Knight of Passion

by Margaret Mallory

  “Sell that… and that,” she said, pointing to an ornately carved chair and a side table as she passed. Most of the furniture had not belonged to her family, and so she did not want it.

  This had been their London house. For as long as she could remember, she, Francois, and their grandfather had stayed here when their grandfather made his twice-yearly trip to trade with the London merchants. It was never grand like their houses in Falaise and Calais. Still, it seemed much smaller and shabbier than in her memory.

  As with most merchant houses, her grandfather had conducted his trade on the ground floor. The kitchen was behind the house, and the family’s solar and bedchambers were above the shop.

  Linnet paused on the threshold to the solar. She smiled, remembering the evenings she and Francois had spent playing chess or backgammon on the floor by the coal brazier.

  “Anything you wish to keep in this room?” her clerk asked.

  A footstool in the corner caught her eye. She swallowed against the lump in her throat as she recalled lifting her grandfather’s feet onto it at the end of a long day.

  “Send that to my new house,” she said.

  “The stool, m’lady?” The clerk looked up from the sheet of vellum he carried and raised his thin white eyebrows. “ ’Tis in very poor condition.”

  At her nod, he put his nose to the sheet and scratched another note. She left him in the solar to step into the adjoining bedchamber.

  Her throat closed, and she could not breathe.

  Suddenly, she was eleven years old again, hiding under that heavy, dark oak bed with her brother. Hearts racing and holding hands, she and Francois had watched the men’s feet move about the bedchamber. Sweat broke out on her palms as she remembered the men’s voices, arguing over who would take what, and the silver end of a cane pounding on the floor.

  She turned around so quickly that she jostled the old clerk and had to catch him by the arm. “Why don’t you rest here in the solar, Master Woodley, while I go up to the attic? ’Tis unlikely there is anything there worth keeping, and the stairs are steep.”

  “Thank you kindly, m’lady,” he said, bobbing his head.

  She left quickly, knowing he would not sit in her presence.

  The walls and low ceiling closed in on her as she climbed the narrow steps to the two tiny rooms under the roof.

  None of this was turning out quite as she’d expected. For five long years, she had worked diligently to achieve her goals. First, she married Louis to gain the funds and independence she needed to restart her grandfather’s business. Working through her brother, she had gradually built her trade in cloth.

  Then she was ready. Her first attack was in their home city of Falaise, where they had retreated after losing everything in London and Calais. In half a year, she destroyed the trade of the “dear old friends” there who had taken advantage of her grandfather in his long illness.

  As she had suspected, the men in Falaise were not the ones who had orchestrated the demise of her grandfather’s business. They were merely the vultures who picked at the remaining pieces left in Falaise.

  From Falaise, she followed the trail of guilt to her grandfather’s former business partners in Calais. Those men were more sophisticated and clever. It took her four years to grow her business sufficiently to take them on one by one. Each of the Calais partners had taken a share of her grandfather’s trade and property. None of them, however, received the lion’s share.

  When she finally had one of them in debt to her up to his ears, he confessed. A London merchant had been behind the scheme to ruin her grandfather’s business. The men in Calais never knew the London merchant’s name; all communication had been through intermediaries.

  The queen’s letter asking Linnet to visit had come at an opportune time. The two of them had formed an unlikely friendship during the months Linnet spent in Paris before she escaped her father’s care. From the start, she felt protective toward the naive princess who came to the decadent court straight from the convent.

  Linnet would do her best by her friend. But while she was here in London, she also intended to discover the identity of the shadowy figure who was her greatest enemy.

  Finding him would be difficult, of course. London merchants resented foreign merchants and would protect one of their own. But she had the very finest Flemish cloth to be found in London. To get his hands on it, a London merchant might be willing to forget that she was both a foreigner and a woman.

