‘In a chamber at Walsingham’s house. We’ve been here three days now.’
‘Three days?’ Anna stared at him and saw that his face was drawn, his eyes hollow, as if he too had been ill. ‘Have you been here with me all that time?’
He kissed her hand. ‘Someone had to drive away that clownish doctor before he bled you dry.’
‘Oh, Robert.’ She almost cried at the realisation that he had stayed with her in her fever, that he had nursed her. ‘Are we safe, then? Or are we prisoners still?’
‘Safe? Your fever has broken. Surely you will recover your strength now.’ His voice was low and terribly gentle, as if to hold her at a distance.
‘Nay, I mean—you are not under arrest? My father is not suspected?’ she asked, desperate to know.
Rob laughed wryly. ‘The last we heard of your father he was drinking ale at the Three Bells. It was thought better not to tell him of your illness until you were improved. And Sheldon has given up all his allies under Walsingham’s questioning. The mere sight of the torture implements made him tell all. It was only Ennis and two other actors, as well as another disgruntled man in Sheldon’s circle. Not the most organised conspiracy Walsingham has ever faced.’
Anna nodded, feeling the deepest sense of relief—and a deeper wave of exhaustion. Rob and her father were safe—for now, anyway. Rob was with her. She was alive.
But she was also so very tired. ‘I think I need to sleep now,’ she murmured.
‘Of course,’ Rob said quickly. He helped her lie back down on her soft pillows and drew the bedclothes around her. ‘You need to be strong again, and rest will make you well.’
Anna held on to his hand as she drifted back into sleep. Surely she had all she needed to make her well now.
Just before the darkness claimed her, she felt his kiss on her brow and heard him whisper, ‘Sleep now. I will see you well and happy before I go…’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
‘I cannot wait to leave this place,’ Anna whispered as she tucked her meagre belongings into a travel case. The Walsingham house was a silent, dark edifice that seemed to press in around her with the terrible weight of all that had happened there, and Secretary Walsingham’s illness. The very walls seemed to hold on to Anna’s own pain and fear, and even though Lady Essex and her mother had been very kind Anna wanted nothing more than to go home.
Wherever ‘home’ was.
She paused in folding a chemise to consider that word home. She would go back to her father’s house behind the White Heron, of course, for there was nowhere else to go. Back to the bustle and noise of the Southwark streets, ledger books and collecting rents, and keeping her father from drinking too much.
Yet in her illness she had had such dreams—a tantalising glimpse of other possibilities. A place of her own, quiet and peaceful, with her own garden, her own books of poetry to read, her own hearth to sit by in the evenings. And Robert sitting there with her, talking and laughing about the day they had just passed and their hopes for tomorrow.
Anna reached for Demetrius and Diana, cradling its soft cover in her hands. It was already worn with all her reading. Could Robert ever leave his London house of adventure and danger, his adoring audiences and tumultuous street brawls, to write poetry in the country with her? Could he be happy there?
She thought of how he had sat by her in her illness, bathing her fevered skin, holding her hand. How tender and careful he was—and how close they were bound by all that had happened. Surely there was hope in that? Surely he cared for her, and one day might…?
Might come to love her as she loved him?
Did she even dare to hope?
There was a knock at the door, and Lady Essex peered inside. ‘Mistress Barrett, I came to see if you needed any assistance in packing, but I see you are nearly done. I hope you haven’t tired yourself too much.’
Anna smiled at her. She had come to like Lady Essex in the time she had spent sitting by Anna’s bed while Rob rested, reading to her or talking of Court fashions and gossip. There was a kindness to her, but also a great sadness that showed how even the greatest nobility were not excluded from the troubles of the world. The pains of love.
‘I have so little to pack I could hardly grow tired from it,’ Anna said. ‘I needed to move about before I became too accustomed to sitting by the fire being waited on. You and your mother have been the most excellent of hostesses.’
