She turned around and pressed her palms to the paneled door. Maybe it was Mother. But she always just burst in without knocking. "Yes?"
"Julia?"
Griffin? It was Griffin? She felt a strange surge of excitement. "Griffin?"
She opened the door a crack and peered out. He stood in darkness, but for the glow of a candle at the far end of the hall near the staircase. He smelled of brandy wine, but she didn't think he was drunk. She opened the door a little farther.
"Yes, it's me."
She didn't say anything because she didn't know what to say.
"I . . . I'm sorry to come so late." He sounded nothing like the fop who had been bowling with a leather ball and empty brandy bottles in the gallery only an hour ago. His voice was rich, intimate, disturbing.
"It's all right." She opened the door farther and stepped into the opening, still holding the brass knob for support. "I'm sorry." She ran a hand over her hair that she knew stood out like a witches' mane. "I was getting ready to turn in. I know I look a fright."
He smiled in the darkness—an utterly charming smile—and Julia felt that she was doing something wrong, something she should be ashamed of, though she wasn't certain what it might be.
"I think you look beguiling." He gazed at her with a far-off look. "What is beautiful is good and who is good will also be beautiful."
She felt her cheeks flush as she lowered her gaze to her stockinged feet peeking out from beneath her gown. "I don't know that one, not Shakespeare, though."
"A woman. Sappho."
Embarrassed, yet secretly pleased, she kept her gaze downcast.
He cleared his throat. "I, uh, I came because I have something for you."
He held a draped object, though she couldn't tell what it was in the darkness. "For me?" she whispered. "Now?"
He hesitated. "You're right. I shouldn't have come. It's late—"
"No, it's all right." She glanced down the hallway to be certain no one saw them, knowing she shouldn't let him in, yet feeling wicked in her desire to be alone with him here in the darkness. "Come in."
He slipped inside.
She stepped back to make room, and he closed the door behind him.
"Lizzy's asleep," Julia said softly as she walked to the door between the sitting room and the inner bedchamber and closed it. "I wouldn't want to wake her."
"When I saw this in a shop, I knew you would like it."
She watched as he unwrapped black fabric from the object on a table. Candlelight from a sconce cast his shadow on the wall behind him and made him appear even taller than he was.
She couldn't resist delight at the thought of a gift. She never received gifts except for Lizzy's half-eaten cookies or broken-stemmed flowers. Simeon's ugly gowns didn't count as gifts because they were not given in friendship, love, or even admiration. She wondered under which category this gift fell. "What is it?" She stepped forward to stand beside him and gaze down at a beautifully embossed leather case in his hands.
He unlatched the case and flipped it open.
"Oh," Julia whispered. It was a leather backgammon game with polished ivory and ebony playing pieces. Simple, but elegant.
"It's very old, the shopkeeper told me."
In fascination, she ran her finger along one of the dyed leather triangles of the board. The case had a slight scent of worn leather and time.
Julia glanced up at Griffin. "Thank you. It's beautiful." She was touched not just by his generosity in presenting her with an obviously expensive gift, but by his thoughtfulness.
"Now you don't have to borrow Simeon's. You have one of your own." He seemed as pleased with himself as she was with him.
Her gaze fell on the game board again. "I really do like it." Then she looked up at him. "But I don't suppose I should accept it."
"Why in Hades not?" Then he frowned. "Simeon. Well, just don't tell him. Surely he didn't take an inventory of your possessions when you entered Bassett Hall, and I would guess he's not been to your apartments since you arrived."
"No," she said softly.
"So it will be our secret." He reached out and brushed his hand over her elbow.
It was a simple gesture, utterly innocent, and yet it made Julia feel so good that she knew there was something wrong in it. Of course it was wrong. He was married. Simeon said he was a homosexual. He didn't belong in her apartments so late at night. "Thank you again," she whispered.
He turned toward the door.
"Where are you going?" This time she touched his arm. She didn't know what made her do it.
"To bed, madame. It's nearly dawn."
