“I have never felt better,” he said, and Mary could hear the smile in his voice. He gained his feet before helping her to stand.
Mary let the two satchels she had grabbed—she didn’t know yet which ones—slide from her frozen arms to the pier. “Where are we?” she asked.
“On the edge of Hamburg, at the house of a friend.” Valentine squatted down on his haunches and gathered big handfuls of her skirts, trying to wring the water from them. “Look across the river, Maria.”
Mary turned her head and gasped. Perhaps it was only the lingering effects of the potion, but the lights of the city and from the lanterns hanging on the moored ships sparkled in the rain like starbursts, and lit the surface of the river like fairy fire. From her position on the dock, the Elbe seemed deceptively calm—not even a ripple could be seen on its black surface, belying the raging torrent they’d just come out of. One could only guess at its tumult by the deep bobbing of the cog ship moored on the far side of the dock.
Mary turned her head quickly the other way, toward the solid shore they had at last achieved, and saw a very different landscape—one of darkened forest and sloping field, of rough-hewn fencing like skeletal bones in the flashing lightning; squat outbuildings ringing a tall, square structure with two low wings to either side.
“What sort of friend?” she asked. “This appears to be an inn.”
Valentine stood, picking up the bags as he straightened and swiped at his eyes with his forearm. “It is. For travelers who do no desire to stay in the city.” He took her arm and started up the pier toward the crest of the hill. “Mostly those traveling with large parties—many horses and belongings, or much to trade. Hamish caters to the nobility—and a certain kind of criminal, it is true—so we should be quite comfortable here.”
“I think I would be comfortable in a cave right now, so long as it was dry,” Mary quipped, struggling to move her legs against the weight of her skirts. “Are we to play at being someones we are not?”
“Not with Hamish,” Valentine said. “He owes me a favor or three.”
“Ah, a fellow criminal from your colorful past,” Mary said. “Why am I surprised?”
“No, no,” Valentine said, helping her up the slippery grass. “His reputation in Hamburg is beyond reproach.”
Mary couldn’t help her laugh. Valentine always knew how to twist situations into the most favorable light.
“What of his reputation elsewhere?” she pressed.
Valentine shrugged in the darkness. “Perhaps slightly less. But I assure you, there would be few men who dared test his identity, lest they wished a quick death.”
Mary winced. “I see. I simply can’t wait to meet him.” Valentine laughed as he led Mary to the rear of one of the low wings of the inn. He released her hand to rap on the door with the backs of his knuckles.
Mary could have sworn she felt the ground beneath her feet vibrate with the loud stomps coming from beyond the door. She turned her head to look nervously at Valentine, but he was smiling. He glanced over at her and gave her a wink and a reassuring nod.
Unintelligible shouts grew louder as the stomping approached the other side of the door.
“—laggin’ peasantry! Can’t even read a flaggin’ drawering, can ye?” The door swung open with a whoosh, emitting kind, golden light and delicious-smelling warmth into the wet night. “Th’inn’s closed for a private party, ye flaggin’ bast—Valentine!”
The man standing in the doorway was no taller than Mary herself, and slender, with a full head of wavy golden hair that rose in a wave from his forehead. He wore a handsome, tooled leather apron over his creamy white shirt, and his boots gleamed black in the light of the room behind him.
“Good evening, Hamish, my friend,” Valentine said. “We seem to have bypassed the main entrance and so missed what I’m sure was a masterful illustration indicating that you were closed for business this night. My apologies.”
“Come in, come in!” Hamish laughed, stepping back from the doorway and giving Mary a friendly smile. His bright blue eyes sparkled. “I must say I’m not surprised to see you, but my God, man—a lady with you? Good evening, milady. Welcome, welcome!” He closed the door after them.
Mary saw that they were in a busy kitchen. A wide hearth took up the entire wall toward the center of the structure, filled with a variety of metal frameworks and rotating spits. Cauldrons boiled, portions of meat glistened and sizzled, the fragrant smoke and steam stinging Mary’s eyes and causing her mouth to prickle. Three long tables took up the center of the room, all surrounded by an army of white-aproned men and women, chopping and stirring and clattering wooden trenchers together. None of the kitchen workers seemed to care one whit for their entrance.
