Winter Blockbuster 2012

by Trish Morey

  He turned down one of the narrow, twisting lanes that led endlessly into other streets and squares, to a press of houses and people that formed an inescapable maze of their world. The light of the sky above was blotted out by the eaves of the roofs, and the flow of the river was lost behind them. All was stillness and darkness.

  ‘Look out below!’ someone shouted, and Rob pulled her under the shelter of a wall until the stream of waste water from the window above flowed into the latrine ditch in the middle of the road. He kept walking, not answering her.

  At last they came to a tavern at the turning of the lane, not far from the White Heron. A sign painted with three golden bells swung over the half-open door. The place seemed quiet so early in the day. Only a few ragged men sat drinking in darkened corners, and a maidservant scrubbed at the floor.

  Rob led Anna up the rickety wooden stairs, all the way to the top floor under the eaves. All the doors were closed along the narrow corridor, the rooms behind them silent, and the heavy smell of cabbage and boiled beef and tallow candles hung in the air.

  He opened a door at the end of the corridor and pulled her inside. Only then did he let go of her arm.

  As he turned away to bolt the door, Anna rubbed at her arm, where she could still feel the heat of his touch, and went to stand as far from him as she could. It was a small, spare room, with a sloping beamed ceiling and one window that looked out on the street far below. There was a bed with rumpled blankets and bolsters tossed about, a table under the window scattered with ink-blotted pages, and two straight-backed chairs. His fine red doublet from last night was tossed over a clothes chest.

  Rob threw his cap down next to it and ran his hand through his hair, throwing the glossy dark waves into disarray. He looked somehow older today, his face drawn, his eyes shadowed and wary.

  ‘Please, Anna, sit,’ he said as he offered her one of the chairs. ‘I’m sorry I have no refreshments to offer you. The Three Bells is a fine, private place to lodge, but I fear it lacks some of the more gracious amenities.’ As Anna hesitated, he laughed. ‘I promise you, fairest Anna, I will not hurt you. You wanted to know where I went. Well, now I shall tell you, even though I’m quite sure to regret it in the end.’

  She slowly sat down, not taking her gaze away from him. She placed her basket on the floor, along with her shawl, and carefully unpinned her hat. ‘I am not so sure I do want to know.’

  ‘Ah, but I have the feeling you already know. Or at least you have your suspicions.’ Rob took the other chair and swung it round to sit down on it backwards, facing her over its chipped wooden slats.

  They watched each other, as if they could not turn away even if they tried. Anna felt those same invisible bonds she’d felt in the garden tighten around her again, binding them together in some mysterious way she could not escape. They were all alone here in this room, so high above the world.

  ‘Was that Secretary Walsingham’s house?’ she asked. She clasped her hands in her lap, twisting her fingers together to hold herself still.

  ‘You know about Walsingham?’

  ‘Everyone in Southwark knows about Walsingham. We can scarcely escape him,’ she said. ‘They say he has long known everything that happens in England, and beyond. That he has superhuman powers and uses them to protect Queen Elizabeth from plots of all sorts.’

  Rob gave a bitter laugh. ‘He has no superhuman powers, Anna, but he is like a great, strong spider, looking over all of us. He thinks he sees terrible papist plots around every corner, and he will do what he must to crush them. He and his circle thrive in these days of suspicion and fear.’

  Suspicion and fear—had there ever been days not filled with those? Anna could remember none such. ‘And are you one of his circle?’

  Many people worked for Walsingham, or for his political rivals the Cecils, or for Lord Leicester before he’d died last year. Everyone knew that. Each person had to survive as best they could, and life was nothing but a succession of masks in the end. They were changed as needed, and no one knew the truth about anyone else.

  But somehow to be faced with real evidence that Robert was one of those secret men, that he too wore masks upon masks, made her head spin. It felt as if her world was tipping, everything falling top to bottom in chaos—and the blinds crumbled from her eyes.

  ‘Writers and actors are among his favourite recruits,’ Rob said. ‘We have some education, we must be observant to ply our trade. We move about the country on tours, we know people of all sorts and ranks—and we always need money. I work for him sometimes, aye, when there is a task he thinks I can perform.’

