Winter Blockbuster 2012 (79 page)

‘Was he captured?’ she asked softly.

‘Of course, and carried away to a traitor’s death. But it was too late for Mary. Her mind had snapped and would never be repaired. My father sent for me, and I returned just before he died. He beseeched me to care for Mary, though she shrank from the sight of me as a man. I set her up with Nelly, who had been our nurse when we were children, in that cottage, and went back to London to earn my coin.’

Anna’s fingers curled tighter over his hand. ‘And to work for Walsingham?’

‘Aye.’ Rob rubbed his other hand over his face and rolled to lie on his back. The sky arched overhead, blue and endless, and the curve of Anna’s cheek was kissed by a stray curl of her dark hair. He reached up to brush that strand back, and his touch skimmed over her warm, soft skin.

‘I told you I worked for Walsingham for money and advancement,’ he said. ‘And I do. I can’t lie about that. But mostly I work for him to bring down men like the traitor who attacked my sister and who would destroy the peace of our country.’

‘Oh, Robert.’ Anna lay down beside him and rested her head on his shoulder. ‘You do like to play the careless cynic, but now you have revealed the truth.’

‘And what might the truth be?’ he asked, doubt heavy in his voice.

‘That you are a defender of women and the weak. A white knight.’ Her hand flattened against his chest, stroking him through the thin linen of his shirt. ‘With armour that is a bit rusty, perhaps …’

‘Rusty?’ He seized her hand and raised it to his lips for a kiss. ‘I am quite ready to defeat all challengers.’

And he was. With her by his side, his secrets safe in her hands, he finally felt he could move ahead. That he could somehow make wrongs right and slay all her dragons. That he could be her protector and her love forever, be worthy of her.

If only he himself was not her greatest dragon of all.

‘I know you are ever ready to charge into battle, Robert,’ she said with a sigh. ‘That is exactly what I’m afraid of.’

CHAPTER NINETEEN

A
NNA
sat on her bed, the breeze from the half-open window cool through her light chemise. From the garden below she could hear music and laughter as the other guests of Hart Castle danced in the moonlight. It sounded so light-hearted and merry, as if it all came from another world—the realm of fairies and dreams.

She knew she should go down to them, put on the fine gown spread before the fire and go dancing. But she felt frozen in place, and the silence of her chamber wrapped around her like a comforting blanket.

Her mind kept seeing Mary Alden, with her pretty blue eyes as blank and empty as a summer sky and that scar on her cheek. Lost deep in the maze of her own mind.

And Robert, who loved his sister so very much he had given his life over to protecting innocents like her in the only way he knew how—with his pen and his sword. The servant of the great spider Walsingham.

Anna had thought she had begun to know Rob. Now she saw she knew nothing at all.

‘Masks upon masks,’ she whispered. She slid down from the bed and went to peer out of her window. The gardens
were lit up by a multitude of torches, blazing so brightly the night itself was kept away. Everyone danced between them, like a sumptuously coloured glittering serpent, winding round and round.

She smiled to see their merriment, and wished she could revel in that one fleeting moment as they did. She wished she could feel Rob’s arms around her, twirling her until the sky was a blur and all she knew was him.

She wished that life could be as a play, with heroes and villains and romances, a clear line from beginning to end and a happy jig to close all.

‘But make it a comedy, please,’ she said. A tale of disguises revealed, love triumphant, no tragedy or bloody revenge. No more bloodshed.

Her heart ached for Mary Alden, and for Robert. His life
was
a revenge play, and she feared there was no place in it for her. No place for tenderness and caring. He felt he did not deserve it, when she knew he was the most deserving of all. But it could never be, not now.

She heard the soft click of her door sliding open, and she turned to see Rob standing there. He wore only his breeches and shirt, the soft linen unlaced to reveal his glistening chest. His hair was tousled and he held a book in his hand. And she suddenly knew—he had been standing there waiting for her all the time.

He closed the door and leaned back against it, watching her across the room. ‘You don’t care to dance tonight?’

Anna shook her head. ‘I am tired. It is odd, Robert—I feel as if I have passed a hundred years today, many lifetimes.’

‘I wearied you with the long walk.’

