"I see my fears were unfounded." All amorous thought had been shattered by his coldness. "I am relieved your injuries were not grievous."
She turned to leave, but ignoring his injuries Matthew moved more quickly, closing the distance in a few strides. Catching her waist, he spun her around. She fell against his chest and jerked back as if scalded.
"Why did you lie to me, Margery Watson?" he asked, ignoring his brother and the rest, who were openly gawping at the exchange. "I inquired at every chandler, weaver and draper's residence on Candlewick, trying to find you. I am not over quick. It took me some time to figure you had deliberately deceived me."
"I was afraid you would tell... that you would reveal my whereabouts," she replied breathlessly. "I could not risk it."
"Meaning you do not trust me." He released her and stepped back, as if too disgusted to be in her presence.
Striving for a measure of calm, Margery inhaled deeply, only to capture his scent–a combination of leather and lavender, chamomile and bresewort from the herbal water. His skin gleamed softly from a mixture of perspiration and the sponging his barber had administered.
"I hope you will forgive me."
Matthew studied her, as if her expression, some nuance or gesture would provide a more satisfactory answer than her words. To what question, Margery could not say, but she was unnerved by the intensity in his eyes.
Harry approached. Following a nod to her—Might he remember?—he said, "Well, brother, we will be going now. Let us know when you are finished with... well..." After a final, unreadable glance at Margery, he and the others left.
In the charged silence that followed, she said, "My treatment of you has weighed heavily on my conscience. I am sorry for that."
Did she detect a softening of Matthew's mouth, of the hard expression in his eyes? He moved, as if he might touch her, but then grimaced and cradled his ribs. Turning his back to her, he limped back to his stool.
"God's nails," he swore softly. He took deep breaths, as if to manage the pain. She tried not to focus on the swell of his bare chest. Rise and fall. Inhale, exhale. Father Crispin would have her saying Pater Nosters until the feast of Mary Magdalene.
"My lord, I am skilled with poultices and potions. Might I not help?"
A long pause. Finally, he opened his eyes, gazing at her as if he'd forgotten her. "Nay, 'twill pass."
She stood awkwardly before him until the silence became unbearable. "I will fetch your barber then."
He nodded.
She hurried toward the exit. Such humiliation. Why had she listened to Orabel? Why had she listened to her heart? Her foolish, treacherous heart?
"Meg!" He beckoned her back. She hesitated. Was he seeking to detain her in order to further embarrass her? Slowly, she complied, stiffening her shoulders and striving for an outward dignity at odds with her inner abasement.
Matthew seemed caught in some internal dialogue for he did not speak for a good while. "I have been known to accept apologies from beautiful women," he said finally. Something in the pitch of his voice caused her limbs to turn liquid.
She managed a nod. "I am grateful, my lord."
"And I know you reside at the Shop of the Unicorn."
Margery's eyes widened. "How—"
"Harry. He saw when I rode away with you at the Poitiers celebration. And he recognized you later, at the Shop."
She tried to keep her face expressionless. Why pretend anger over a lie when he'd known—how long had he known?—her true whereabouts. Yet he'd made no effort to renew their acquaintance. Yet he said he'd searched for her. Matthew Hart was a puzzle...
"If you do not vanish again, mayhap I will pay the Shop a visit."
"I would like that, my lord," she whispered.
Matthew closed his eyes, as if against more pain. "And now, would you fetch me my barber?"
Chapter 16
London
In the summer of 1359, talk of war with France resumed largely because Jean le Bon's ransom remained unpaid. Though the southern provinces of Languedoc had responded, no money came from a north ravaged by the Jacquerie, an uprising in which peasants revolted against their lords, as well as the incessant raids of various Free Companies. An impatient King Edward pressed Jean to a second treaty with terms so outrageous that Jean's sons and the French Estates General adamantly refused ratification.
"We have dallied long enough," His Grace declared. "We have no choice but to declare a "just war" against their perfidious rejection."
