The Maiden's Hand

by Susan Wiggs

  At last Oliver returned to her side and drew her out into the bright light. His eyes were wide with juvenile wonder.

  “Well?” Lark asked.

  “I feel quite strung with emotion,” he said earnestly. “Also cheated by nature.”

  Lark shook her head in disgust. For once, Spencer was wrong. This crude, ribald man could not possibly be the paragon of honor Spencer thought him to be. “‘An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations,’” she muttered, “‘feet that be swift in running to mischief.’”

  “I beg your pardon?” Oliver weighed his purse in his hand.

  “Proverbs,” she said.

  “Why, thank you, my lady Righteous.” With an insolent swagger, he plunged down yet another narrow lane, and Lark had no choice but to follow or be left alone in the crowd. They passed flower sellers and cloth traders, booths selling roast pork and gingermen. Oliver laughed at puppets beating each other over the head. He dispensed coins to beggars as easily as if he were passing out bits of chaff.

  After what seemed like an eternity, they reached the boundary of the fair. In the distance they could see the horse fair at Smithfield.

  “We’ll venture no farther.” Oliver’s face paled a shade. “I mislike the burning grounds.”

  She followed him obligingly from the area. Though the blackened stakes and sand pits were not yet visible, she felt their proximity like the brush of a cobweb against her cheek.

  “That is the first sensible thing I have heard you say,” she announced. “Think of the condemned Protestants who have been martyred here.”

  “I’ve been trying not to.” As they walked past the fringes of the fair, Oliver heaved a great sigh. “I have failed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I wanted to make you laugh and smile, and you have not. Where did I go wrong?”

  “Well, you could start with our near drowning while shooting the bridge.”

  “I thought you’d find that exhilarating.”

  “I found it foolish and unnecessary. As was your greeting to the woman called Nell.” Lark lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “Heaven in her lap?”

  He had the grace to blush. “She’s an old friend.”

  “What about your treasonous little exchange with a monkey?” Lark continued, enumerating the outrages. “And your prurient interest in a bull’s, er, his two…”

  “Pizzles,” Oliver supplied helpfully.

  “Hardly a cause for great mirth from me.”

  “I know.” He had a rare gift for looking both sulky and charming at once. “I’ve failed you. I—” He broke off, glancing over her shoulder. The sulkiness disappeared, and his face glowed with sheer delight. “Come, Mistress Lark. Here is something you’ll like.”

  Pulled along in the wake of his enthusiasm, she found herself at the stall of a bird seller. Wooden crates of burbling doves, huddled robins and moth-eaten gulls were stacked about haphazardly.

  “How much?” Oliver asked the man.

  “For which one, sir?”

  “For all of them.”

  The man’s jaw dropped. Oliver grabbed his hand and dumped a small fortune of coins into it. “That should keep you in your cups a good while.”

  “My lord,” Lark said, “there are hundreds of birds here. How will you—”

  “Watch.” He drew a silver eating knife from the leather sheath attached to his belt and pried open each cage. With a flourish he removed each little door.

  “Oliver!” Lark barely noticed that she had used his Christian name. The bird seller uttered a blue oath.

  Like a great, winged cloud, the once-captive birds rose. The sound of beating and whirring feathers filled the sky above the fair. It was an awesome sight, darkening the sun for a moment, then turning light as the flock of liberated birds dispersed.

  Oohs and aahs issued from nearby fairgoers.

  “‘The stars compel the soul to look upward,”’ Oliver de Lacey recited, “‘and lead us from this world to another.’ Plato.”

  “I know.” She squinted up at the birds, now mere specks in an endless field of marbled blue. And against her will, a smile unfurled on her lips.

  “Eureka!” Oliver spread out one arm like a seasoned showman. “She smiles. Eureka! Archimedes. When he first said ‘Eureka,’ he went running naked through the streets.”

  “That,” she said, “I did not know.”

  “It is said he made his discovery about the displacement of water while in his bath. The insight so aroused him that he forgot to dress himself before running to tell his colleagues.” Oliver lifted his face to the winter sun as the last of the birds disappeared. “There, you see, my angel. They can soar. I have set them all free.”

