The Maiden's Hand (22 page)

“I think I’m insulted.”

“You know better than to take offense. I love you, Lark. I would never hurt you.”

The lancelike rays of sunlight through the window touched her bare back and shoulders. She spoke her most heartfelt fear. “You love easily, Oliver.”

“And why should I not? The members of my family, the friends I have made, inspire affection. It feeds my soul to love.”

“And to be loved,” she said.

“That is true.”

Tell him, urged her inner voice. Tell him that you love him.

“Oliver.”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

She changed her mind, decided to wait until her feelings did not bleed like raw wounds.

She wanted to be more than food for his greedy soul. She wanted him to look upon her and feel the same silent exultation she felt when she gazed at him. She wanted him to feel the same helpless wonder that nothing, no one, would ever mean as much to him as she did.

“We had best start back,” she said, improvising. “Now that I am feeling well, your parents have invited guests to dine with us at Lynacre.”

He blew out a reluctant sigh. “I’d nearly forgotten. All the tenants and townspeople. Also Algernon Basset, earl of Havelock. And Kit’s father, Sir Jonathan Youngblood.”

“You know them well?”

“Very well indeed. Havelock is the most prolific gossip in all England. No doubt he’ll have plenty to say about our hasty marriage. He has probably set the date for the birth of our first child. A pity he’ll be disappointed.”

Maybe not, thought Lark. Before she could stop herself, she asked, “Do you look forward to that? To our first child?”

He chuckled, sitting up to don his blousy chemise. “In sooth, I had not thought that far ahead.” He kissed her briefly, letting her taste their spent passion. “I rarely think past tomorrow.”

“So I’ve noticed.” She had made the right choice in not telling him.

“I want you all to myself, sweetheart.” With lascivious glee, he fondled her breasts. “I can’t imagine sharing you.”

She blushed and gathered up her clothes.

He laughed and continued dressing. “You will be proud to learn that my father and I have determined a way to smuggle Richard Speed out of England.”

She poked her head through the neck opening of her shift. “Is it safe?”

“It shall be an adventure. We’ll travel to London. The
Mermaid,
one of my father’s Russian fleet, will be arriving to dock at the Galley Key in London late in the summer. After its cargo is offloaded, the ship will be careened and repaired. Then it will return to St. Petersburg by way of the White Sea. Calling, of course, at Amsterdam.”

She clasped her hands together. “Where Richard can be
put into the hands of Dutch Protestants.” The southern Low Countries suffered under Spanish domination, but in the north, amid the icy seas and tidal islands, the Dutch fought for their freedom.

“Aye, that is the plan.”

Half-clad, she rushed across the room and threw her arms around him, covering his face with kisses.

He staggered back in surprise. “If I’d known it would mean that much to you, I would have told you sooner.”

She laughed and picked up her petticoat, shaking it out. “The safety of the Reverend Speed means everything to me.”

“Does it? Why?”

“Because of what he stands for. The work he does.” She frowned, trying to twist around to tie on her skirts. Oliver stepped behind to help. Lark went on, speaking over her shoulder. “Richard has the power to affect many, and the grace to use his power to do good. To save souls. To question authority and preserve freedom.”

“It is that power that the men of the Church fear,” Oliver pointed out. Accomplished as any lady’s maid, he helped her don her bodice and lace up her oversleeves.

She reached for her coif. Before she put it on, he turned her to face him and plunged his hands into her hair. “Such a pity to hide it.”

His flattery warmed her face, and she kissed him. “You give me sinful vanities.”

“A little vanity is healthy.” He kissed her back. “I
do
love you.”

She raked back her hair and slid the coif in place. “That’s because it’s easy for you to love. If it were difficult, you would not bother.”

“Wench,” he said, clutching his chest as if wounded.
“Your tongue is a rapier. One day you’ll find a better use for it.”

He was charming and incorrigible. Hardly the qualities for a good father. If only she could be certain he would not grow restless, eager for the next adventure, she would confess all to him, about the baby, and even about the secrets in her past.

“Oliver?”

“My love, I have an idea.” He seemed not to have heard the question in her voice. “Let us go abroad with Richard Speed.”

