He closed the door and leaned back against it, watching her across the room. ‘You don’t care to dance tonight?’
Anna shook her head. ‘I am tired. It is odd, Robert—I feel as if I have passed a hundred years today, many lifetimes.’
‘I wearied you with the long walk.’
‘Nay. I am not weary, not now. And—and I am more grateful than I can say that you allowed me to meet your sister.’
‘I could have done nothing else after you shared your own secrets with me.’
‘Secrets?’ she asked.
‘About your marriage.’
Anna glanced back down at the party guests, dancing on as if in giddy oblivion. ‘Mine was not a secret so much as a pitiful tale I don’t care to remember.’
‘Then I’m doubly honoured you remembered it with me,’ he said.
She heard Rob move, felt his warmth against her back as he shut the window and silence fell over the chamber.
‘You’ll grow cold there,’ he said. ‘Come, sit by me on the bed for a while.’
He took her hand in his and led her back to the bed. Anna let him help her slide beneath the bedclothes and tuck them round her before he sat beside her against the bolsters. His arm lay lightly over her shoulders and she smiled up at him. Aye—this was what she had waited for. To be with him, alone in the quiet.
‘I’m certainly warm enough now,’ she said. ‘And the walk today was not too far at all.’
‘Mary liked you very much, I could tell,’ he said. ‘You were very gentle with her.’
Anna rested her head on his shoulder with a sigh. ‘That poor, sweet girl. You have made her a safe haven, Robert.’
‘Whether I can keep it safe for her is less certain,’ he muttered. ‘I brought this for you in thanks.’ He laid the book he held on her lap, and its fine red-leather cover glowed in the low firelight.
‘I need no thanks,’ she said. ‘But I’m always willing to accept books.’ She ran her palm over the soft leather and traced the title in raised gilt letters. Demetrius and Diana—the poem she had been reading in London, the tale of the poor shepherd and his impossible love for a goddess.
She opened it, and saw that it was not a printed book but one handwritten on vellum, as if it was the original manuscript especially bound. She knew that writing well; she saw it often on scripts at the White Heron.
‘You are the author of Demetrius and Diana!’ she whispered, astonished. How could he keep that a secret, when it was the most astonishingly wonderful thing she had ever read? ‘Why did you not tell me before?’
Rob shrugged and laid his hand atop hers on the book. His fingers moved like a whispering caress over her skin. ‘My plays are there for all to see, but my poems—they come from somewhere deeper, I think. Somewhere I don’t want everyone to know.’
‘But this work is beautiful! And very popular, too, though no one knows the real author yet,’ Anna protested. ‘The language and images are so vivid and real, and the emotions— This work could bring you great fame if you let it be known. They do say Queen Elizabeth rewards her favoured poets richly.’
‘What would I do with more fame?’ he asked with a laugh. ‘Or with the Queen’s rewards?’
‘Do you never seek a new life, Robert?’ she questioned. She remembered how he had looked as they walked by the river, so happy and carefree. Or perhaps she had only misread that, putting her own secret desires on to him, and he missed the constant movement and upheaval of London. ‘You would miss having everyone hear your words onstage, I’m sure.’
‘My truest words are in here, fairest Anna, for those who care to seek them.’ He tapped lightly at the book’s cover. ‘And now I give them to you.’
‘It is a very fair gift,’ she said. ‘I will use it to remember these days at Hart Castle, the good and bad of them alike.’
He raised her hand and pressed a warm, open-mouthed kiss to the centre of her palm. ‘I hope you only ever remember the good, Anna. You deserve naught but sunshine and laughter all your days.’
She smiled at him, tenderness flooding her heart at the sight of his tousled hair and shadowed eyes. That ice she had built around her heart in the bleak days with her husband had melted entirely away, and she felt only those sunshine wishes.
She laid her other hand against his face, cupping his cheek, and said softly, ‘How dull that would be, with no poetry to fill my hours.’