Hamish came around them and shouted to the people in a guttural language. One rotund woman swept past, carrying a large, steaming pot with the ends of her apron wrapped about the handles, and she answered him quickly and dismissively in the same language. Then Hamish gestured for them to follow him through the kitchen to a doorway at one end of the hearth. It housed a narrow stairwell, which they climbed.
“Eloise’ll be so flaggin’ pleased to see you, Valentine. ’Tis sorry I am that I cannot place you and yer lady in the king’s apartment, but we are full up tonight with some flaggin’ general’s business. You can have one of our chambers above until they clear out on the morrow.”
“The king’s apartment?” Mary whispered over her shoulder.
Valentine shook his head with a grin. “Hamish names the chambers. He says it makes the patrons who stay here feel important.”
“I see,” she murmured, although she didn’t.
“Everyone wants to feel they’re important, milady,” Hamish said cheerily above her. “Even if they’ve no more flaggin’ pedigree than a dross mare.”
“He has unusually keen hearing as well,” Valentine said, quite unnecessarily at this point, Mary thought.
“Keen hearing is a necessity in my lines of work, eh?” Hamish said, coming to the top of the stairs and glancing back with a grin. He went to a door on the left and pushed it open, then popped his head in to look about, his words muffled a bit. “I demand a pretty coin for a room at the Queen, and so if a bloke is willin’ to pay, well—” he took a step back into the short corridor and wrapped the hem of his leather apron around his hand before seizing one of the sconces from the wall—“he’s to be treated like a flaggin’ prince, ’sfar as I’m concerned. The city’s bleedin’ me dry for taxes—I need all the coin I can lay hand to. The only reason I agreed to shut down the Queen for the night. Every room full, the stable as well.
“Milady,” Hamish said with a sweeping bow, holding the light high toward the open doorway.
Mary stepped into the room, feeling her skirts pulling on the boards behind her. “I’m sorry for the trouble when you are so harried,” she said to Hamish, who was securing the sconce to a wall of the room.
“No trouble at all,” he said with a bright smile. “The oldest usually sleep here, any matter, but the lot of ’em’s at the cottage with their mother tonight. Be safer there, Eloise reckoned.”
Valentine had deposited their bags in a corner on the floor. “How many do you number now, Hamish?”
“Our sixth was born in May.”
Valentine paused and looked at his friend with what appeared to be anticipation. “Boy?”
The jolly blond man threw back his head and laughed. “Another flaggin’ lass, if you can believe my poor luck! Seems I’m to be the only cock in the roost. Ah, well.” Mary thought he didn’t look at all disappointed. “Am I to understand that all your belongings soaked up the storm?”
“Soaked up the Elbe is more accurate,” Valentine said wryly, and Mary noticed that Valentine’s usually swarthy complexion had taken on a grayish cast. He was obviously exhausted.
Hamish cocked an eyebrow in surprise, and for the briefest moment, Mary could almost see his mind turning over this information behind his friendly eyes. She suspected there was muc
h more to Hamish than his humble innkeeper façade led one to believe.
“You flaggin’ despise travelin’ by river!”
“Believe me, friend, I despise it even more after this night.”
Hamish laughed again, and his calculating look had vanished to the point where Mary wondered if she’d even seen it in the first place. “Well, I’m lookin’ forward to hearing what has turned the great horseman Alesander to sailor. There are some simple garments in the wardrobe—help yourselves.”
He turned back to the door. “You can come to the main room after for food if you can keep your shadow and your woman close, which I know you can, Valentine. Flaggin’ rough lot we’ve got in tonight. But do come for a tankard, any matter. We can reminisce a bit before they get too pissed an’ I have to start cleanin’ ’em out.”
“My thanks, Hamish,” Valentine said, turning to the large wooden box against the wall.