It was at this time that Edward III also began entertaining ambitions of being crowned King of France. Through his recently deceased mother, Queen Isabella, who had been sister to the French king, Philip the Fair, His Grace could support his blood claim.
And so he did.
With August's arrival, Edward, along with thousands of other knights and yeomen, again fastened greedy eyes upon France.
* * *
When learned men expounded on the human constitution, they explained that each person's body is composed of four contraries—hot, cold, moist, and dry. While males are generally of the sanguine type, women, because their nature is melancholic, are primarily influenced by cold and dry humors, which push them more readily toward death, the coldest and driest state of all.
Margery often pondered the word "melancholic," for that was exactly how she had been feeling. Throughout the day, as she went about her chores or snuck away to check the turf seat built into the side wall of the Crull back-side for a message from Matthew, that word kept rolling around in her mind. Melancholic.
But why wouldn't she feel thus with war once again at her door readying to take away her stepbrother, but most especially, Lord Hart?
Since the tourney, she and Matthew had met a handful of times. He had devised a secret system, paying one of the urchins clustered on church steps or at the side doors of mansions, to sneak into the back-side and deposit an appropriate number of stones in the turf seat. Two small flat stones and Margery and Matthew would meet that day at the Tower Garden at terce, three at sext and four at nones or thereabouts, depending on how quickly she could slip away.
During their assignations—well, Margery could scarce call them assignations for that intimated they were lovers—Matthew was always attentive, but he never transgressed boundaries. The space between them fairly crackled with sexual tension—at least she felt it—but he never tried to seduce her. Why? Did he have another? Was he secretly affianced? Did he find her dull, homely? But no lord would seek out a plain woman of her station for conversation, for anything save a sexual dalliance, so why wasn't Matthew Hart dallying?
Oft times she suspected Matthew was so enamored with the talk of war that he had no room in his heart for another mistress. Then why did he dispatch the beggars with their stones? At her most frustrated Margery considered concocting a love potion, as she occasionally did for Orabel. She need but search the back-side for yarrow, passion flower, motherwort, and all the other necessary ingredients, mix them together and chant her wish. But such activities smacked of black magic, and, even in this enlightened England, 'twould be dangerous to be labelled a witch. While gardeners were encouraged to crumble consecrated hosts over their gardens to kill caterpillars and priests used holy water to drive off grasshoppers or exorcise ghosts, certain boundaries could not be transgressed. So long as the rituals involved religious symbols, it was deemed acceptable. But for a woman, and for love potions?
Still, Margery felt so restless, so discontented, so... so... melancholic between the times Matthew summoned her.
As he did today.
Four stones tucked in the corner of the turf seat.
Margery raced through the noon meal and her chores before seeking out Dame Crull for permission for her and Orabel to leave. Gisla was in the back of the shop, before the furnace. Master Crull stood nearby, explaining some gilding technique to Nicholas Norlong. Margery spoke quietly so as not to be overheard. Her master could be querulous for the most insignificant reasons.
Gisla assented with an indifferent shrug, but Simon Crull called, "Where are you bound?" He approached her, waving his dainty hands as if shooing away an unpleasant odor. "Who are you seeing? Someone among that hedge priest's band of mercenaries, cutthroats and pickpockets?"
Dame Gisla ceased working her bellows to glare at Margery. "Husband—"
"You think I do not know what you are about? I'll have you followed, and if I find you've been whoring around, I'll have you removed from this house."
"Husband, I need you to tend the furnace." Gisla jabbed a bellows in Simon's side. "Off with you, girl, before I change me mind."
* * *
Tower Hill, where the Tower of London was located, possessed an abundance of private gardens, as well as a royal garden which specialized in exotic pear trees. Its slopes were terraced with vines and orchards. Margery considered this part of London one of the most beautiful, for flower and vegetable gardens also stretched all along the city wall and down to the Thames.
Once at their destination, Orabel, who always accompanied her, would discreetly tend to a strip of garden designated for the Crull household while Margery and Matthew met.
