the river, she stopped and turned. They both assumed the time-honored stance of a bickering couple: hands on hips, noses thrust toward each other, brows almost touching.

“Well?” he prompted furiously.

She took a deep breath. It was about time he learned the truth. He was bound to find out eventually, anyway.

“Because,” she said in a nervous rush, “I am married.”

“M
arried!” Oliver squawked. He cleared his throat. “Married! How on earth can you be
married?”

Reeling in shock, he peered at her through the darkness. Lark. She looked the same as she ever had. Not beautiful. Beyond beautiful.

The moonlight fell like a veil over her, glinting in her dark hair like filaments of silver. She was no raving beauty, he assured himself for the hundredth time. But there was that air about her. That rare combination of delicacy and strength. That intriguing allure of self-denial and barely repressed passion.

“This is a joke,” he said. “You cannot possibly be married.”

“People get married,” she stated. “It happens every day.”

“Not to you.” The denial leaped from him. He had suffered many surprises in his time, but never one that
hurt.
Lark could not be married. She was sweet. She was innocent. She was
his.

Apparently not.

“Not to me?” she asked, thrusting up her chin. “And
pray you, why not? Ah, I see. I am too timid and mousy and plain to be the wife of anyone, is that it?”

You are too naive, he thought. Too pristine. Too…
mine.

He loosened the laces of his collar, for despite the cold night he had begun to sweat. “What sort of wife goes traipsing around the countryside risking her life to rescue condemned men? What sort of husband would
allow
it?”

She shrugged, her defiance dimming a little. “He does not precisely allow it.”

He.
Oliver’s stomach churned.
He.
The husband. A man who had an identity, who commanded Lark’s heart.

“Who?” Oliver forced himself to ask. “Who is this husband whose wife defies death and sleeps amongst Gypsies?”

She squared her shoulders. He braced himself, certain she would name the handsome yet oily Wynter Merrifield.

The thought that Wynter—or any man—might know her and touch her in the way Oliver wanted to know her and touch her was unbearable.

“Who?” he demanded again, preparing himself for the news that she had wed Wynter, who was bolder, stronger…and longer lived than he.

“Spencer Merrifield,” she replied.

Oliver broke into relieved laughter. “Your jest is strange indeed, Lark.”

“Tis no jest. Spencer is my husband. I am Lark Merrifield, countess of Hardstaff.”

Oliver mouthed the name and the title, but no sound came out.
Please be lying.

But Lark never lied. Lark never jested. He suspected she did not even know how. In this, as in all matters, she was deadly serious.

“But he’s old!” Oliver burst out at last.

“Forty-five years my senior.”

“Then why…how…wherefore…” Oliver raked all ten splayed fingers through his hair, wishing he could comb away his sense of horror and betrayal. “I need a drink,” he mumbled.

She unbent enough to offer him a slight smile. “So do I.”

They crept back to the encampment. Lark checked on Richard Speed; he still slept a sound, healing sleep. Oliver nicked a jar of wine clad in wicker from where it hung on one of the wagons. He took a woolen blanket and two battered pewter goblets, as well, and they stole away together—like two lovers in the night, he thought with an ironic smile.

He led her up a slight incline to the top of a grassy knoll overlooking the river. The scent of the water freshened the breeze that drifted up from the valley. Oliver welcomed the coolness on his face. Lark had some explaining to do, and he would not let her rest until she confessed all.

Scowling, he spread out a blanket, sat down and patted the spot next to him. She lowered herself somewhat warily.

He uncorked the bottle, filled both goblets and handed one to her. “Drink. Something tells me this is going to be a long night.”

She took an admirably lusty pull from the cup. He pretended not to notice the arc of her throat as she drank or the way her long eyelashes fanned her cheeks. He knew nothing quite so flattering as the silver light of a winter moon.

She finished, setting down the cup. “Why do you stare at me so?”

