The Widow's Kiss (6 page)

“Were you talking about the hunt?” Pippa persisted.

“Aye,” Greene agreed. “That we were.”

“Did the boar really charge Pen's pony? Did she scream? I expect she did. Was that why her arrow missed?”

Robin, alone on the dais, was beginning to feel self-conscious and rather wishing that he hadn’t driven Pippa away when a bustle from the hallway beyond the door in the wooden screen and the accompanying blast of a ceremonial trumpet interrupted the dancing. A procession of torchbearers entered the hall; in their midst walked the cook bearing a great square cake, its surface lavishly decorated with a complete replica of Mallory Hall, its gardens
and gatehouse, even the topiary gardens. A miniature pony with a tiny figure representing Pen was riding over the packhorse bridge with the river flowing green and brown beneath.

Pen, flushed with pleasure, abandoned her partner and ran up to the table, Magister Howard wheezing in her wake. “Oh, Master Gilbert, how beautiful!” she breathed as the cook carefully placed the cake in front of her place. “Oh, I can’t possibly cut it. We can’t
eat
it.”

“Of course we can, Pen!” Pippa declared, bobbing up beside her. “What a waste it would be if we didn’t. Is it marchpane, Master Gilbert? I do so love marchpane.”

“As we all know to our cost,” Guinevere said with a half smile. “Master Gilbert, you are a true artist.”

The cook beamed his pleasure and handed a knife to Pen. “Just cut it straight down the middle, Lady Pen, and I’ll do the rest.”

“You have to make a wish … make a wish!” Pippa cried, bouncing on her tiptoes to watch the magic moment. “You must wish for something wonderful … oh, why don’t you wish for a new pony, or … or that your hair will go curly … or that next hunt you’ll shoot a boar … or …”

“I can make my own wish, thank you,” Pen said.

“You have to close your eyes and wish really really hard,” Pippa advised, not in the least put out. She fixed her sister with an anxiously critical stare to make sure that she followed instructions to the letter.

A deep rumble of laughter came from Hugh, and Guinevere could feel his shoulders shake as he stood beside her. Pen glanced quickly at Robin who said, pointing, “If you cut straight from here, you won’t spoil any of the decorations.”

Pen nodded and took up the knife. She placed it carefully on the cake. Closing her eyes tightly she cut down.

“What did you wish … what did you wish, Pen?”

“I can’t tell you that, it won’t come true,” Pen told her little sister. She shot Robin a sideways glance and he smiled at her.

“Well, I hope it was something really splendid,” Pippa declared. “Such a cake deserves a really special wish, doesn’t it, Mama?”

“Indeed it does,” Guinevere said. “But you, my child, will have one very small piece. You may have one of these marchpane trees, but that's all for today.”

She nodded at Master Gilbert who grinned and said, “I’ll see to it, my lady.” He took up the cake and carried it away for serving.

“Should the butler bring the fine rhenish, my lady?” Master Crowder in a waft of black gown appeared on the dais.

“Yes, indeed. I for one prefer it with a sweet dish.” She glanced pointedly at Lord Hugh as she said in an undertone, “Perhaps you would care to open the flagon and pour it yourself, my lord. That way you could be certain you were in no danger.”

Hugh, whose original barb had been intended only to make a sardonic point, said, low voiced and smooth, “I enjoyed the intimacy of our sharing, madam. It added greatly to my pleasure in the feast. I’d be loath to drink alone now.”

Guinevere felt her color rise as indignation warred with a resurgence of tormenting and unruly sensations. He had picked up her glove and, indeed, she had not expected him to do otherwise. But the lightly mocking taunt spoke so readily to her present confusion she was suddenly rendered mute. Did he feel any of this himself? she caught herself wondering.

She had sensed how he had responded to her when he first saw her in the chapel, and womanlike she knew what effect her smile and her soft melodious tones could
have. They were the only weapons in her arsenal, and it was a pathetic enough arsenal compared with Hugh of Beaucaire's. But when she used them on this man she seemed to forget what she was using them for. Then just when they both slipped into a moment of ease, as they had while dancing, when her guard was down and she was powerfully aware of the humorous, warm, vibrantly attractive man, the fierce hostility and distrust between them would rise up like a tidal bore, sweeping away anything approaching accord.