  “All of them,” she agreed, feeling strangely content.

  “Well, not quite.”

  She peered at the cages. Not a single bird remained. The bird seller was already stacking his crates in a two-wheeled cart.

  Oliver slipped one arm around her waist, and his other hand rested on her bodice, the fingers drumming on the stiff corset of boiled leather.

  “There is still one little lark in a cage, eh?”

  His barb hit home with a sting of unexpected pain. She tried to look imperious. “Sir, I am insulted. Unhand me.”

  He bent low to whisper in her ear. “I could free you, Lark. I could teach you to soar.”

  Heat swept from her toes to her nose, and she could not suppress a shiver as his warm breath caressed her ear. Alarmed, she broke away and stepped back. “I do not want you to teach me anything of the sort. I simply want help with a certain matter. You have refused to listen. You have dragged me from pillar to post on a fool’s errand. If you will not help me, I wish you would tell me now so I can be shed of you.”

  “You wear outrage like an angel wears a halo.” He sighed dramatically, then lounged against a stone hitch post.

  All her life she had been taught that men were strong and prudent, endowed with qualities a mere woman lacked. Oliver de Lacey was a reckless contradiction to that rule. Furious, she marched blindly down the road. She hoped the way led to the river.

  With easy strides he caught up with her. “I’ll help you, Mistress Lark. I was born to help you. Only say what it is you require. Your smallest desire is my command.”

  She stopped and looked up into his sunny, impossibly wonderful face. “Why do I think,” she said, “that I shall live to regret our association?”

  “I cannot understand why you agreed to this,” Kit Youngblood muttered to Oliver. He glared at the prim, straight-backed figure who rode in the fore. They were on the Oxford road leading away from the city, on an errand Oliver had embraced with good heart. The ride was enjoyable, for he loved his horse. She was a silver Neapolitan mare bred from his father’s best stock. Big-boned and graceful as a dancer was Delilah, the envy of all his friends.

  “Keep your voice down,” he whispered, his gaze glued to Lark’s gray-clad form. He had always found the sight of a woman riding sidesaddle particularly arousing. “I owe her my life.”

  “I owe her nothing,” Kit grumbled. “Why drag me along?”

  “She needs a lawyer. For what purpose, she has yet to disclose.”

  “You know as much about the law as I do.”

  “True, but it would be unseemly for me to practice a profession.” Oliver feigned a look of horror. “People might think me dull and unimaginative, not to mention common.”

  “Forgive me for suggesting it, Your Highness. Far better for you to follow your lordly pursuits of drinking and gaming.”

  “And wenching,” Oliver added. “Pray do not forget wenching.”

  “How did the woman know where to find you?”

  “She went to my residence. Nance Harbutt directed her to my favorite gaming house.”

  “Hunted you down, eh? And what have you done to the poor woman? She’s barely spoken since we left the City.”

  “I took her to Newgate Market.” Closing his eyes, Oliver recalled the rapt express
ion on her small, pale face when he had set the birds free. “She loved it.”

  “You’ve ever been the perfect host,” Kit said. “I do not know why I put up with you.”

  “I wish I could say that it’s because you find me charming. But alas, ’tis because you’re in love with my half sister, Belinda.”

  “Hah! Faithless baggage. I’ve not heard from her in a year.”

  “The kingdom of Muscovy is not exactly the next shire. Fear not. She and the rest of my family will return before long.”

  “She’s probably grown thin and sallow and peevish on her travels.”

  Oliver chuckled. “She is Juliana’s daughter,” he reminded Kit, picturing his matchless stepmother. “Do you really think such a lass could grow ugly?”

  “I almost wish she would. Suitors will be on her like flies on honey. She’ll take no notice of me, the landless son of a knight. A common solicitor.”

  “If you believe that, then the game is up before it’s started. You—” Oliver broke off, scanning the road in the distance. “What’s that, a coach?”

  Lark twisted around in her saddle. “It looks as if it’s gotten mired.” She made a straight seam of her mouth. “You would have noticed minutes ago if you had not been so busy yammering with Mr. Youngblood.”

