Karen Harper Read online

  “The queen’s woman,” he said. “Ah—Mistress Westcott, Veronica.”

  “Varina, my lord.”

  “Just so,” he said, walking his horse closer. With one arm, he leaned down and snatched me off my feet, pulling me sideways before him onto his saddle and turning us for the drawbridge. His chest armor hurt my shoulder and hip.

  “I am grateful for your help,” I told him, trying not to hold on to him but find a place to grasp his big saddle. “I ran from the man and hid in the bog.”

  “I guessed such from your appearance. My men will find him, and we shall question him together. You do manage to attract trouble, mistress. For one moment I thought I had my own little selkie emerging from the water.”

  “A selkie, my lord?”

  “A changeling from the sea, a seal in water and an alluring woman on dry land. The Scots say they shed their skin and seduce human men. Selkies live with their lovers for years, especially if the man can find a way to hide their sealskins so they cannot escape back to the sea.” He said all that pleasantly enough, but put his hand right on my thigh and stroked me there with a heavy thumb through my wet breeches.

  As cold as I was from the water and wind, I felt frozen by his touch. Sim’s murder—my fear and headlong flight—all seemed a nightmare—then this?

  In the courtyard, where the rain had finally started pelting down, I tried to slip off the horse, but Surrey had a good hold of me as he dismounted and lowered me into the circle of his arms. “You’ll catch your death of cold,” he said, obviously used to giving orders and being obeyed. “I’ll send for your maid, but you need a warm fire and a proper bath—and to tell me in more detail what happened.”

  “I am grateful, my lord, and will call upon you later,” I said, and tried to back away, but he scooped me up into his arms, bouncing me once against his steel chest armor to get a better hold.

  “We should have a physician examine you too,” he said, and, holding me tightly, carried me into the shelter of the arched entryway.

  A new sort of panic set in. Did one blatantly refuse an earl or gainsay his wishes? I kept recalling that Nick had once told me that King Edward, our queen’s father, had amused himself by taking lovers from the city merchants’ wives. But the earl had vowed to summon my maid and a physician. One of the prince’s doctors, or his own? In his suite of rooms, who knew what could happen? Or was I misreading all of this? No, I was no green girl. I’d seen that look on my husband’s face, especially the first few years of our marriage, and I had accepted it. On Christopher’s face, and hated it. And on Nick’s face, and desired it.

  “Please put me down, my lord. I am fine and wish my own chamber.”

  “Then I’ll take you there to see you are well tended.”

  Nick had said the Earl of Surrey, the king’s Lord High Treasurer, was nearly sixty, but he was as strong as a strapping lad of sixteen. Did he know or care that his hard hold on me was bouncing my arm and bum against his armor? Nick, I thought. Where was Nick? Had Surrey left him back in that cave?

  As if my frenzied thoughts had summoned him, I heard his distant voice. “Nick!” I shouted, despite that Surrey swore under his breath.

  I heard footsteps. Nick skidded to a halt before us, nearly bumping into the earl. “Varina, are you injured?” he demanded, ignoring the necessary courtesies of greeting Surrey. “His lordship’s men said you were running through the bog. You could have been killed!”

  “Crown business,” the earl said, as if to brush Nick aside. “I need to further examine her and have sent my men to see to her attacker—who evidently killed the guard she took, someone named Simon.”

  “Sim?” Nick said to me. I could tell he wanted to pry me out of Surrey’s arms. “Sim Benton?”

  “Yes. Nick, you weren’t back, so I knew I must take a guard.”

  “Was all this for a mere woman’s whim to see that damned bog?” Surrey demanded. I could tell Nick wanted to interrogate me too, but he held his tongue, bless him, for I could hardly tell him what the princess had said in front of the earl without revealing our secret task here in Wales. “Stand aside, Sutton,” Surrey ordered. “You consider the puzzle of who defaced the cave, and I’ll deal with Mistress Varina. I’ll send for you if—”

  “I need to go with her,” Nick insisted as I squirmed to be put down despite Surrey’s grip on me. “It’s only proper, my lord, and the queen would wish it, for by her command, I am responsible for Varina’s well-being. By Her Majesty’s permission we are betrothed.”

