CHAPTER 4
DAVID STOOD AT the threshold between the solar and the bedchamber and studied the woman whom Sieg had just brought upstairs. She was still an attractive lady, but thirteen years take their toll on anyone. He hadn't realized back then how young she must have been. No more than twenty-five at the time, he would judge now. Still, he would remember her anywhere.
She hadn't noticed him, and he watched her glide around the solar, fingering the carving on the chairs and examining the tapestry on the wall. She touched the glazing in the windows much as Christiana had done that first night.
He would not think about Christiana now. If he did, he suspected that he might not go through with this. He had already spent more time the last week thinking of those diamond eyes than about the carefully planned harvest of justice that he would reap this afternoon. The last thing he wanted now was the thought of a good woman making him weak with a bad one.
The woman's face looked paler than her hands, and he could tell that she used wheat flour to make it so. An artful touch of paint flushed her cheeks and colored her lips. If he gave a damn, he would find a kind way to tell her that the coloring was a bit too strong for the honey hair that had begun to dull with age. He suspected that this was one of those women who looks in the mirror a lot but never really sees what is reflected there.
He shifted his weight silently but it drew her attention anyway. Amber cat eyes turned and regarded him. He saw the brief scrutiny and then the slow relief. Aye, he thought, if this woman whores for a man, she prefers him young and handsome. She continued looking at him and he noticed the total absence of recognition.
“David de Abyndon?” she asked. Her eyes narrowed and a thin smile stretched her mouth.
“Lady Catherine. I'm sorry that I could not see you sooner.”
She misunderstood and, flattered, smiled more naturally.
He gestured and she joined him at the doorway. When she saw it was a bedchamber, she glanced at him, reproving him for his lack of subtlety.
She entered slowly and again she took in the details of the room, calculating their value. Time and again her gaze rested on the large tub set before the hearth. It had been brought in by the servants before David dismissed all of them for the afternoon. If they wondered why he wanted it here and not in the wardrobe where it belonged, they hadn't said so.
It had been filled with water, and more water was heating by the hearth. David lifted the buckets and poured them into the tub.
She watched him with amusement. “Perhaps I came too early.”
“This is for you.”
“You thought that I would be unclean?”
You are so unclean that all of the water in the world would not cleanse you. “Nay. But I remember how much you enjoy baths and sought to indulge you.”
She frowned and looked at him more closely. A spark of memory tried to catch flame, but he watched it die.
“My husband assumed …”
“I know what your husband assumed. But we do it this way or not at all.” He leaned against the hearth wall and waited.
A little flustered, but not too much so, she began to remove her clothing. She carefully folded the bejeweled surcoat and placed it on the nearby stool. The beautiful cotehardie followed. Rich fabrics. He had no trouble calculating how many of her husband's debts were devoted to her wardrobe.
She untied her garters and peeled off her hose. He noted her lack of embarrassment. He was by far not the first stranger she had stripped for.
The shift dropped to the floor and she looked at him boldly. He gestured to the tub and she stepped in with clear irritation.
She settled down. She was childless and her body was still youthful. Her full breasts bobbed in the high water.
“Well?” she asked.
“Your husband sent you here to ask something of me. To negotiate for him, did he not?”
She gestured with exasperation at the tub.
David smiled. “I only do this to give you every advantage, my lady. I remember that you negotiate best when you are thus.”
Again that scrutiny. Again the flame of recognition that died before it caught fire. She became all business.
“My husband says that you have bought up all of his debts.”
The man had amassed debts to merchants and bankers over the last few years. When he had resorted to borrowing from one to pay another, when the financial market in London had realized that he tottered on the edge of ruin, David had bought the loans at a deep discount. He had not even gone looking for today's justice. It had simply fallen into his lap, one of Fortune's many gifts to him.
“He needs time to repay them.”
“They are long overdue, as I have explained to him.”
“He thought that you might be more reasonable with me. I have come to ask for an extension. The properties have been less productive of late, but that should improve.”
“They are less productive because they are neglected and mismanaged. Already the ones that I hold have improved.”
“The loans were made with the promise that the property you hold now would be returned to us.”
“Only if the loans are repaid.” He paused. “I think that we might be able to work something out about the loans and the property, however. Is there anything else that you require?”
Her face lightened. It was going better than she thought it would. “Aye. We need a further loan. A small one. As a bridge until things work out.”
This husband placed a high value indeed on his wife's favors. “You are asking me to throw good money after bad.”
“You will be repaid in full.”
“Madam, your husband gambles. You are extravagant. Both vices are rarely conquered. I will consider the extension of the old loans, but in truth you will never repay them. Why would I now give you more?”
She looked at him boldly and a small smile formed on her tinted lips. Slowly, expertly, she shifted in the tub so that he had a full view of her body.
