She couldn’t stay here. That was plain. She had only a few coins left, not enough to pay for her lodgings—not enough to repay Michael for the midwife. Soon she’d be turned out. Mayhap she’d end up in debtors’ prison. She had no trade, no way of earning a living except as a serving-woman—and even that would be difficult. For times were lean in England now, and soldiers, crippled in Cromwell’s wars, limped about willing to work for a pittance, their wives reduced to slatterns who slaved for their keep, their children often begging on the streets for their very bread. Lenore shuddered. Her little Lorena must not come to that!
She could ask Mistress Watts for work—but that would mean supplanting poor Gwynneth, who so badly needed her job. And Gwynneth’s meager salary would not furnish housing for herself and Lorena and stabling for Snowfire. And—and anyway, it would be very hard staying in Oxford and serving ale in some tavern—though she guessed she might find a job in one, for men liked to look at her as they sipped their ale. But in Oxford she would constantly run into friends of Geoffrey’s, who would be embarrassed for her and pity her, and Gilbert could come and lord it over her. She ran a distraught hand through her hair. No, she would not stay in Oxford.
It did not occur to her to sell herself on the street, or to try to move in with Michael, who would have been glad to have her. Her mind didn’t work that way. Instead, she pondered the possible alternatives of making her own way.
Her hands were clenched white in her lap. I will not let him wreck me, she told herself fiercely. I will make my way alone.
But how to do that? That was the problem.
At last she thought she had the answer. She would have to leave here, of course. But there were things to do first.
She sat down and penned a note to Michael, sending it by Jack, the stable boy. In it she thanked him again for all he had done and asked him for his family’s address, since she knew he was soon to leave the university, and she wished to repay him the money he had laid out for her to Mistress Rue as soon as she was able.
Then she went downstairs and sought out her landlady, who was occupied with counting the spoons and looked up with a frown at Lenore’s approach. “Two spoons missing,” she muttered. “That careless Gwynneth! Probably thrown out with the slops!”
“I have not the money to pay what I owe you.” Lenore came to the point at once. “And since Geoffrey has left me, I am not like to get any money here.”
“Ye can stay without money,” interrupted Mistress Watts with an expansive gesture that knocked the spoons to the floor. “Oh. dear—see what I’ve done! There’s plenty of room. Mistress Daunt, and ye’ll find a way, ye’ll find a way.” She was thinking that Gilbert, whose mother sent him money from time to time, would be glad to pay the bill for Lenore’s lodgings—if not, some other young buck. And she would come to it, given time!
Lenore, helping her pick up the spoons, took her meaning and frowned. “No, I cannot do that,” she said soberly.
“I know that you rent lodgings for your livelihood and cannot afford to have beggars such as myself occupying them. Do you chance to know where there’s a fair being held, Mistress Watts?”
Mistress Watts straightened up and took the spoons Lenore held out. “A fair? Well, I did hear there was to be one at Banbury. Next week, I think—no, perhaps it is going on now.”
“Then I’m to Banbury. I’ll send you the money I owe you—if not from Banbury, from another fair.”
Mistress Watts was aghast. Surely young Mistress Daunt did not propose to sell herself to the fair-goers—’twas known fairs were the haunts of prostitutes, who had rich pickings there of farmers and drovers on holiday!
“And now if I could ask cook to provision me for my journey to Banbury?” Mistress Watts looked taken aback, but Lenore reached in her purse. “I have enough money left for that.”
“I'll tell her,” said Mistress Watts, taking the money. “But I do think ye are making a mistake, Mistress Daunt.”
Cook liked young Mistress Daunt for her spirited ways. She packed a big square of linen with brown bread and Cheshire cheese and apples and plum tarts and left it hanging over the newel post.
Puzzled by the urgent tone of Lenore’s note, Michael hurried over and knocked at Lenore’s door.
“Come in,” she called over her shoulder, and glanced up as he entered. “Oh—hello, Michael.” She hoped he wasn’t going to try to persuade her to stay.
“Why, where are you going?” he burst out, seeing that Lenore was busy packing her belongings.
“Can ye not see?” asked Lenore irritably, without raising her eyes from folding a petticoat. “I’m taking my leave of Oxford before I pile up mountains of debts I can’t pay and they send me off to debtors’ prison.”