Rob’s arms came around her and he pulled her against his body as they both rose to their knees in the middle of the bed. His mouth came over hers in a hungry kiss, and she closed her eyes to tumble head-first into that dark, swirling, heated world she always found with him. She had never felt closer to anyone before, bound to him by desire and joy and sadness all tied into one.
She parted her lips in welcome and felt his tongue sweep against hers, tasting her just as she was hungry for him. She met his kiss with equal fervour, full of all the terrible, passionate longing she always felt with him. It was a primeval, overwhelming force she couldn’t deny. She wrapped her arms around his neck, holding him so close there could be nothing separating them now. She wished she could be even closer, that she could make him entirely her own.
His lips slid to her throat, to the bare skin where her chemise fell away from her shoulder. Gently he urged her back down to the bed and drew the fabric away from her legs, up and up. He kissed her ankle, tracing his tongue over the arch of her foot. It tickled and tingled, and it made her want to laugh and cry out with need all at the same time.
He kissed the soft skin just behind her ankle. He lightly bit at it and traced his mouth up to her knee, the back of her thigh.
‘Robert…’ she whispered.
‘Shh, just lie still,’ he said against her skin. He rose up on his knees between her legs and urged her thighs farther apart as he eased her chemise up to her waist. He used the fabric to draw her closer and softly blew on the damp, sensitive curls above her womanhood.
‘Robert!’ she cried out. The sensation of his breath, his mouth, was almost too much. She arched her hips away but he wouldn’t let her go. And she didn’t really want to get away from him. She wanted to stay with him, just like this, with a desperate need she had never known before.
He leaned closer and kissed her just there. With one hand he held her down to the bed, and with the other he spread the wet folds of her so he could kiss her even more deeply, more intimately. His tongue plunged deep inside her, rough and delicate at the same time, tasting her, pressing at that one rough, sensitive spot. She moaned and twined her fingers in his hair to hold him with her.
It was so terribly intimate, somehow even more than when they joined together in sex, and she felt utterly open and vulnerable to him, yet also strong and powerful. She wanted to shout out at the joy of being with him!
His mouth eased away from her to kiss the inside of her thigh. He slid up along her body and caught her by the hips as he kissed her lips. He tasted of wine and mint, and also, shockingly, of her, and it made her cry out against him. She tilted her hips and felt the hardness of his own desire on her stomach.
They fell together, entwined, to the bed. She moaned again, the only sound her blurry voice could make. She could hold no thoughts now, only emotions, feelings she had pressed down inside for so long that they overwhelmed her now. Tears pierced her eyes as she turned her head away from him, and his open mouth traced her cheek, her eyelids, her temple where the pulse beat so frantically. He bit at her earlobe, his breath hot in her ear, and they shuddered together.
Her hands tunnelled under his shirt to trace the groove of his spine, the hard muscles of his back and shoulders. His skin was taut and damp under her touch, so warm and alive it was amazing.
He reached between them to unfasten his breeches and release his erect penis. It was hard and ready, and she spread her legs wider in invitation. With a deft twist of his hips he drove into her and buried himself to the hilt.
She wrapped her legs around his waist and moved with hi
m, hard and fast, and then even faster. She held tight to his shoulders, letting that rough, burning pleasure build inside her. Together they climbed higher and higher, until they could leap free and soar into the sky.
‘Anna!’ he shouted above her. ‘Anna, Anna—I can’t…’
‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘I know. I’m here. I’m here.’
He collapsed beside her, and they held on to each other as the night closed in around them.
Chapter Twenty
‘Sheldon is in debt to some very powerful people,’ Rob muttered as he examined the papers spread over Edward’s desk. The documents Elizabeth’s bold niece had stolen from Thomas Sheldon’s London home were a scattered lot, snatched up quickly and in places incomplete, but they painted a dark picture of financial desperation.
And, for a man as socially ambitious as Sheldon, desperation was not a good state.
