The Maiden and the Unicorn

by Isolde Martyn

  There was a rumble of laughter from her companion. "Never tell me there is still life in that old goat? Did he try to put his hand up your skirts?"

  Her tone was prim. "I know you have a poor opinion of my virtue, sir, but I do draw the line at rheumy graybeards. I suppose you heard how he refused to let Isabella bear her child on dry land. I can never forgive him for that." Huddleston made no comment so she continued nervously to fill the silence. "To make such a fuss of Isabella with trinkets when she was tiny and then to do that to her. If he had ever had a child in his belly, he would never have—"

  "You speak from experience?" The icy draft of his tone chilled her.

  "No!" she retorted angrily, biting her lip. Even this conversation seemed to lay traps for her unwary tongue. "I have seen babies born though. Most women have. Maybe husbands should be forced to be present instead of being barred from the birth chamber." Just the unwitting mention of husband made her cheeks flame.

  "I am sure the experience would do us all much good," he agreed pleasantly, increasing her heartbeat as he included himself. A shivery heat assaulted her senses. Sooner or later this impossible man was going to thrust his seed into her and she would have to carry his child whether she would or no. Her fingers coiled into fists. Damn him!

  "So Lord Wenlock sent you into France with an escort to rejoin the Duchess? You had a safe journey?"

  "No, not at all. Alys and I were merely abducted by a troop of Burgundian ruffians and terrified out of our wits, but I am becoming used to it, thanks to your worthy self. I have obviously been missing out on these new ways of doing things every time one travels."

  "And?" He had a habit of saying that, she noticed. "Go on, I am hanging on your every word. And?"

  "And de Commynes, why he—"

  "The Burgundian?" Huddleston reacted like a bull stung by a gadfly. She heard him lift his head from the pillow.

  "Yes, the Burgundian envoy. You see, I met him at Lord Wenlock's and he sent me some bath essence in Venetian glass which was very kind of him and he asked me many questions about what Ned was doing. Did I know whether he had sent out commissions of array, that sort of thing."

  "While you were in the bath? So unimaginative. And did you?"

  "Yes, well, I knew all the men-at-arms had been sent back to their shires. Actually I did not use the essence though her grace put some in my bath today. I had given it to her, you see."

  "How disappointing."

  "Had I known that we were to be shackled together in matrimony, sir, I should have kept it and broken it over your head."

  "Careful, mistress. The dog beside you comes with a long leash. But do go on… You were saying his men abducted you. What happened then?" Richard's voice was controlled but she knew there was no way he would let her stop now.

  "De Commynes—and I did not receive him in my bath— searched our possessions."

  "So he found all the letters."

  "Yes, except—oh!" Her incautious tongue had erred.

  Richard was not pleased. It confirmed his view that women could not keep secrets. "It is so easy, is it not, to let something slip out? So you were carrying special letters. Did he find the King's letter to George of Clarence? I assume there was one."

  Margery refused to answer. If Huddleston had just shrugged off his allegiance to Ned, he was hardly likely to share in her mission to make Clarence turn Judas.

  "Are you capable of facing me?" Her new husband's voice had grown dangerous. "Did the Burgundian force himself on you? Did any of the others? You will forgive me for pressing the matter but I should like to be told if I am to foster a Burgundian cuckoo as my heir?"

  Margery was tempted to torment him but it would have been like crossing thin ice. To do so would be to reinforce her reputation as an easy wanton.

  She twisted around to find he was leaning on one elbow looking down at her, his face stern. She shook her head slowly, her eyes large and owlish, knowing it was important that he believe her. This talk of heirs was breeding a strange panic in her again.

  Some demon in her blood affirmed that Richard Huddleston was undeniably attractive to her. The Devil prodded her curiosity further, awaking a serpent of lust within her belly. If Richard Huddleston sensed any signs of wantonness stirring in her, he gave nothing away but flopped back against his pillow, his hand stroking his hair back from his frowning brow. Margery turned away from him in relief, angry at the stirring of her body.

  When he finally spoke again, it was not of cuckoos. "So the Duke of Burgundy is sniffing the air and wondering where the real danger lies. I rather think the future may be extremely perilous."

