Isobel took Jamie’s arm, and they began to stroll toward the gate.
“At least you need not worry about hurting Lady Agnes’s feelings,” Isobel said.
“That is for certain.” Jamie laughed. “As soon as I left her house, she ran away to the nunnery.”
“It was kind of you to stop to see her there before leaving.”
“She is hell-bent on remaining at the nunnery,” he said with a smile. “If the abbess fails to persuade her father through reasoned argument, Agnes intends to chain herself to the altar.”
Isobel held her belly as she chuckled. “Pray, do not make me laugh, or I may have the babe right here in the yard.”
As they walked, Isobel’s expression grew thoughtful. “Tell me, what went wrong with Linnet this time?”
Jamie blew out his breath. “Simply put, Linnet wants revenge for something that happened years and years ago more than she wants me.”
“I see,” Isobel said and nodded to herself.
“Tell me, how can I convince her to forget the past?” Isobel stopped and turned her serious green eyes on him. “Did you never consider helping her settle her old scores?”
“What? Help her with such foolishness?”
Isobel raised her eyebrows at him and then began walking again. “ ’Tis not foolishness to her.”
“But it is foolish nonetheless—and dangerous besides.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Why can she not leave it alone and be happy to be a wife and mother like other women?”
Jamie turned in time to catch Isobel rolling her eyes. “If she were like other women, she would not be the woman you love,” she said. “Try to understand her. If you felt a great wrong had been committed against, say, your mother, could you rest?”
Isobel knew precisely how protective he felt toward his mother; she always made her points with razor-sharp accuracy.
“But Linnet promised me she would let the past be.” Breaking her word to him still rankled.
“You know how it was for her,” Isobel said. “When Stephen and William found her and Francois, they were living by their wits, stealing food and protecting themselves with an old sword. It cannot be easy for her to forgive the men who put them there.”
“But she thinks nothing of poking a stick at these men,” he said, raising his hands in the air, “no matter how powerful they may be.”
“All the more reason she needs you,” Isobel said.
Who knew women were such bloodthirsty creatures? “I suppose I shall have to help her. God knows she cannot do it alone, no matter what she thinks.”
Stephen caught up to them then, leading Jamie’s horse. “My wife put you on the right path?”
“Do you doubt it?” Jamie put his arm around Isobel’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “Wish me luck, for I fear we shall have our wedding in the Tower.”
Isobel grinned at him. “At least you shall be together.” He bid them a final farewell and mounted his horse.
As he made the long journey to London, Agnes’s strange words of parting nagged at him, drawing his mind again and again, like an infected wound.
“Pray for God’s protection,” Agnes had said, “for I have seen demons hovering over the lady you seek.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
Linnet was beneath the water, rocked by the motion of the sea. Her heart began to race because the sea was too dark for her to see the surface, and she did not know which way to swim.
Gradually, she realized the rocking motion was not the sea, but someone carrying her. Her head pounded. She recalled someone grabbing her from behind… and the strong medicinal smell of a cloth over her face. She sniffed. Damp wool now. Was she wrapped in a blanket? She felt confined, swaddled as tight as a babe.
A voice came out of the darkness. “Any trouble?” “None.” She felt the rumble of the deep voice of the man carrying her.
The voice sounded familiar… A jolt of indignation ran through her: This was Carter, the very man she had hired to protect her.
She forced herself not to struggle. There was nothing she could do wrapped up like this—and letting them know she was awake might squander a later opportunity to escape.
“The others are waiting,” the first man said.
He spoke in vernacular English, but his voice was cultured. An educated man, someone of the noble class or in frequent contact with the nobility.
“You take her an’ give me the rest of my money now,” Carter said. “I already risked more’n I like. I don’t want nothin’ more to do with you lot of devil-worshippers.”
Devil-worshippers?
“Put her in the wagon, and you can go.”
She bit her lip to keep from crying out as she was tossed through the air. A sharp pain shot through her shoulder as she landed with a hard thump. Wooden slats creaked beneath her as the wagon rocked from the impact of her weight.
“Mind you keep your mouth closed,” the man with the cultured voice said. “I warn you—I know spells that would leave your cock limp for the rest of your days.”
Carter spurted a string of oaths. Then she heard the clink of coins, following by receding footsteps. The wagon rocked again, this time with the weight of someone getting in the front. With a lurch, it moved forward.
As the wagon bumped along, she rocked herself from side to side, intent on rolling off the back of the wagon. Once, twice, she rolled over, and then… damn, she hit the side of the wagon. She gathered her strength and bounced herself. She was wrapped so tightly, it was slow going. Inch by inch, she moved until her feet fell off the end.
“Halt, John!”
At the woman’s shout, the driver brought the wagon up sharply, which sent Linnet sliding forward away from the end of the wagon. She wanted to scream in frustration.
The next thing she knew, there was someone beside her, unwrapping the blanket from her face.
She saw a flash of starlit sky, and then a cloth was over her face. It had the same distinctive odor as before.
“Noooo!” Her scream was muffled by the cloth. In vain, she struggled against the bindings that held her fast.