Edward tossed down the half-finished letter he studied. ‘He has made promises to the Queen’s courtiers he can’t keep in return for their loans. Now it seems he has turned to less exalted means of finding money.’
‘Bankside moneylenders, pimps and swords for hire,’ Rob said. He slumped back in his chair and propped his boots up on the table. Outside in the garden could be heard shrieks of happy laughter as Elizabeth led a game of blindman’s buff, but that light-hearted scene seemed far away from the closed-in library. This was his real world, and he could never escape it for long.
‘Such a man would not stop at taking Spanish or French coin, either,’ said Edward. ‘Treason is not so far beneath him—especially if he feels he is not getting his due attention from Queen Elizabeth.’
‘Is he the one we seek?’ Rob said. ‘The man who used the theatre as his base of traitorous communications?’
Or was Rob searching for straw men—anyone to replace Anna’s father in Walsingham’s suspicions? Perhaps Sheldon was too stupid, too desperate for the patient planning of such a scheme.
But traitors were often simple-minded and overconfident—it was what got them caught in the end. Look at Babington and his friends, and their wild scheme to free Mary of Scotland.
‘We must trap him well and good,’ Rob said.
‘I’ve made a fair start—inviting him here, flattering him, cajoling him, even as it has made me feel ill,’ Edward said. He went to the window and watched Elizabeth as she laughed with the others. ‘Elizabeth hates him for trying to wed her niece… She doesn’t see how I can stomach his presence even for our scheme. But I can invite him here again, if I must.’
‘I fear our time to spring the trap grows short,’ said Rob. He reached inside his doublet and withdrew the folded message that had arrived only that morning, before Anna and most of the house were even awake. ‘From Seething Lane.’
Edward scowled and snatched the note from Rob’s hand, reading it hastily. ‘They are closing in?’
‘They want this business done—one way or another,’ Rob said grimly. ‘We must find out if Sheldon is our man and make haste back to London with the evidence.’
‘Damn it all!’ Edward cursed, slamming the paper onto the desk. ‘If only Lady Essex had stayed here longer, until we had more evidence for her to carry to her father.’
Rob shook his head. ‘’Tis better she is there, to delay them if she can. You should visit Sheldon yourself—ride over to his estate this afternoon and see what you can find. I will talk more with your other guests. They should know the latest gossip.’
Suddenly there was a shout from the garden and ladies’ screams—not of joy but alarm. Edward threw open the window and leaned out to see what was happening. Rob sauntered over to peer over his shoulder.
Two of the men were arguing heatedly, it appeared over one of the sobbing ladies, and it looked as if blades were in imminent danger of being drawn.
‘And now a brawl in my house, on top of all else,’ Edward growled. ‘Come, Rob, let’s break up this dog fight before it destroys my fine garden.’
They snatched up their own swords from where they lay on the desk and ran out of the library after sweeping the papers into the drawer. Even the servants had gathered at the open front doors to watch the fight.
‘Another dull country day,’ Rob said with a wry laugh. Merriment could turn to violence in only a moment.
* * *
‘Is anyone here?’ Anna called. She made her way slowly down the corridor, peering past darkened doorways. She had slept late, and awakened to find Rob gone and her stomach grumbling with hunger, so she’d quickly dressed and ventured out to find some food.
But the house seemed eerily quiet—no guests laughing or playing cards, not even a servant to be seen.
Anna heard a muffled shout from beyond a closed door, and tested the latch to find it unlocked. It was a small library, the panelled walls lined with shelves of valuable books and a desk piled up with blank sheets of parchment and pots of ink and quills. The window was half-open, and that was where the noise came from.
She hurried over to peer outside. When she had first awoken and looked out to the garden there had been a merry game going on—men chasing ladies between the flowerbeds as everyone shrieked with laughter. Now it seemed turned to sudden strife. Two men stared at each other in smouldering fury, blades half drawn, while one of the women sobbed.
