Lords of Conquest Boxed Set

by Patricia Ryan

“No, Damian, please.”

  “Olive—”

  “It’s impossible. You know that.”

  “Because of Father? My betrothal to that...that child?”

  Olive glanced uneasily toward Joanna. “Not just that.”

  He closed the space between them swiftly, taking Olive’s face between his hands and saying softly, “I’ve told you before—I don’t care about that. You weren’t to blame. You were coerced. ‘Twas—”

  “Please, Damian.” Olive closed her eyes, her hands fisted in her kirtle. “Please go.”

  “Olive—”

  “Please.” Opening her eyes, she laid a hand gently on his cheek. “Please. Please.”

  A tear slid from her eye. He brushed it with his thumb, lightly kissed her damp cheek, her forehead. “I won’t give up, Olive,” he said, and left.

  Olive slumped back against the wall, her eyes closed, tears trailing down her face. Sheathing her dagger, Joanna plucked her handkerchief from her sleeve and handed it to Olive. “Are you all right?”

  Olive nodded as she dried her face. “It’s impossible. He’s just having trouble accepting it.”

  “Judging from those tears, so are you.”

  “It can’t be that way between us.”

  “Has he tried to...take advantage of you?” Joanna asked. “Does he want you to be his mistress?”

  “Nay. He’s never touched me. He wants me for his wife.”

  “Verily?”

  “I can’t marry him. It’s impossible. Impossible.”

  “What was it he said you weren’t to blame for?”

  In a teary whisper, Olive said, “Something that can never be undone, much as he would like to think it can.” Sighing, she folded the damp handkerchief in a neat square and handed it back to Joanna. “How did you find Mistress Ada?”

  Joanna let Olive change the subject, knowing she would just withdraw further if she pressed her. “Very ill.”

  “That’s a bad head cold she’s got.” Smoothing her hair, Olive returned to the storefront.

  Joanna followed her. “That’s no head cold.”

  “Well, Master Aldfrith says she’s melancholic, too, like Mum.”

  “Perhaps.” Joanna lifted the empty phial that had contained the tonic and inspected the few drops remaining in the bottom. “Master Aldfrith prescribed this medicine, did he not?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you mind telling me what’s in it?”

  “‘Tis an ordinary cold remedy—an infusion of yarrow with a bit of mint and honey to soothe the throat. We sold a great deal of it over the winter—I brewed up four pintes at a time.”

  “Yarrow? That’s all?” There were few more benign or commonly prescribed herbs than yarrow.

  “That’s all.”

  “Is it possible to consume so much yarrow that it would...make someone even sicker?”

  Olive shook her head. “Yarrow’s not like that. Wormwood is, and valerian and...well, many herbs will sicken you if you get too much—kill you, even. But not yarrow. Why?”

  Joanna shook her head. “No reason. I just thought perhaps...but obviously I was wrong.”

  “‘Tisn’t my tonic making Ada le Fever sick, mistress. ‘Tis an overabundance of black bile doing that.”

  “Perhaps,” Joanna said. But if Master Aldfrith was so sure of what was ailing Ada le Fever, why couldn’t he manage to cure her?

  Chapter 14

  Not wanting to appear too interested, Graeham waited until after supper, when Joanna sat down at her embroi¬dery frame, to question her about her visit to Ada le Fever.

  “How did it go today?” he asked as he lowered himself onto the chest against the front wall, a cup of wine in his hand.

  She sighed as she took her seat, inspecting the orange tree painted on the silk, and the knotwork border with which it was embellished, with a critical eye. “Not well.” Plucking a needle off its parchment card, she threaded it with brown silk.

  She’d kept her veil on tonight, for he’d made the mistake of telling her at supper that he’d be joining her again. He missed seeing that extraordinary hair glimmer in the lamplight, like rippling waves reflecting a fiery sunset. But even with the veil, it was, as always, a struggle to keep from staring at her like a besotted youth.

  “No one commissioned anything from you?” he asked, although he’d surmised as much from her solemn demeanor when she came home this afternoon. She hadn’t even smiled when he’d suggested she take up burglary, so ingeniously had she gained access to le Fever’s house.