The years fell away. He was in another chamber standing in front of a younger woman. She was a frequent visitor to the shop, but when she had come this day, David Constantyn had not been in. She bought expensive cloths and paid with a tally as was the habit of such women, but then insisted that the young apprentice deliver the goods that afternoon to her manor in Hampstead where the tally would be made good.
He had gone. Like others before him, he had innocently ridden the five miles north to Hampstead.
She had received him in her chamber, lying in a tub much as she did now. Pretending to ignore his presence, she had demanded that her servants open and examine the purchases while he waited. All the while she had bathed herself, slowly and languidly, occasionally looking at him with a challenging stare that dared him to react to her nakedness.
He did not. He was randy enough at sixteen and not inexperienced, but he held his body in check. At first his dismay and shock helped him. His knowledge of females consisted of the happy servant girls with whom coupling was a form of joyful play. Instinctively he knew that this woman was nothing like that and that she tempted him to something other than pleasure.
But as she continued displaying herself, it was anger that kept him in control. He turned away from her. He did not like playing the mouse to this cat woman. He resented her using her position and degree to humiliate him.
Finally he could tell that she grew angry too. She addressed him directly and began to renegotiate the price of the goods. She pursued the subject a long while, refusing to pay the whole tally, demanding his attention. Finally, he had to look at her, and as he did she raised one leg to the side of the tub and exposed herself.
He lost control then, but not in the way that she expected. He let his face show what he thought, but it was not the desire she demanded. He looked down at her and let her see his utter disgust before he walked out.
He had almost reached the road before her men came and dragged him back. They tied him to a metal ring set in the trunk of
an oak tree in the garden. Before the lash fell, he looked over his shoulder and saw her honey hair at a window.
“You do not remember me,” he said. “But then, there were a number of us, why would you remember one?”
Over the years, they had found each other, the boys now grown to men whom she had ensnared in her web. The woman's unhealthy appetite was not discussed openly, but it was not unknown. It was why David Constantyn had never let his apprentices serve her or deliver goods.
But he was the one who had not played her game as she wanted it, and so the lash fell harder on him than those others whose only crime had been to show the lust that she demanded and then punished while she watched from her bower window. He had been flogged once in Egypt, but it was this first time that had scarred his back. His youth had been beaten out of him that day.
He regarded her impassively, watching her study him hard. This time the spark of memory caught hold and her eyes flamed with recognition. Her gaze slowly swept the room as she calculated her danger. She collected herself.
“You were compensated,” she said coolly.
Aye, he had been compensated. When he staggered back home and his master saw his condition, that good man had done what no other master or father had done. Going to the city courts the next day, he petitioned against this woman and forced the mayor to address the issue. After a long while, the husband had been made to pay fifty pounds. David had refused to touch the money.
“The others were not. And it is not a debt that money settles anyway.”
She glared at him angrily before calming herself. She glanced at the bed and then eyed him with a question.
“Aye, that too. But if you want this extension, I have other terms. I will extend the loans in return for the Hampstead manor and property, and for one hour of your time.”
“The Hampstead lands belong to me, not my husband. They were not pledged as surety for any loans.”
“I know that they are yours. In return for them, however, I will in fact forgive the loans, not just extend them.” He smiled. “See how well you negotiate? Already I have conceded much more than I had planned.”
He saw her weighing certain ruin against the property. If he called the loans, she would have to sell it anyway.
“Why do you want that house? Why not another? Are you going to burn it or something?”
“Nay. We merchants are very practical people. We rarely destroy property. It is a very beautiful house and I have admired it. I will have need of a country home near London soon. I hold no grudge against a building.”
“And the hour of my time?”
“That is for the other debt. You will go to a place that I tell you. There a man will flog you just as you watched others flogged for your pleasure. Ten lashes.”
Her eyes flew open in shock. He noted her reaction with relief. Those who took pleasure in pain often went both ways, and he did not want her to get perverse enjoyment out of this.
“I didn't realize that we had so much in common,” she finally said.
“We have nothing in common. I will not be there, although some of the others might be. They will be told of this and may want to see it. I would demand your husband do it, as he should have long ago, but he knows what he has in you, and if he started he might not stop. It is justice we seek, not revenge or your husband's satisfaction.”
She abruptly rose from the tub. She stepped out and began to dry herself. Her hurried, angry movements gradually slowed, however, and the expression on her face changed. He saw her considering, calculating, planning the final negotiation that, if executed well enough, might change everything.
He realized with surprise that he had totally lost interest in taking her humiliation any further.
He removed a small purse from the front of his pourpoint. It contained exactly the difference between the value of the loans and the Hampstead property. He dropped the purse on top of her garments. “It is the money that you seek but not a loan. That would be bad business. However, I always pay for my whores whether I use them or not.”
He walked to the door. “A week hence, madam. The time and place will be sent to you. Afterward husband can contact me about settling the loans and property.”