  "Perilous?"

  "If de Commynes suspects you to be more than you seem, then so too might others."

  "I pray you do not say such things. You make me anxious."

  "I like making you anxious, Margery. Your tidings, on the other hand, anger me. The King should not have involved you as his messenger. This is the second time he has used you."

  "If you are referring—" Her shoulders stiffened.

  "Lady, he did. I'll swear he did."

  "No, it wasn't like that." She shook his hand away and wriggled to the edge of the bed but she could not escape his words.

  "Come, be honest with yourself, the King was nursing a resentment against your father like a running sore. I heard him spit anger."

  "What did you say?" she demanded, twisting around.

  "Why, nothing! Who argues with kings and sleeps secure o'nights?" His gaze slid lazily downward forcing her to fiercely clamp the sheet against her.

  "No, no, not that!" She could have shaken him in her desperation to wring out an answer. "It was the other thing you said. You said my father!"

  CHAPTER 11

  "You said the King was angry with my father!" Richard Huddleston withdrew his gaze with a laconic shrug. "Yes." His fingers plucked idly at a glinting thread.

  "Are you saying, Master Huddleston, that my father is the Earl of Warwick?"

  His gaze snapped back on hers. In the moonlight coming through the window, she saw his eyes narrow beneath a frown. "Of course." Then his keen eyes pierced her. "By Christ's blessed mercy, woman, you do not mean to say that—"

  Words failed him. It was unusual.

  "The Kingmaker is my father" she mouthed, staring unseeing at the door. "Why should you think that?" She jerked her head around at him angrily. He was watching her darkly, his chin cupped in his hand, his elbow close to her on the bed. "Come, sir, it is false. This is merely some gossip that you have heard."

  "Yes, it is gossip but… but yet not voiced. It was ever an assumption… oh, Margery." She was sitting up now, her face caught in wonderment as if he had given her the moon for her footstool. He would have sketched her now if God had given him a talent for drawing. It would have been something to capture her mood for eternity. Her head was delightfully cocked on one side like a little lapdog's and her chin rested thoughtfully on her drawn-up knees. Inside her head he could imagine her beliefs flung about, her mind all tangled like a ransacked room.

  No, drawing her was the last thing he felt like now. Her distraction, her excitement, was tempting him. Richard could not resist playing his fingers up the tiny stepping stones of her spine to gently tangle in her hair but she shifted forward with a shrug as if his fingertips were merely a bothersome fly. He wanted to push her back against the pillows and make himself master between her thighs. He could feel himself stiffening at the thought of sliding his fingers into her while he sucked the swollen buds of her breasts into his mouth.

  His hand locked around her ankle like a manacle. She was his to enjoy, damn her. The Kingmaker's daughter.

  "No! Sir, I hold you to your promise." Her fingers scrambled down the bed to fasten about his, preventing him from adventuring upward. "I— Give me time." She was lying.

  "Ah, time, of course." He held on tightly. His male pride and his appetite for her struggled against his honor. "Play with time as much as you please but by law you owe
me a wife's duty, lady. That shall be as inevitable as the sunrise and you know it."

  Margery grew hot beneath his fiery touch. Let him remove his hand, sweet Jesu, she begged.

  Someone heard. He withdrew his fingers. With a sob, she flung herself on her side, the sheet demurely to her shoulder, but to her discomfort, he leaned across her. His fingers delicately smoothed a silken coil of hair off her cheek. "I beg your pardon. You must forgive me for my momentary lapse. It will not happen again. Let us talk then of your father."

  "No! No more!" Words were easy to him. He knew how to bend them to his will. He could make swords and horseshoes from the iron of language. But his breath upon her neck was a different matter. "I… I do not want to talk. I want to be rid of this day."

  Damnation to her, if he might not enjoy her body, he could play with her mind and take some comfort in abusing the man who had. "Come now, I will wager you long to hear more."

  She shook her head violently and edged away but his voice was at her ear now like Satan's presence in the wilderness, while his hand was within a palm span of her thigh. "I'll give you reasons no one else dared touch you except the King."