During her three years in England's capital, Margery had come to consider London as alive as any human and fancied she could read its many moods. Today the city seemed charged with excitement, like an animal before a storm. No need to be a soothsayer to understand the reason.
"Why does combat so enthrall men?" she asked Orabel, as they turned up Tower Hill. "It unites them as nothing else can."
Her friend shrugged. She enjoyed these outings because of the opportunities they provided for gossip with other households, not to ponder weighty matters. "Men be just big boys and boys are allus looking for a fight."
Margery nodded. From camp cooks to commanders, from the merchants who readied supplies to the boys who bid their fathers farewell–all men seemed to embrace the very concept.
'Twould be fine for all the nobility to go off and die, she told herself. All save my Lord Hart. She had ceased questioning Matthew's power over her, for she deemed it elemental and inevitable, a force of nature. Beyond that, Margery was so grateful that he'd rescued her from that netherworld she'd inhabited before the tourney, when she'd been neither alive nor dead and where lassitude had been her dominant emotion.
They entered the grove. After Orabel retreated to the Crull garden, Margery drifted to the enclosed arbor where she generally met Matthew. Her favorite area brimmed with Rosa Gallica—the rose used on John of Gaunt's coat of arms; the rose his retainers wore as an identifying badge.
The king and his sons and my lord Hart off to France as if enjoying some grand game, with the French merely set pieces for them to smash as they please.
To escape the cloying smell of fallen fruit already beginning to rot, she brought a dazzling purple rose to her nose, inhaling its fragrance. She closed her eyes.
War... Melancholia...
"What a fine sight you make, alone in the garden."
Margery turned, startled. "I did not hear you, my lord." She gave him the slightest of smiles, as if no frisson of excitement accompanied her first glimpse of him, as if every part of her had not been immediately shaken to life. "How long have you been there?"
"A while. I enjoyed watching you. Such a refreshing change from court ladies, who keep thinking to marry me." Matthew laughed as if such a possibility was ludicrous, and approached her. He leaned down to kiss her on the forehead. As he might a child.
Margery studied him, not daring to speak until she was sure she could trust her voice. "Someday even you will have to bow to convention and marry."
"Never. I will remain a bachelor like Prince Edward."
Margery released her rose. "At the shop we are always hearing talk of marriage for the prince. 'Tis just a matter of time."
"I am not a prince. I can do as I please," he boasted. "And it pleases me to remain just the way I am." Matthew took both her hands and smiled into his eyes. She felt his excitement, as surely as she had that of the city, and knew he had come to say good-bye.
"In a week's time we'll be bound for Dover, and I would not waste our time speaking of unpleasant things. Come along, Meg, let us walk. I am too restless to stay hidden in a garden."
With Orabel trailing discreetly behind—she'd fallen in with another pair of maidservants headed in the same direction—Matthew and Margery headed toward London's outskirts. Margery tried to concentrate on the river traffic, the various street vendors, the noises and smells and bustle, but she kept thinking, In a trice you will be gone. I may be seeing you for the last time. She found it hard to speak, though she assured herself she need not fear for his safety. You are going off to war, and if there is one thing you excel at, 'tis combat.
"I know you are pleased to fight, but there is always so much suffering...'tis women and children who are most affected. Before you ride into France, they will be wives and sons and daughters. After your leaving they will be widows and orphans."
"The French refuse to pay their king's ransom. What else can we do? You must never forget that the French are not people so much as they are England's enemies. I know few woman can see the joy in war but only the sorrow, so I canna criticize you for not understanding. Mayhap there are things about women I could never understand." His tone made it clear that what he did not understand he did not care to contemplate.
Matthew's assuredly flawed logic reinforced the gulf between them, which she once again chose to ignore. Rather, Margery would concentrate on the fact that they were first and foremost man and woman, enjoying each other's company. Without past or future, but merely the present. It was a delicate maneuvering act, like a juggler balancing his balls. The slightest mistake might send them all crashing–and reveal the fragility of their relationship. If relationship it could be called. For didn't that imply something between equals, something that would lead somewhere? When this never would. Still, she would smile and revel in the touch of his arm on hers while pretending otherwise.
