Jamie glanced over his shoulder to be sure they were out of earshot. “She is an innocent virgin,” he hissed. “You think I would violate her?”
Of course, Linnet’s virginity had not stopped him. He felt a twinge of guilt over that, but he could not pretend to regret it.
“I’m not accusing you of deflowering Agnes.” Stephen gave Jamie’s cheek a playful slap. “But surely a bit of license is called for before shackling yourself for a lifetime?”
Jamie had taken more than a bit of license with Linnet when she was younger than Agnes. But then, Linnet’s virginity had not stopped her any more than it had him. It did not even give her pause. She had given herself to him wholeheartedly that first time—even urging him on when he argued they should wait. What a wonder that first time was. He remembered how she looked beneath him, her face flushed and her legs wrapped around him…
“Come,” Stephen said, jarring him from his thoughts, “tell me you’ve at least kissed Agnes senseless a time or two.”
“Agnes?” Jamie was having difficulty pushing images of Linnet, naked and writhing, from his mind. He rubbed his forehead, trying to clear it, and found it was damp.
“Aye, Agnes,” Stephen said, sounding exasperated. “By Saint Peter’s bones, if you are not tempted to kiss her and a good deal more, you should not have come to see her father.”
The sooner he had another woman in his bed, the sooner he would stop thinking of Linnet.
“ ’Tis a shame Stafford is not here,” Jamie said. “Did you not deliver my message to him?”
Stephen waved his hand. “ ’Tis fortunate Stafford happened to be called away.” Then he waggled his eyebrows. “You should use the opportunity to find out if you and Agnes are ‘well suited.’ ”
“Are you suggesting I drag her under the bushes while I am a guest in her father’s home?”
“ ’Tis damp beneath the bushes this time of year,” Stephen said. “Behind a door would do.”
“We are here but a few hours,” Jamie protested. Stephen lifted his hands, palms up. “If you do not find her appealing…”
“Of course I do. I am a man and she is a woman. And a very pretty woman, at that.” He felt like punching his uncle. “Even if I meant to do it, I could not get her alone.”
“If you wanted to get her alone, you could manage it,” Stephen said with a shrug. “That is what we men do. ’Tis why having a daughter frightens me half to death.”
As much as it annoyed Jamie to hear it, Stephen’s words had the ring of truth. Those weeks in Paris, he and Linnet had kissed—and more—behind doors, under stairs, in the mews…
“And if a woman wants a man, she will make it easy for him to find her alone.” Stephen spread out his hands. “It has been that way from the beginning of time.”
Jamie thought of Linnet’s eagerness. How many times did they make love on the floor because they could not wait to reach the bed? He would miss that fiery passion.
He did miss it.
He tried not to think about the ache in his chest as he and Stephen walked across the windswept meadow outside the gates of Stafford’s manor house. Spring came late here in Northumberland. It would be several weeks before the ground they walked would be planted with rye or wheat.
The wind flapped at Jamie’s clothes as they stopped to watch the dark clouds rolling in over the hills. Living here would suit him. He liked the open spaces and clean smells—and Northumberland’s distance from the politics of London.
Neither of them had spoken since they left the gate, but Stephen broke the silence now.
“Most men are satisfied with a bride who brings a fair dowry and has the skills to manage a household,” Stephen said. “If their wives do not suit them, most men are content to keep mistresses and get their pleasure from other women.”
After a long pause, Stephen said, “But we are not like most men.”
Stephen was right. If Agnes was to be his wife, ’twas past time he kissed her. Once he set his mind to it, it was nothing to get her out a back door of the manor house. Taking her hand, he began walking her toward the woods. He did not intend to roll on the wet ground with her, but he wanted privacy for this.
He had bedded a good many women to forget Linnet the first time. Since he was going to be a married man, this time he would have to forget her with only one. No easy task, but he was determined. He knew what he wanted: a calm and steady life. What he did not want was a wife who was always at the center of tumult and mayhem—and usually the cause of it.
Agnes’s hand was dry and cold in his and did not clasp his back. He was undeterred. He was going to prove Stephen wrong and kiss her senseless. He would make her sweat. Sweaty and breathless. She would beg him not to stop. But he would stop, because he was an honorable man. A true knight.
“Sir James, please slow your pace.”
He turned to find Agnes’s hood had fallen back and her cheeks were pink with exertion. She was a pretty woman, really.
She gasped as he pulled her close. He cupped her cheek and looked into her grave eyes. Innocent as she was, she had to know he was going to kiss her now. Instead of softening or becoming nervous, as he expected, her lips thinned into a line of disapproval.
But that was only because she hadn’t been kissed before. Not by him, anyway. He leaned down to brush a kiss on her cheek and blow a soft breath into her ear.
Nothing. No indrawn breath. No sigh. No soft breasts pressing against his chest.
He sucked in his breath. In for a penny, in for a pound. This time, he put his lips to hers. How was he to feel lustful when she did not move? An uneasy feeling settled in his stomach, as if he were doing something wrong. It made no sense. Hell, he’d kissed girls since he was twelve and never felt a shred of guilt for it.
He was relieved when she pulled away.
