The Maiden's Hand

by Susan Wiggs

  He planted himself on the canopied chair at the head of the table. Oliver shot a “what an arsehole” look at Kit and held Lark’s chair out for her.

  She stared at him blankly.

  “Do sit down, Mistress Lark,” Oliver murmured.

  A smooth, melodic chuckle flowed from Wynter. “Do forgive our Lark. The social graces seem to be beyond her grasp.”

  She didn’t even flinch. It was as if she were accustomed to his biting comments. She seated herself with the unthinking obedience of a beaten spaniel.

  Oliver sat across from her, and Kit took the seat at the foot of the table. Wishing he could kiss some life back into Lark, Oliver grabbed the pewter wine goblet at his place.

  Lark cleared her throat and clasped her hands in prayer.

  Feeling sheepish, Oliver released the goblet, and when she finished asking the Lord’s grace, he and Kit dutifully replied, “Amen.” Wynter made an elaborate sign of the cross.

  Eager to have done with the tense and silent meal, Oliver was pleased to see a small army of well-trained retainers break into action, flowing in through a small side door from the kitchen. He savored the fresh bread and butter, a salad of greens and nuts, a delicious roasted trout.

  “Thank you, Edgar,” Lark murmured to a boy passing the bread basket.

  “Took me months to get the servants in hand,” Wynter explained, reaching up without looking around, confident that the bread basket would appear. It did. “I suppose dear Lark did her best—didn’t you, Lark?—but of course that couldn’t possibly be good enough. Not for these rough country types.”

  He could not see the blaze of anger that lit the serving boy’s eyes as the lad withdrew. Oliver stifled a laugh. “You just won them over with your charm, my lord.”

  Wynter had a rare gift for focusing his gaze as sharp as a blade. “My lot has not been easy. Spencer disgraced my mother and sent her into exile. Whatever charm I possess, I did not learn at my loving father’s knee.”

  Kit, ever the guardian of right and wrong, lifted his cup and released a huff of breath into it.

  Oliver wished he, too, could remain the skeptic, but he could not. Wynter bore the scars of wounds for which he was not responsible. Just as Oliver hadn’t asked to be born with asthma, Wynter hadn’t asked to be born to a woman whose morals were too loose and a man whose morals were too rigid.

  “No one’s lot is easy,” Lark stated. She turned to Oliver. “Except perhaps yours, my lord.”

  “Indeed,” he said wryly, angling his wine cup toward her in a halfhearted salute. He contemplated telling her what it was like to turn blue for want of air but decided it was inappropriate conversation at table.

  The main dish arrived, the platter borne high on the shoulders of two footmen. They planted it with a flourish in the center of the table.

  Wynter closed his eyes and inhaled. “Ah, capon. A favorite of mine.”

  “Lord Oliver,” said Lark, “why don’t you do the honors and serve yourself first?”

  Between his sympathy for the nasty Wynter and his distaste for the main dish, Oliver felt queasy. “No, thank you. I never eat capon.”

  Kit smothered a laugh.

  Lark tipped her head to one side. “Whyever not?”

  “It’s a castrated cock, that’s why. Gives me a bad feeling.”

  He expected her to be shocked by his bluntness. Instead he saw a faint spark of amusement in her eyes.

  “I take it you’d never ride a gelded horse, either,” she said.

  “I ride only mares.” God, he liked her. She stood for everything he hated, everything he found tiresome, and he liked her immensely.

  “I have no qualms about eating capon.” Kit wrenched a leg from the roasted bird and bit into it. Wynter took the other leg. Oliver held out his goblet for more wine.

  “How is the weaving coming along, Lark?” Wynter asked quite cordially.

  “Well enough,” she said without looking at him.

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Is it, then? It appeared to me that you’ve been neglectful of late. I’ve seen no progress on the tapestry you’ve been weaving.”

  “I didn’t realize I was under your scrutiny.”

  “One can’t help but notice when a woman neglects her duties to go traipsing off to London.”

  Oliver looked from one to the other as if they were engaged in a tennis match. What an extraordinary pair they made, despising each other with such civility.

