The Champion (Knights of the Black Rose Series : Harlequin Historicals, No 491)

by Suzanne Barclay

  The corridor door opened, and Oliver peered around it. “My lord, your guests await in the—” His plain-as-pudding face twisted into a frown. “What is she doing here, my lord?”

  Linnet stood and shook out her skirts. “I had to come and see how my lord bishop fared.”

  Oliver sniffed. “He has myself and Brother Anselme to look after his health.” Of Thurstan, he asked, “Are you well enough to go below and dine?”

  Nay, he was not. But Robert de Lyndhurst had raised no weaklings. Never let your enemies see you are vulnerable. “Tell them I will be down directly.” But for how long could he continue? As the door closed behind Oliver, Thurstan’s eyes fell on the journal. What if he collapsed, and it fell into the wrong hands? Partly his concern was for the townsfolk whose sins he had sinned in recording…and in using against them. Mostly, it was for the document concealed behind the front cover of the journal. The charter, granting Simon the manor of Blackstone Heath. Thurstan had purchased the estate to give to Simon after his knighting, but the boy had promptly pledged himself to the Crusade. And died.

  Thurstan had still been reeling from the horrible news when his youngest half sister, Odeline, and her son had arrived. Her scandalous antics had resulted in her being exiled from court. If Thurstan did not provide for her, Odeline had cried, she and Jevan would starve. Not wanting that on his conscience, too, Thurstan had taken them both in. He’d also amended the charter, granting Blackstone to Jevan, provided he completed his studies at the cathedral school.-The boy was as vain and spoiled as his mother and no student, but Thurstan had hoped that the discipline would turn Jevan into a capable overlord.

  Now that Simon was back, the charter must be changed again so that Blackstone would go to him. Another bit of land could be found for Jevan, or perhaps coin so he could buy—

  “Thurstan…” Linnet’s eyes were filled with tears.

  “Do not fret, my dear.” He managed to stand and found his legs steadier than expected. “I am feeling better.” Simon was alive, and Thurstan thought he knew what, if not who, was killing him. Hope fluttered in his chest for the first time in months. Directly after dinner, he would take the herbal brandy to Brother Anselme for examination. Perhaps ceasing to drink the stuff would be enough to save him. But the sense of impending doom did not lift. It moved over his skin like chilling fog—or a draft from the grave—making him tremble.

  “Thurstan?” Her hand closed over his on the journal.

  That damned journal with its dark secrets. “I want you to have this, my dear.” What better person to guard his secrets than the woman whose own transgression he had meticulously recorded within? After all, her life was intricately connected with Simon’s. With luck, the two of them might find the happiness that had eluded him and Rosalynd. “My favorite prayers are within.”

  “Thank you.” She clasped the book to her breast. “But I am afraid for you. For your soul. I would help you.”

  “You have helped, more than you know, but you must leave now, before Archdeacon Crispin comes looking for me and finds you here. Will you close the window on your way out?”

  She nodded, her expression still troubled, and hurried over to the window. “It is because I love you that I am worried, Thurstan,” she said as she drew the window shut.

  “Do not fret, my dear Linnet. I am feeling stronger by the moment. In a few days, I will send for you.” By then, he might know who had planned this vile deed. “We will sit together in the garden.” He would extract the charter from its hiding place in the journal and make the critical changes that would shift Blackstone Heath from Jevan’s grasp into Simon’s.

  Simon flung out of the bishop’s palace, barely hanging on to the temper that had plagued him all his days. He kicked stones from his path, imagining each was Bishop Thurstan.

  Dieu, the man was even more of a coldhearted, unfeeling monster than Simon had remembered.

  “It is because I love you that I am worried, Thurstan.” A choked female voice carried in the still air.

  Simon stopped in his tracks. He turned, looked over his shoulder and scanned the bishop’s palace, four stories of impressive stonework, broken at regular intervals by small windows. A lit one on the second story was just closing. A moment’s calculation told him it was the room he had just left. The bishop’s withdrawing room.

