The Widow's Kiss

by Jane Feather

  Well, there was little else she could do to reassure them for the moment.

  She returned to her chamber and examined her reflection in the glass. Little lines crept around her eyes and her pallor seemed excessive. Excessive enough for some help. She opened the small pot of dried and powdered geranium leaves, dipped a finger into the water in the ewer and dabbed up some of the red powder. She brushed it lightly on her cheekbones, then smoothed it in with a dry fingertip. It gave her a slightly rosier glow. Her teeth, thanks to the twice daily vigorous application of dried sage leaves, gleamed white when she smiled.

  She brushed a finger over her lips and they seemed to come alive with the physical memory of that kiss. She could taste his mouth on her tongue. The muscles of her sex tightened and her belly seemed to drop. Lust.

  Timothy.

  She spoke his name under her breath and it was a cry for help. How could she weave her way through this deadly skein when lust reared its head? Once before she had yielded to the glorious seduction of pure passion, and that had led to the deep wonders of loving fulfillment.

  She missed it so much. Such an ache of longing for what had been. Not a day passed when she didn’t think of Timothy … see him in some expression, some gesture of one of the girls, hear his voice, his laugh in her head. And at night she would feel him in her dreams.

  Lust that led to the deep wondrous satisfactions of love.

  Lust for Hugh of Beaucaire would lead only to the scaffold.

  Guinevere smoothed down her skirt of dark red silk. She adjusted her coif, white beneath the charcoal-gray hood. She touched the pearl pendant at her throat. Then she went to do battle with Hugh of Beaucaire.

  She found the steward in his office. He was making lists of provisions. “Master Crowder, I would have speech with Lord Hugh. Would you send a servant to summon him?”

  Crowder knew his lady and knew she was putting her plan into action. It was in the set of her head, the martial gleam in her eye, the crisp well-modulated tones. He’d never seen her fail yet.

  “Master Robin is hanging around outside the northwest entrance, madam. Should I suggest he request his father's presence?”

  “Is Pen with Master Robin?”

  “No, madam. But I think he's hoping she might be soon.”

  “We’re going to have to pick up some pieces there, Crowder.”

  “Aye, m’lady.” Crowder nodded. “But Lady Pen's as sensible as they come.”

  “True enough, but first love …” Guinevere shook her head ruefully. “Send Robin for his father, then. I’ll receive him in the hall … No, wait.” She put up a hand at a sudden thought.

  Crowder paused expectantly. “I’ll go to him myself,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “It would be a good opportunity to take a look at his encampment, see how things are arranged. It might give me some ideas as to how we can arrange our escape.”

  “I was thinking, madam, it would be best to employ servants for the new house from the Cauldon area,” Crowder said. “If we took people from here someone might let something slip.”

  “Yes, I’d thought of that myself. If Lord Hugh decides to search for us, he's bound to come back here first. No one must have any idea where we might have gone.” She gave Crowder a smile designed to reassure herself as much as the steward and walked out into the bright sunny lower court. She left the house through the northwest door and saw Robin sitting on the stone wall of the packhorse bridge, looking disconsolately back at the house.

  “I give you good day, Robin,” she greeted him cheerfully. “The girls are busy packing for the journey tomorrow. There's much to do. But I’m sure Pen would be happy to talk with you for a few moments if you go into the house.”

  Robin looked yet more disconsolate. “My lord father, madam, says I mustn’t disturb you today. I thought I’d wait and see if maybe Pen came out for a walk … or something.”

  “Well, why don’t you take the path around the side of the house that goes through the gardens. You could stand under the girls’ chamber window and look conspicuous,” Guinevere suggested. “The window's bound to be unshuttered on such a lovely day. I’m sure Pen’ll look out once in a while. And even if she doesn’t, Pippa certainly will.”

  Robin grinned. “I wouldn’t really be disturbing anyone, would I?”

  Guinevere shook her head. “I don’t think your father would consider a mere stroll in the garden to be disobedience. Is Lord Hugh in the camp?”