Rob and Edward held them apart, and Rob was speaking to them in a low, quick voice. It seemed he was as good at defusing fights as he was at causing them. She learned new aspects of him every day, yet still she couldn’t believe she would ever know all of him.
A cool wind rushed in from the garden and ruffled the papers on the desk, sending some of them fluttering to the floor. Anna knelt down to retrieve them before they could blow away. Most of them were blank, but one, torn in half and then quarter-wise, so only a portion remained, was covered in tiny, smudged cross-writing. As she rose to place them back on the desk, a scribbled name on the page caught her attention.
Peter Spencer. One of the Lord Henshaw’s Men at the White Heron.
‘Why would Lord Edward have a list of actors?’ Anna whispered. For a proposed performance at Hart Castle, perhaps? Curious, she turned the fragment over and tried to read its closely writ lines.
There were more names, but not all of them were actors. She recognised a few as young, rebellious noblemen—second sons with nothing to do but get into trouble gambling and drinking, and perhaps dabbling in forbidden Catholicism. There were numbers after each name, various amounts of money, and with some there were other notes. A Spanish name—D. Felipe—and amounts in scudas plus one word—‘Received.’
Had these men received Spanish money, as well as English? A double-cross scheme?
But who was being crossed? And why did Edward Hartley have such a list?
As Anna stared down at the strange document in her hand, a terrible thought struck her. Did Edward work for Walsingham, as Rob did? Were they here to conspire on some scheme? Catching double agents and traitors? The paper looked messy, harmless, but she suddenly feared it would burn her if she held it too long.
Her fingers trembled and she felt as if the warm garden breeze had turned to freezing ice on her skin. Rob’s dangerous work followed him everywhere, touched everything—now it followed her, as well.
She turned back to the desk and tried to organise the papers just as they had been, as if she could thus put the world back the way it had been. As she tugged a blank sheet over it a name scribbled in tiny letters at the bottom of the list stood out to her.
Tom Alwick—and a question mark and a star.
Her father. On an intelligencer’s list.
Anna pressed her hand to her mouth to hold back a cry. Her father suspected by Walsingham? Nay, it could not be. He thought of nothing but the theatre and the tavern, his friends and his ale. He could never have the discretion and the caution needed for spying. He could never be…
A traitor.
Surely that question mark meant he was only suspected? Considered because he knew so
many actors—the men Rob had said were especially sought out by Walsingham for their skills and their need of money. All people of the theatre, of Southwark’s businesses, were liable to suspicion.
But mere suspicion could so easily get men tortured and killed.
Anna heard voices again outside the window. She quickly straightened the pages back into place on the desk and looked to see what was happening in the garden. The quarrelling company had dispersed, and Rob and Edward were walking back to the house. They talked together quietly, confidently, as old friends did. Anna remembered how Rob had said they’d known each other since boyhood.
Did they work together now to find traitors in the people around her?
She hastily brushed away the hot tears that prickled at her eyes and spun round to rush out of the library. She had to leave Hart Castle at once—to get back to her father in London and warn him to be on his guard. He had to look hard at his friends, be wary of what he said—and perhaps even leave London for a time.
And she had to hide from Robert the fact that she’d seen that paper. What if he was working against her? Searching for a way to trap her father while—while making love to her?
‘No,’ she whispered. Her whole body felt so cold and brittle, as if she would snap in two. The room turned hazy and pale at the edges, as if in a dream. Perhaps this was a dream, all of it, and she would soon awake in her own narrow bed in Southwark.
She hurried up the stairs, past the servants who had finally reappeared to do their morning tasks, and back to her fine borrowed chamber. She had to be gone from this place, and all its deceptive dreams.
She quickly traded her soft leather shoes for boots, and pinned her hair up under her hat. The rich costumes would have to be left behind in her haste to leave, but perhaps Elizabeth would send them on to the theatre once Anna had seen her father safe.
The Taming of the Rogue Page 18