  “And what have you done with yourself, Wynter?” Lark’s voice was low, yet dripping with venom. In contrast to the servile spaniel who had first entered the room, she seemed to be coming out of herself, brandishing words like a sharp blade. “Turned in any heretics lately?”

  Wynter smiled. “Dear Lark. You are always so full of pointed humor.” His hand clenched around the ivory handle of his knife.

  When Spencer did finally die, Oliver knew Lark would have to beware Wynter Merrifield.

  “Wardens’ Temporal Act…Treasonable Offences by Rank Villains’…. None of these will do.” Kit frowned at the thick, heavy tome on the long library table.

  Lark knelt on the bench beside him and dragged a fat, smoking candle closer. “What about this one?” She pointed to an entry on another page of the huge tome. “An Acte for the Disbursement and Recovery of Real Property.”

  Oliver rubbed his weary eyes. Midnight was but a vague memory, and they had been in Spencer’s amazingly huge library since sunset, poring over law books and legal tracts.

  “We’ll have to go to London. We’ll never find what we’re looking for here.” Kit closed the huge book with a thud.

  “Ouch!” Lark said. “You’ve closed my finger in it!” She yanked the book open.

  Oliver’s mind kept toying with what she had said earlier. “Disbursement,” he said to himself. “Recovery…” As a youth fleeing the boredom of polite nobility, he had gone to St. John’s at Cambridge to hear shockingly reformed ideas on the law. Unfortunately his memories of that time were obscured by a pleasant mist of women, gambling, drinking and general mischief.

  Kit took a sip from the wine jug. “You carry on the search. I’m but a common lawyer. A very weary common lawyer.” Yawning, he left the library.

  “Is he really a commoner?” Lark asked.

  Common. Oliver’s mind clung to the word for a moment. “His father was a knight who had eleven sons. Kit fostered with my father.” The recollection plunged Oliver into the past. There had been a time, long ago, when his father had barely acknowledged Oliver’s existence. Kit had been the substitute son, the golden lad who learned to ride and hunt and fence at Stephen de Lacey’s side.

  If there were wounds from that time, they had healed nicely, Oliver decided. He adored both Kit and his father.

  He brought his thoughts to the present and looked at Lark. The pale stranger at supper had given way to the lively maid who had braved a Bankside tavern to find him.

  What a charming scholar she made, so sweetly unaware of her provocative pose. She had her elbows planted on the heavy tome, her knees on the bench, and her startlingly shapely backside thrust out and upward in a way that brought the devil to life in Oliver.

  Wisps of dark hair escaped the detestable coif, and the locks curled softly around her pale face. The hunt for a loophole in the law seemed to animate her, causing her eyes to dance and her lips to curve into an artless smile. Even better, the angle of her pose allowed Oliver to peer unobstructed into the bodice of her dress. It was a beautiful bosom indeed—what he could see of it. High, rounded breasts, the skin like satin or pearls, and if he craned his neck, he fancied he could just barely make out a shadow where her skin darkened—

  “Are you ill?” she asked.

  Oliver blinked. He shifted on the bench. He glanced down at his codpiece. Other than being too tightly trussed, he felt fine. “No. Why do you ask?”

  “You were looking at me rather strangely.”

  He laughed. “That, my darling, was lust.”

 
“Oh.” Her gaze dropped to the page. Something told Oliver that she had little experience with lust.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I assure you, I can control my base impulses.”

  “Perhaps.” She drummed her fingers on the page. “’Tis true, I sense no danger when I’m with you. Yet at the same time, I feel as defenseless as a fledgling fallen from the nest.” A single crease of bafflement appeared between her brows.

  He touched the tip of her nose. “That’s because I threaten the most vulnerable part of you, my pet. Your heart.” He gave her no chance to ponder that, but forged on. “Now. What is it you keep reading on that page?”

  “It’s about the disbursement and recovery of—”

  “That’s it!” Oliver jumped to his feet. He strode to her side of the table, leaned down and skimmed the page. Even as his eyes absorbed the printed words, he noticed her scent of fresh laundry and femininity.