  “Nay, no commissions.” She retrieved a leather thimble from the basket and fitted it over her finger. “I never even got to show my samples.”

  “What happened?”

  She pierced the silk from underneath, on the edge of the orange tree’s trunk. “Mistress Ada is too ill to have any interest in such things, and Mistress Rose was preoccupied with trying to soothe her husband’s temper.”

  “Ada le Fever is ill?” He raised the cup to his lips, watching her over the rim.

  “Aye, very ill—thin, wasted,” she said, swiftly tracing the outline of the tree with a line of neat stitching. “She’s confined to a bed in her solar. A rheum of the head, supposedly, plus an excess of black bile, according to Aldfrith.”

  “Aldfrith—the fellow who set my leg?”

  “The same. Her husband thinks she’s just looking for attention and pity.”

  Graeham took another slow sip of wine. “What do you think is wrong with her?”

  “I think if she has an excess of anything, it’s exposure to Rolf le Fever.”

  “You don’t think he’s...doing anything to harm her, do you?”

  “Not unless...” She frowned; the needle flashed. “Nay, I have no business speculating on—”

  “You can speculate. Is he doing her harm?”

  She looked at him curiously before returning her attention to her orange tree. “His mere presence in that house must worsen her melancholia—perhaps even cause it. But there’s no reason to think he’s actually hurting her. She showed no sign of bruising. And she said he hadn’t even been up to the solar since before Lent—that would be over three months ago.”

  “How did she appear to you?” he asked.

  Joanna shrugged without looking up. “As I said, very thin—although I know she’s getting nourishment. There was a bowl of broth on the table, and she’d eaten it. She was deathly pale, with dark circles beneath her eyes. Despite that, she’s a pretty little thing. Enormous brown eyes, raven hair.”

  Graeham’s gaze lit on the gleaming raven’s quill in Joanna’s basket. It hadn’t occurred to him that Lord Gui’s twin daughters might be black-haired. Lord Gui had only described Phillipa as comely. The baron’s legitimate issue—like he and his wife—were quite fair, so Graeham had always pictured his future bride with golden hair and sky-blue eyes.

  “She’s very petite, very delicate,” Joanna continued, well into the painstaking process of outlining the orange tree’s drooping branches. “I felt like an ox next to her.”

  Laughter burst from Graeham at the notion of Joanna Chapman comparing herself to a draft animal. Never in his life had he known a woman more exquisitely graceful, more innately feminine.

  More desirable.

  More unattainable.

  Don’t think about her, Graeham scolded himself. Think about Phillipa. He could summon a mental image of his betrothed now, thanks to Joanna. It was an appealing image. She was petite; small women could be quite attractive. And although many men seemed to prefer blond women, some of the prettiest women Graeham had ever known were black-haired. Her eyes were brown...

  Like Joanna’s.

  No. No woman had eyes like Joanna’s. When Graeham married Phillipa, he would have to forget Joanna’s eyes. Or try to.

  Refocusing on his inquiries, he asked, “Is she in any...real danger from this illness, do you think?”

  “You mean, do I think she’s going to die?”

 
Graeham took a deep breath and tossed down the rest of his wine. “Aye. She’s not...I mean, she didn’t seem...”

  “As if she were on her deathbed? Nay—not as yet, anyway.”

  Graeham sighed with relief.

  “She was conversing with me fairly comfortably,” Joanna said as she methodically stitched the branches. “And she’s still eating. And she takes her medicine without complaint, even though she doesn’t like how it makes her feel afterward.”

  “She doesn’t? Do you...happen to know what’s in it?”

  Joanna glanced briefly in his direction. “According to Olive, ‘tis but an infusion of yarrow.”

  “Yarrow,” he mused. “That should do her no harm.”

  “No real good, either, if she’s as ill as I think she is.”

  The severity of Ada’s illness could be a problem. “Does she ever get out of bed?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I doubt it.”

  “But if she had to...” he began. “If she had to, say, travel...”