She merely inclined her head and returned to her seat, supervising Pippa's consumption of marchpane and cake with a sharp eye. The butler with great reverence withdrew the stopper from the flagon of rhenish and poured it with appropriate solemnity into fresh goblets.

This time Hugh did not cover his goblet. He leaned back in his chair, watching the stream of golden wine glowing in the candlelight as it arced into the delicate crystal. There was enough worth in Venetian crystal on this table to build and fortify a small castle, he reflected. His eye roamed around the hall. The tapestries on the paneled walls were lush, their hues of varied blues and greens, gold, crimson, and silver thick and rich under the torchlight. The tapers on the dais table were wax not tallow and the air was perfumed with the scents of dried woodruff, watermint, and sweet herbs sprinkled lavishly upon the wooden floor.

King Henry's court was renowned for its show; nobles vied with each other to prove their wealth and standing, bankrupting themselves to dress their households in the finest garments. They displayed their possessions with an apparent disregard for their value that they believed only added to their consequence. Hugh had seen many a noble try to hide his wince as a priceless flagon of Venetian crystal was carelessly thrown to the floor on his own orders.

Guinevere Mallory was probably as wealthy as Privy

Seal but the display of luxury around Hugh was not done for show. It was part of the woman. Something she accepted as natural. She was not trying to impress him.

He glanced at Robin who was eating cake and marchpane with the dedicated concentration of the perpetually growing, perpetually hungry youngster. Robin would inherit a small estate in Kent, his mother's dowry. Hugh himself, the youngest son of a family of sons, had little of his own. For his service to the king he had been given the lands of Beaucaire in Brittany. They were fertile but not extensive. He had money, the king was generous when he remembered to be, but he hadn’t had the time to improve either the estate in Kent or his French lands, and he certainly didn’t have the money to acquire the trappings of wealth he saw around him tonight. Compared with the Lady Guinevere, Hugh of Beaucaire was a pauper.

He sipped the rhenish, noting its quality. Which of the husbands had furnished this for the cellars?

“It meets with your approval, Lord Hugh?”

“It's very fine. I was wondering which of your husbands was responsible for this acquisition.” His eyes, heavy lidded now, were slits of blue in his tanned face.

Guinevere hesitated, then said, “Lord Hadlow had agents in Burgundy, Bordeaux, and in the wine-growing districts of the Rhine. He taught me much and I buy through the same agents who served him.”

“They make wise choices for you,” he commented.

“No, my lord, they advise me.
I
make the choices.”

“I see.” He wasn’t sure that he believed her. Women knew little about such things. But then women did not ordinarily write their own marriage contracts and inherit lock, stock, and barrel from their deceased husbands. He touched his lips with his fingertips, considering.

“Did none of your husbands have families who would lay claim to some part of their estates?”

“My lord, I am willing to answer your questions … to
cooperate in your ‘investigation’ if you choose to use that term. But not at my daughter's birthday feast.” Her tone was clipped.

“Later then?”

“When the children are in bed, if you will come to my apartments I will do what I can to put your mind at rest.”

“Madam, I doubt that is within your capability.”

“Not if you have already closed your mind to the truth,” she said softly.

“My mind is always open to the truth.”

She looked at him then, full in the eye, and her gaze mocked such a pathetic defense for his presence under her roof. “Is it, Lord Hugh?”

He was saved from the need to respond by a renewed tucket of trumpets. Pippa jumped to her feet the instant before her sister. “Pen, ’tis your procession! It's beginning. Boy Robin, you have to walk beside Pen because you’re an honored guest and Pen likes you … you do, don’t you, Pen?” There was a momentary hesitation and then gallantly she continued the exuberant flood. “And I’ll come behind you two. Mama will come behind us with …” She hesitated, looking at Hugh.

“
I
will walk behind your mother,” he said firmly.

“And everyone else will come where they’re supposed to,” Pippa said happily.

The procession, preceded by trumpets and torch men, wound its way out of the hall, across the lower court, and out of the house. They went over the packhorse bridge, across the meadow under the starlit sky, and back up through the topiary garden that skirted the outside walls of the house.

Once more back in the lower court, Guinevere kissed her daughters good night and dismissed her household with smiling thanks and a generous purse to Master Crowder to be distributed as he thought fit.