  The temptation to slide his hand over her almost overwhelmed him and he flung himself back heavily against the pillow. "You know full well, Margery, that without Warwick's protection a baseborn wench like you was game for any of us. But even when he was away I would swear that you were sacrosanct."

  "Oh, this is nonsense," Margery said huffily into the pillow.

  "So why did no one try to lure you? It was because Warwick sat up there watching over all his daughters. But who was the only man who was never afraid of him? King Edward! Your precious Ned was prowling around looking for a chance to snatch a sacrificial lamb and you were it, Margery."

  "That is not true and God damn you for saying so!"

  "The King was searching for a way through to Warwick's soft underbelly. He wanted to prick him to a fury. Isabella and Anne were unassailable, lawfully begotten, and too young then for the King to entice—the world would have condemned him—but you were ripe for picking. Your seduction, even if you were merely Warwick's natural daughter, was calculated to enrage."

  "Oh, have done! Their quarrel was over Ned's marriage to the Woodville woman. He married her secretly while my lord was negotiating for the Queen of France's sister. It was shabbily done."

  "True, but taking your maidenhead in so insolent a fashion beneath your father's roof was one of the many things that broke the love and trust between them and I will swear it hurt your father as much as the rest."

  Tears stung at the back of her eyes but Margery was determined to hide the pain his words were causing her. She put away the thought of Ned using her and answered as calmly as she could. "This is just surmise on your part. You have given me no real proof that the Earl could possibly be my father."

  "Are you listening to me? Why do you imagine Warwick was so angry at your behavior? You are not just any bastard, you are his bastard! Why else would he now be dowering you so generously? Merely to rid himself of you? No, I think not. Have you no mirror? Are you not aware of the likeness? Any fool can see it. Margery, why do you imagine that you were permitted to be a close companion to Isabella and Anne and rank so high in their affection? You are their half sister, you addlepate."

  "If it is so, why should he not have told me?"

  Richard winced at the agony in her voice. The knowledge that she had been deliberately kept in ignorance must be like salt on an open sore. All those years of wondering. So many people misleading her and withholding the truth.

  "I shall beg an audience with… with him in the morning. This matter must be aired." She was quiet again and he knew her mind had begun to run with the consequences like a fox with a stolen fowl.

  He listened for a while to the noises outside the bedchamber. A drunken snatch was being bawled in the hall. Below in the courtyard a woman giggled. Somewhere else a slap of water hit the ground. His new wife was not asleep. She fidgeted and one arm crept out and pushed down the heavy coverlet.

  "You still think upon it?"

  "I can do nothing else. You chose to keep me awake— one way or another."

  "A wedding gift."

  She moved onto her back, wide awake. "I always wondered why my lady Countess…" She gestured, seeking the right words. "Why she always held something back, why I could never please her. Now it all begins to make so much sense."

  The potion of knowledge was working. She tucked her hands behind her head, oblivious to his admiring study. "If he is my father then I mean to ask him who my mother was."

  "No one ever told you that either?"

  She shook her head. "No one ever told me anything. I heard people whisper about me but I tried not to care. I thought maybe they were jealous because Isabella and Anne favored me and, yes, as you say, the Earl has always protected me. Do you know who my mother was?"

  "No." Richard Huddleston pulled the bed curtains to on his side. Then he bestowed on her his usual close-lipped smile, a mixture of indulgence, pity, and amusement, before he turned on his side, facing away from her.

  "How naive I have been," she whispered to the kindly darkness.

  "But how much humbler. Your nose would have been higher than your headdress." She bit her lip, unable to choose between laughter and tears. Then she pulled the curtains together beside her against the window draft and lay down again, as far away from her bridegroom as possible.

  Richard Huddleston was mentally satisfied if nothing else. She might be exhilarated with the thought of being the Earl's daughter, but the suspicions he had sown about the King would quietly spring to shoot. And soon he would make sure the world knew he was son by marriage to mighty Warwick.