  “What’s it?” Lark blinked at him.

  He lifted her bodily from the bench. He wanted to share his exuberance, to show her the clean, effervescent joy of a puzzle solved. While she gaped at him as if he’d gone mad, he planted a brief, noisy kiss on her mouth, then spun her around, throwing his head back and laughing.

  “Lark, you have the wit of a scholar!” he cried.

  “I can’t.” The spinning seemed to render her breathless, so he stopped and held her by both hands.

  “Why not?” he demanded.

  “Well.” She looked up at him with heartbreaking earnestness. “Because I’m a woman.”

  “So was Eleanor of Aquitaine. Christine de Pisan. Perkin Warbeck.”

  “Perkin Warbeck was a pretender to the throne,” she stated. “And he was a boy.”

  “Don’t be so certain.” He couldn’t help himself. Such sweetness as he saw in her face should be outlawed as a strong intoxicant. He tipped up her chin and brushed his knuckles along her jawline. “Why in God’s name do you believe such humble ideas?”

  She tried to look away. He held her chin again, his touch gentle yet compelling. “The most learned men of the age have made a great study of the minds of women. They have proven that women are weaker.”

  “Learned men also once claimed the world was flat. Lark, you just gave me the key to breaking Spencer’s entail.”

  “I did?” For a moment sheer joy transformed her face into a vision of loveliness. He had no idea how she could seem so plain and lifeless one moment, so glowingly beautiful the next. She presented a far greater puzzle than English law, a far more interesting one, too.

  “The Common Recovery,” he said with satisfaction. “I never thought of it until you suggested it. You’ve a fine mind, Lark, and the man who says otherwise is a fool.” He smiled down at her, his hands cradling her cheeks. “I could kiss you.”

  “You’ve already done that, thank you very much,” she said. “How does it work?”

  He found himself staring at her face. Candlelight had such a happy effect at moments like this. The warm glow healed her pallor, brought out the elegant shape of her nose and cheekbones, and flickered in the velvety depths of her eyes.

  “How does it work?” he repeated, mindless now with desire. “Well.” He pulled her toward him, passing one hand around to the back of her waist. She gasped, and he smiled.

  “It would help if you were not so stiff in your upper body.”

  “My lord—”

  “And you should hold on with both hands—just so.” He took her hands and brought them to his shoulders, then around behind his neck.

  “But—”

  “And for Christ’s sake, don’t talk. That spoils everything.”

  “What I meant was—”

  “You talked. Disobedient wench.” He cut her short with a kiss. When he had kissed her in the tavern, he had been woozy from his attack. He was recovered now, and he meant to prove to himself that he could control his desire for her. That she was no different from the dozens of other women he had wooed and won. He wanted to obliterate that one frightening moment when she had made him feel deeply. Care deeply. Want something that could never be.

  He opened his mouth over hers, brandishing his tongue like a weapon, smoothing his hands over her shape. She was a woman like any other. A nicely put together bundle of hip and tit and silky hair. An object to be enjoyed, not enslaved by.

  Even as he told himself these things, he felt the truth crashing down around his ears. Lark was special. Lark was the one woman who could make him feel these things. Lark was—

  Oliver’s breath left him in a whoosh. He staggered back and glared at her.

  “Why did you do that?”

  She glanced at her fist, then relaxed her fingers. “Punch you in the stomach? You’ll notice I was careful not to hit your wounded side.”

  “I was kissing you, and you punched me.” The blow to his pride cut deeper than any flesh wound.

  A wry smile curved her lips. Her mouth was soft and moist, and he wanted it again, but he was too angry to try.

  He began pacing the room. “Don’t you like me, Lark?”

  “Truthfully, I think not. No matter. Spencer needs your help. I am loyal to Spencer. Ergo, I shall endure you. I must be careful with you, Oliver. I wanted to know how the Common Recovery worked, and you showed me how a kiss worked.”

  “Given a choice of the two,” he said dryly, “I’d choose the kiss every time. The Common Recovery is a heaving bore.”

  “But we can use it to bar Wynter from inheriting the priory.”