  ‘And you have a task now?’

  For the first time his steady, watchful gaze flickered away from her and he shrugged. ‘I keep in touch at Seething Lane. These are uncertain days, with the Spanish still hovering in every corner and the succession not certain.’

  Anna slumped back in her chair. So this was his secret—or one of them anyway—he was an intelligencer. Recruited for his skills of observation, his deceptive acting abilities.

  What had he observed of her?

  ‘How did you come to this work?’ she asked.

  He shrugged again. ‘Because it is a way forward in the world, I suppose, and writers who live by their pens and their wits have few of those. It puts coins in my purse and I meet influential people.’

  ‘Such as Lady Essex?’

  ‘They do say her husband has taken his late stepfather Leicester’s place in the Queen’s favour. It can’t hurt to know them.’

  Anna studied his face carefully, wishing she too had a writer’s power of observation, of knowing the secrets of the human heart. She had a disquieting sense that he was not telling her all his secrets. That there was more to his work than money and connections.

  But she could only bear one secret at a time.

  Rob suddenly knelt beside her chair and took her hands in his. Unlike the hard grasp he’d used to lead her here, his touch was gentle. He twined his fingers with hers and raised them to his lips for a swift kiss.

  ‘I have given my secret into these hands alone, fairest Anna,’ he said. ‘You now have the power of life and death over me. I may be only a lowly courier for Walsingham, but if others came to know …’

  Anna was sure Rob could never be a lowly anything. There was more to this twisted tale of his, but she was content for the moment. ‘I will not say a word to anyone. If you will assure me of something.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Are you in danger—great danger, I mean? More than usual? Or is anyone near us in danger?’

  ‘I promise you, Anna, I will protect you whatever happens. You are in no danger from me.’ He kissed her hands again, soft kisses to each fingertip and the hollow of her palm. He turned them over and touched the pulse pounding at her wrist with the tip of his tongue.

  Anna caught her breath at the flood of sensation that washed through her at his touch. It was as if that invisible bond had become all too physical. They clung to each other as if that was all they had left in the world.

  ‘I know I ask the impossible of you, Anna,’ he said, cradling her palm against his cheek. ‘But believe me when I beg you to trust me. You don’t like me, I know—and with good reason—yet I will make sure nothing touches you in these matters.’

  Anna laughed. She bent her head to softly kiss the top of his head, his hair tickling gently at her lips. ‘Don’t like you? Oh, Robert. It’s true that you drive me mad sometimes. Yet I fear I like you all too well—even when I know I should not.’

  ‘Then we share that. For I like you more than I should.’ Rob rose up on his knees in front of her and gently cradled her face in his hands. He studied her closely, as if he sought to memorise what she looked like, to imprint her features on his memory.

  Anna wrapped her fingers around his wrists and studied him in turn. All traces of his laughter, his recklessness had gone now, and in his eyes she saw the stark seriousness of his true heart. Rob was involved in matters she cou
ld scarcely fathom, despite her life lived on the fringes of London’s underworld. She thought she knew greed and desperation, the turning of those masks from one false face to another, but she didn’t know everything. She didn’t know the truest depths.

  She stared into them now, with Rob. And she had to admit it was frightening, but also so very enlivening. For once he did not hide from her. He trusted her.

  Could she trust him? Did she dare to come out of hiding at last?

  Then Rob’s own mask slid neatly back into place, and he smiled at her. ‘Always beware, fairest Anna, of all men,’ he said. ‘For we are the basest deceivers.’

  His hands slid into her hair, loosening its pins until it fell free over her shoulders. He wrapped long strands of it around his fists, using them to tie her to him, and drew her slowly towards him. He stared at her mouth as if fascinated by it, drawn to it.

  She closed her eyes just as his lips brushed hers softly, lightly, once and then again. She felt the echo of his moan against her, the tightening of his touch in her hair, and the kiss deepened. His tongue swept past her parted lips to taste her fully, and she opened to him in welcome. She couldn’t hide from him as she could from everyone else.