Her heart sank. Their problems loomed before her, insurmountable as an icy mountain. “Oliver, I am committed to helping the Samaritans with their work here.”

“You’ve served them well, Lark, but think of yourself for once. Think of it! We’d have the most splendid time, sailing the churning seas, eluding the Spanish navy, perhaps engaging in a battle or two.” Laughing, he drew an invisible sword and assumed a fighting stance.

Lark turned away to hide the wistfulness in her eyes. She looked at the gardens, where the late-afternoon sunlight lay softly upon the hedges and lawns, and stifled a sigh. Just when she was preparing to settle down, he wished to go off on yet another adventure—as if the past few months had not been adventure enough.

And that, she realized, was the wall between them. He lived from one reckless exploit to the next, little caring for the grinding labor and distant rewards of less dazzling pursuits. The excitement of playing husband and father would likely pall for a man like Oliver.

“S
he thinks I love her because it’s easy,” Oliver complained to Richard Speed at supper that night. In honor of Oliver’s marriage, a great banquet had been set up on one of the broad greens of Lynacre. The elaborate food and entertainments had drawn a boisterous crowd of merrymakers from town and country alike.

Speed offered no sympathy, merely gazed with longing at Natalya, who watched the dancing on the torch-lit tennis court.
“She
thinks I love her not at all,” said Speed.

Kit, who had arrived that afternoon, made calf eyes at Belinda. Peculiar as ever, Oliver’s sister ignored her suitor. The celebration had given her a chance to indulge her dearest passion—setting off explosives. “
She
thinks I love her too much.”

Oliver filled their goblets with dark claret. “What a miserable lot we are.” He glared across the lawn at Lark, who sat in earnest conversation with his stepmother. “Why do we let them do this to us?”

“Because our brains are in our—” Kit caught himself. “Sorry, Reverend.”

“Do not apologize. I am beginning to despair of ever wearing a codpiece again.” His gaze held a world of torment. Peculiar in her own right, Natalya was pacing up and down, practicing a sermon under her breath.

“’Tis good to see you’re human, at least,” Oliver said. “I was beginning to think you were above matters of the heart.”

“I was,” Richard said with a desultory tug at his starched ruff. He had no choice but to stay in disguise; news had come from Essex that four men had been burned just a week earlier. Bishop Bonner’s attacks on Protestants were escalating in frequency and viciousness. Kit’s report from London was that the authorities had been thoroughly humiliated by Speed’s escape.

“Until I met Natalya,” he concluded, watching her gesticulate to make a point in her sermon. He lifted his eyes heavenward. “By all that’s holy, what right has she to be so lovely? So dainty and sweet? She gives me no encouragement at all, yet I yearn for her.”

Oliver thought of his sister’s bovine glances and wondered how Speed could be so blind.

“Does it help to pray?” Kit asked. His attention was fixed on Belinda. She had climbed to the top of a rise in the middle of a formal knot garden. There, she and her assistant, Brock the Alchemist from Bath, set their charges. The display of flying fire would culminate the evening’s entertainment.

“It helps some.” Richard scowled. “But not when I see her sitting there, nattering away while I malinger here imprisoned by this ridiculous costume.” Glumly he kicked at the hem of his gown. “I can’t even ask her to dance.”

“Patience, Richard,” Oliver cautioned him. “Havelock would have a scold’s day at the gossip mill if he knew we harbored a fugitive Protestant.”

Speed glared at the earl, a pretty man of middle years. An hour earlier, Havelock had entered talking and had yet to pause. Like a stream in a spring melt, he brimmed and overflowed with gossip.

In December of the previous year, the English garrison at Calais had failed to defend itself; England’s last foothold in France was lost. Those who dared, Havelock said with bitterness, blamed the queen’s husband, Philip of Spain.

In March the queen went to Greenwich to await the birth of her child. Despite her stubborn delusions about the false pregnancy and the state of her own health, she made out a new will. Frightening business, that, for the document made Philip regent of England.

Recently, seditious pamphlets had flurried like a storm over London, declaring the queen a raging madwoman and cruelly jeering at her sad, fruitless marriage.

Havelock had related all this with an uncustomary lack of relish. He did love gossip but preferred the sort that titillated one’s sense of the ridiculous. The current tidings simply filled men of reason with bleak despair.