  “Travel? Where?”

  “I don’t know. Anywhere. Say she had to take some sort of journey. Do you think she’d be up to it?”

  “On that palfrey you brought for her?”

  “Hugh sold the palfrey. I’ll have to—” Shit.

  Joanna stuck her needle in the silk and turned on her stool to face him. She was not smiling.

  Graeham closed his eyes and sank back against the wall. “I suppose I was a bit too obvious.”

  “More than a bit.”

  He opened his eyes. She still wasn’t smiling.

  “Did you suspect,” he began, “before tonight...?”

  She pulled the thimble off and absently fiddled with it. “Nay, you were very smooth. Some men are skilled at deception, serjant. You’re one of them.”

  “Mistress...”

  “Granted, there were hints that things weren’t as they seemed. There was that palfrey. No soldier rides a palfrey. It’s a lady’s horse. And before that, I remember thinking it was awfully strange for you to be searching for an inn in West Cheap when you already had accommodations, seeing as you were just passing through London on your way to Oxfordshire. But you don’t even have any relatives in Oxfordshire, do you?”

  He raked a hand through his hair. “Nay.”

  “You were in West Cheap because of Ada le Fever. You came to London because of her.”

  “Aye,” he said hesitantly, loath to reveal more than he absolutely had to.

  “You came to take her away. Back to Beauvais?”

  “To Paris.”

  “Are you in love with her?”

  He sat forward. “Nay!”

  “You crossed the Channel to steal her away from her husband,” she said impassively. “You’re still trying to find a way to do it, despite...” Her eyes narrowed on him. “That’s why you wanted to live in my house. That’s why it was worth four shillings to you. You needed a convenient lair—a place to hide out while you planned a way to abduct Ada le Fever from her home. You’ve been using my storeroom as a hunting blind!”

  “Mistress...”

  “You have, haven’t you?” she demanded furiously. “Tell me the truth for once, damn you.”

  He sighed heavily. “Save for your somewhat sinister insinuations, yes. You’re right. I’ve been keeping watch on that house for the reasons you’ve surmised—I need to get Ada le Fever away from there. But not because I’m in love with her.”

  She regarded him skeptically.

  “I’ve never even met the woman.” He rubbed the back of his neck as he pondered how much to tell her. “I was sent here,” he said carefully, “by a kinsman of hers, someone who’s troubled about her welfare. He has reason to believe that her husband may be mistreating her.”

  “Why?”

  “She stopped writing letters about six months ago.”

  “That’s when she took ill,” Joanna said. “I’m sure she simply hasn’t felt up to it.”

  “There wouldn’t be such concern if it weren’t for le Fever himself. He regrets the marriage, and has done naught but heap abuse on his wife since bringing her back to London.”

  “What manner of abuse? Beatings?”

  “Apparently not—not bad ones, at any rate. He insults her, threatens her.”

  “Threatens her?”

  “Says things that could be perceived as threats,” Graeham hedged.

  “And what, pray,” Joanna asked with grim humor, “has he done that would set him apart from the general run of husbands?”

  “You already know what a debaucher he is. It seems he’s had numerous liaisons with other women.”

  “I’m still waiting.”

  He was stabbed to death last summer by some Italian whose wife he’d been diddling, Leoda had said of Prewitt Chapman. Graeham suspected that the marriage for which Joanna had sacrificed so much had been a grievous disappointment to her.

  “Rolf le Fever flaunts these trysts within Mistress Ada’s hearing,” Graeham said. “It seems he takes special pride in seducing the wives of important men, and he’s not as discreet as he might be. I myself saw him bring a woman up to his bedchamber and...disport himself with her while his wife was asleep upstairs. From the way this woman was dressed, I’d say she was a matron of high rank.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Very blond hair, almost white. Rather generously proportioned.”

  “Pockmarks?”

  “Aye.”

  “That’s Elizabeth Huxley, the wife of the alderman for our ward. John Huxley is not a man to trifle with. If he knew about this, he’d take measures.”

  “Would he have le Fever killed, do you think?”