Guinevere looked up to where a yellow half moon
hung like a cut lemon in the brilliant night sky. She could smell wood smoke and pitch from the bivouac beyond the gatehouse. Slowly she turned to the man standing as still as she behind her.

“It's a beautiful night.”

“Aye,” he agreed.

“ ’Tis a pity to spoil it.” She sighed, the long fingers of her right hand twisting the rings on her left. “But that's as it must be. I am going to look in on the girls, then I will await you in my apartment. You will find it above the north entrance.”

She turned without another word and Hugh watched the tall slender figure, her rich skirts swaying gracefully around her, cross the lower court and go back into the house. He could scent her perfume lingering in the soft air, but then he wondered if perhaps it was just the fragrance of the rose garden.

He was unaware that he echoed her sigh as he went to check on his men in their bivouac beyond the gates.

T
he clock in the chapel tower chimed ten as Hugh crossed the lower court. He looked up above the north entrance to the window that overlooked the court. The wooden shutters were fastened back and the soft glow of candlelight filled the window space. A shadow passed across the light, a tall, graceful shadow.

He entered the house through the small door set into the larger one. Sounds came from the kitchens to the left of the passage; presumably the servants were cleaning up after the feast. He turned aside through the opening in the wooden screen into the banqueting hall. There was no residue here of the evening's festivities; the cloth had been removed from the table on the dais, the long trestle tables folded and put away with the benches. The floor had been swept clean of debris and the torches in the sconces extinguished except for two to light the stairs that rose from the far end of the hall.

Hugh mounted the stairs and took the long galleried corridor that led to Lady Guinevere's apartment. He paused outside the heavy oak door listening for the sound of voices. She would have her tiring woman with her. But there was only silence from within. He raised a hand and knocked.

“Pray enter, Lord Hugh.”

He raised the latch and opened the door. Guinevere was seated at a table above which hung a small Italian mirror of silvered glass in an elaborately carved and painted wooden frame. Tall candles burned on the table to either side of the mirror. The wicks were scented, filling the air with the delicate perfume of verbena.

Guinevere rose from her chair, turned, and smiled at him as he stood in the doorway. “Pray close the door, sir.”

Hugh put his hand behind him and pulled the door softly closed. She was smiling that
damnable
smile again and her eyes were luminous, her skin creamy and glowing in the candlelight, her mouth so warm and full and sensuous.

It was very still in the large chamber, the only light coming from the candles on the table. The walls were paneled in a pale oak, the ceiling ornate with gilded moldings. His eye went involuntarily to the great bed where the pillars were carved in sinuous lines, the bed hangings and coverlet of a rich turquoise tapestry embroidered with great yellow suns. The pillows and the edge of the sheet where it was turned over the coverlet were of whitest lawn. There was no fire in the stone hearth but a copper jug of tumbled golden marigolds brought the scents and sense of summer into the chamber.

“Be seated if you wish.” Guinevere gestured to a wooden settle beside the hearth.

Hugh, instead, perched upon the deep stone seat at the window that looked out over the countryside. His voice was harsh, masking his inner turmoil, as he stated, “So Stephen Mallory fell from a window.”

“Yes. From that one.” Guinevere gestured to the window overlooking the court. “He was drunk at the time as anyone will tell you.” She sat down before the mirror again and began to take off her rings, hanging them over the branches of a silver filigree orange tree that sat on the table. Her hands were perfectly steady.

Hugh rose and crossed to the opposite window. He stood looking down at the cobbles below. “I can’t imagine how a man could have unintentionally tripped over this sill. It's too deep.”

He glanced over his shoulder to the woman sitting before the mirror. Guinevere shrugged slender shoulders. “He was a big and heavy man. Clumsy with drink.” Her tone was indifferent as if she cared neither one way nor the other whether he believed her.

She opened a silver box on the table and reached behind her to unclasp the chain of the diamond pendant that nestled between her breasts. She placed the jewel on the black velvet shelf within the box. It winked in the candlelight.

Hugh watched, mesmerized in the soft shadowy light of the chamber, his questions stilled upon his tongue. She unfastened the diamond-studded arc set atop her black silk hood and placed it on the table. All her movements were languorous and deliberate as if part of an elaborate ritual where each step was sacred.