Oliver had absorbed the news silently, thoughtfully. Not with his usual firebrand flare of temper. Of late he had learned to smolder slowly, to conserve his righteous anger.

Sebastian, the younger twin by moments, clapped his hands at the musicians. “If you please, my masters,” he called. “A new dancing measure.”

A tambour rattled. The head musician whistled a salute on his pipes, and then the slow, measured beat of a pavane commenced. Simon drew a partner from the visiting ladies. Sebastian paired up with a journeyman weaver of Malmesbury. Though their friendship always caused a few eyebrows to rise and ears to redden, the sight of the two no longer created a stir. Oliver did not pretend to under
stand his brother’s preference, but considering his own past way of life, he was hardly in a position to condemn anyone.

Speed looked mildly curious.

Oliver chuckled. “The fact that Sebastian has an identical twin makes for no end of fun. Usually at poor Simon’s expense.”

Stephen de Lacey bowed low before his wife; they stepped down from their table to lead the set.

Oliver caught Kit’s eye. “Shall we?”

Kit blanched. “Shall we what?”

“Ask the ladies to dance, minnow-brain.”

“What if she says no?”

“Then you can hurl yourself off a parapet.”

“Really, Oliver, I—”

“Hsst!” Richard clutched Kit’s arm. “I see trouble coming.”

As splendid as one of the peacocks that roamed the grounds, Havelock was making his way toward them. He favored Speed with a broad smile, his intention clear. Oliver leaned over and murmured an order into Kit’s ear.

Kit went from pale to red in an instant. “No,” he whispered.

“You must,” Oliver hissed.

“You’ll owe me a blood debt.” Kit rose and ungraciously dragged Richard up with him, leading the mortified, beskirted reverend to the tennis court to join the other dancing couples.

Oliver lifted his cup to greet Havelock. “You’re too late, my lord. That lady is spoken for.”

Havelock looked wistfully at Speed. “So I see.”

“She is not your sort, anyway. Too robust.” Sending Havelock on his way with a brimming goblet of claret, Oliver crossed the grassy sward.

Lark had been watching the revelry from the bride’s seat of honor, a canopied, thronelike chair at the high table. The massive seat, carved with leering gargoyles and oak leaves, dwarfed her. To Oliver, she looked like a little girl playing at being a princess. Her face reflected a childlike wonder; her rain-soft eyes seemed to drink in the entire merry scene. He didn’t have to ask if she’d ever seen a fête before; he knew she had not. Filled with bittersweet affection, he sank to one knee before her.

His easy gallantry never failed to startle her. Oliver liked that, liked the way her cheeks flushed and her breath caught when she looked at him and put her hand in his.

“You think that’s interesting?” he asked, indicating the dance on the tennis green. “Watch my sister.”

Belinda and Brock were in rare form with their incendiary display. With the basin of a fountain reflecting their artistry, they set off sizzling stars and great wheels of burning color, a
miroire chinoise
that launched a spectacular glowing bird. Each child received a pharaoh’s serpent egg, a black pellet that hissed and grew into a snakelike shape.

“It’s wonderful,” Lark cried, and the exploding stars were reflected in her eyes. “Your sister makes magic.”

“She’s actually quite practical. Her formulas for gunpowder are much in demand. She put her foot down, though, when my father attempted to launch a rat into the air with a rocket tied to its back.”

“He should use Bishop Bonner instead.”

For a moment her solemn look deceived him. Then he realized she had made a jest, and he burst out laughing. “If anyone can draw you out of your shell, my lady Lark, my family can.”

For the pièce de résistance, Belinda had fashioned several great aerial shells. But something went wrong;
within seconds of the fuse being lit, the entire garden was shrouded in smoke.

Oliver waved away a thick, sulfurous cloud and felt an ominous tickle in his lungs. Panic jolted through him. Not now, he thought, forcing his chest to relax in the way that sometimes warded off an attack. Not with Lark watching.

“She must’ve mismeasured the charge,” he said, trying not to wheeze, “or failed to mix the powder correctly.”

“I can see nothing!” Lark said, squinting through the jaundiced fog. “Is everyone all right?”