  Thurstan’s important visitor was a woman. A woman who openly professed her love for him. For an instant, Simon was sickened. Dieu, was there no limit to the man’s crimes?

  What if it was his mother?

  The notion hit Simon so hard he trembled. Then he crept up beneath the window and cocked his ear, but heard no more. Still shaking, he leaned against the building for support. The voice had been soft and so choked with emotion as to be ageless.

  Did she live here?

  On the chance that even Thurstan would not be so brazen as to keep his mistress within the cathedral, Simon ducked around the side of the building and hid in the bushes. The scent of roses from the nearby garden assailed his senses, temporarily piercing his turmoil. There had been nights in the desert when he’d lain awake, pining for England, for the damp air, the lush smell of grass and roses.

  He knew why.

  That last night in England he had dreamed of a woman, a woman whose skin smelled of roses, and whose touch had ruined him for all other women. Four years he’d spent searching in vain for a woman who completed him as she had.

  The crunch of footsteps on the gravel walkway shattered Simon’s reverie. Peering out, he saw a cloaked figure hurry away from the palace. The cowl hid face and hair, but the person was small and moved like a woman.

  His mother?

  His heart atangle with hope and dread, Simon emerged from hiding and followed.

  Thurstan stood with his hands braced on the table, his head bowed as he sought the strength to negotiate the winding stairs to the ground floor and endure the six-course meal. Hearing the door open, he lifted his head, hoping that Simon had returned.

  Odeline entered in a whisper of bright silk, gems winking like stars in the crispinette that held her hair back. She was the image of her mother, a clever, sensuous beauty who had caught Robert de Lyndhurst’s eye when he was fifty and she twenty, luring him to the altar, much to the disgust of Robert’s children. “Are you coming down to sup?”

  “Aye.” Thurstan rounded the desk, his slow, shuffling gait in marked contrast to Odeline’s catlike glide as she closed the distance between them. It was then, as she moved from shadow into the golden circle cast by the candles on the table, that he saw the fury in her emerald eyes. “You are upset.”

  “Upset?” She spat the word. Her hands came up, fingers curled into talons. “He is back, your bastard son.”

  Thurstan started. “What makes you say that?”

  “I saw him going down the stairs.”

  “Ah.” Thurstan sighed. “Few people m Durleigh know of Simon’s and my…connection. I would keep it that way.” At least until he’d discovered who was poisoning him.

  “As if I would want the world to know my brother the bishop did father a son on—”

  “Have a care, Odeline, lest your own indiscretions become common knowledge.”

  “A trade. My silence in exchange for Blackstone Heath.”

  “Blackstone is Simon’s. I’ll find another bone for your pup to chew on,” Thurstan said nastily.

  Her lips curled back in a feral snarl. “You promised my

  son that estate, and he will have it.”

  “Not without my say so. And I say nay.”

  “Bastard.” She struck him in the chest with both hands. Her shove sent Thurstan backward.

  He cried out, reaching for her as he lost his balance. She didn’t move. The last thing he saw before his head struck the desk was the smile that spread over her face. Even that winked out in a shower of inky stars.

  Chapter Two

  Someone was following her.

  The realization pierced the fog of misery that had
enveloped Linnet Especer since leaving Thurstan.

  Night had fallen while she’d been with Thurstan. The lights from the cathedral and the bishop’s palace winked back at her, islands of light in the darkness, promising a safe haven. Yet she dared not return. Archdeacon Crispin heartily disapproved of her relationship with Thurstan, and, since the bishop’s decline, he had become more vocal in voicing it. Not that she cared what the archdeacon thought of her, but his accusations sullied the good name of a man who was, to her, nearly a saint.

  There! A shadow drifted down the path from the palace, cloak billowing in the light evening breeze. One of the archdeacon’s spies, she thought in annoyance. Yet he was tall and moved with more purpose than any monk. As his cloak shifted again, she caught the glint of light on metal. A sword.

  The sheriff?

  The notion that Hamel Roxby might be after her quickened Linnet’s pulse and deepened her fear. Her closeness with Thurstan had kept the sheriff from pressing his unwanted attentions on her. But maybe Hamel had noted the bishop’s growing weakness and thought to take advantage of her.