She unclipped the pomander and the tiny watch from the chain at her waist and placed them in the box with the pendant. She rose to her feet and very slowly unclasped the gold chain itself, drawing it away from her body, curling the delicate links into the open palm of her hand.

Hugh felt he was losing touch with reality, as if his purpose for being in this fragrant chamber of soft light and shadow was suddenly irrelevant. He pushed his way through the sensual tendrils she was weaving, thrusting aside the dreamlike quality of the moment.

“What do you think you’re doing?” His voice rasped in the quiet. He was not asking for the literal answer she gave him.

“ ’Tis late, my lord, and I wish to uncoif,” she said, sitting at the table again. “Don’t let me distract you from your investigation.” Her eyes darted up to the glass,
catching his still-riveted gaze as he stood behind her. For a moment there she had had him; for a moment she had succeeded in deflecting his questions about Stephen's fall. Would he ask them again?

She bent her head and slid off the black silk hood, then reached up to remove the long golden pins of her white coif beneath.

It was too much for Hugh. “God's blood! Where's your tiring woman?”

“In the inner chamber,” she said, gesturing to a door in the far wall. “I had thought you would prefer it if your questions to me were asked and answered in private. I’m sure you’ll wish to talk with Tilly yourself. You wouldn’t like her
evidence
to be affected by what she’d heard me say. Would you, my lord?” She smoothed the folds of the coif and stretched sideways to lay it over a stool.

He found he couldn’t answer her. Her hair was parted and braided, drawn back over her ears and coiled at her nape. Little tendrils escaping from the braids wisped tenderly over her ears and curled on her forehead.

With the same unhurried movements she drew out the long pins that held the plaits in place, her eyes still fixed on his in the glass. “You have seen a woman uncoif before, my lord?” She raised a chiseled golden eyebrow in faint mockery.

He found his tongue. “There are times when such bedchamber intimacy is appropriate and times when it is not, madam. This I deem to be an inappropriate time,” he declared harshly.

Guinevere's soft laugh chimed. “Be that as it may, Lord Hugh, ask your questions of me now. You’ll wish to question my household at your leisure, and they will be obliged to answer you as they can, but I will give you this one opportunity to hear me.”

Her braids fell unloosened to below her shoulders and she began to unplait them, her long white fingers twisting
deftly in the shining white-gold mane. She shook her head and the shimmering mass swung out around her. She reached for an ivory-backed hairbrush and began to pull it through her hair.

Hugh didn’t know what he was doing. He moved a hand and clasped her wrist, his brown fingers dark in the mirror against her white blue-veined skin. She released her hold on the brush and he took it from her, beginning to brush her hair with long smooth rhythmic sweeps. Their eyes held in the mirror and for long minutes they were contained in a silence broken only by the soft swish of the brush and the occasional electric crackle from the pale river of her hair.

“You have some skill as a tiring woman, my lord.” Guinevere broke the silence, her voice low and husky as she bent her head beneath the rhythmic strokes.

“It's been many years since I’ve done this for a woman,” he replied, his voice as low as hers.

“Robin's mother?”

He nodded.

“She must have been very dear to you.”

His hand stilled. He stared at the woman's face in the mirror and as he stared Sarah's face came back to him. A round freckled face with a snub nose and merry brown eyes. So different from Lady Guinevere's sculptured beauty. He had never heard Sarah mock, or taunt, or say an unkind thing. She had not been learned except in the ways of kindness and motherhood, schooled only in the management of a household, but he had loved her.

He dropped the hairbrush and it clattered to the table. The chamber came back into focus and he remembered why he was here, who this woman was. He spun away from her, away from that bewitchingly beautiful face, the brilliant, intelligent eyes.

“So Stephen Mallory fell from that window. Where were you when he did so?”

She turned slowly in her chair to look at him as he stepped away from her. What had happened to break that connection between them? It had been so strong, so real. But now he was regarding her with all the old antagonism and a very real and personal hostility.

“In the garderobe,” she said slowly, aware that her palms were clammy, her cool composure reduced now to a facade.

“You didn’t see him fall?”

“No.” She had almost come to believe it herself, but as she told the lie she felt her foot twitch the way it had as he’d lunged for her. Her ankle tingled as it had after Stephen had caught his foot against it. She resisted the urge to bend and rub it.

“Did anyone see him fall?”

She shook her head. “Not as far as I know. The torch men came running when he cried out, but he was on the cobbles before they reached him.”