  I fear I gasped a bit too loud. The earl’s arms tightened and his chest armor pressed even harder into me. “Why was I not informed?” he asked as Nick stood his ground, half a head taller than the earl and much angrier. I knew clearly now that Surrey had indeed intended to possess more than whatever knowledge of treachery I had.

  “It is a secret engagement,” Nick said, staring hard at him and not so much as blinking. “Such could hardly be announced or celebrated in this tragic time of mourning.”

  “And here I thought you were a clever climber, Sutton,” the earl said with a slight sneer that made me dislike him all the more.

  I truly think I had lost my voice; my brain and emotions seemed frozen. I had hoped Nick would not have to use this ruse, a last resort merely to protect me so I might do my duty. And to be haggled over—indeed, lied about so that Nick could keep me out of Surrey’s clutches—or more like so we could keep our investigation into the prince’s death a secret…

  “Mistress, I did not know,” Surrey said, and finally deposited me on my aching, soaked feet.

  Nick put out a quick hand to steady me, though Surrey still held my other elbow. I felt like a fragile breastbone from a yuletide goose about to be pulled apart by two people to see who won a prize. Nick did not want me for himself, but only to keep me from Surrey, and to protect me, as he had promised the queen. Because I wished the lie to be true and knew that could never be, I wanted to collapse and cry. But they were looking at me, and I must play my part.

  “I…we needed, as Nick said,” I stammered, “to keep it private—for now, for the period of mourning.”

  The earl finally loosed his hold on me, removed his helm and held it almost ceremoniously in one arm. Frowning deeply, he said, “Sutton, I suggest that you keep a better eye on your betrothed. It sounds as if she could have been killed out there today, which I will look into. Now, I have much to do.”

  He turned and walked away, his spurs jingling.

  As soon as he was out of earshot, Nick exclaimed, “How was I to keep an eye on you when I was with him all afternoon and then he left me there until the contingent of guards arrived?” He gestured wildly, most unlike himself. “You could have been killed indeed!” he repeated when I expected at least tender concern. He pulled me off into an alcove.

  Hands on my wet hips, I shot back at him, “You could have let me handle him so you didn’t have to forfeit your trump card of a false betrothal!”

  “Oh, yes, I could see how you were handling him! Rather, he would soon have had his hands all over you, and you would have ended up on your backside in his bed like some doxy!”

  “You—in the midst of all this danger, of our inquiries—just acted out of jealousy, didn’t you?” I demanded. “Well, I warrant I understand that. At first I thought you and Sibil were lovebirds.”

  “Sibil? No, the queen just asked us to work together for a while. Sibil is mad for a courtier, a handsome devil, Nigel Wentworth, another former Yorkist who has pledged to serve this king.”

  Strangely relieved, and recalling Nick’s goal to earn his own way with the Tudors, I felt my anger ebb. Perhaps Nigel Wentworth was the one Sibil had been waving to from the parapet the day of the joust. I realized I was not really angry at Nick, but at Surrey, and mostly at myself for getting Sim killed and nearly betraying our secret mission. Upset with myself, I tugged free of Nick’s grip and started for the stairs.

  “Not the main staircase,” he said, pulling me back. />
  “Oh, that’s right!” I spit out, shaking him off, my temper on edge again. “I’m ever to be sneaked in the back way!”

  “Keep your voice down! And I recall you, not me, are the one who dubbed the ruse of a betrothal between us ‘absurd.’”

  With my sopped boots squeaking, dripping a trail of water, I darted down a corridor that led to a back staircase, Nick in hot pursuit. “Never mind that fantasy,” I insisted, feeling on the edge of tears again. “I was not just out in the bog to admire the scenery, you know,” I threw back over my shoulder as we thudded up the stairs. “The princess summoned me again and told me the prince and she had been given wild garlic by a peddler at the far end of the bog.” I lowered my voice and slowed my steps. “Despite that we were told the herb was not to be found this early, some from last year could have poisoned them.”