  Mychell was one of the men whose voices she heard from under the bed that awful day. But he was only a lackey, a bit player in the scheme. He was not clever enough to plan the demise of a business with interests from Normandy to Flanders. This house had been Mychell’s reward for the part he played. She should feel triumphant throwing him out.

  But she did not.

  Mychell did not know who had driven him into debt until yesterday, when they met to sign the deed. She swallowed back the bile in her throat as she recalled her meeting with the greasy-haired rodent.

  “If you just give me a little time,” he had said, sweat breaking out on his brow, “I shall be able to pay.”

  “Time will not help you.” She leaned across the table and pounded it with her fist. “Do you not know who I am?”

  Startled by her outburst, Mychell sat back in his chair and stared at her. She could tell the moment he recognized her, for his eyes widened with surprise—but not a trace of shame.

  “Shall I leave you as much as you left two orphaned children?” she asked him.

  “ ’Tis not my fault your grandfather died in poverty,” the man protested.

  But she knew better. She had a gift for figures. It took her years to piece it all together, but she knew exactly how much had been stolen from them and how. They started with shorting payments and claiming goods were not delivered and moved up from there. The death knell came when they intercepted her grandfather’s huge annual payment to the weavers in Flanders, which ruined relationships he had built over a lifetime.

  Even as a child of ten, she had known something was wrong with the accounts. When she shared her suspicions with her grandfather, he was too good-hearted to believe his friends would steal from him. The theft grew more and more blatant. But by then, her grandfather was far too confused to understand.

  “Do not bother to deny it,” she spat at Mychell. “I heard you dividing up the spoils. You could not even wait for us to leave London to do it.”

  Linnet looked around, startled to find herself on the small landing at the top of the stairs. How long had she been standing here? She shook her head to clear it of the wretched man.

  On either side of her, the doors led to the matching rooms that she and Francois had slept in. She pushed open the one on the right and ducked under the low frame to enter her old bedchamber. The same narrow bed filled most of the cramped space under the sloping roof. How often had she opened that shutter to watch the stars as she made up stories of knights and princesses? Back then, she never expected to meet a princess, let alone befriend one.

  She shook her head again. What was wrong with her today? She did not come up here to dream, but to find something. In their hurry to leave London that night, she had forgotten her most prized possession.

  There was little chance of it still being where she hid it, but she had to look. She dropped to her knees beside the bed and slipped her hand between the mattress and the ropes. Nothing. The musty smell of the straw made her sneeze as she reached farther. Grunting, she pushed her arm in all the way to her shoulder. Still nothing.

  She got down on all fours and stuck her head under the bed. It was too dark to see a thing under there. She sat up coughing—and nearly choked when she heard the sound behind her.

  C-r-e-a-k.

  The thin blade she kept up her sleeve was already in her hand as she jerked her head around to look. The top of the old chest at the end of the bed slowly lifted to reveal a girl with a headful of springy red curls.

  “Saints abov
e,” Linnet said, slapping her hand against her chest. “You startled the wits out of me!”

  Apparently, Mychell had forgotten one of his belongings when he moved out this morning. The girl, whom Linnet guessed to be seven or eight, pushed the trunk lid all the way back and stepped out.

  “Are you the one who has taken our house?” the girl asked.

  What was she to say to that? Linnet sat back on the floor and wrapped her arms around her knees. Finally, she said, “This used to be my house.”

  “Was this your bedchamber as well?”

  Linnet nodded.

  Tilting her head, the girl asked, “What are you looking for?”

  “A polished steel mirror.” After a pause, she added, “It was all I had of my mother’s.” Odd, that she felt she needed to justify herself to this little girl.

  The girl held her gaze and then walked around to the other side of the bed.

  “I moved it,” she said as the top of her red curls disappeared from view. A moment later, she popped back up with the long-lost mirror in her hand.

  “Thank you,” Linnet whispered when the girl brought it to her. She ran her finger over the familiar bumps of the flowered pattern on the back, which was black with tarnish.