He reminded himself that they were almost strangers, and she was an innocent. In time, he would awaken passion in her.
“You do know what husbands and wives do to have children?” He ran a finger down her arm and gave her a slow smile. “You want children, do you not?”
She nodded, her expression solemn. “I pray I will have many children to give to the church,” she said. “They shall serve God as I was not permitted to do.”
“You want them all to be nuns and priests?” He was almost too surprised to get the question out.
“I prefer the boys be monks.”
Jamie wasn’t sure he liked the idea of one of his daughters spending her life in a nunnery, but it was hard to know with girls. Boys were another matter.
“My sons will be strong knights in the service of the king. None will choose to wear a cleric’s robe. They will be fighters, every one.”
Agnes folded her arms across her chest and narrowed her eyes at him. “As we are speaking plainly, Sir James, I wish to know if you intend to follow the church’s guidance regarding marital conjugation.”
Jamie felt his eyebrows reach almost to his hairline. She could not mean what he thought she did. Surely not.
“The church admonishes us that the only righteous purpose of conjugation is procreation.”
“But no one follows the church’s guidance on this,” Jamie said, raising his hands into the air. “I doubt even men who are repulsed by their wives follow it, unless they are very, very old.”
“Celibacy within marriage is a great virtue.”
“ ’Tis not healthy for a man.” He was shocked at the very notion of it. “These silly rules do not come from God. They are made up by priests who dislike women—or who have no notion what they are asking a man to go without.”
Agnes’s face was flushed. “You criticize the judgment of men of God?”
They were having a real argument now.
Jamie took a deep breath. She was speaking from ignorance. Once she experienced “conjugal relations,” she was bound to change her mind.
“While the church encourages husbands to forgo their marital rights,” she said in a calmer voice, �
��it does permit the activity on more days than is necessary for procreation.”
Jamie remembered laughing about this with his friends. One long evening during a siege, they had attempted to count the prohibited days as they sat around their camp-fire drinking. They had stopped at three hundred.
He was not laughing now.
Agnes sniffed. “That is the church’s preference. A wife, however, is not permitted to refuse her husband.”
Just to be contrary, Jamie said, “Under the law, a wife may demand her conjugal rights as well.”
Agnes made a very unpleasant sound through her nose. “I shall have to discuss this with the abbess at length when next I see her.” She furrowed her brow, apparently lost in contemplation of sin and marital conjugation. “It seems unfair that I should be tainted by my husband’s sin if he is weak. And yet, it would be a sin to wish my husband would satisfy his carnal lust elsewhere.”
Jamie swallowed. “Avoidance of sin is the only reason you would not want your husband to lie with other women?”
She blinked several times, as if she was trying to puzzle through some great mystery. “What other reason could there be?”
“Time for us to return to the house.” He took her arm and started walking, determined not to think about what she had said.
As they crossed the field to the house, he felt as if stones weighed on his chest, making it hard to breathe.
Chapter Thirty-three
Linnet heard a knock on the front door, followed by her maid’s feet on the stairs. There was not one person in all of London she wished to see. When her maid appeared on the solar’s threshold, she held her breath, waiting to hear who it was.
Lizzie clenched her skirts and darted her eyes about the room. “A priest is here, m’lady. He says he must speak with you.”
Linnet wondered at her maid’s unease. Though she could not imagine why a cleric had come to see her, she could think of no harm in it. She revised her opinion when she went down and saw the black-robed man waiting outside the door. What did Eleanor Cobham’s clerk want with her?
“Father Hume.” She dipped her head slightly, but she did not invite him inside.
She had forgotten meeting him and Margery Jourdemayne on the stairs to the undercroft at Windsor almost as soon as it happened. The memory of it now made her uneasy. She’d never liked this sinister priest, who followed Eleanor like a shadow.
The priest glanced up and down the street before he spoke. “I have come to bring you a warning from a friend.”
Linnet raised her eyebrows. “Lady Eleanor considers herself my friend?”
“I did not say it was Lady Eleanor,” he said through tight lips.
So it was Lady Eleanor. “What is the warning my mysterious ‘friend’ wishes to give?”
“There are rumors traveling about the City that you are engaged in sorcery and witchcraft.”
“What?” Her hand went to her chest, and she was unable to keep the tremor of alarm from her voice. “I have heard nothing of this.”
“But others have heard the rumors. Powerful people. Men in the church,” the priest said, drawing out the last word.
Fear clawed at her belly. After Pomeroy accused her of killing her husband with sorcery, she had lived under the shadow of the accusation for months. She remembered how the villagers backed away and made the sign of the cross when her carriage passed. The memory of the black fear on their faces sent a frisson of terror up her spine.
Now she understood her maid’s unease and furtive glances.
“They are saying,” the priest said, leaning forward, “you used sorcery to make the queen fall in love with Edmund Beaufort.”
Her mouth went dry. This had to be Pomeroy’s doing. “Sir James Rayburn’s family is a powerful one. While you were ‘under his protection,’ certain persons were afraid to act.” The priest cleared his throat. “They are no longer afraid.”
“I have means to protect myself,” she said.
“They will prove insufficient. Your friend recommends you leave at once for your homeland.”