  “Or at the very least, gelded,” she said. “Le Fever must know this—he’s no fool.”

  “Men tend to lose perspective in matters of the heart.”

  “Women lose perspective in matters of the heart,” she said dryly. “Men are enslaved to the whims of another organ entirely.”

  He nodded to acknowledge her point, while trying not to smile. Given her mood, he’d best conduct himself soberly.

  “Who is this kinsman who sent you here?” she asked.

  “I’m not at liberty to reveal that.”

  Joanna dropped the thimble into the basket, her jaw set.

  “He asked me to bring her back to Paris,” Graeham said. “And I intend to find a way to do that, despite my leg. That’s...as much as you need to know.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “And ‘tis your place, I suppose, to determine what I need to know about schemes being perpetrated from within my own home.”

  “I’m not perpetrating anything, mistress. I’m trying to rescue an ailing woman from a miserable marriage.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s as I’ve said,” he answered impatiently. “Her husband mistreats her, she’s ill...and who knows but that he may intend her some real harm.”

  “Nay. Why are you really doing this? Why did you come all the way to London on this mission for some mysterious kinsman? And why is it so important to you?”

  He just stared at her, wishing she weren’t so damned insightful.

  “What do you stand to gain,” she asked, “by bringing Ada le Fever back to Paris?”

  He shrugged, looking away from her. “Do I need to gain anything by it, other than the satisfaction of having helped a woman in need?”

  “Are you so chivalrous, then, that you’d go to all this effort for no reward at all?”

  “Perhaps I am.” To reveal his upcoming marriage and the land that went with it would compromise Lord Gui’s anonymity. That wasn’t the only reason he was loath to tell her about Phillipa, but it was the reason he clung to, the one he told himself was important enough to justify the fabric of lies he continued to weave around himself and Joanna Chapman.

  She lied to me by not revealing her husband’s death. She’s lying still. But that was a simple lie, and a benign one—wise, even. Graeham’s lies were complicated and roote
d in self-interest. There was a profound difference.

  “Your motives may be selfless,” she said, “but I doubt it. You’ve a personal interest in this mission. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be so critical to you that you’d sacrifice your honor for its success.”

  “Sacrifice my honor!”

  “You came into my home,” she said quietly, “and deceived me.”

  “Mistress...”

  “And, worst of all, used me. This grand idea of yours, this plan for me to seek commissions from the merchants’ wives, it was all a ploy to get me into Rolf le Fever’s house so I could spy for you, wasn’t it?”

  Graeham grappled for words; why was his tongue so clumsy in her presence?

  “I was your agent,” she said. “Your unsuspecting pawn. I was to take stock of the situation in that house and report back to you. Only I had no idea this was my true purpose. I daresay it must have amused you when I agreed so readily to do your bidding.”

  “‘Twasn’t that way, mistress.”

  “Do you deny that you sent me over there to act as your eyes and ears? That you used me, exploited me, without my knowledge or permission?”

  He dragged both hands through his hair. “‘Twas the only way.” In frustration he added, “It still is. I know you hate me for having misled you—”

  “Lied to me.”

  “Lied to you,” he corrected, dismayed that she didn’t deny hating him. “And I don’t blame you. But I still need you. I need you to go back there—”

  Her jaw dropped. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Don’t do it for me,” he said. “Do it for her—for Ada le Fever. Help to rescue her from that insect she’s married to.”

  “You’re smooth, serjant, but not that smooth.”

  “Mistress—”

  “First you lie to me. Then you have the gall to make pronouncements about how much I need to know. Now you actually expect me to go back to that house—”

  “Don’t you care at all what becomes of that woman? Le Fever once told her he wished he could be rid of her. For all we know, he may have plans to do just that.”

  “Loathsome though Rolf le Fever may be, there’s no reason to think he intends any harm toward his wife. He doesn’t care enough about her to harm her. He hasn’t even seen her in over three months. She languishes in her solar while he dallies with the local matrons. If he wanted to remarry, I could see him thinking about...doing away with her. But as it is...” She shrugged. “I won’t do it. I won’t go back.”