  He was still asleep when she stirred, awakened by a sword of sunlight thrust through the gap where the curtains merely kissed. Cautiously, she studied the sleek, healthy skin of the man beside her, the shoulders well muscled from the combat yard, the fine hand flung open-palmed upon the pillow. Her instinct was to touch him, like a child wanting to run its fingertips over the pelt of a wild creature. Unaware, asleep, he looked as unpredictable as he did awake. If she had expected to glimpse an innocence or simplicity in his features, a boy within the man, she would have been disappointed. She had no such idealism. She was caged with a sleeping leopard.

  Sliding out from beneath the coverlet with all the care of a thief, Margery eased the curtain closed behind her. Alys had set out a ewer of clean water behind the screen for her the night before. Haggard from poor sleep, Margery knelt and plunged her hands into it to wet her face. The water blinded her. Blinking, she groped for the napkin only to have it placed in her hand. She started up in panic like a doe surprised at a woodland pool, but his hand kept her down. Was this being married, this invasion of privacy?

  "Speak to your father this morning if you've still a mind to. He will be leaving tomorrow to spend a few days in Hon-fleur overseeing his ships. I have to go today."

  She gazed up anew at the man who had taken lordship of her. He stood astride, his legs fine and powerfully muscled beneath the black hose. His masculinity stirred her. She grew aware of how well endowed he was behind the laces, the narrowness of his waist, and the broad expanse of his chest beneath the gipon. As if he read her thoughts, his lips twitched imperceptibly but his green eyes held no warmth. Margery was aware of the peaks of her breasts tightening against the wrap she wore. As she rose to her feet, rebelling against his hand, denying him the pleasure of straddling the world above her, her body demanded submission to him, her senses out of control, questioning what strange realm it was that held so enigmatic and unenthusiastic a bridegroom.

  "No one told me that." She struggled to sound matter-of-fact.

  He laughed. "Not fit tidings for a bride's ears. However, I can see the news distresses you."

  "Certainly. My tears will fill at least three milking pails. When can I expect you back to plague me further?"

  He rubbed his teet
h with a fresh napkin, then stooped down to sluice himself vigorously with water. She swiftly shrugged off his wrap and snatched her gown from the bed. Once she had it safely over her head, she retrieved her belt from where it had fallen beside the stool. Perversely, she enjoyed watching the droplets of water fall from the curls about his forehead as he fumbled for the napkin. She picked it up and thrust it against his hand. He wiped the moisture from his face with his fingers and mopped his underarms.

  "I am not certain when I shall return. It depends on the news from King Louis. You know he plays host to Queen Margaret and her son?"

  The normality of conversation made her feel safe again as she hastened to fasten the belt beneath her breasts. "Yes, and makes as much trouble as he can for Ned. All the world knows the French would like to see the House of Lancaster back on the throne and yet they say King Louis has a kindness for my lord War—my lord father."

  "Hmm, travelers going in the same direction may often share a bed."

  She frowned. "What do you mean?"

  "It is an age for wonders. Why, look at us! Paired and bedded like two turtle doves in a cot." He picked up his fallen shirt.

  There were voices beyond the door now. "Have you the lies ready to trip off your tongue? They will want to know every detail, the least of which will be how I compare with the King of England."

  Secured from his eyes within the covering of her clothes, she found it was possible to laugh.

  "And?" he prompted.

  She cast back a querying, teasing glance. "What would you like me to say? Shall I tell the gossips that you crow like Chanticleer and are comparable with a broom handle?"

  He gave a roar of laughter, his eyes narrowing to such mischievous slits of devilment that she stepped back hurriedly, knocking the screen down and falling back on top of it. The basin heaved its water onto the purfiled hem of her skirt.

  "Oh, the Devil take you!" she exclaimed. "How I wish I had never in my life set eyes on you!"

  His hands fastened about her forearms and tugged her to her feet but he did not let her go. "I wish it so too." His laughter had vanished, replaced by such a vehemence in his tone that she caught her breath. Then he bent his head and brushed her mouth lightly with his own. Margery quivered within his hands as much in fury as with some emotion she could put no name to. She tightened her lips and pushed her palms against his chest.