“With such tippling skills, you’d not be out of place in one of my London haunts.”

She stared down at her lap. “Yes, I would.”

He touched her shoulder. When she looked up at him, he saw the moon reflected in her great, sad eyes.

“Lark, why did you not tell me you were married? And to Spencer Merrifield, of all people?”

“It seemed imprudent, especially at first.”

“And you are, above all, a prudent woman.”

She tightened her fist around the base of her goblet. “Of necessity. At the start, I knew virtually nothing of you. Like the court that condemned you to the gallows, I thought you a common rabble-rouser. I felt no need to share my life history with you.”

“Then why not later? Why not after you learned my true identity and came looking for me?”

“Ever since I joined Dr. Snipes and the Samaritans, I have always tried to keep my part in this work private.”

“Because Spencer has no idea about the risks you take.”

“He believes I do no more than help Mrs. Snipes at the safe hold at Ludgate and decode messages in cipher. If he should happen to hear that a woman was seen rescuing prisoners, he’ll be less likely to associate that woman with me.”

“Ah.” Oliver savored the burn of a long swallow of wine. “Is that why you act the downtrodden female when you are at Blackrose?”

She sniffed. “I shall ignore that.”

“You still haven’t said why you kept this a secret from me.
I
would not have told Spencer,” Oliver grumbled.

“I feared what you would think if I introduced myself as Spencer’s wife and then told you the plan to disentail Wynter.”

“You thought I’d assume you were acting out of greed, wanting the inheritance all for yourself.”

“I do not,” she said vehemently. “But neither do I want Wynter to have it. In the days before the Reform, Black
rose Priory was a place of corruption and superstition. Wynter would restore it to that state.”

Oliver held up a hand. “You need not exert yourself to make me believe
that,
Lark. What I was wondering about was a bit more…personal.”

She drank again, pulled her knees up to her chest and set her chin upon them. Clearly she was unaware that the pose made her look younger and more untried than ever. Good Christ.
Was
she untried? Had she and that wasted old man shared a bed?

“Just start at the beginning,” he said, wishing the thought had never occurred to him. “I want—I
need
—to understand.”

“Shortly after my birth, both my parents died of the sweat.”

He nodded and took a drink. The dread horror of the sweat had been known to empty whole manors and towns.

“They were Lord and Lady Montmorency,” she said.

“I have heard the name. Estate in Hertfordshire?”

“Yes. It’s called Montfichet. And I, just three months alive, was the sole heir.” She held up her hand as if she knew what his comment would be. “Spencer had little interest in the land. He already possessed a manor called Eventide—that will fall to me upon his death—and Blackrose Priory, which King Henry granted to him in the first phase of the Dissolution.”

With random, nervous movements, she plucked strands of dry grass and arranged them on the blanket in front of her, forming the Roman numeral
VIII
with the blades. “Blackrose was granted on condition of entail, for at the time, the realm needed stability. The king could not know that Spencer’s son would embrace the corrupt Church of Rome when he was man-grown.”

She helped herself to more wine. Oliver stifled his own impatience to learn the answer to the only question that truly concerned him.

Did you bed him, Lark? Are you that old man’s lover?

“After my parents died, a number of men vied to make me their ward. I’m told the petitioning became quite competitive, for the wardship was lucrative.”

“And Spencer was among those offering to be your guardian?”

“Being a friend of the Montmorencys, he heard of my plight, learned of unsavory schemes to bribe the Court of Wards and take possession of my estate.” With a restless hand, she whisked away the bits of dried grass. “My father summoned Spencer to his bedside. He begged Spencer to look after me, to protect me.”

“Ah,” Oliver commented. “The fated deathbed promise.”

She looked at him sharply.
“Some
people take such solemn oaths quite seriously. Spencer did. He wed me out of a sense of duty to his old friend. He’s told me this many times.”

A sense of duty. No wonder the woman had no notion at all of her own worth.