‘Although the circumstances have been deplorable, we’ve been glad you’re here. You’ve given my mother a welcome distraction when she most needs it.’ Lady Essex carefully folded a pile of snowy handkerchiefs. ‘Now I suppose you will go back to your theatre?’
‘Yes. My own father needs me, as yours needs you.’
‘My father does not need anyone—not really,’ Lady Essex said. ‘Nor does my husband. Not as Master Alden needs you.’
‘Rob doesn’t need me. He only…’ Anna suddenly heard a noise from the courtyard below her window, and she hurried over to investigate. A groom had led a horse onto the cobblestones and was settling a saddle on its back. It was an unusual sight, for it seemed no one had come or gone from the house since Sheldon and Ennis had been hauled to the Tower.
‘Does your father have an errand today?’ Anna asked.
Lady Essex peered over Anna’s shoulder and shook her head. ‘My father hasn’t ridden in a long time. Everyone comes here to him now.’
As they watched, it was Rob who emerged from the house with a leather messenger bag slung over his back. He spoke to the groom and glanced up at Anna’s window. She instinctively shrank back behind the curtain, where she could not be seen, and saw him climb up into the saddle.
He looked grim and sad, and very determined, and that look on his face planted a touch of chilly disquiet in Anna’s heart.
‘Is your father sending him on another mission?’ Anna asked Lady Essex, who shrugged and looked just as confused as Anna felt.
‘My father sometimes lets me deliver messages for him, as lately I did to Hart Castle,’ she said, ‘but he seldom talks to anyone about his work, or about the people he employs. I would have thought Master Alden would be of no use to him now, after this escapade.’
‘Why is that?’ Anna asked in alarm. To be ‘of no use’ to Walsingham sounded like a dangerous thing.
‘It has gained attention, and Master Alden has worked for my father for a long while now. Such people are usually given a pension and retired.’ Lady Essex took Anna’s hand and said soothingly, ‘I am sure he is only on an errand of his own and will soon return.’
Anna was not so sure as she studied Rob’s solemn face through the windowpane. She knew him well by now, and had learned his expressions and gestures—the way he tried to hide his darker side from her and protect her. Something told her something was amiss now.
She lifted the hem of her skirts and ran from the chamber and down the stairs, ignoring the pain in her side from the bandaged, healing wound. She took a couple of wrong turns, but finally tumbled out into the courtyard as Rob gathered the reins in his gloved hands.
‘Where are you going?’ she demanded.
He looked at her calmly, as if he had been expecting her, but his face was cool and polite. So very different from when she’d been ill and he had never left her side. ‘I have a new task to perform for Secretary Walsingham, since my old one is now concluded. Clumsily so, I admit, but I have been given another chance.’
‘Another chance to risk your life among villains?’ Anna demanded, fear rising up in her.
‘To do my work,’ he said impatiently, and Anna felt she had never known him at all. Never sighed in passion in his arms, never felt his tenderness. He was a stranger.
‘And where might this work be?’ she countered tightly.
‘In France,’ he said, as lightly as he might have said in Spitalfields.
‘France!’ she cried. He was going away to France—across the sea, to hunt down England’s enemies and perhaps die—and he had not
even said farewell? After everything they had done together?
After—after she had thought herself in love with him, and even dared think he might come to love her, too?
She felt as if she was sinking into the ground, her heart like a stone in her chest, and a loud buzzing grew in her ears. She grabbed on to his saddle to keep from falling.
‘Why didn’t you come to tell me? To say goodbye?’ she asked, a feeling of numbness spreading over her body.
‘I left a letter with Lady Walsingham to be given to you,’ he answered.
He swung down from the horse to land lightly beside her. He took her hands in his, but Anna could hardly feel it. She stared down at their joined fingers and felt as if she watched from a great distance.
‘What does the letter say?’ she said. ‘That we had a merry time together but now you are off to France and adventures new?’