As they strolled along with Matthew decrying the latest French duplicity, Margery fancied she could read the impending war on the faces of passersby. She tried to imagine which women had said good-bye to their lovers or husbands or brothers, which men were readying to leave and whether, if she looked closely enough, she could read their fate in their eyes. Who would return and who would die in France?
"Almost there," said Matthew, his words breaking through her fog.
"Where is THERE?" She noticed they were in Holborn. And that by the sun's position many hours remained before she must return to the Shop.
"Hart's Place." He said it so casually, as if 'twas their usual destination.
Margery halted. "Why?" There could only be one reason for him to take her to his townhouse. Seduction. Was this the moment she'd been longing for?
"Meg." He uttered only her nickname but his look left her weak with desire. A part of her seemed to detach, to drift overhead and survey them from above, to view her, so soberly attired and looking, what?—frightened, wary, eager—for she felt all those things. And Matthew, brimming with the supreme self-confidence of a man who's won his courtship and is about to claim his prize.
They reached Hart's Place. Beyond noticing that his residence was detached—a further reminder of familial wealth—her concentration had narrowed to the burning of his palm as it slid down her arm to lace her fingers with his own, to the lust in the depths of his eyes when he turned his gaze upon her.
As if in answer to a question he had not asked, Margery nodded.
Matthew drew her to the front door. Once inside, he wrapped his powerful arms around her, pulled her close and kissed her long and slow. She had to stand on tiptoe to fully reach him, for her own arms to slide around his neck.
When he finally released her, Margery remained pressed against him. She closed her eyes, the better to imprint this moment on her memory.
For later, before it would all have ended in sorrow...
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"I wanted to be alone with you, where we would not be interrupted." He brushed his lips across the crown of her head. "I would not force or hurry you, but sometimes events have a way of sweeping people along with them."
Might she beg him to stay in England, to pay a scutage rather than fight? But that would be a foolish, womanly thing to do, as well as a waste of precious moments. More than that, she wanted him to lead her—now—to wherever they might have privacy so that he might complete his conquest.
Matthew kissed her again. She drew back, noted the pulse racing in his throat, felt the evidence of his desire and whispered, "Take me, my lord... if you please."
Matthew swept her up as though she were light as a lamb and carried her upstairs to the solar. With one booted foot he kicked closed the door behind them. Margery slipped from his arms and stepped back from him, dimly aware of her surroundings—of the massive canopied bed and the shuttered mullioned windows swathing the room in shadow. They faced each other. How to feel simultaneously breathless and totally still inside? Should she tell him she was a virgin, that she was frightened of what was about to unfold? But the first seemed unimportant and the second would be a lie.
Matthew reached out. Carefully, he loosed the braids coiled on either side of her ears so that her hair fell free down her back. Margery stood as if paralyzed. His actions seemed oddly gentle in so large a man. He ran his fingers through a tangle of hair, brushing her breast in passing. "Monks say the sight of a woman's unbound hair will drive any man to lust." His hands settled upon her hips. "They must have been speaking of you."
Matthew kissed the corners of her mouth. His breath smelled sweet. Though his touch remained light, there was no mistaking the power, even danger, behind it. That threat of danger she ever found intoxicating.
"I have waited so long," she whispered. For it seemed so, at least a lifetime. Her fingers curled in the thick hair at the nape of his neck. Bringing his head down, she kissed him. Boldly, inappropriately. And she did not care. She pressed against him, delighting in his hardness. She might decry a warrior's occupation, but the result of that training was the man who stood before her, a man with a body nonpareil. She remembered the sight of him, half naked after the tourney, and felt such an unfeminine eagerness to have all of him revealed, to make love to him in the magnificent flesh, as she'd made love to him countless times in her imaginings.
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