  “Aye, madam. He's making preparations for the journey with Jack Stedman.”

  “I trust he's not too occupied to talk with me,” she said easily, turning away towards the stone gatehouse.

  Her heart was beating uncomfortably fast as she approached the circle of tents set about a hundred yards from the gatehouse. How would he behave after last night? She was determined to act as if she had no recollection of what had happened. She would be cool in her manner as befitted a prisoner with her jailer, and quietly determined in her demands.

  She had the sense that so long as those demands were reasonable, Hugh would accede to them. He was far too confident, far too naturally commanding, to need to prove his present power over her by making her life on the journey any more difficult than it had to be, and she knew in her blood that he was not a cruel man. No one who treated children with such a natural warmth and humor could be all bad. But this reflection did nothing to still her heart's pounding. If she could decide that her anxiety was simply about the situation she was facing, then it would be a lot easier to deal with. But she couldn’t blind herself to the truth.

  There was an atmosphere of orderly bustle in the camp. Her eyes swept the scene, noticing how the horses were kept hobbled in a rudimentary stockade to one side. They were not guarded, but would they be on the journey? She must take belladonna in case there was a guard who must be put to sleep. Tilly would be useful there. She had a knack for striking up conversations. In her motherly fashion she would soon put a man at his ease and off his guard.

  “Lady Guinevere?” Lord Hugh's pleasant tones sounded behind her and she spun round with a little gasp. She hadn’t expected him to appear from that direction. “My camp is honored indeed.”

  His expression gave nothing away but she thought she could detect a lingering warmth in the brilliant blue gaze bent upon her, just the residue of a curve to his mouth, as if he’d surprised himself by being pleased to see her.

  “There are some matters I would discuss with you, Lord Hugh.”

  “Why did you not send for me?”

  “Prisoners do not in general send for their jailers,” she returned.

  The warmth sprang to full life and the curve became an amused smile. “Are you determined to be provoking?” he asked mildly. “I won’t be provoked, madam. I am in far too good a humor.”

  “Oh? And what brought that on?” Immediately she regretted the question.

  His eyes narrowed. Slowly he moved a hand and placed his fingers over her mouth, like a blind man reading sensation. “A memory I don’t seem to be able to lose,” he said softly. “Why did it happen, Guinevere?”

  She would not, could not take this path. “I don’t know,” she said in an exasperation that was only part genuine, but was directed as much at herself as at him. She turned her head aside so that he dropped his hand. “And I would rather not talk about it again. It was moon madness.”

  He shrugged and the light faded from his eyes so that they took on the cool hue of pewter. “As you please. What are these matters we have to discuss?”

  “The details of the journey. I find that Master Crowder, Magister Howard, and Greene cannot be ready to leave in the morning.”

  “So … you leave them behind.” He spoke as if it were a foregone conclusion.

  “No, I do not,” she said steadily. “You have decreed a very abrupt departure, my lord. There are estate matters that must be addressed. I can’t leave an entire household without money or orders.” She regarded him with a mocking smile. “Of course, I realize tha
t someone else is going to take over Mallory Hall, some absentee landlord. But it won’t happen immediately and my people must not suffer from my absence.”

  Hugh pulled at his earlobe. “So what do you suggest, madam?”

  “If you insist …” She paused, infinitesimally but significantly … “Then Tilly, my daughters, and I will be ready to leave with you at sunup tomorrow.”

  “I do so insist.” With a gesture, he invited her to continue.

  “My household will follow us as soon as the arrangements have been made. Provisions for the journey, for instance. They shouldn’t have any difficulty catching up with us, we won’t be able to ride too fast with the girls.”

  “Very well.” He inclined his head in acknowledgment.

  “I need to know the route you intend to take, my lord.”

  “We will go through Chesterfield.”

  “It makes better sense to take the route through Derby,” she said. “You’re not particularly familiar with the roads in this county?” She raised an eyebrow.

  “We came through Chesterfield. It seemed a sensible route.”