‘Anna, I would hardly call our time together merry,’ he said, his hands still tight on hers. ‘Kidnappings, fights, imprisonments, wounds—you deserve much better than what I brought you.’
‘Is that why you are leaving? Because we are a curse on each other?’ she cried.
‘It’s for the best. I must do this if I am to hold my promise to you,’ he said, his voice cold and distant, as if he was already gone from her.
Anna shook her head. ‘And what promise is that?’
‘To protect you. I failed in that before. I will hold to it now.’
‘How can you protect me if you are in France?’ she whispered in confusion.
‘Men like Sheldon and Ennis will have no need to hurt you if I am not here,’ he said. ‘You can find a better man—a man with no secrets. A country squire who can give you the peaceful home you want, children, quiet days.’
That had long been her dream. But now she found those dreams were as nothing beside her feelings for Robert. She had come to crave his fire and passion, the passion that ignited something long frozen in her own soul and brought her to life again.
‘You deserve a life, as well,’ she said. ‘Please, Robert, don’t go now. Stay here in England.’
He raised her hands to his lips and kissed them with a lingering caress, as he had so many times. She tried to study him, to memorise the way he felt and looked, but it all seemed too unreal. He was leaving, their affair was over, and she couldn’t quite hold on to that terrible knowledge.
‘I must go, fairest Anna,’ he said. ‘Please—don’t forget me.’
He pressed a soft kiss to her brow and set her away from him. As Anna watched, rubbing her arms against the cold inside her, he swung back into the saddle and led the horse through the courtyard gates and out into the lane.
She hurried after him, but she didn’t call his name or try to bring him back. She knew that would be futile, and now she could only hold on to the tattered remains of her pride.
But she watched him until his horse turned the corner and he was gone from her sight. Gone from her life as suddenly as he had landed in it. She felt hollow inside.
‘Godspeed you, Robert, and keep you safe,’ she whispered. If only she could have done the same. If only—if only he could have loved her as she did him.
* * *
Rob stood on the crowded, bustling docks, watching as the ship that would carry him to France was loaded. Yet he truly saw none of it—didn’t hear the shouts and cries around him, the shove and clamour of the crowd.
He could only see Anna’s face as he had told her goodbye—how pale she’d been, her eyes huge and dark with pain. An echo of the same pain he felt in his own heart, sharp and more cruel than any dagger. That pain had grown and grown ever since he’d made his decision to leave her, and he knew it would never be gone from him. The loss of Anna was a mortal wound.
He gave a bitter, self-mocking laugh at the thought. He had spent his career creating the illusion of passionate, tragic love while keeping himself at a distance from such tumult. He had never really believed it—not until Anna.
She had slipped into his soul before he knew it, and she was there forever. No matter how many seas and mountains there were between them.
He turned away from the ship, telling himself he had to follow his chosen path alone. He had left Walsingham’s service. He was of no use to the Secretary now. He could carry on with such work no longer—not after it had injured Anna. But Walsingham had found him a place with a troupe of players connected to the Queen’s ambassador in Paris, and Rob had chosen to take it. If he was in Paris, Anna could move on with her life, free of him.
But, z’wounds, he did not want her to move on without him! He could still feel the touch of her hands, trying to hold on to him, still see the hurt and love in her eyes. She was his, just as he was hers. She had stood with him in the darkest moments, believed in him.
How could he ever do less for her?
Rob was suddenly filled with the burning, urgent need to find Anna, to beg her to give him a chance to prove himself to her. To spend his life trying to make her happy.
He would do anything at all just to stay with her.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘So you are home at last, Anna!’ she heard her father call from the sitting room as she stepped into the house behind the White Heron.
She put down her case on the floor and looked around her. The house looked so much the same she might never have left. There was more dust, and the smell of old food and spilled wine in the air without her housekeeping, but otherwise the days seemed to have stood still. Yet she felt so much older.