  “Aye, we can.” A delightful notion occurred to him. “It is very complex, Lark. It will take much hard work and many hours of preparation from Kit and me. And you.”

  “Me?” Her eyes went wide. Adorably wide.

  “Aye. We shall have to work very, very closely, Lark. Can you do that?”

  She seemed entranced by his look. “Aye. That is, if I must.”

  He caught her hands in his and drew her close. “You must.”

  “What an amazing coincidence,” Kit said the next day. “A whole tract on the Common Recovery right here in the Blackrose library.”

  “Convenient, is it not?” asked Oliver.

  Lark studied him in the pure morning light. Such strong early sunshine would surely expose his flaws. Yet she realized, with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, that in looks, at least, Oliver de Lacey had no flaws.

  The sunlight only enhanced the spun gold of his hair, brightened the sky-blue of his eyes, and brought out the bold structure of his face and physique.

  Just the sight of him tugged at something deep and elemental inside Lark. And, heaven help her, Oliver knew. Even as she chastised herself, he caught her staring and gave her a smoldering look followed by a wink that she felt all the way to the bottoms of her feet.

  Shaking sense into herself, she pointed at the legal tract Kit was studying. “Is that rare?”

  “Aye. Why would Lord Spencer possess it? Has he a particular interest in the law?”

  Only his own rigid rules, she thought, then flayed herself for disloyalty.

  “Not that I know of. But His Lordship is a learned man who has many interests.” She deliberately kept her gaze from wandering to Oliver. “Lord Oliver wasn’t able to explain exactly how the Common Recovery works.”

  “I could’ve explained,” Oliver said with a sulk that was every bit as appealing as his smile. “I just didn’t see the point of going into it at so late an hour. The heart of the night was not meant for legal debates.”

  She continued to ignore him. “I want to know, Kit.”

  The mild surprise in Kit’s regard was gratifying. Most men would be shocked and dismayed by a woman’s interest in the law.

  “Tis a lawsuit,” he said. “By using Oliver as a party in the suit, I can prove Lord Spencer came by his estate through irregular means.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  Kit grinned. “You must think like a lawyer. Of course he did. And Oliver is entitled to both compensation and the r
ight to dispose of the estate as he chooses.”

  “Oliver? He doesn’t own the estate.”

  “For our purposes, and only on paper, he does.”

  “Oh.” She disliked the sticky dishonesty of it, yet she saw the merit in the plan. “And naturally Lord Oliver would not choose to confer the estate on Wynter Merrifield.”

  “Naturally,” Oliver said. “I would give it to you, my fair Lark.”

  “What must we do?” Lark asked, tossing away his glib compliment with a wave of her hand.

  “We must take a long walk and discuss this,” Oliver suggested. “Intimately, at great length.”

  “Why should we walk outside?”

  Oliver cast suspicious glances to and fro. Lark suppressed a smile at his overblown gestures. “No one must hear our plans.”

  Kit nodded. “Wynter knows we’re up to something. I’d not like to encounter his friends again.”

  Oliver led the way out of the library. Blackrose Priory and its vast grounds seemed to be awaiting the spring, the trees with buds still tucked within themselves, the sere, colorless lawns barren. At the far reaches of the estate, the gardens ran wild, tumbling into the majestic disarray of the forested hills. Lark took her companions to a high walk along the ridge of a rise above the river. The air smelled of cold water and dry reeds.

  “When Spencer was well we used to come here often,” she said, speaking over the soughing wind and the rustling of tall grasses. She remembered the feel of his hand firm around hers, the certainty of his voice as he taught her her place and her role. Bridle the body and press down feeling, he used to say in all earnestness. Quench the heat of youth. He was very convincing. A single, errant thought sent her to the chapel to kneel for hours in prayer.

  Yet even Spencer’s best efforts had been for naught.

  Before the shame could engulf her, she lifted her skirts and picked her way over to the edge of the walk. There was a sheer drop to the river, and along the face of the cliff, rock doves nested. “Sometimes,” she said, “boys from the village used to climb down and rob eggs from the nests. It looked like such an adventure.”