‘Nay. I am not weary, not now. And—and I am more grateful than I can say that you allowed me to meet your sister.’

‘I could have done nothing else after you shared your own secrets with me.’

‘Secrets?’ she asked.

‘About your marriage.’

Anna glanced back down at the party guests, dancing on as if in giddy oblivion. ‘Mine was not a secret so much as a pitiful tale I don’t care to remember.’

‘Then I’m doubly honoured you remembered it with me,’ he said.

She heard Rob move, felt his warmth against her back as he shut the window and silence fell over the chamber.

‘You’ll grow cold there,’ he said. ‘Come, sit by me on the bed for a while.’

He took her hand in his and led her back to the bed. Anna let him help her slide beneath the bedclothes and tuck them round her before he sat beside her against the bolsters. His arm lay lightly over her shoulders and she smiled up at him.
Aye
—this was what she had waited for. To be with him, alone in the quiet.

‘I’m certainly warm enough now,’ she said. ‘And the walk today was not too far at all.’

‘Mary liked you very much, I could tell,’ he said. ‘You were very gentle with her.’

Anna rested her head on his shoulder with a sigh. ‘That poor, sweet girl. You have made her a safe haven, Robert.’

‘Whether I can keep it safe for her is less certain,’ he muttered. ‘I brought this for you in thanks.’ He laid the book he held on her lap, and its fine red-leather cover glowed in the low firelight.

‘I need no thanks,’ she said. ‘But I’m always willing to accept books.’ She ran her palm over the soft leather and traced the title in raised gilt letters.
Demetrius and Diana
—the
poem she had been reading in London, the tale of the poor shepherd and his impossible love for a goddess.

She opened it, and saw that it was not a printed book but one handwritten on vellum, as if it was the original manuscript especially bound. She knew that writing well; she saw it often on scripts at the White Heron.

‘You are the author of
Demetrius and Diana!
’ she whispered, astonished. How could he keep that a secret, when it was the most astonishingly wonderful thing she had ever read? ‘Why did you not tell me before?’

Rob shrugged and laid his hand atop hers on the book. His fingers moved like a whispering caress over her skin. ‘My plays are there for all to see, but my poems—they come from somewhere deeper, I think. Somewhere I don’t want everyone to know.’

‘But this work is beautiful! And very popular, too, though no one knows the real author yet,’ Anna protested. ‘The language and images are so vivid and real, and the emotions—This work could bring you great fame if you let it be known. They do say Queen Elizabeth rewards her favoured poets richly.’

‘What would I do with more fame?’ he asked with a laugh. ‘Or with the Queen’s rewards?’

‘Do you never seek a new life, Robert?’ she questioned. She remembered how he had looked as they walked by the river, so happy and carefree. Or perhaps she had only misread that, putting her own secret desires on to him, and he missed the constant movement and upheaval of London. ‘You would miss having everyone hear your words onstage, I’m sure.’

‘My truest words are in here, fairest Anna, for those who care to seek them.’ He tapped lightly at the book’s cover. ‘And now I give them to you.’

‘It is a very fair gift,’ she said. ‘I will use it to remember these days at Hart Castle, the good and bad of them alike.’

He raised her hand and pressed a warm, open-mouthed kiss to the centre of her palm. ‘I hope you only ever remember the good, Anna. You deserve naught but sunshine and laughter all your days.’

She smiled at him, tenderness flooding her heart at the sight of his tousled hair and shadowed eyes. That ice she had built around her heart in the bleak days with her husband had melted entirely away, and she felt only those sunshine wishes.

She laid her other hand against his face, cupping his cheek, and said softly, ‘How dull that would be, with no poetry to fill my hours.’

Rob’s arms came around her and he pulled her against his body as they both rose to their knees in the middle of the bed. His mouth came over hers in a hungry kiss, and she closed her eyes to tumble head-first into that dark, swirling, heated world she always found with him. She had never felt closer to anyone before, bound to him by desire and joy and sadness all tied into one.