  She took a deep breath and gathered herself. Attempting a smile, she asked, “What is your name?”

  “Lily.”

  “You are a remarkable girl, Lily.”

  “ ’Tis what my sister says.” The girl’s bright smile faded, and her gaze drifted to the side. “My brothers call me other names.”

  “How many brothers do you have?”

  “Lots.” The girl made a sour face that made Linnet suspect the boys took after their father. The poor thing.

  Linnet reached through the slit in her gown to fish out a coin from her pouch. “I can see you are good at hiding things, so keep this safe from your brothers.” And from that filthy, moneygrubbing father of yours. “It is payment for returning the mirror.”

  When she took Lily’s hand and placed a gold florin in her palm, the girl gasped.

  “And here is my ring.” Linnet twisted it off her little finger and put it in Lily’s other hand. “If you are ever in trouble, show this to my clerk, Master Woodley. He will find my brother or me, and one of us will help you.”

  Lily closed her fingers over the ring and nodded. Clearly, this was a girl who had learned to expect trouble. Linnet gave Lily directions to her clerk’s rooms and made her repeat them twice.

  “Your family will return soon,” Linnet said as she got to her feet. “Wait for me downstairs, and I will take you for a meat pie while we wait for your father.”

  When Linnet entered the solar, her clerk’s eyes flew open and he fumbled to his feet.

  “Tell Mychell to meet me in an hour to hear my offer,” she told him. “If he gives me what I want, I will forgive the debt and let him keep the house.”

  The clerk put his hand to his chest, as if her words pained him. “But the man has nothing left of value.”

  She smiled at him. “I did get the stool.”

  “How should I have known the thieving maggot would breed like a rabbit?” she complained to her brother that evening. “I cannot throw his wife and children out onto the street.”

  She and Francois were relaxing with her best wine in the house on the Strand she had purchased the week before.

  “Revenge is proving more complicated than you anticipated.” Francois lifted his glass to her with a sparkle in his eyes. “Perhaps now you’ll have the sense to leave justice to God.”

  She smiled at him over the brim of her cup. “You know me better than that.”

  He gave a long-suffering sigh. “Linnet, you are good at business. If you were not set on using your trade for revenge, you could make a fortune.”

  “I intend to do both,” she said. “ ’Tis difficult here in London because of the lock the guilds have on trade. But I have a plan now.”

  “I beg you, do not tell me yet,” Francois said, putting his hands up. “Let me enjoy one more hour of peace.”

  They grinned at each other, then Linnet squeezed his hand. “How lucky I am to have you for a brother.”

  They sat in comfortable silence, their feet propped up on their grandfather’s stool, watching the burning coals in the brazier.

  After a while, Francois said, “I hear Jamie Rayburn is in London.”

  “He is.” Linnet took a long drink of her wine. “I have seen him.”

  “More than once, I hear tell.”

  She rolled her eyes. “What do you do, bribe the servants? Sleep with the queen’s ladies-in-waiting?”

  Francois winked and shrugged one shoulder. “Whatever I must.” He picked up the flask from the small table between them and poured more wine into their cups. “How is he?”

  “Vile.”

  Francois threw his head back and laughed. “I take it he did not fall at your feet this time.”

  Linnet slapped her brother’s arm.

  “He did play the dashing knight, braving a violent horde of Londoners to rescue me from the bridge,” she said, fighting a smile. “I was managing quite well without his help, but he did look magnificent.”

  Francois sat up straight. “You were on London Bridge the day of the riots?”

  “As you can see, I am none the worse for it,” Linnet said with an impatient wave of her fingers. “But you should have seen Jamie—Sir James, rather. He charged across the bridge like Saint George toward the dragon.”

  “That does not sound too vile to me,” Francois said. “He was horrid afterward. And even worse when he came to Eltham.”

  “Poor man,” Francois said, shaking his head. “After all his effort to avoid you in France, he comes home to find you here.”