Her voice, harsh and ugly, ripped across the chamber. “There will be a new debt to settle after this, you bastard son of a whore!”
He paused. Justice, not revenge, he reminded himself.
Still …
“Fifteen lashes, I think now, my lady. The last five for the insult to my mother.”
He strode out through the solar and hall and left the house.
The sky had clouded over and a light snow was falling by the time David reined in his horse outside the tavern. To his right, along the Southwark docks, small craft of all types bobbed. Stretched out in front of them rose the small houses where the prostitutes of the Stews plied their trade. Even at night these docks would be full, for the city discouraged crossing the river after dark and it was traditional for these women to have their customers stay until dawn.
The rude tavern was dark and musty with river damp. David let his eyes adjust, and then walked to a corner table.
“You are late,” the man sitting there said.
David slid onto the bench. “Oliver, you are the most punctual whoremonger I have ever met.”
Oliver passed him a cup of ale, drank some of his own, and wiped his black mustache and beard on his sleeve. “I am a busy man, David. Time is money.”
“Your woman's time is money, Oliver, not yours. How is Anne?”
Oliver shrugged. “She doesn't like the winter. The nights are too long in her opinion.”
She would probably move to Cock Lane soon. It was right outside the city wall and the women there worked differently than here in Southwark. But then, they also had to deal with the city laws. Southwark, across the Thames from London, was a town apart and close to lawless.
He looked at Oliver's wiry thin body and long black hair. They had known each other since boyhood, when they had played and scrapped in the streets and alleys together. On occasion during those carefree days, they had met danger side by side. But then Oliver's poor family had moved up to Hull and David had been plucked from those alleys and sent to school and into trade.
They had met again when Oliver returned to London several years ago. David had recognized at once that he had found a man whom he could trust. Like Sieg, Oliver might do a criminal's deeds sometimes, but he lived by a code of loyalty and fairness that would put most knights to shame. Since then, they had again on occasion met danger side by side.
The decision for Anne to become a prostitute had simply been the easiest of several choices available to them when they had come back to London. Anne had already decided that the winter nights were too long when he had met them a short while later. Still, she probably earned three times as much on her back than she and Oliver could together through honest labor. The odd jobs Oliver did for him and others helped some.
He wondered how he was going to explain Oliver and Anne to Christiana. Sieg's story would be strange enough when she finally realized that he wasn't a typical servant.
“Has he spoken to you?” Oliver asked.
“Twice. The last time just this morning.”
“I have followed him like you said. He spoke to a ship's master yesterday. I think that he will sail back soon.”
“He will need to. I expect that he will seek me out one more time, though, and delay his trip until I will talk to him at length. He has only felt me out so far, and has not achieved what he came for.”
“You think that it is set, then?”
“I think so. I refused him, but I left the door open.”
Oliver shook his head. “I am not convinced. His actions have been very normal. He goes to merchants and other places of business. That is all.”
“His offer to me has been subtle so far but unmistakable. He appears to be a merchant because he is one. Except for the letter for Edward and his mission wi
th me, he is here for trade. It is the whole point. Whenever I go to France or Flanders, I go for trade, too.” He stretched out his legs beneath the table. “Speaking of which, tell Albin that I will need to go over in about a week or so.”
“Running from your duel?” Oliver asked with a grin.
“Before that. After he talks with me but before my wedding. I want to sail along the coast.”
“You are pushing things, my friend,” Oliver said, laughing. “Wait until after you marry this princess. Tempt fate and you might find yourself caught in bad seas for a week and miss the ceremony. That will take some explaining, I'll warrant.”
David looked away. Sieg had been right. It was a bad time to be getting married. Oliver was right, too. He should wait until after the wedding to sail the coast. But it needed to be done soon, and he had no intention of leaving Christiana for a while after she came to him. This girl, and the growing desire he felt for her, were complicating things.
Her eyes were faceted jewels full of bright reflections. A man could lose his soul in eyes like that.
For one thing, he had begun to lose interest in these subtle and dangerous plans that he had laid and in which Oliver played a role. He had finally admitted that to himself as he rode over here today, and had been astonished to discover it. After all, he had been slowly planting this particular field for almost two years. A piece of information here, a deliberate slip there. It had worked because people like himself were quick to notice mistakes and weakness and potential advantage, and he knew that he dealt with a man very much like himself. In fact, matching wits with him should be a pleasure in itself, and the final justice much more satisfying than the rather thin contentment he had felt with Lady Catherine today.
Instead, he was losing interest and even considering cutting things short just as they reached the critical moves. His own plans and Edward's had become so intertwined that he had pondered at length whether it would be possible to extricate one from the other. That he even considered such a thing had to do with Christiana. She had him thinking of the future more than the past. He already felt responsibility for her. He considered far too often what it would mean for her if in the end he lost this game.
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