  “The road through Derby is more traveled and the surface is better,” she said firmly. “It will be easier for my people traveling with carts of provisions to catch up with us if we take the Derby road.”

  She turned aside for a minute, then said in a voice that sounded stifled, “Lord Hugh, I must have the magister at my side in London. It will take him at least a day to crate the books I’ll need. Surely you’ll not deny me the chance to defend myself.”

  “That was never in question.” Hugh had the feeling that more lay beneath this conversation than was apparent, and yet he couldn’t identify it. Everything she said made sense, and he had no brief to deny her right to defend herself. If she needed books and her mentor he wouldn’t keep them from her. “You know the county better than I, madam … by the bye, Matlock is on the Derby road, is it not?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “Mmm,” he murmured. Passing through Matlock would enable him to make some inquiries into Timothy Hadlow's death. Even though he had sufficient cause to accuse her of Mallory's murder, and he only needed one murder to bring her to Privy Seal, the circumstances of Hadlow's accident, if such it was, intrigued him. As indeed did the circumstances of Guinevere's marriage to Hadlow. He would like to discover whether it had been considered happy, and there would be tenants in Matlock and the surrounding countryside who would know things, and who would certainly have opinions.

  “Very well,” he said with a brisk nod. “We will take the Derby road.”

  “Then I’ll tell my people that they should try to catch up with us when we break the journey at Kedleston,” Guinevere said, her voice calm. “I assume you’ll permit us to rest for a day every so often? My children can’t be expected to ride day after day without respite. Every second day, they’ll need a break.”

  “I had assumed as much,” Hugh said. “But when and where we break the journey will be for me to decide. It’ll depend on weather conditions as much as anything else.”

  “My daughters are not campaigners,” she said tartly. “You cannot expect from them what you expect from Robin.”

  “I understand that,” he said quietly. “You need have no fear that I’ll expect more from them than they can manage.”

  No, she thought. Whatever else she might fear it wasn’t that. She offered him a neutral smile. “I thank you, Lord Hugh, for your understanding.”

  Hugh nodded, then said in a different tone, “What have you told Pen and Pippa?”

  “What I imagine you’ve told Robin.” Her voice was sharp.

  “There's no need for them to be alarmed,” he said in awkward agreement.

  “Isn’t there, my lord?” Her eyes defied him to deny it. “Have you thought for one minute what will happen to my children?”

  She turned in a swirl of dark red silk and walked away.

  Hugh swung away into camp. He would take her daughters. He would fight for them in the proxy courts and he would win them. But how could he say that to Guinevere? Telling her that he had made determination for her children was tantamount to agreeing that she was about to end her life on the scaffold.

  Just before dawn the next morning Hugh rode into the lower court. He sat his black destrier, one hand resting on the hilt of the sword at his hip, as he looked around at the bustle of departure. Two men were strapping wooden trunks onto the back of a packhorse. Grooms held Guinevere's milk-white mare, two ponies, and a sturdy mule. The mule was presumably for the tiring woman. It looked strong enough but it would slow them down. The ponies were of good blood, but they too wouldn’t have the speed of his own horses, or, indeed, of Guinevere's beautiful mare. And once the servants with their carts of provisions and books joined them the procession would slow even more.

  He had close to two months to make the journey before the shortening days of autumn. He was going to need all that time, Hugh reflected grimly. Heading up a combination of nursery and traveling library was a far cry from commanding a brigade of hard-riding soldiers.

  He glanced up at the lightening sky. His horse shifted beneath him, sensing his rider's impatience. Hugh wanted the business over and done with. He was wrenching a woman and her children from their home, and he had no wish to drag out the process.

  Guinevere appeared from the house. She was with the magister and Crowder and did not immediately acknowledge Hugh's presence.

  Guinevere knew he was there, though. It was impossible not to be aware of him in the early-morning gloom. He was such a … such a substantial figure, she thought, groping for the right word to describe him. Substantial, powerful … she could well imagine he inspired fear and awe in his men, and the mental image of him with drawn sword on a battlefield sent a shiver down her spine.