  She remembered his taste, the way he felt, from the garden, and she had thought she remembered how his kiss made her feel and thus could be prepared for it. But that drowning, flying, exultant sensation swept over her all over again, and she was lost in it.

  For so long she had been alone in life cold and afraid of feeling again, afraid of the terrible danger of vulnerable emotions. In his arms she didn’t feel alone any longer. She wasn’t even afraid, even as she knew he was probably the most dangerous man in her world. She just felt alive and warm—and free. The cold fell away at last.

  She wanted to be alive, even if it was only for a moment. A moment couldn’t hurt her. A moment was nothing.

  She wrapped her arms around his shoulders to bring him closer to her. She slid off the chair and knelt before him, until their bodies were pressed together and nothing could come between them at all. His hands fell free from her hair to unfasten the front of her jacket and push it away from her shoulders.

  There was no smooth deftness to his movements, as Anna would have expected from a man so experienced at removing women’s garments. He was rough and quick, as if desperate to remove that one barrier—as desperate as Anna was to have it gone.

  He tossed it away and his mouth slid from hers to kiss her neck, the soft curve where it met her shoulder just above her gathered chemise. His teeth nipped at her skin lightly, making her gasp, and then he traced the spot with his tongue. Anna’s head fell back to give his kisses greater access, and she closed her eyes to let the feelings wash over her.

  For once she revelled in them, and did not push them away. After all, this was a fleeting moment in the sea of her life and she had to hold on to it before it ebbed away.

  Blindly, she reached out to unfasten his doublet. The buttons stuck in the stiff velvet, making her groan with frustration, but at last they gave way and she peeled the cloth away from his body. She pulled off his shirt, as well, and tossed the garments away.

  She ran her palms over his bare chest, the skin smooth and warm, slightly damp under her touch. She felt the roughness of the bandage on his shoulder—a stark reminder of just how dangerous his secrets were. How dangerous it was to be here with him. She bent her head and pressed an open-mouthed kiss below the bandage, near where his heart beat so strongly.

  ‘Anna,’ he growled, and he lifted her up in his arms as he rose to his feet. He spun round to the bed and laid her down amid the rumpled blankets that still smelled of him.

  She opened her eyes to stare up at him as he stood before her, his magnificent body, honed by swordcraft and stage acrobatics, bare to her. He studied her, as well, his blue eyes almost a burning black.

  She held out her arms to him and he fell to the bed beside her, kissing her again. There was no artful seduction to their embrace, no fine poetry or pastoral gentleness. There was only a fire, a raw longing that burned away all else.

  He caught the hem of her skirt in his fist and dragged it up until she felt the cool air of the room rush over the bare flesh above her stocking. It was quickly turned to warmth as he touched her through the thin knit silk of the stocking, his finger dipping behind the velvet ribbon of her garter.

  ‘Such fine underthings you hide from the world, Mistress Barrett,’ he whispered teasingly. ‘So shocking.’

  And he was the first to see them in a very long time—definitely the first to appreciate them. Anna tugged his lips back down to hers for another kiss, their tongues touching and tangling. He parted her legs and fell between them as she tilted her hips to cradle him against her. She felt the heavy, rigid press of his erection through his breeches, and it sent a tingling thrill through her.

  He wanted her, too—just as she wanted him.

  She wrapped her legs around his waist and held on to him as their kiss slid deeper and deeper. Through that blurry, hot mist of desire she felt him tug the loose edge of her chemise lower to reveal her pale breast. He slid down her body to kiss the soft swell of it.

  The tip of his tongue circled her aching nipple, only lightly caressing and teasing. Anna arched her back, trying to bring him closer, but he laughed and kissed the other breast, the soft, vulnerable curve of it just above the angle of her ribs.

  ‘Such pretty bosoms you have, Anna,’ he said, blowing ever so gently on a nipple as she trembled. ‘It’s a shame you hide them away as you do, for they are rare beauties.’

  ‘Teasing wretch,’ she moaned.