She gazed off at the moon-silvered distance, the roll of hills delving toward the river valley. A light mist stole through the dale, its moody presence giving the land an aura of mystery. “At that time, I suspect Spencer’s life was quite empty. He had just put aside his Spanish wife—Wynter’s mother. He forced her to annul the marriage on grounds of her imprudence.”

“You mean she cuckolded him?”

Her cheeks darkened. “Aye. She left in high dudgeon and went north to a Catholic sanctuary in the Borders.”

“Leaving Spencer without wife or child.” Oliver was beginning to see a horrible sort of logic in the tale.

“In practice, yes, though once he learned he had a son, Spencer made certain Wynter would always be recognized as his legitimate heir. It is a decision he came to regret.” She tilted her head slightly as an owl called from the woods. “When Spencer’s petition to the Court of Wards was denied, he went to King Henry and asked permission to marry me.”

“And the king allowed it?” Oliver thought for a moment. Aye, old Harry would have found it quite amusing. Oliver remembered the king—corpulent, belligerent, dangerously intelligent, yet woefully ignorant in matters of the heart right up until the end.

“Of course he allowed it.” Oliver answered his own question. “It would leave a loyal noble, an adherent to the Reformed faith, in charge of three important estates—Montfichet, Eventide and Blackrose.”

“Aye. Spencer was extremely loyal to the king.” Lark spoke slowly, thickly.

Good Lord, was the woman getting drunk? “You became the infant countess of Hardstaff. How very singular.” His nerves were stretched to their limit. “Lark, I must ask you…”

She flung out one arm, then flopped back on the blanket, propping herself on her elbows. “Ask away,” she sang out. “Dissect me like a cadaver of the Royal College. I have no more secrets. Though I can’t think why my life would interest you.”

Nothing could have made him feel more guilty. But he well knew how to ignore guilt. “You see—” he cleared his throat “—I have come to care about you.”

She regarded him with a twinkle of suspicion in her half-lidded eyes. “No doubt.”

He hated it that she did not believe him. But then, why
should she? Spencer had been telling her for years that he had wed her out of duty, not love.

Oliver’s frustration escalated to anger. He pressed her back against the blanket, their position—if not their attitude—that of two lovers. He could feel the firmness of her flesh beneath his fingers, could smell her scent of perfume and wine. An overpowering desire flared through him, and he wanted to punish her for making him want her so badly, for being the woman he could not have.

“What was it like?” he demanded.

“Let go of me.” She wrenched herself away and sat up on her knees. “You have no right—”

“Did he raise you to his particular tastes?” Oliver couldn’t help himself. He chose each word as a dart, dipping its point in poison. “Did he wait until you had your first monthly, or did he simply bed you from the time you could walk—”

Her slap, when it struck, was powered by a surprising force. One of passion and rage.

Oliver felt a curious sort of relief. She was not always totally in control. And she knew how to stop him when he got carried away.

He poked his tongue at the lining of his lip and tasted blood. “On my troth, you’ve a good arm.”

She held out her hand, staring at it as if it belonged to someone else. “What right have you to ask such questions?”

“Because I feel betrayed.”

“You’re the only person I’ve ever hit.” She glared in fierce accusation. “But then, you’re the only person who has ever been so impertinent.”

Oliver grabbed the wine and refilled the two goblets. “It was stupid of me to ask.” He drained his glass, flinching as the wine stung his lip. “Stupid, for I do know the answer.”

She gulped back her wine and sent him a lopsided grin. “Do you?” She rolled over on her stomach on the blanket and cupped her chin in her palm. Slapping him had evidently drained all the anger from her, and now she was an amiable drunk.

The night had begun to yield its dense shadows to the coming dawn, and the soft early light bathed her, gilded her, transformed her from woman to sprite. He saw her then for what she truly was, a girl raised by a stern yet good-hearted man, taught to loathe passion and physical need, untouched by any man—save Oliver de Lacey.