“I could lend ye a little,” he ventured, frowning. Lenore straightened up and smiled into his eyes—albeit it was a wan smile. She was touched by Michael’s offer, knowing how straitened were his circumstances. For all his fine clothes, Michael’s parents kept him on a paltry allowance that allowed him few luxuries, and she felt deep in his debt already. “I couldn’t do that,” she said gently.
“Lenore,” he said earnestly, his cheeks pink with emotion, “come home with me. I would be so glad to take care of you.”
She patted his shoulder, looking ruefully into his flushed face. “I know you would, Michael, but ... I couldn’t.”
“I know.” He flinched a little. “I would promise not to touch you. I would remember that you belong to Geoffrey—wherever he may be.”
She gave him a long, sad look. “No.” Her mouth twisted bitterly. “Never again will I belong to Geoffrey. I belong to myself alone. As to where Geoffrey is, he’s gone to France. He shouted that was where he was going as he left. I didn’t believe him—then. But now I do.”
Michael digested this. “Perhaps you might change your mind about me later?” he ventured. “Since you’re a free woman at last.”
Lenore turned away lest he see the agonized look in her violet eyes. Free? Would she ever be free of Geoffrey? Would a night ever pass with the wind sighing in the trees that she would not remember his lips, his burning touch, the strong masculine feel of him in her arms? She’d be alone . . . but not free.
Her lips denied it. “Yes,” she said woodenly. “I’m a free woman at last. But”—from shadowed lashes she considered him, feeling compassion for his youth, his hopeless love for her—“I am not apt to change my mind about you, Michael,” she added sadly.
“I see.” He spoke hurriedly. “Can I help you pack, then?”
She shook her head. “I’ve little to pack, just what I can take in my saddlebags. Mainly I’m trying to clean up these rooms so they’ll be no trouble to Mistress Watts and Gwynneth after I’m gone—she’ll be wanting to show them to let.” She was polishing the leaded windowpanes with a scrap of woolen cloth as she spoke.
“Where will ye go, Lenore?” Michael asked soberly.
“First, to Banbury, where Mistress Watts tells me a fair is being held.”
“A—a fair?” he faltered, waiting for an explanation. “Yes. I plan to race Snowfire there. That’s how I’m going to support myself, Michael—by racing Snowfire at the fairs, wherever they are held.”
“You—you mean to ride the length and breadth of England with a suckling babe in your arms . . . racing at the fairs?” He looked at her incredulously. “But the prizes are usually only a turkey or a small purse at best!”
Lenore nodded grimly. “'I’ve had a taste of it. Tis not so much the purse or the fat turkey—’tis the wagers. I’ll goad men into wagering good money because they cannot admit that a woman can beat them!” Her jaw hardened, remembering big Hobbs, who had tried to run her off the track at Wells.
“But—but ye’ve no money to wager!” he gasped.
“Pebbles will make a purse heavy,” said Lenore. “And if I should lose, why then—why then, I will indenture myself to pay the debt!”
Michael was beyond speech. He looked at Lenore as if s
he had taken leave of her senses—a woman racing at the fairs, indeed! And wagering without money!
“At least, let me accompany you to Banbury,” he pleaded. “For I’m quitting Oxford, as you know. I was going next week, but no matter, I might as well leave now.”
“No,” said Lenore absently. “Your mother will expect you home speedily, Michael. You must not linger at Banbury.”
“But Coventry lies to the north of Banbury, Lenore. Banbury is on my way—I always stop there to eat cakes, Banbury’s famous for its cakes!”
Lenore wasn’t sure whether she believed him, but she knew she’d be very glad of his company as far as Banbury. Michael, at least, had stood by her. In the uncertain new life on which she was about to venture, it would be good—at least for a little while—to have a friend. Her smile was sad. “You are too good to me, Michael. I would I could pay you for what you laid out to the midwife, Michael.”
“ ’Tis no matter.” His voice was rough. “I was glad to do it, Lenore. I—I kept wishing the child was mine.”
Lenore swallowed. His devotion was foolish but overwhelming.
“Michael,” she said, “I will win enough at the fairs, I promise, to repay you all that you have spent on me.”