  Wide-eyed, standing on the same stair with me, he nodded. We said not one word more until I reached my chamber, where I jiggled the latch until I recalled I’d locked it and realized I’d lost the key in the bog as well as the arrow I’d meant to bring back as evidence.

  “By the Virgin’s veil!” I muttered the queen’s favorite curse and burst into tears. “What else can go wrong today?”

  Nick tugged me across the hall into his room and sent his servant to find someone to get my door open. Feeling a complete ninny, a failure—and by the saints, I missed my home and son!—I sat in the chair where Nick put me and sobbed. When he stood me up again, then sat down with me in his lap, I wanted to jump up and be strong on my own, but I just held on to him as if he were the last solid thing in this swaying world.

  “So tell me about Sim’s killer, besides his being a good archer,” Nick said much later, after my chamber door had been unlocked with the castle’s master key. My maid, Morgan, had been summoned to help me bathe and change into my burgundy woolen day gown. My aching limbs and the terror of the day made me desire nothing more than to sob myself to sleep in my own bed, but Nick and I sat across the small table from each other in my chamber.

  “From all you have told me,” he went on, “I agree Sim’s killer could be the peddler-poisoner or a poacher. He might be one and the same.”

  “I caught a distant glimpse of him as he walked away,” I told him. “Tall, I think. Caped but not hooded. I think he had light hair—blond, white, or gray, though I know that’s vague. I realized it was about to rain and was foggy and misty, yet he seemed to simply disappear, and—”

  Nick jumped to his feet. “Disappear? This place is getting to you,” he said, pacing to the window and then back again. It was still raining; water sheeted down the thick panes of glass. “You thought old Fey looked young at first,” he accused. “Your eyes are bothered by tricks of the light. I don’t want to hear drivel like they claim about Glendower coming and going in the mountain mists, or Lord Lovell vanishing into thin air during battles against the king!”

  “Lord Lovell? You’re the one obsessed with Lord Lovell! But you saw the man on the parapet of the castle when we buried the prince’s heart,” I insisted, hands on my hips. “Not a ghost of Glendower, but perhaps the same man who defaced the prince’s banners and the walls of the cromlech. The new Glendower, as old Fey let slip.”

  “But who the hell is he? He’s flesh and blood, and we have to find out who he is!” Nick raked a hand through his hair and lowered his voice again. “Varina, you nearly got yourself killed—and by a damned ghost, the way you tell it. I wish you could have brought that arrow back that you said you had. If I could find that, I’d try to trace the fletching, though that won’t be easy, since everyone’s some sort of bowman around here! I’m tempted to lock you up in this big stone fortress of a castle, but no doubt you’d still find a way to put yourself in danger.”

  “That’s not fair. Now you’re the one acting like this place is getting to you!”

  “No, you’re getting to me. I need your help; the queen has sent you, but I don’t want you hurt! All right, let’s calm down,” he said, sitting back in his chair, “and assume the poacher-peddler somehow poisoned the prince and tried to kill Princess Catherine too. Killing the Tudor heir is a victory in battle. Sly, clever—not even an obvious murder.” Wide-eyed, he whispered his words now. “And Arthur’s killer might be willing to dispatch anyone who gets in his way, including you.”

  “Me?” I asked. “Otherwise, why would he pursue me when I didn’t see his face and can’t identify him? What if the man who murdered Signor Firenze in the crypt and came after me then is this same man now? Perhaps he wants to murder anyone who serves Their Majesties, or he thinks I know something that I don’t. But how would he have so much intimate information about me? I was once fearful the queen wanted to silence me about making the effigies.”

  “I believe we can trust the queen. But we must find the peddler whether it’s the archer or not. It could be any disgruntled Welshman who still wants freedom from the English or is a York loyalist, since these parts bred so many of them. At least we know it wasn’t Surrey, since he was with us when we buried Arthur’s heart and then he was with me at the cromlech.”

  “But he’s a man who likes to be in charge, to know everything. Maybe Surrey wanted to take me off alone to his chambers to interrogate me about what you and I are doing here.”

  Nick shook his head. “He had other plans in mind for you. I know that look he had.”