“Leave for France?” she asked, startled.
“You haven’t much time.”
As a child, she had been forced to flee London in the dead of night. She was sorely tempted to do so again. But she could not leave England until she saw Jamie again.
Or heard news of his marriage.
Besides, she had done nothing wrong. She would not let her enemies force her to leave this time. She had no intention, however, of sharing her plans with this weasel of a priest—or his keeper.
“You can thank my ‘friend’ for her counsel,” she said as she eased the door closed.
“They will arrest you tomorrow.” The priest stopped the door with his foot to give her his parting words. “And here in England, they burn witches.”
Linnet paced her solar, considering what to do. It seemed foolish to stay. Jamie wanted a wife who could give him a quiet life and a peaceful home. Even if she were not arrested, tried, and burned, she could never persuade Jamie she could be that sort of wife—not with accusations of sorcery whispered about her.
Who was behind this? At first, she assumed it was Pomeroy. But now, she wondered if she had ruffled too many feathers among the powerful London merchants. They were suspicious of her, just as they were of the queen.
As a foreigner, she should have walked softly. Instead, she had fanned the flames of their resentment by her success in trade. And then, she had used the leverage her success gave her to pursue one of their own.
Whether it was Pomeroy or the merchants spreading these accusations, she would not just sit here, waiting for her enemies’ next move against her.
“Lizzie!” she called, wanting her maid to help her change.
When Lizzie did not answer, Linnet went looking for her. After finding no one belowstairs, she went behind the house to the kitchen. Carter, the rough man Master Woodley had hired to escort her about the City, sat on a stool eating an apple. Master Woodley must have hired Carter for his size alone, for the man was huge.
“Where is Lizzie?” she asked.
Carter cut a slice from the apple and ate it off his knife. “The other servants are gone.”
They must have heard the rumors of sorcery. Apparently Carter was too surly to be frightened.
Fighting back the sour taste of nausea at the back of her throat, she said, “I will need you to escort me to Westminster in an hour.”
Carter nodded but did not get up. “I shall be here.” Linnet went to her chamber to dress for the occasion. She would dare them to make the accusations to her face. Damn them! She was so angry that her first instinct was to wear a bold, blood-red gown. Instead, she made herself think carefully about the impression she wished to make.
She was well aware her looks could be both an advantage and a disadvantage. Rather than the red, she chose a delicate eggshell-colored gown embossed with intricate embroidery. The trim was a warmer shade of the same creamy white shot through with silver threads. A thin ribbon of the trim ran along the top edge of her bodice, while wider bands were sewn at the high waist, at the wrists, and along the bottom of the gown.
It was not easy getting into the gown and matching headdress without a maid, but when she looked at herself in her polished steel mirror, she was satisfied. The snug bodice, set off by the trim, subtly showed off her breasts and the whiteness of her throat. When she walked, the trim along the hem drew attention to the movement of the skirt and made it appear to float about her.
Coils of fair blonde hair were visible through the delicate silver mesh on either side of her face. Most important, a heavy silver cross rested just above the top of her bodice. Everyone knew witches could not wear crosses. On a longer, more delicate silver chain, Jamie’s pendant hung out of sight between her breasts. She touched it and closed her eyes, wishing with all her heart that he was here.
Never in her life had she felt so alone. Jamie was gone. Francois, too. She could not call on the quee
n without putting her in danger. It was up to her to save herself, as it had always been.
After slipping on her cloak with the silvery-gray fur trim, she took one last look in the mirror. She was ready for them.
She was no angel, but she looked like one.
Chapter Thirty-four
“ ’Tis good to see you,” Geoffrey said, pounding Jamie on the back.
Geoffrey was a big, barrel-chested young man who would have been mistaken for a warrior, save for his tonsured hair and habit.
“What shall I call you now?” Jamie asked. “Brother Geoffrey?”
“That will do,” Geoffrey said with a broad smile. “I have my prior’s permission to accompany you to your uncle’s, since he is an important benefactor of our abbey. But first, I thought you would want to see where your father spent much of his life.”
“Do not call him my father,” Jamie said.
“Brother Richard, then,” Geoffrey said, ever the peace maker.
“Visitors are not permitted in the dormitory or the chapter house, but I can show you the church and grounds.”
The abbey was situated in a lovely spot next to a river bordered by giant yew trees. Despite its beauty, impatience tugged at Jamie as Geoffrey led him behind the kitchens to show him the gardens.
Geoffrey stopped before a desolate piece of ground no more than twenty feet by ten. “Brother Richard spent most of his time tending this herb garden, when he was not in prayer.”
Jamie stared at the small plot tucked between the kitchen block and the ditch that carried water from the river into the abbey.
After a long silence, Geoffrey said, “There is not much growing now, but you should see it in high summer.”
“This is where he spent his days? For more than twenty years?” Jamie was appalled. In the name of heaven, the man was once a knight.
“I understand he took care of the goats during his first years here,” Geoffrey said. “But their unpredictability distressed him.”
“Goats? Goats distressed him?” He would have accused Geoffrey of jesting, but the sympathy in his friend’s eyes stopped him short.
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