He spoke with a tinge of sarcasm. It was not her imagination. He really did act like two different people. The question was: why?
"You can't bring me such a beautiful backgammon board and then not offer to be beaten by me at least once."
He laughed and she smiled shyly.
"Just one?" she beckoned.
His hand on the doorknob, he turned back to her. "All right. Just one. But if you think I'm going to allow you to beat me, you're wrong"
She smiled. She liked this man, no matter what Simeon said. "I've a game table."
"Let me help you."
As they picked up the small, round table from near the fireplace and carried it to the center of the room, Griffin's hand brushed Julia's. The sensation was so intensely pleasurable that she almost pulled away.
I shouldn't be doing this, she thought as he offered her a chair. I shouldn't be making this alliance. It's too dangerous. Nothing good can come of it, and so much bad.
But even as the thought ran through her head, she was gazing up into his intense blue eyes. After the incident today with Simeon, it was a welcome relief to have someone to talk to who didn't seem to despise her. She needed Griffin's friendship tonight, and somehow he had known.
"Best two of three?" Griffin began to set up her new backgammon board. His hands moved adeptly, but his gaze remained locked with hers.
"Thank you for coming," she whispered.
Griffin made no response but to smile. None was necessary.
"You roll first." He took her hand in his and placed the dice in her palm.
She clasped the dice and rolled. She didn't know what journey she'd embarked on tonight, inviting this man into her bedchamber. But somehow she knew it would be as wonderful as it would be dangerous.
Chapter Five
Griffin stood in one of the two window alcoves of his third-story bedchamber and pushed back the heavy, blue velvet drape. He stared out, lost in thought as rain pitter-pattered on the bubbled glass panes. A loose shutter banged as it swung back and forth, partially obscuring his view of the deserted Aldersgate Street below each time it closed.
Griffin felt as restless this morning as the noisy shutter. He was to meet with the king for tennis at noon so he had much to accomplish before then, but he couldn't concentrate. Each time he picked up a slip of paper with names and dates and attempted to make sense of the muck, his thoughts wandered to a woman.
Wouldn't that shock Cousin Simeon, who thought him to be a homosexual? Griffin and a woman. He smiled to himself, but then his thoughts sobered. He suddenly felt older than his thirty-two years. God in heaven, how long had it been since a woman had occupied his mind as Julia did now? Too long.
Julia. Last night, alone in her bedchamber, it had seemed as if they were the only two people in the world. For a brief time, as they played backgammon and talked, there were no politics, no impending wedding. It was just the two of them, friends . . . but more than friends. He knew he shouldn't have gone to her apartments. But he was glad he had.
Now Griffin couldn't stop thinking about Julia's tumble of red tresses, or her brilliant blue eyes, or her laugh that made him giddy in the pit of his stomach. He chuckled aloud at the thought of a woman making him tremble.
"My lord?"
He glanced over his shoulder to see Jabar study him expectantly as he laid out Griffin's wardrobe for the day.
>
Griffin waved his hand. "Nothing, old friend. Just a silly notion."
The shutter banged.
Jabar nodded with understanding and returned to the task of smoothing Griffin's red and yellow satin coat on the bed.
Jabar and Griffin had been together more than ten years, since they'd met during Griffin's service in the Holy Land. The man sometimes understood Griffin better than he understood himself.
"The woman," Jabar intoned.
Caught. "What woman?" Griffin left the window, relieved to be in the privacy of his room where the falsetto voice and calf-aching tiptoed walk was unnecessary. He tugged absently on the tie of his silk floral dressing gown and stretched.
"The red-haired one with the eyes of jewels." Jabar shook his turbaned head in disapproval. "You should not. She is your cousin's betrothed. Taboo."
Griffin wandered to his desk scattered with papers. Like his chambers, it was in messy disarray. Discovering a sheet under his bare foot, he picked it up and tossed it. It floated in the air for a moment and then drifted onto the writing desk.
"He should never have brought her here," Griffin said. "He no more wants a wife than Charlie, there." He pointed to the black golden-eyed cat curled in a tight ball on his rumpled bed linens.