As soon as the door closed, Mary rushed to Valentine’s side, looking over his arm as he rifled through stacks of yellowed ivory and brown wool. “All right, tell me,” she said, hearing the eagerness in her own voice.
“Tell you what, mi amor?” he said.
“Your friend. Who is he really? He said his ‘lines of work.’ One line is, of course, as an innkeeper. What else?”
Valentine had collected several pieces and now turned from the wardrobe. “Well, he is obviously a breeding stallion since he has six children. I do no blame him; Eloise is—” He made a noise that was a sigh of longing.
Mary felt herself stiffen. “I see. You knew her before her husband, then.”
He placed the clothes on the bed, wide and lumpy and low to the floor, and laughed. “I knew her before Hamish, yes. But I didn’t know her, Maria. I assisted them in traveling here, to Hamburg, to start their life together. I placed myself in great danger for them, certainly. But I could never resist the pleas of two people in love.”
Mary placed her hands on her hip and cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, really? And how much did he pay you for your sentimentality?”
Valentine shrugged and then tossed her an undergown that unfurled in the air. “His entire wage.”
Mary caught the rough flax material in her hands. “That doesn’t seem like it could have been remotely enough to risk your life for.”
“Hamish is very good at what he does,” Valentine conceded, as if that in itself should have been explanation enough. “And I had learned a thing or two from my terrible mistake in secreting Teresa away. Helping Eloise and Hamish escape was child’s play for me.”
Mary frowned for a moment. “You made it seem that Eloise was dead?”
“Yes. Are you going to change or no?” he asked.
“Yes, but—”
“Then do so, pray, mi amor—my throat, it is very scratchy. I am in need of dry clothes and a strong drink.”
Mary huffed and went behind the wardrobe. She fought with her wet gown while she continued to ask questions. “Why would you want to make it appear that the woman Hamish loved was dead?”
“Her father never would have allowed the marriage, for one. Eloise is noble, and Hamish is . . . well, he is no so much.”
She pulled the rough underdress over her head. The dryness felt heavenly. “I find it difficult to accept that her father would prefer a dead daughter over one married to a commoner. But since I have no father, I cannot know for certain. Mine shackled me to you, after all.” She couldn’t help but smile at her own wit.
“Maria,” Valentine said in mock warning from beyond the wardrobe.
Mary removed her soaking shoes next, trying to wipe off the bits of wet leaves and debris with her ruined gown as best she could. “I’ve finished. Are you decent?”
“Completely nude,” Valentine said.
“I’ll wait.” Mary picked up her sopping gown and stood behind the cabinet, biting her lower lip. She sighed, curling and uncurling her toes to help bring the feeling to them faster, trying everything she could not to imagine what Valentine looked like without his clothes. Surely he was dressed by now. She would just take a little peek.
Mary eased her head around the edge of the wardrobe slowly, her eyes going wide in anticipation of what she would see.
What she saw was Valentine Alesander, dressed in the outfit of a manservant, his arms crossed and smiling at her.
“Caught you,” he said with a wink.
Mary’s face whooshed with heat, but she managed to hang a frown on her mouth and stomped from the corner. “You were taking too long,” she said with her chin raised. She tossed her wet things atop Valentine’s own and turned to him with a flounce. She paused when she saw him crawling onto the bed.
“I thought you wanted a drink,” she said.
“I do, Maria, but right now, I am no feeling so well. I think it would be better for me to lie down for a bit. I will visit with Hamish later.”
Mary frowned in earnest then, and approached the bed, sitting on the side of it close to Valentine. She reached out and placed a palm along his temple; he was burning with fever.
“Valentine, I believe you are taking ill,” she said.
“It is nothing,” he said. “I am only tired. I have no slept.”
“Tired doesn’t bring on fever,” she argued. “I will go below myself and solicit your friend for some food and something to drink.” She fully expected him to forbid it.
He didn’t say anything for several moments. And then, “All right. Something warm, por favor.”
At that, Mary became genuinely concerned. “I will do my best.”