  “So we absolutely can trust him?”

  “I would risk it. Surrey’s Yorkist loyalties are over. He knows his future lies with the Tudors, and, however angry I am with him, I believe he has hitched his star to the king. Just keep in mind that he is a rank opportunist and is used to taking what he wants, his wife and a large brood of children notwithstanding. You are not to be alone with him, whatever excuses he concocts on the morrow to ‘examine you’ further. You are a beautiful, desirable woman, Varina, even dripping wet with bog mud in your hair.”

  In the midst of our arguments and reasoning, that warmed me to the very pit of my belly. “I do see his lordship for what he is,” I insisted, trying to keep on track. “He didn’t even get my name right at first, when I’d gone to him about the cromlech. He called me Veronica.”

  Nick reached across the table to take my hands. The hint of a smile crimped one corner of his mouth, but his voice was deadly serious. “If I haven’t said clearly so before, Varina, I value you for much more than your beautiful face and body.”

  Why did this man always manage to disarm me with straightforward statements that seemed not a bit flowery but made my insides cartwheel and my thighs and breasts tingle? We swayed slightly toward each other, and I anticipated another kiss. Instead I nearly jumped out of my skin when someone pounded on my door. Reluctantly, I answered it to find one of the Earl of Surrey’s men, the one who had brought him his armor in his chambers earlier today, standing there. He had been with the four men who had ridden off into the bog. Nick came to stand behind me in the doorway.

  “I’m to tell you, Mistress Westcott,” the man said, “that the earl’s men found no sign of the several things you described. Sim Benton’s body and your two mounts are nowhere to be seen, though we spent a goodly time combing the area. I’m to ask, are you certain he was dead?”

  I gasped at his stunning news. “I’m positive,” I told him. “I felt for the pulse in his neck, and he was shot through the throat, so he could hardly have wandered off.”

  “But we did find a steer stolen from the royal herd, partly butchered,” he said. “And two more items of interest the earl says you are to have.” He lifted from the floor an open-topped wooden box with a leather neck cord nailed to it. “Some sort of a peddler’s box, we take it, with nothing inside—rainwashed. We did find two arrows in the bog. One we gave to the earl and one he sends to you.” From his belt he plucked an arrow with a wet shaft and fletching, and extended it to me. “Good even to you both then,” he concluded, and walked away.

  The moment I closed the door, Nick took the two items from me. He
studied the arrow closely. “I don’t think we even need to have the peddler’s box identified by the princess,” he said. “Our prey is unpredictable, cleaning up after a murder but leaving the blood-spattered ruins in the cave, if it’s the same man. Let’s hide these under your bed for now.”

  “No—no, I don’t want them in here. Take them with you.”

  “All right. We’ll talk more about everything tomorrow, when we ride into the village to visit the apothecary. Business first, but as for our betrothal—”

  “Our playacting betrothal,” I interrupted. “We shall let it serve our purpose for now, but I won’t hold you to it, of course.”

  “Yet maybe I shall hold you to it. I’ll sleep on it now—and then later, maybe we can sleep on it together,” he said. But his expression was still grim, and he had a tight grip on the arrow and peddler’s box. He kissed me quickly, then quietly closed the door behind him.

  My knees shaking, I shot the bolt to lock myself in. Then, to steady myself, I leaned against the solid wood, torn between hatred of our unknown enemy and my growing love for Nick.

  CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH

  “Varina,” Nick said, “I am placing you in the funeral procession next to me with the other guards. We’ll be riding directly behind the coffin. You’ll need to oversee keeping it dry if it continues to rain like this.”

  “And that way you can keep a good eye on her too,” the Earl of Surrey said with a little smirk. “If this damned weather doesn’t let up, the road out of here will be even deeper than the bog I found her in.”

  I ignored the fact that Surrey had hardly found me in the bog. Nick frowned but plunged on with explaining his plans. I don’t know how he found the time, but he had made labeled drawings showing the order of marching and riding mourners for the prince’s funeral procession. He had even drawn in a few horses, banners flying, and the draped coffin on its cart.