  “Mistress Gamehen,” Oliver said with a smile, “one day you will peck some poor husband to the bone.”

  She tossed her head, the dark coif fluttering behind her. With a squeeze of his legs, Oliver guided his horse past her to investigate the distressed travelers.

  The boxy coach had been traveling toward town. Rather than being pulled by big country nags or oxen, it was yoked to a pair of rather delicate-looking riding mounts. Curious.

  Behind the coach was a bridge spanning a shallow, rocky creek. Apparently the conveyance had cleared the bridge and become stuck in the muddy berm at the roadside.

  “Hello!” Oliver called out, craning his neck to see into the small square window. He waved his hand to show he had no weapon drawn, for travelers tended to be wary of highwaymen.

  “Are you mired, then?” he shouted. No response. He drew up beside the coach, frowning at the horses. Indeed they were not draft horses. Smallish heads indicated a strain of Barbary blood.

  “Hello?” Oliver twisted in the saddle to send Kit a quizzical look.

  The coach door swung open. A blade sliced out and just barely caressed the nape of his neck.

  “It’s a trap!” Oliver dismounted, drawing his rapier even before his feet hit the ground. Kit did likewise.

  To Oliver’s dismay, Lark leaped out of her saddle, lifted her skirts and rushed toward the coach. Three men, wearing the tattered garb of discharged soldiers, swarmed out. From the grim expressions on their faces, they seemed bent on murder.

  Oliver flourished his sword and feinted back from one of the soldiers, a bearded fellow. “I say!” Oliver parried a blow and sidestepped a thrust. “We’re not highwaymen.”

  His answer was a wind-slicing front cut that slit his doublet. A bit of wool stuffing bulged from the tear.

  A feeling of unholy glee came over him. He loved this feeling—the anticipation of a battle joined, the lure of physical challenge.

  “You’re good,” he said to the bearded one. “I was hoping you would be.”

  Danger always had this effect on him. It was a battle lust he had learned to crave. Some would call it courage, but Oliver knew himself well enough to admit that it was pure recklessness. Dying in a sword fight was so much more picaresque than gasping his last in a sickroom.

  “En garde, you stable-born dunghill groom,” he said gleefully. “You’ll not have the virtue of this lady fair but with a dead man’s blessing.”

  The soldier seemed unimpressed. His blade came at Oliver with raging speed. Oliver felt the fire of exhilaration whip through him. “Kit!” he yelled. “Are you all right?”

  He heard a grunt, followed by the sliding sound of locking blades. “A fine predicament you’ve gotten us into,” Kit said.

  Oliver fought with all the polish he could muster under the circumstances. He would have liked to tarry, to toy with his opponent and test his skills to the limit, but he was worried about Lark. The foolish woman seemed intent on investigating the coach.

  The soldier came on with a low blow. Like a morris dancer, Oliver leaped over the blade. Taking swift advantage of the other’s imbalance, Oliver went in for the kill.

  With his rapier, he knocked the weapon from the soldier’s hand. The sword thumped into the muddy road. Then Oliver whipped out his stabbing dagger and prepared to—

  “My lord, are you not a Christian?” piped a feminine voice beside him. “‘Thou shalt not kill.’”

  His hesitation cost him a victory. The soldier leaped away and in seconds had one arm hooked around Lark from behind.

  “I’ll break her neck,” the burly man vowed. “Take one step closer, and I’ll snap it like a chicken bone.” Stooping, he snatched up his fallen sword.

  “Don’t harm the girl!” one of the other soldiers cried.

  “Divinity of Satan,” Oliver bellowed in a fury. “I should have sent you to hell when I had the chance.”

  Glaring at Oliver, Lark’s captor drew back his sword arm.

  “Thou shalt not kill, either,” Lark stated. As Oliver watched, astonished, she brought up her foot and slammed it down hard on the soldier’s instep. At the same time her pointed little elbow jabbed backward. Hard. If the blow had met his ribs, it would have left him breathless. But he was much taller than Lark and her aim was low, and when it connected, Oliver winced just from watching.