“He was drunk?”

“He was always drunk. Viciously drunk.” She said it simply but there was no disguising the bitterness of her tone.

“Was that why you don’t mourn him?”

“Among other reasons.” She turned back to the mirror, her hands falling into her lap as she watched his reflection. It was easier somehow than watching him in person.

“And what of your other deceased husbands? Did you mourn them? Or were they also unworthy of such respect?”

“You consider my feelings towards my husbands to be relevant to your inquiry, my lord?”

“I am inquiring into the circumstances of their deaths. Your feelings could provide a motive for those deaths,” he observed dispassionately, his shoulders propped against the wall behind her, hands thrust into the deep pockets of his gown. He was master of himself once more, his expression cold and hard.

“A motive for what you intend to prove,” she threw at him. “If you discover that indeed I had little love for any of my husbands that will give you a motive and you need look no further. Is that how you and your masters reason, sir?”

“I doubt your motives were as simple as dislike, madam. I believe them to be more venal,” he stated.

“You talk as if my guilt is already an established fact. We have not as yet discussed the deaths of two of my husbands.” Her tone was sweet as the marchpane on Pen's birthday cake, but her eyes were shrewd and cold. “Don’t you wish to question me about those, or is it not worth going through the motions since you’ve already made up your mind?” She kept her back to him, her hands still lightly clasped in her lap.

“You will have a fair hearing,” he said tightly.

Guinevere shook her head. “I know the facts of life, my lord. If Privy Seal intends to find me guilty for his own gain he will find me so. I assume you’re merely his instrument … the cat's-paw you might say.” Now she had really hit home. His vivid eyes burned and he pushed himself off the wall. For a minute she thought he was about to lay hands on her, then he strode instead to the open window over the courtyard. He put one foot on the low sill, resting a hand on his upraised knee.

He said with icy calm, “Be careful, madam. You talk treason. Such statements about Privy Seal impugn his master, the king. Were they to come to Lord Cromwell's ears, he will have your head.”

Guinevere shrugged. “If he intends to have it, sir, he will have it on one pretext or another.” She turned sideways on her chair to look at him fully. “However, I can see only one way in which they might come to Privy Seal's ears. Only one person heard me. Will you tell tales, Hugh of Beaucaire?”

Somehow she had forgotten in the crisp satisfaction of
besting him that she had intended during this encounter to distract him with charm, to try to confuse his responses to her. At the beginning she had begun to do that, but once again the bright knife of antagonism cut the frail accord. And now she didn’t care. Anger would distract him as well as sensual temptation.

But Hugh was not to be provoked again. He observed with a mocking amusement, “You have an asp's tongue, my lady. Poisonous enough, I dare swear, to do away with any number of self-respecting husbands. However, if you will accept a piece of advice, when you are questioned in London, you would do well to leave such venom behind. It will not find favor, I assure you.”

“On what subjects am I to be questioned?” Guinevere inquired, striving to maintain her own air of mocking indifference despite the fear crawling down her spine at this reminder of the journey that lay ahead if she couldn’t hit upon some desperate means to avoid it. It was all very well to play word games and rejoice in a well-placed dart, but it was an empty puerile triumph in the face of the real danger in which she stood.

“That is for them to say.”

“And who is it who wishes to question me?”

“The king, for one. The Bishop of Winchester for another. Privy Seal for another.”

Guinevere's laugh was low and humorless. “God's grace! Such marked and august attention for a mere widow from the northern wilds!”

“A very
rich
widow,” he emphasized softly. “A lady four times widowed. Most conveniently widowed.”

“And you are here as Privy Seal's cat's-paw,” she reiterated with a bitter scorn fueled now by desperation and fear. “You are here to find what evidence will support the facts that suit you? You think you will gain the deeds to my estate by such means? Good God, my lord! Is your greed such that you would trump up charges against me
and bring about my death to get your hands on land that does not belong to you?”

The mocking amusement died. Hugh's expression darkened, his mouth hardened. “My son has legitimate title to that land. If you are innocent of your husbands’ deaths, then I will find you so. But if you are guilty, believe me, I will find you so.”

“You will find me so because it will suit you to do so,” she repeated in the same low and furious voice. “You think I do not know your kind, Hugh of Beaucaire?”