  Her heart in her throat, Linnet rushed out through the stone gates of the cathedral courtyard and onto the Deangate. The street was nearly deserted, free of the pilgrims and worshipers who flocked to the cathedral by day. The most direct route back to her shop was along Colliergate where the charcoal burners plied their trade and thence across town to Spicier’s Lane. But it was also the least trafficked in the evening.

  So she darted along Deangate and into the center of Durleigh. The scent of freshly baked bread rolled over her as she rounded the corner onto Blake Street. The narrow thoroughfare was not crowded, but there were enough people hurrying in and out of the bakeshops lining it to make her feel a bit more comfortable. And the light from the open shop doors made her less afraid. Halfway down the street, she glanced back, hoping she had been wrong about her pursuer.

  Nay, there he was, just entering Blake, a head taller than those around him, his stride measured but purposeful. The way he moved, seeming to slide from one group of people to the next, sent a shiver of fear down her spine. He used them for cover as a fox might use stands of brush when sneaking up on a rabbit.

  Linnet did what any rabbit would do. She jumped down the nearest alleyway. Durleigh had been her home from infancy, and even in the dark she knew every twist and turn that would take her home. The Guildhall sat on the corner of High Gate and New Street, an imposing stone-and-timbered building, testament to the wealth of Durleigh’s tradesmen. Day or evening, the hall was usually abustle with activity. Tonight was no exception.

  Torches lined the front of the building, flickering in the wind, sending light and shadow over the clerks hurrying home for the day and paunchy merchants arriving for some supper. Many of them were known to her, but none would have aided her against the sheriff, either out of fear or because they believed she was Thurstan’s mistress and reviled her for that.

  Linnet lingered in the alley long enough to remove her cloak and fashion it into a bundle with the prayer book inside. She loosened her long, tawny braids, shook her hair free and pulled it about her face. As disguises go, it was not much, but if Hamel were indeed following her, he’d be looking for a cloaked woman, not the laundress she hopefully resembled.

  Emerging from the alley, Linnet fell into step with a pair of clerks who were heading south on High Gate. She dared not look back to see if Hamel followed for fear of dislodging her flimsy disguise. Her nape prickled, and an icy chill ran down her spine. With every step she took, she expected to be grabbed and spun about to face her longtime nemesis. But she walked on unmolested, past the market square.

  When they came abreast of the Royal Oak Inn, Linnet breathed a sigh of relief. Here, at least, she could count on aid. Bidding a silent thanks to the clerks, she slipped around to the kitchen of the tavern. With trembling fingers, she rebraided her hair as best she could, then pushed open the door. Light and the scent of richly spiced food spilled out, welcoming her.

  Across the kitchen, Elinore Selwyne looked up from ladling stew into wooden bowls. “Linnet. Whatever are you doing here at this time of night?”

  “I—I was passing,” Linnet said breathlessly.

  Elinore frowned, her sharp eyes scanning Linnet from head to toe. “What is it? What is wrong?”

  Conscious of how harried she must look, Linnet opened her mouth to explain, then noticed the maid loitering in the far doorway. Short and curvaceous, Tilly had sly brown eyes and a nose for gossip. Linnet’s apprentice, Aiken, fancied Tilly, but the maid had eyes only for the sheriff. It was rumored she’d been seen frequenting his small house near the market square.

  “I am hungry is all,” Linnet said, biding her time.

  “I see.” And Elinore likely did. Older than Linnet by a dozen years, she had inherited the inn from her father and now ran it with the help of her husband, Warin. Elinore’s tart tongue and keen head for business belied her kind heart. When Linnet’s father died the year before, Elinore had taken Linnet under her wing. She had offered comfort, support and advice when Thurstan’s intercession with the guild paved the way for Linnet to take over the apothecary. “Aiken has already been here to collect supper for your household, but you’d best stay here and eat. I have no doubt he and Drusa have gobbled down the lot.”