Through the smoke, he saw Kit running up the hill toward Belinda and then noticed, with a twinge of brotherly concern, Richard Speed stealing a kiss from Natalya.

“Everyone is fine,” he said, willfully denying the twitching in his lungs. “Lark, I want you to stay here with my family while I take Speed up to London to await a ship to carry him abroad.”

“No.” Her instantaneous denial both gratified and frustrated him.

“You’ll be safe at Lynacre.”

“My own safety concerns me little.”

“Don’t you like my family? I know they’re a bit odd, but they’re good people.”

Lark looked at his family with her heart in her eyes. “They are an amazing, marvelous, magnificent clan,” she said softly.

“Then why won’t you stay with them?” Oliver asked.

“They are not
mine.”

He felt a curious squeezing sensation in his chest, and the feeling had nothing to do with the smoky air. “To God, Lark,” he muttered, “you do tug at my heartstrings.”

She laid her hand over his. “No one has ever said anything like that to me before.”

“Perhaps no one’s ever cared for you as I do.”

A cautious joy lit her gaze. “Perhaps. But you are so capricious, Oliver. Only this afternoon you were begging me to go sailing off to Amsterdam with you. Now you want to leave me here with your parents. Tomorrow you might want to ship me away to Smyrna.”

“I have given it much thought. We’ve been lucky, running with Richard, keeping him hidden. But if our luck runs out, the game is up.”

“Game,” she said, her voice harsh. “That’s all it is to you.”

“Lark, I—”

“I do not fight for justice to amuse myself.”

His temper sparked.
“That,
madam, is painfully apparent. However, I have decided that it’s safer for you to stay at Lynacre.”

“And
I
have decided to go with you and Speed to London.”

“No.” Lord, but the woman kindled his ire like no one else. “You can’t go. And that’s final.”

In London, Lark and Oliver and Speed stayed at Wimberleigh House, between the Strand and the Thames. To the vast dismay of Richard Speed, the Russia Company ship had been delayed. He moped like a lovelorn boy, penning letters to Natalya in Wiltshire and seemingly oblivious to the tension between his host and hostess.

Lark had won the battle over whether or not she would stay at Lynacre, but Oliver extracted his price. He did nothing blatantly cruel; in fact, in her company he was his usual attentive and tender self.

But he was not always with her. He made a point of leaving for long periods of time each day.

One evening, when she heard his step outside the door, she did not look up from her reading.

“There you are, my love,” he said, striding into the room. He stopped in front of her, bent, and framed her face with his hands. “Good Lord, but you look luminous. I should have stayed abed with you all day long.”

She could not help but smile. “Where were you?”

“Out and about.” He went to a side table and poured himself a cup of wine. “Down to the keys to watch the shipping.”

“No sign of the
Mermaid?
”

“None. And what have you been doing?”

The question never failed to startle her. He was inordinately interested in her opinions, her thoughts, the things she knew and read and dreamed about. She had never known any truth save what Spencer had told her. With Oliver, she was learning that beliefs could—and sometimes should—be challenged.

“Reading Erasmus.” She indicated the book in her lap with a nod. “
The Apothegms.
No wonder the church has banned his writings. I think tomorrow I should read some poems to lighten my mind.”

He laughed. “Read the Latin ones my brother Simon brought from Venice. The illustrated ones.”

“Those are bound to be banned for an entirely different reason,” she said, blushing. She felt that Oliver tried to expunge the ideas Spencer had drummed into her: that women were inherently unwise, venial creatures. That they had no thoughts of their own and that their time was best spent in menial, somber pursuits such as sewing and reading scripture.

He taught her chess and backgammon and mumchance. He gave her books by Heywood and Calvin. He watched with delight as she read John Knox’s latest diatribe against
women and grew furious enough to pen a challenging letter to the radical Scotsman. Some evenings Oliver read her the old, aching sonnets of Petrarch in a voice that made her melt with emotion.

Feeling her usual confusion of affection and exasperation for her husband, Lark took her sewing from the basket by her chair. She acted out of long ingrained habit rather than conscious thought, deftly stabbing the needle into the fine white lawn of the tiny chemise.