“Gracias, mi amor.”
She stood up and then paused, a thought occurring to her. “Valentine, what was the other thing?”
“What other thing, Maria?” He groaned.
“You said Eloise’s father never would have allowed her to marry Hamish because he was not noble, for one. What was the other reason?”
“Because Eloise’s father was Hamish’s employer. And Eloise? She was the mark.”
Mary frowned. “I don’t understand. Mark?”
Valentine rolled back toward her with an exhausted sigh, but his tone was patient. “My little Maria, I hate to completely destroy your innocence.”
“Tell me,” she insisted. “I vow I shan’t reveal to Hamish that you did.”
“I do very much doubt that he would care,” Valentine said with a wry but weary grin. “Tonight we sleep in a bed belonging to one of the world’s greatest assassins.”
Mary smiled to herself as she stepped out into the short corridor at the top of the narrow stairs.
That cheerful little blond man a hired killer? Valentine must think her a child needing entertainment with such wild tales. Or perhaps he was trying to instill an abundance of caution in her by exaggerating Hamish’s reputation. Either explanation was rather sweet, any matter, she thought.
She stepped lightly down the stairs, her bare feet making no noise on the smooth wooden treads. She had added a rough brown kirtle to the underdress, and found that she was now quite dry and alert. But she was also starving, and her mouth was sticky with dehydration. She hoped she could locate Hamish quickly in the bustling kitchen; Valentine did not look at all sound, and she wanted to care for him as well as he had done for her on those long days adrift on the river.
If it was possible, the kitchen seemed even busier than when she and Valentine had first arrived. Mary stood on tiptoe and craned her neck to look across the sea of heads bowed to their tasks, but she did not spy the Queen’s proprietor. She edged around the nearest bench toward the place where the back entrance met up with another doorway, which assumedly led to the main room. Rowdy shouts and laughter burst through the opening intermittently. Mary had little desire to search for Hamish in the midst of such a disorderly company, so she would simply wait there, being as inconspicuous as possible, until he returned.
Mary didn’t realize the woman’s gruff shouts were directed at her until she felt the kick to her shin.
“Ow!” she
shouted, bending up her knee to rub at her leg and giving the rotund cook she’d seen earlier an offended frown. “I beg your pardon!”
But she was forced to return her foot to the floor as the cook thrust a tray crowded with brimming tankards at her. Mary took them reflexively, lest they crash to the floor, and as soon as she had a firm grip, the fat woman began haranguing her in the same guttural language she’d spoken earlier, simultaneously pointing at the doorway that led to the main room.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Mary said, giving the woman what she hoped was a friendly smile. “I’m looking for—”
But the woman cut her off with more barking, this time enunciating slowly while doing an elaborate pantomime, as if it would help Mary to understand the foreign words she spoke. She pulled a length of what appeared at first to be a rag from her apron pocket and jerked it down over Mary’s hair even as Mary tried to duck away.
It was then that Mary noticed the cook’s kirtle and underdress were of the exact cut and color as the ones Mary herself currently wore. The misunderstanding became clear to her a moment later as she stood there in the kitchen in her bare feet and wet, tangled hair, the short lappets of the simple cap tickling her jaw.
“You think I came here for work!” she said with a relieved smile and a half laugh. “No, no—I’m a guest.” She tried to return the tray to the woman. “All of my own clothes were ruined and so—you don’t understand me at all, do you?”
The woman responded by stepping close to Mary’s side, landing a sharp pinch to the underside of her arm, and then shoving her, tray and all, through the doorway.
She barely kept her balance as she was forced to run after the precariously tilting tray, and she sighed her relief as she came to a stop along the wall of the main room and saw that the heavy tankards had kept to their bottoms. She looked around at the dark, smoky room, paneled in rich, oiled wood that flickered with the liquid gold of the oil lamps on the small tables. Another huge stone hearth made up the innermost wall, but this one contained only a small fire over which a solitary spit turned what appeared to be palm-length sausages. A young lad stood at the turn, handing out the morsels on long skewers.
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