“Win enough you may,” he declared fiercely, “but you cannot make me take it!”
She smiled and leaned over and gave him a light kiss. His face flamed up as her lips brushed his. Later she was to remember that moment, and be so glad she had kissed him.
“'I’ll take you to a good dinner at the Crown and tomorrow we’ll start out,” he told her energetically.
Lenore shook her head. “I owe Mistress Watts too much already, and I mean to leave today. Cook has provisioned me. I am almost ready.”
“But you cannot be in such a rush as that to be out of town,” cried Michael, upset. “I’ll rush home now and pack my saddlebags—the boxes can follow me later!”
“All right,” Lenore assented. “I’ll wait for you here, but do hurry, Michael. I like not the idea of spending a night on the road.”
“There’s a good inn,” he began, but she waved him away.
“Hurry.” She gave him a small push.
Michael had barely sprinted around the corner of Magpie Lane when Gilbert turned into it from a different direction. He had estimated his timing to be exactly right. With Geoffrey five days gone, Lenore should be at her wits’ end, a ripe plum for the picking. Briskly he headed for Mistress Watts’s establishment, slapped on his plumed hat, and opened the door.
“Not back yet?” he asked Mistress Watts, brows lifted in interested query, when he encountered the landlady in the downstairs hall.
“*If ye mean Mister Daunt, that he’s not,” said Mistress Watts with tightly compressed lips. “And it’s as well, I say, to be rid of him—a man who would leave his poor lady thus right after she’s borne him a child!”
“True, true,” agreed Gilbert piously. “And how does she take it—Mistress Daunt?”
“She has been very upset,” confided Mistress Watts. “But now she packs, poor lady.”
“Packs?” Gilbert was startled; this was one contingency that had not occurred to him. “Faith, I should dissuade her!” He hurried by the landlady, mounted the stairs on his high yellow heels, and knocked on Lenore’s door.
Lenore had been burning her used parchment and trash on the hearth, preparatory to leaving. Now she was bent over, impatiently stirring the fire with a poker to make it burn faster. “Come in,” she called over her shoulder, thinking it was Mistress Watts.
“Lenore, what is this foolishness I hear about your packing?” Gilbert came in and closed the door behind him, a foppish and elegant figure in honey-colored satins.
At the sound of that voice, Lenore straightened up, the red-hot poker still in her hand. She turned a malevolent face toward Gilbert, unaware that she looked very wild and beautiful as she stood there with her face flushed by the June heat and the roaring flames. “I am leaving,” she said in a cold voice. “Kindly get out.” Since he did not move to go, she walked toward him and seized the door handle as if to usher him through it.
“Lenore, Lenore.” Gilbert’s voice was indulgent. He moved toward the door and took her shoulder in a light grip. She flinched and jerked away. “Ye could move in with me. I’d accept the babe—”
Lenore seemed to grow taller. Her voice quivered with fury.
“At least I am spared that,” she said grimly. “Now that Geoffrey is gone, I’ve no longer need to protect him from you! Let me not see your face again!”
“Lenore, you don’t mean that.” The caramel curls bent forward as he seized her shoulder again, insistently. “Think how it was with us,” he urged. “Remember! I’d treat ye better than Geoffrey. Ah, Lenore, ye must remember the night ye spent in my arms—the joys we shared!”
In a wave of revulsion Lenore twisted away from him and drew back the poker. A moment later its red-hot tip had snaked through the air and landed with force on Gilbert’s cheek. With a howl he fell back against the doorjamb, eyes wild as he regarded her, clutching his face with his hands.
“I have longed to do that!” she choked. “Get you gone, or I’ll mark your other cheek as well!”
Gilbert turned and lunged through the open door. “I’ll see ye hanged for this!” he cried, almost sobbing with rage and pain. “Think not ye can mark me and go scot-free! I’ll tell the authorities who you are!”
“Tell them!” screamed Lenore, following him to the stair landing, poker raised threateningly. ‘Tell them who marked you! Tell them why!” Her angry voice followed him as he plunged down the stairs and into the alley, blundering around the corner into Magpie Lane.