"Not your trouble." Jabar crossed the room and pulled a pair of yellow clocked stockings from a trunk.
Griffin shook his head.
Jabar displayed a pair of pink ones.
Griffin nodded. "It is not my concern that my cousin should take an innocent woman to his bed whom he does not want? My cousin, a man who is not worth the ground she trods upon?"
"Master cannot solve all problems, only problems given to him by Allah."
Griffin gritted his teeth. He hated it when Jabar called him Master, but in ten years he'd not been able to break him of it. It had been hopeless since Griffin had freed him from that dark pit in the ground so many years before.
Griffin crossed his arms over his chest. "And how do you know that Allah has not made Julia my problem?" As a man once in exile, Griffin had long ago learned that God was still God, by any name.
Jabar cut his dark gaze to Griffin as he placed the pink stockings on the bed and added a pair of ribboned green garters. "It has been many years since master has had a woman. I should get you one, yes?"
He frowned. "No. What do I need a woman for?" He indicated the piles of papers that overflowed from his desk to the floor. "Don't you think I've enough to deal with without a woman tied around my neck?"
Jabar nodded. "You are right, Master. You do not need a woman, and this is why you will not interfere with St. Martin's woman, pretty as a morning bird or not."
Griffin knew Jabar was ready to help him dress, but he didn't shed his dressing gown. He would be embarrassed for his friend to know how greatly Julia affected him. Griffin turned away from Jabar to pace.
It felt odd, and yet at the same time a relief to be physically mere a woman. so since Griffin had held a naked woman in his arms that he had almost forgotten its pleasures. It wasn't anything so dramatic as being rejected by love, but that he'd been so occupied these last years. Too occupied finding women for others that he didn't have time to find them for himself.
Griffin chuckled at the irony of it.
Jabar lifted one eyebrow. "You are vexed today, Master, I will pray for your mind's healing."
With another chuckle, Griffin dropped his dressing gown on the floor and walked to the bed. "All right, Jabar. What have we here today?" He blinked theatrically as if nearly blinded. "Uds lud!" He spoke in his pseudo-persona. "There'll be no need for an introduction at Whitehall today, will there? The king will see me before I reach Charing Cross!"
Jabar laughed and Griffin laughed with him, thoughts of Julia set aside, at least for the moment.
Julia raised her quilted yellow and green petticoat and climbed the ladder to reach the book above her head. "Ah, hah. There you are," she said aloud to Simeon's empty library. He was gone elsewhere today, business, she was told. "I knew there had to be a book on gardens somewhere." She perched on the top of the rolling ladder and opened the heavy leather cover. "Now let's see . . ."
"Always talk to yourself?"
Startled, Julia glanced down to see Griffin just inside the doorway.
"Oh, you gave me a fright." She pressed her hand to her pounding heart. "I didn't hear you come in."
He was wearing a large, curly wig of the most ghastly red that clashed unbearably with his red and yellow coat and pink stockings.
"I'm sorry. Didn't mean to startle you." He leaned against the doorjamb. Alone like this, like last night when they'd played backgammon, he didn't seem effeminate, nor particularly theatrical if one could ignore the wig. She wanted to ask him about the differences in his manner, but she wasn't sure how to broach the subject.
Last night he had been so warm, so friendly, and yet utterly masculine in a way Julia couldn't have explained if she tried. Never overstepping the bounds of good taste, he had made her feel beautiful, even sexually attractive. Last night thoughts had crossed her mind that even now made her blush. For the first time in her life, she felt a sexual awakening. Suddenly she was not only aware of her own body and its reactions, but another's body Of Griffin's.
She avoided his gaze, embarrassed by the wantonness of her musing. Her mother was right; it was time she married. "I . . . I was looking for a book on gardens, on hothouses. I'd like to order some plants to replace those that have died off. I'm not certain what to plant other than lilies in the pond." She indicated the large tome she carried. "I thought maybe this would help."