  Linnet managed a smile. Both her apprentice and her elderly maidservant had prodigious appetites. “I appreciate your offer.” Heart in turmoil, she set her cloak down on the floor beside the door and waited while Elinore finished filling the bowls.

  The tavern kitchen was small, but neat and efficiently run by the plump, pretty Elinore. A brick hearth tall enough to stand in filled the far end of the room. Inside it, a toothed rack supported two massive cauldrons for cooking. Before it sat the long plank worktable where the food was prepared, flanked by two chests, one for cooking implements, the other for spices. Shelves on the far wall held wooden bowls, horn spoons and platters for serving the broken meats, bread and cheese.

  “Serve that quick before it gets cold,” Elinore admonished, shooing Tilly out the door. “Now…” She advanced on Linnet, blue eyes steely. “Whatever has happened? You look all afright. Your hair is half undone, your eyes wild as a harried fox’s.”

  “Nothing.” Linnet’s lips trembled, and tears filled her eyes, making Elinore’s lined face blur.

  “Come. Sit down.” Elinore wrapped an arm around her waist and led her to the bench beside the table.

  Linnet sank down. “I—I fear the bishop is dying.”

  “Dying.” Elinore crossed herself. “What is it now?”

  Poison. But Linnet dared not voice her suspicions, even to her dearest friend. She did not want anyone to guess, as she had, that the bishop was killing himself out of grief. She, too, had mourned when Simon was reported dead. And Thurstan’s grief was all the sharper because he felt he’d failed Simon in life.

  Six months had not dulled the anguish of Simon’s passing for her, though she had never been his, not really. She had admired him from afar for years, but had only gotten close to him once. The night before the Crusaders left Durleigh. That single, brief encounter had changed her life forever. She mourned him deeply. It seemed impossible that so bright and vibrant a soul as Simon’s had been snuffed out.

  “The tonic you took the bishop last week did not help?”

  Linnet shook her head, fighting back her tears. If she let them fall, she feared she’d never stop crying. For Thurstan. For Simon. And for another life, lost to her, too.

  “He has not been well since last autumn when word came that the Crusaders had died.” Elinore patted her hand. “One and fifty is not such a great age, but when the heart weakens…”

  Or when it ceases to hope. Linnet sighed. “I fear you are right, but it hurts so to see him in such pain and be unable to help.” There was no antidote for monkshood, but if she could find his supply and destroy it, perhaps she could save him.

  “Your friendship has eased hi
m and brought him joy.” Elinore frowned. “But it has sullied your reputation, my dear.”

  “I do not care what others think of me.”

  “Not now, but when he is gone,” Elinore said delicately, “those whose tongues were stayed by the bishop’s power may speak out against you.”

  “Their words cannot harm me.”

  “They might if they cost you custom or your place in the guild,” said practical Elinore. “And then there is the matter of Sheriff Hamel’s persistent interest in you.”

  “Aye.” Linnet shivered. “Why can he not leave me alone? I have said time and again that I want nothing to do with him.”

  “Silly girl, you know little of men if you ask that.”

  Indeed. She had known only one man, and him so briefly.

  “Men are hunters who revel in the chase. To Hamel you are a challenge. If he caught you, he might well abandon you the next day and never bother you again.”

  Elinore’s words ripped open an old wound. Simon had taken Linnet’s innocence that warm spring night and looked straight through her the next morn when the Crusaders left Durleigh for the East. Nay, he had not done it out of meanness. Logically she knew darkness and drink had likely fogged his memory. After all, Simon had-been unaware of her existence, while she had mooned over him for some time. Fate had thrown them together for that brief, passionate interlude in the dark stables. Shame had driven her to creep off while he still slept. So it was her own fault if he did not know with whom he had lain that night.

  “Well, I will not give in to Hamel,” Linnet said. Though Simon was gone, she could not sully the memory of their loving by giving herself to another. And then there was the other, the greater sin that weighed on her conscience. She had already betrayed Simon once by giving away his most precious gift.

  “No woman should be forced to endure someone she dislikes. I am only saying that you must be prepared. If God does see fit to take our good bishop, Hamel may pursue you.”