  With that cropped iron-gray hair beneath a flat black cap, the piercing light of his brilliant blue eyes, his square shoulders accentuated by the leather doublet he wore beneath a short gown of gray worsted, he struck her as a veritable Genghis Khan, raiding and dispossessing innocent women and children. Even if she succeeded in escaping him, she was still going to be driven from her home, reduced to relative penury, condemned to lose everything she’d worked so hard for, to spend the rest of her life in some form of exile. It was a recognition bitter as wormwood.

  “We’ll be waiting for you at Cauldon, my lady,” Crowder said in a whisper.

  “God willing,” she returned. “Where are the girls?”

  “They wanted to say farewell to the dogs,” the magister told her.

  Guinevere glanced across at the man on his horse. She could feel his impatience from here. “You’d better send someone to fetch them, Crowder.” She walked slowly towards the massive destrier. “Lord Hugh, you’re anxious to complete this dispossession, I see. ’Tis not yet dawn.”

  He looked down at her, noting how pale and composed she was. But there were bruised shadows beneath her sloe eyes. She was wearing the gown of emerald green silk that she’d been wearing when he’d first seen her hunting in the woods; the same dark green hood with its jeweled edge set well back from her forehead revealing the pale shimmer of her hair.

  “I see little point in delaying the inevitable, madam.”

  “No.”

  “Mama … Mama … is it time to go?” Pippa's voice preceded her flying appearance from the upper court. “We’ve been saying good-bye to the dogs and the stable cats. The big gray one, the one we call Wolf … her kittens are old enough to leave her now. Pen and me, we’re going to take one each with us. Oh, good morning, Lord Hugh. See my kitten.” She greeted him sunnily, holding up a tiny bundle of silver fur. “Pen's is ginger. It's a male and mine's female, so when we get to London they might have kittens together. We haven’t thought up names for them yet.”

  God's bones! A nursery, a library, and now a farmyard!

  He glanced at Guinevere and saw that she was regarding him with sly challenge, waiting to see how he was going to deal wit
h this one.

  “Your mother will explain to you why it's impossible for you to bring kittens on such a journey,” he said, with a decisive nod at Guinevere.

  “Oh, but Mama, they’ll remind us of home,” Pen said, coming up to them clutching her own soft parcel of ginger fur. She was looking distressed, as if the reality of leave-taking had suddenly hit her. “We have to leave everything behind, couldn’t we just take these two? They won’t be any trouble. They’re so tiny.”

  “Yes, please!” Pippa chimed in. “They won’t be any trouble, we’ll look after them, and they’ll remind us of home.”

  Guinevere regarded Hugh with an undeniably malicious glimmer in her eye. “Just a memento,” she murmured. “It's so very hard for them to have to leave everything behind.”

  Hugh glared at her. He could feel two pairs of pleading hazel eyes fixed hopefully upon him. How could he possibly refuse them in the circumstances? As Guinevere damn well knew, he reflected savagely. She was watching his dilemma with undisguised enjoyment.

  He turned away from the mockery in her gaze and said curtly to the girls, “Very well. But they’re your responsibility and I don’t want to lay eyes on them, ever. Is that understood?”

  “Oh, yes,” Pen said, her expression transformed. She tucked the kitten into her cloak. “Thank you.” She gave him a smile that was so like her mother's it took Hugh's breath away. No wonder Robin was smitten.

  The sun rose above the horizon and the soft pink light filled the lower court, setting the mellow stone of the house aglow. “Mount up!” he commanded curtly. “I wished to leave at sunup. We’ve a good many miles to cover today.”

  He turned his horse and rode through the arched doorway and out onto the gravel path. At the bridge he drew rein and waited for them. The small procession of women and children emerged within minutes from the house and Hugh again felt that inconvenient stab of remorse … of fear for what lay ahead for them.

  Supposing he just abandoned his mission. Just turned and rode away.