‘Aye, I’ve come back, Father,’ she answered. She took off the hooded cloak she had borrowed from Lady Essex and went to greet her father.
He embraced her and gave her cheek a hearty kiss, squeezing her until her side hurt and she had to suppress a gasp. ‘I’ve missed you, daughter,’ he declared.
‘So I see,’ Anna said with a laugh, extracting herself from his arms to sit down in her usual chair. She suddenly felt very tired. ‘I don’t think the hearth has been swept since I left.’
‘You haven’t been here to keep an eye on Old Madge, and it’s been busy,’ Tom said. ‘We’ve started rehearsals at the White Heron! So I have kept myself occupied while you were on your grand travels.’
‘Rehearsals for what? I thought you were reviving old productions for the time being.’
‘Why, Master Alden’s new play, of course. It is sure to be a great success.’
Anna sat up straighter in her chair. It was as if someone she’d thought dead—someone she mourned fiercely—had suddenly appeared before her at the mention of his name, and her emotions ran hot. ‘He sent you a new play?’
‘Certainly. It was delivered here only a few days ago, and then this morning another package arrived. The messenger said it was a gift for you.’
As Anna watched in puzzlement and confusion, her father fetched a small wooden chest from the desk and laid it on her lap. It was heavy and solid.
‘Have you opened this, Father?’ she asked.
‘Certainly not! It is for you.’ He gave a sheepish smile. ‘I may have given it a shake or two, though. Go on and open it.’
Anna slowly turned the little key in the lock and eased back the lid. It felt so strange to find a gift from Rob after their parting—as if a conversation she’d thought abruptly over still went on.
And what a conversation it was. Before her lay a pile of gold and silver coins, along with a smaller box and a note.
She unfolded the paper and read Rob’s bold, slashing hand: For your peaceful country cottage, fairest Anna. Don’t forget me. That was all. But when she opened the little box she found a ring—a band of small pearls set in gold. Another note, a mere sliver of parchment, told her this had once been his mother’s but now was hers, if she cared to wear it.
Cared to wear it? Anna pressed her hand to her mouth to keep from crying as she looked down at the ring. She felt doubly foolish now—first for letting Rob leave, and then for believing he cared nothing for her when her ins
tincts had told her that he did. Their time together had not been a lie. It could not be.
‘Father,’ she said in a choked voice. ‘What is this new play about?’
‘It’s quite splendid—exactly what an audience could desire,’ Tom answered. ‘A faraway kingdom where a princess falls in love with an assassin who saves her from a murderer, and she in turn saves him and redeems his soul from damnation. But they are parted, and he dies of love for her. Most moving, and several good fights, as well.’
‘What else does a story need?’ Anna murmured. She slid the ring onto her finger and locked up the chest of coins. It would not be for a country cottage where she would live alone, but for one to be shared. The princess had to fight for her assassin and his soul. She had to fight for her love. Rob had given her that strength, that belief in herself, and now she had to use it to bring him back to her.
‘I must leave again, Father,’ she said. ‘But I will return soon.’ And hopefully not alone.
* * *
The docks were crowded and chaotic as Anna pushed her way through, past sailors and confused passengers, stacks of crates waiting to be loaded. The salt-fish smell of the water and the hot tang of tar was thick there, and she was elbowed and jostled as she struggled to find her way.
Lady Essex had found the name of Rob’s France-bound ship for her—the Royal Henry—and it was to depart on the evening tide. But there were so many ships being boarded for just such voyages, and Anna could not tell them apart.
She was determined to find him, though, and to learn the truth once and for all. If he preferred his work—a life of danger and excitement—to a life with her, then she would have to let him go, no matter how hard that would be.
But if he did leave because he thought it was best for her—because he thought to protect her as his assassin could not protect the princess—then she would have to gather her courage and tell him her own truth. She would rather face any danger with him than a hundred quiet years without him. She had found life again with him—life and hope and passion. If there was any chance at all that he felt the same, she had to seize it.
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