When he had gone, she flung the poker away from her in revulsion. Pale and shaken, she swept up her baby in her arms and ran down the stairs, picking up the linen square of food the cook had left draped over the newel post as she went. There was no time to lose; she must take Lorena and make her run for it. Before Gilbert could make good his threat, before the authorities came.
“Tell Michael when he comes that I’ve ridden on ahead,” she called to the open-mouthed Mistress Watts, who had witnessed Gilbert’s headlong descent down the stairs with Lenore at the top brandishing the poker. “Tell him to ride hard and catch up with me—if he doesn’t, I’ll wait for him at the first crossroads. I’ll remember to send you the money. Thank you for everything—and goodbye.”
Running away with Michael! Mistress Watts was caught speechless. She stood and watched the beauty who’d been the toast of Oxford hurry to the stables and come back riding Snowfire. At that point she recollected herself and ran forward. “Mistress Daunt, Mistress Daunt!”
Lenore paused impatiently as Mistress Watts hurried up and clutched her skirt. “I did not like to tell you before when you were so upset, but now that you’re going, I’ll not have another chance. I ran across Mistress Rue and she said she thought you’d been hurt somehow in your fall down the stairs and that ye were not like to have any more children.”
“My fall? Or perhaps ’twas Mistress Rue’s bungling,” said Lenore bitterly. “Tying a rope around me while I was in labor!”
Mistress Watts looked shocked. “A good midwife she is,” she protested, bridling. “The best in Oxford!”
Lenore gave her a sardonic look. “Mistress Watts, if you marry your suitor across the street and decide to present him with a child, I suggest you lock Mistress Rue out of your house—you’ll do much better!”
“Well! Well!” Mistress Watts hardly knew what to say. Lenore’s face softened. “You’ve been very good to me, Mistress Watts, lending me your eagle-stones, and letting us make so much noise you might have landed in the stocks!” She leaned down and planted a quick kiss of gratitude on Mistress Watts’s cheek, and the older woman beamed with pleasure and sniffled.
“Do you take care now, Mistress Daunt,” she admonished Lenore.
Lenore took a deep breath. “Not Mistress Daunt— Lenore Frankford!” H
er voice rang.
Mistress Watts looked nonplussed at this public declaration, delivered in the street. “Fine gentlemen do let us down,” she said weakly.
“Don’t they?” agreed Lenore in a hard voice. “Goodbye, Mistress Watts! Tell all my friends goodbye for me.” She started to ride away, but Mistress Watts still clung insistently to her skirt.
“Suppose—suppose Mister Daunt comes back, after all?” she faltered.
“From France?” Lenore gave a short, scornful laugh. “Not likely! But if he does, tell him to go to the devil!” She brushed off Mistress Watts’s restraining hand, wheeled her horse and galloped away down the street, for tears were springing to her eyes and she did not want Mistress Watts to see them—she did not want anyone to see them.
From the corner, Lenore turned and waved a hand at Mistress Watts, who still stood in the street bemused. For a moment her gaze lingered on the plain Tudor exterior of the lodgings that had meant so much to her. She was saying goodbye to her first home of her own where so much, both good and bad, had happened to her . . . the place where her little Lorena had been born.
Squaring her slender shoulders, she turned down Magpie Lane, keeping her gaze straight ahead. It was all behind her now: Oxford ... all of it. She had a new life to make, and make it she must—not for herself, but for that small pink bundle sleeping in her arms. She must make a life for little golden Lorena.
She was galloping past Michael’s lodgings—which lay directly on her way out of the city heading north—when a shout hailed her, and she turned to see Michael himself leaning out of an upstairs window. “Lenore, where are you going?” he cried. “Lenore!”
Reluctantly she reined in. “Catch up with me!” she called. “I must go!”
“I’m coming!” he cried desperately. “Wait!” He turned from the window and collided with Barney Claypoole, who had the rooms upstairs and who had come down to help him pack.
“What, won’t she wait for you?” Barney’s brown eyes were laughing at him.
Michael regarded Barney steadily from a cherubic face. Barney was always laughing at him. And now Barney had seen Lenore about to race by and would view his mad dash to catch up as ridiculous. He grasped his packed saddlebags and swung two more big bags over his shoulder. The weight made him gasp. “Ye’ll send my boxes after me, Barney?”
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