Linnet awoke with a blazing headache. For a long moment, she lay on her back, staring at the ceiling with no notion of where she was or what had happened to her. Yet her skin prickled with the knowledge that she was in danger.
Slowly, it came back to her. How long had she been in the wagon? How many times had they reapplied the cloth? She had no sense of either.
She lifted her head and had to grit her teeth against the throbbing pain in her head. A hint of light filtered in around the edges of a single barred and shuttered window, and even that hurt her eyes. She was lying on a pallet in a narrow room. The weight she had felt on her hands and feet were chains. When she tried to sit up to see better, she was hit by such a wave of dizziness that she was forced to drop her head back down.
A tear slid down the side of her face into her hair. What was she doing here? Kidnapped, drugged, and chained like a dog! If she had listened to Jamie, done as he begged her, they would be at his parents’ castle now, planning their wedding feast.
But nay. She had to poke her stick into the hornet’s nest once more. After that disastrous encounter with Gloucester, however, she had done nothing to pursue her enemies. She had been too despondent to care. Once Master Woodley confirmed the mayor’s spotless reputation for honesty, she had no notion where to look next in any case. Regardless, her earlier actions must have threatened someone powerful—and evil.
No matter what she’d done to bring this on herself, Jamie would come save her if he knew. No matter his wretched betrothal to someone else, no matter his fury with her, no matter his determination never to cross paths with her again—Jamie would come if he knew she was in danger.
To keep her courage up, she imagined Jamie coming down a long corridor to reach the door to this tiny room, fighting his way past twenty men. Such a warrior he was! How magnificent he would look, his sword swinging left and right, high and low, as he
struck down one after another.
Then he would kick the door open with a great crash. He would stand for a long moment in the doorway, his chest heaving, praising God he had found her still alive. And finally, he would drop to his knee beside her narrow cot, take her in his arms, and—
Click. Click. Click.
Linnet turned her head toward the sound of a key in a lock. Her heart stopped in her chest as the door latch slowly lifted.
Chapter Thirty-eight
“Someone put it about that Lady Linnet was doing witchcraft,” Mistress Leggett said. “Black witchcraft.”
This was the third time Jamie had heard this since he arrived in London to find Linnet gone and her house empty. There had been whispers for months about nobles in the highest circles being involved with witchcraft and dark arts, but he’d never heard a word about it in connection with Linnet. Until today.
“I didn’t believe it for a moment,” Mistress Leggett said, fanning herself, though the room was far from warm. She sat with her knees apart and her bulk overflowing the small stool on which she sat. “But if any noble lady was going to be accused of sorcery, ’twas bound to be her.”
“Why Linnet?” he asked.
“She doesn’t act as men think a woman ought. And she won’t pretend they know better. That’s enough to put a woman at risk.” Mistress Leggett’s jowls shook as she nodded her head. “Believe me, I know.”
Jamie tapped his foot, but Mistress Leggett took no notice of his impatience.
“I praise God I wasn’t born with her sort of beauty,”
Mistress Leggett said as she refilled his cup from the pitcher of ale without asking. He refrained from shaking her as she refilled her own and drank down half of it. “Such rare looks can lead men to a dangerous sort of lust.”
Mistress Leggett wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and shook a thick finger at Jamie. “Then, if she won’t have him, the man will go half mad. And you can bet a pretty penny, he’ll blame her for it. Next thing you know, he’ll be saying she bewitched him.”
“Are you saying you know who is behind the rumors? Who accuses her?” Jamie asked, still hoping she might give him something useful.
She puckered her lips as she pondered his question. “All the men looked at her, so ’tis hard to say. But where I heard the rumor was at the Guild Hall. I’d start there, if I were you.”
God’s beard! Any merchant in London might visit the Guild Hall. Jamie stood to leave.
“ ’A course that won’t help you find her.”
Jamie waited, nerves taut, halfway to the door. “People say she caught wind she was going to be charged and got on a fast ship for France,” Mistress Leggett said. “Must be true, for she was gone when the guard went to arrest her two days ago.”
Jamie returned to Linnet’s house, determined to search every inch of it. Master Woodley wrung his hands and followed on Jamie’s heels, while Jamie searched from room to room.
The clerk cleared his throat as Jamie rifled through
Linnet’s shifts and stockings. “Should you be looking through her… personal things, sir?”
“Goddamn it!” Jamie shouted. “She must have left a clue here somewhere.”
He had looked everywhere—even under the floor-boards—for something, anything, that might tell him where she had gone or who might have taken her.
“Lady Linnet would not leave London without telling me,” Master Woodley said. “She is very good about keeping me informed—unlike her brother, I must say. When she goes, she always provides precise instructions on how I may exchange messages with her.”
Jamie returned to the solar and dropped down onto the window seat amid Linnet’s colorful pillows. Where was she? He held his head in his hands, trying to think.
“Truly, this is most unlike her, Sir James.”
Fear gnawed at his belly, for all evidence suggested Linnet did not leave by her own choice.
Jamie looked up as Martin came into the solar, his young face taut with worry.
“I found nothing in the kitchen,” Martin said. “No hidden letters, nothing out of place.”