  ‘Oh? Is this what you want, then?’ He kissed her again, just at the hollow between her ‘pretty bosoms.’ ‘Or—this?’

  At last he drew her pouting nipple deep into his mouth to suckle it, wet and hot and hungry.

  Anna wound her fingers into his hair, holding him against her. He was so good at that—too good, for she couldn’t see straight when he touched her like that.

  Rob slid even lower down her arched body, his mouth open against her skin. He kissed every freckle, every soft, sensitive spot, until he knelt between her legs. As Anna watched, breathless, he rose up on his knees before her and reached for her leg.

  Through the thin silk of her stocking he kissed the curve of her foot, nipped lightly at her ankle, the vulnerable spot just behind it. His lips traced a warm path up the back of her calf, the turn of her knee—the angle of her thigh. His tongue dipped behind her garter, as his finger had earlier, and touched her naked, hot skin.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she gasped as he knelt lower on the bed, looping her legs over his shoulders. She was open to him, completely bare—not even her husband had ever seen her thus.

  She wasn’t sure how she felt about that, about such vulnerability, but Rob held on to her when she tried to close her legs.

  ‘Let me, Anna, please,’ he said hoarsely. ‘You are so beautiful. I have to taste you, feel you …’

  And then he did just that. His fingers spread her hidden folds open to him and his tongue delved into her in the most intimate of kisses.

  Anna’s head fell back to the pillow and her eyes fluttered closed. Slowly she let her whole body relax into the bed, let her thoughts and fears float away, and just—felt. Felt every touch, every sensation. Once she did it was as if she flew free into the sunlit sky.

  A burning pleasure built up deep inside her, expanding and growing until it exploded and covered her in its sparkling light.

  She had heard women at the bawdy houses and taverns laugh about such things, but she had never felt it before. It was wondrous. Dizzying.

  Rob lowered her legs back to the bed and drew her skirts over her bare skin. He pulled himself up to lie beside her on the pillows and took her gently into his arms.

  Anna felt him kiss her closed eyelids, her forehead, the pulse that beat in her temples. He smelled of mint and the clean salt of sweat—and of her own body.

 
; ‘Did I please you, fairest Anna?’ he whispered.

  Anna opened her eyes and turned her head on the pillow to study him. His hair fell in tangled waves over his brow and his eyes were shadowed with—could it be worry? Concern? Did he actually think of her feelings now? A tiny fragment of worry and hope touched her deep inside, but she dared not explore that further.

  She reached up and traced his cheek with the tips of her fingers. ‘I am overwhelmed,’ she said truthfully. He had swept over her careful life like a summer rain, exposing hopes she had thought long buried.

  Rob laughed, and turned his head to kiss her palm. ‘Then I’m honoured to have overwhelmed you.’

  She raised herself up on her elbow to study him. His face against the white pillow seemed dark and drawn, the elegant angles of his features tight, as if he was in some sort of pain.

  ‘You have not taken your pleasure,’ she said. She laid her hand flat on his naked chest and felt the erratic pounding of his heart, the thrum of his need. His penis was a hard ridge under his breeches.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said brusquely.

  ‘And I know you are not,’ she argued. ‘I am no fine miss in an ivory castle. I know what happens to a man when he is unsatisfied.’ She slid her hand lower, over his lean waist, the hard plain of his hip. ‘Let me …’

  Rob caught her wrist in a hard grasp before she could brush against his erection.

  ‘I’m quite well,’ he said. His voice sounded rough, and his hold on her was tight. Something about him told Anna she shouldn’t argue, even as she longed to with every fibre of her being.

  He had just given her such pleasure—had given her the most intimate moment she had ever known with another person. Why would he not let her do the same for him?

  Why would he not be with her in every way?

  But he was surely right to cut this—whatever it was—now.

  Anna nodded and he slowly let go of her hand. ‘I should go,’ she said. ‘You seem to want to be solitary.’

  ‘Nay, Anna, don’t go yet,’ he said, his voice growing gentler. ‘I don’t want to be alone. Not right now. I just …’