  When she failed to laugh, Francois turned and gave her a penetrating look. It could be both good and bad to have a twin who could read you like a book. She turned her face away to make it more difficult for him.

  “I am sorry if he was unkind to you,” Francois said in a soft voice. “The two of you tore each other apart. By the saints, I could never see the cause for it.”

  “Well, ’tis clear he places all the blame on me,” she said.

  “Five years gone, and he is still that angry.”

  “Aye, he will hate me forever.”

  “Nay, he wants to hate you,” Francois said, raising his forefinger and smiling. “That, my dear sister, is not the same thing at all.”

  Chapter Four

  Praise God, the queen had agreed to leave for Windsor in two days. Jamie would rather fight a dozen battles than remain at Westminster Palace.

  From morning till night, he traversed the dangerous no-man’s-land between Gloucester and the London merchant guilds on the one hand, and Bishop Beaufort and the Council on the other. The two camps were locked in a struggle for control over the kingdom—and a child-king not yet four years old.

  Jamie felt out of his element in this palace fight. Give him a sword in his hand, any day. Still, he was doing his best to keep the queen from being trampled in the melee.

  If that was not more than enough trouble for any man, Linnet was here. She moved between the camps with ease, courted by men from both sides of the conflict. And Jamie had to watch it.

  He turned to find two of the queen’s French ladies-in-waiting hovering nearby. Though both were vaguely attractive, he could never remember which was which.

  “Good day, ladies,�� he said and bowed. “May I escort you to the table?”

  The women would likely starve before one of the other men would take them. How could anyone suspect these silly women of being spies?

  “Merci, Sir James,” the ladies twittered as each took an arm.

  He took his seat between them for another insufferably grand meal. When he looked up, he saw that his ill luck was holding. In this gathering of notables, both he and Linnet were seated “below the salt,” at tables perpendicular to the high table. She sat directly opposite him.
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br />   And Edmund Beaufort, whose status surely afforded him a place at the high table, was sitting next to her.

  “Do you see that gown on Lady Eleanor Cobham?” one of his dinner companions said, leaning forward to whisper across him to her friend. “If she sneezes, her breasts will fall out.”

  “And that headdress,” the other replied in a low voice. “A high wind, and she shall be carried out to sea.”

  Jamie pulled at the neck of his tunic and wondered if he could leave now without insulting them. To avoid looking at Linnet, he turned his attention to the high table and saw that the ladies did not exaggerate about Eleanor’s gown. But then, Eleanor never had been subtle.

  Her lover, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, sat in the seat of honor next to the boy-king. Though it was not yet noon, Gloucester was soused. He had won this round against his uncle and was celebrating. Because Gloucester was Protector and Defender of England, the bishop’s threat to use force to prevent his crossing the river could be interpreted as treason. Consequently, the bishop had been forced to apologize for the confrontation on the bridge.

  But Jamie thought Gloucester celebrated too soon. Gloucester was full of bombast and bluster, but he lacked his uncle’s perseverance. While he was here making a drunken fool of himself, the bishop was across the river plotting his next twelve moves.

  Jamie would put his money on the bishop every time. ’Twas fortunate, indeed, that Bishop Beaufort’s interests coincided with the kingdom’s.

  Jamie felt sorry for the queen, who sat on the other side of her son, looking pale and cowed. It annoyed him to see how Gloucester’s gaze kept settling on Linnet. He reminded himself, yet again, that she was not his concern. If any woman could fend for herself, it was Linnet. Besides, her brother was here. Francois was used to the onerous task of looking out for his sister.

  “Why is Lady Eleanor looking at Linnet as if she’d like to put poison in her soup?” one of his companions whispered.

  Behind her hand, the lady on his other side said, “She has a stare that would shrivel plums to prunes.”

  Apparently, Gloucester’s mistress had noticed his wandering eye as well. Knowing what he did about Eleanor, Jamie found that even more worrisome. He would have to warn Francois.