  The man doubled up, unable to speak. Then, clutching himself, he half limped and half ran into the woods beyond the road.

  Kit’s opponent, bleeding now, backed away. Swearing, he leapfrogged onto one of the horses, cut the traces and galloped off.

  Oliver raced toward the third soldier. This one fled toward the remaining horse, but Lark planted herself in his path.

  “No!” Oliver screamed, picturing her mown down like a sheaf of wheat. But as Lark’s hands grasped at the mercenary’s untidy tunic, he merely shoved her aside, mounted, spurred and was gone.

  “Lark!” Oliver said, rushing forward. She lay like a broken bird in the path. “Dear God, Lark! Are you hurt—” He broke off.

  It struck just then. The dark, silent enemy that had stalked Oliver all his life. The tightening of his chest muscles. The absolute impossibility of emptying his lungs. The utter certainty that this was the attack that would kill him.

  The physicians called it asthma. Aye, they had a name for it, but no cure.

  The world seemed to catch fire at the edges, a familiar warning sign. He saw Lark climb to her feet. Kit seemed to tilt as if he bent to pick something up. Lark moved her mouth, but Oliver could not hear her over the thunder of blood rushing in his ears.

  God, not now. But he felt himself stagger.

  “Ahhhh.” The thin sound escaped him. Shamed to the very toes of his Cordovan riding boots, Oliver de Lacey staggered back and fell, arms wheeling, fingers grasping at empty air.

  Three

  “I’ve never stayed at an inn before,” Lark confessed to Kit as she cut a strip of bandage.

  Oliver leaned against the scrubbed pine table in the large kitchen and tried to appear nonchalant, when in fact he was doing his best to keep from sliding into a heap on the floor.

  What was it about Lark, he wondered, that so arrested the eye and took hold of the heart?

  Perhaps it was the childlike sense of wonder with which she regarded the world. Or perhaps her complete lack of vanity, as if she were not even aware of herself as a woman. Or maybe, just maybe, it was her sweet nature, which made him want to hold her in his arms and taste her lips, to be the object of her earnest devotion.

  “Oliver and I know every inn and ivybush ’twixt London and Wiltshire,” Kit was saying. Discreetly he sidled over to the table beside Oliver.

  To catch me
if I fall, Oliver thought, feeling both gratitude and resentment. Cursed with his baffling illness, he had lived a peculiar and isolated boyhood. When he had finally emerged from his shell of seclusion, Kit had been there with his brotherly advice, his ready sword arm and a fierce protective instinct that surfaced even now, when Oliver had grown a handspan taller than his friend.

  Kit held out his hand and clenched his teeth as Lark washed the grit from his wound. She worked neatly, her movements deft as she applied the bandage. Oliver noticed that her nails were chewed, and he liked that about her, for it was evidence that she suffered unease like anyone else.

  She wasted no missish sympathy on Kit but confronted his injury with matter-of-fact compassion and an unexpected hint of humor. “Try to avoid battles for a few days, Kit. You should give this gash a chance to heal.”

  “I wonder what the devil those bast—er, rude scoundrels were after,” Kit said. “They didn’t even attempt to rob us.”

  “Perhaps they were planning to kill us first.” Oliver had become rather casual about his brushes with death. Long ago he had decided to defy fortune. He refused to let the weakness of his lungs conquer him. He meant to die his own way. Thus far, the pursuit had been amusing.

  “Thank you, mistress.” Kit pressed his bandaged hand to his chest. “I feel much better now. But I would still dearly like to know what those arse—er, wayward marls were about. Ah! I just remembered something.” With his good hand he reached into the cuff of his boot and pulled out a coin. “I did find this when we searched the coach.”

  Both Oliver and Lark leaned forward to study the coin. Their foreheads touched, and as one they drew back in chagrin.

  “Curious,” said Kit, angling the coin toward the waning light through the kitchen window. “Tis silver. An antique shilling?”

  “Nay, look. ’Tis marked with a cross.” Cocking his head, Oliver read the motto inscribed around the edge of the piece. “‘Deo favente.’”