"I'm glad you've decided to try your hand in the orangery. It will fill your days. It's difficult to come to a new place and find your way."
She rolled her eyes. "Especially this place. It's so different from home. Different from what I expected. I'm a little lonely," she confessed softly. She hadn't seen Simeon alone again since the morning he'd had his coat fitted.
"Ah . . . my cousin. I wouldn't think him to be particularly attentive."
She lowered her gaze to the book. She knew that servants listened in doorways. Simeon's secretary could be anywhere . . . listening. "He's a busy man. I understand."
Griffin glanced out the door, then back at her. "No need to say more. I don't know why you came here to begin with, why your mother would allow—"
"My mother?" She gave a sniff of derision.
He glanced down the hallway again, then back at her. "You could call off the wedding," he said quietly. "It's not too late."
She licked her dry lips. The idea had been tumbling in her head for days, since Simeon had been so abrupt with her in his apartments. But if she didn't marry St. Martin, who would she marry? Her family's welfare was dependent upon her making a good match. Lizzy's well-being was dependent on Julia's ability to care for her.
"My father wanted me to marry St. Martin," was all she could say.
"And you? You, Julia?" he whispered with conviction. "Do you wish to wed him?"
Julia grabbed the book, turned on the ladder, her layered petticoats swishing as she climbed down. "This isn't an appropriate conversation, sir."
He was silent for a moment. "I'm sorry," he said finally. "I just hate to see a woman . . . you . . . unhappy."
"Oh, I'm not unhappy." Of course she was unhappy. Desperately unhappy. More so since Griffin had befriended her. She glanced up at him, wondering if she would be feeling this way right now if it had been Baron Archer her father had betrothed her to, instead of St. Martin. Even with his ridiculous costumes and silly behavior, he was more a man than Simeon. "I'm certain Simeon will make a fine husband. I only need a little time to adjust."
After a long pause, he nodded. "You're right, of course. It makes no difference. Might as well be St. Martin as the next man. You know what Virgil said: 'A woman is always fickle, an unstable thing'." Then he smiled that silly grin of his. His moment of seriousness passed and he was once again the fop. "Well, good day to you
." He swept off his hat and bowed.
"Good day," she whispered to the empty room as she clutched the book to her chest. Tears stung the back of her eyelids. Griffin utterly confused her. He had been so friendly when he'd come to her room and brought the backgammon board. Now, here, he had first said she didn't have to marry St. Martin, and then said she might as well. He just didn't make any sense.
But she was beginning to suspect that there were a lot of things about the Baron that didn't quite make sense.
"You have to at least make an attempt to be civil to him!" Susanne followed Julia down the flagstone path, deeper into the orangery, batting at overgrown bushes as she trotted.
Lizzy trailed silently behind her mother.
Julia kept walking, a heavy wooden crate of plants in her arms. "I am civil." She dropped the crate of plants beside an empty fish pond. "I'm just not particularly nice."
"Well! You're certainly nice enough to that fop, Baron Archer," her mother sniffed.
"Please lower your voice, Mother." Julia sat on the edge of the stone pond and reached for one of the plants. " I'm nice to Griffin because he's nice to me. He's the only one who has shown me any kindness in this dreary house in a fortnight."
Her mother plopped her ample frame on the edge of the pond wall. "But he's not willing to marry you, is he?"
Julia glanced up at her mother, then back at the task at hand. She dug deep into the soil with an old trowel she had found abandoned in a gardener's shed. This was it. This was her chance to tell her mother what she thought. "It's just not going to work, Mother," she said firmly. The memory of Griffin's words gave her the courage to continue. "We can call the betrothal off now. It's not too late."
"Impossible."
"Simeon doesn't want me to run his household. He doesn't want my company. He doesn't want a wife."
"He wants what all men want, a healthy breeder."
Julia stabbed the rich soil with her trowel. "Exactly, which is why this isn't going to work. I don't think I can bed a man who can't speak to me except for show in public."
In Love with the King's Spy (Hidden Identity) Page 5