Damnation. “Tell me again, Master Woodley, what did she have you looking for regarding her grandfather’s old business?”
“I was following the trail of gold,” Master Woodley answered. “The path his fortune traveled—and through whose hands—all those years ago.”
“What did you find?”
“The trail forked and forked and forked again. No matter which route I took, I came to a stone wall.” He raised a finger. “But the same stone wall, mind you, which is telling.”
“Can you not save time and simply tell me what you know? Lady Linnet may be in danger.”
“All trails led to the Mercer’s Hall. That is the stone wall.”
“That is the oldest and most powerful of the London guilds,” Martin put in.
“I am not a foreigner. I know what the mercer guild is.” Jamie blew out a breath, annoyed with himself for snapping at the two of them.
The old clerk cleared his throat. “The lad is correct. Why do you suppose the mayor is most often a mercer?”
“You cannot mean the mayor of London is behind this shady business with her grandfather,” Jamie said. “I know Mayor Coventry, and I do not believe it.”
“I did not say he was.” The way the little man raised his white brows reminded Jamie of his old tutor. “But I believe the man behind the scheme was a mercer—and a powerful member of the guild.”
“Then I shall go to the Hall of the Worshipful Company of Mercers,” Jamie said, rising to his feet, “and knock some heads together until someone tells me what I wish to know.”
“But Sir James…,” the clerk said behind him as he headed down the stairs, but Jamie was done with talking. He needed to do something, and knocking mercer heads together seemed as good as any.
Just as he reached the front door, someone pounded on the other side. He flung it open to find two girls on the step, looking up at him as if he were a wolf about to eat them.
Who the devil were they? Sisters, that much was clear, though one was still a child and the other all voluptuous curves. Their faces, however, were like mirror images, ten years apart.
He forced himself to take a deep breath and to say, “Good day to you.”
“We are here to see Lady Linnet,” the older one said. Her voice was breathy, and she leaned forward as she spoke.
“We’ve come to warn her!” the younger one shouted over her.
Perhaps the clue he’d prayed for had come in the form of these two big-eyed girls.
“Come inside, quickly,” he said.
The older girl was staring at him with her mouth slightly open. When she took a step forward, the younger girl grabbed her arm and held her back.
“We do not know him,” the younger girl hissed at her sister. Then to Jamie she said, “If Lady Linnet is not here, we are willin’ to speak with her brother.”
“He is not here either, but I am Sir James Rayburn, the man Linnet is going to marry.” If he ever got his hands on her again.
“Then we’ve no time to waste,” the younger girl said, pulling her sister over the threshold past Jamie. “Not if you want a wife who is aboveground.”
Once they were in the solar, the girls, whose names he learned were Rose and Lily, told him what they knew.
Rose, the older girl, spoke first. “Our father agreed to help Lady Linnet.”
“She had him over a barrel, ’tis why he did it,” Lily put in.
Rose smoothed her skirts, then looked up at Jamie from under thick, dark lashes. “Since Father is a member of the guild and she is not, he sold her cloth under his own name for a percentage of the profit.”
“He cheated her, ’a course,” Lily added.
Rose gave her sister a sideways glance, then cleared her throat. “He also agreed to make inquiries—”
“Nose about, she means,” Lily said, nodding. “But he never meant to.”
> “You do not know that, Lily,” Rose said.
Lily crossed her arms. “Ha. Father lies like a—” “Girls, please,” Jamie said, putting his hands up. “Tell me what you know.”
“We overheard Father talking to a man,” Rose said. “We hid under the stairs to listen,” Lily said, “like we always do.”
Rose’s breasts rose and fell as she heaved a sigh. Jamie glanced at his squire, who was staring with openmouthed admiration at the older girl.
“Father said that frightening Lady Linnet wasn’t likely to work,” Rose said.
“Aye, he says ‘the only way to stop that one is to have her restin’ on the bottom of the Thames,’ ” Lily added. “ ‘’Cause she is stubborn as an ox.’ ”
Rose cleared her throat again. “Father asked the other man how he wanted it done, but the man said he did not need Father’s help.”
“That’s when the other man starts talkin’ ’bout witches and sorcerers,” Lily said, her eyes wide.
“Is this true?” Jamie fixed his gaze on Rose, though he knew in his soul it was.
“Aye, sir, I swear it,” Rose said.
“What does this man who came to see your father look like?” Jamie asked.
“We was sent up to our bedchamber before he comes,” Lily said. “An’ we can’t see much from under the stairs.”
“But he had an old voice,” Rose said.
A mercer with an old voice. God have mercy on him.
“Did he use a cane?” Master Woodley asked.
Lily nodded so vigorously, her curls bobbed. “A fancy one. All’s I could see was the bottom, but it was all silvery and carved like a cat’s paw.”
“Could it have been a lion’s paw?” Master Woodley asked.
Lily nodded again.
Where had he seen a walking stick like that? At the edge of his mind, he could see a cane and a glint of silver…
“Lady Linnet was looking for a man with a cane like that,” Master Woodley said.
Jamie had believed it was Pomeroy she was intent on murdering that day at Windsor, despite her denials. But perhaps it had been someone else—this man with the silver-clawed cane.
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