She parted her lips in welcome and felt his tongue sweep against hers, tasting her just as she was hungry for him. She met his kiss with equal fervour, full of all the terrible, passionate longing she always felt with him. It was a primeval, overwhelming force she couldn’t deny. She wrapped her arms around his neck, holding him so close there could be nothing separating them now. She wished she could be even closer, that she could make him entirely her own.

His lips slid to her throat, to the bare skin where her chemise fell away from her shoulder. Gently he urged her back down to the bed and drew the fabric away from her legs, up and up. He kissed her ankle, tracing his tongue over the arch
of her foot. It tickled and tingled, and it made her want to laugh and cry out with need all at the same time.

He kissed the soft skin just behind her ankle. He lightly bit at it and traced his mouth up to her knee, the back of her thigh.

‘Robert …’ she whispered.

‘Shh, just lie still,’ he said against her skin. He rose up on his knees between her legs and urged her thighs farther apart as he eased her chemise up to her waist. He used the fabric to draw her closer and softly blew on the damp, sensitive curls above her womanhood.

‘Robert!’ she cried out. The sensation of his breath, his mouth, was almost too much. She arched her hips away but he wouldn’t let her go. And she didn’t really want to get away from him. She wanted to stay with him, just like this, with a desperate need she had never known before.

He leaned closer and kissed her just
there
. With one hand he held her down to the bed, and with the other he spread the wet folds of her so he could kiss her even more deeply, more intimately. His tongue plunged deep inside her, rough and delicate at the same time, tasting her, pressing at that one rough, sensitive spot. She moaned and twined her fingers in his hair to hold him with her.

It was so terribly intimate, somehow even more than when they joined together in sex, and she felt utterly open and vulnerable to him, yet also strong and powerful. She wanted to shout out at the joy of being with him!

His mouth eased away from her to kiss the inside of her thigh. He slid up along her body and caught her by the hips as he kissed her lips. He tasted of wine and mint, and also, shockingly, of her, and it made her cry out against him. She tilted her hips and felt the hardness of his own desire on her stomach.

They fell together, entwined, to the bed. She moaned again, the only sound her blurry voice could make. She could hold no thoughts now, only emotions, feelings she had pressed down inside for so long that they overwhelmed her now. Tears pierced her eyes as she turned her head away from him, and his open mouth traced her cheek, her eyelids, her temple where the pulse beat so frantically. He bit at her ear-lobe, his breath hot in her ear, and they shuddered together.

Her hands tunnelled under his shirt to trace the groove of his spine, the hard muscles of his back and shoulders. His skin was taut and damp under her touch, so warm and alive it was amazing.

He reached between them to unfasten his breeches and release his erect penis. It was hard and ready, and she spread her legs wider in invitation. With a deft twist of his hips he drove into her and buried himself to the hilt.

She wrapped her legs around his waist and moved with him, hard and fast, and then even faster. She held tight to his shoulders, letting that rough, burning pleasure build inside her. Together they climbed higher and higher, until they could leap free and soar into the sky.

‘Anna!’ he shouted above her. ‘Anna, Anna—I can’t …’

‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘I know. I’m here. I’m
here
.’

He collapsed beside her, and they held on to each other as the night closed in around them.

CHAPTER TWENTY

‘S
HELDON
is in debt to some very powerful people,’ Rob muttered as he examined the papers spread over Edward’s desk. The documents Elizabeth’s bold niece had stolen from Thomas Sheldon’s London home were a scattered lot, snatched up quickly and in places incomplete, but they painted a dark picture of financial desperation.

And, for a man as socially ambitious as Sheldon, desperation was not a good state.

Edward tossed down the half-finished letter he studied. ‘He has made promises to the Queen’s courtiers he can’t keep in return for their loans. Now it seems he has turned to less exalted means of finding money.’

‘Bankside moneylenders, pimps and swords for hire,’ Rob said. He slumped back in his chair and propped his boots up on the table. Outside in the garden could be heard shrieks of happy laughter as Elizabeth led a game of blindman’s buff, but that light-hearted scene seemed far away from the closed-in library. This was his real world, and he could never escape it for long.

‘Such a man would not stop at taking Spanish or French coin, either,’ said Edward. ‘Treason is not so far beneath
him—especially if he feels he is not getting his due attention from Queen Elizabeth.’