Silken Threads

by Patricia Ryan

  A distant thud, as of a door closing, drew Graeham’s attention back to le Fever’s house. Olive, having delivered Ada le Fever’s medicine, was crossing the stable yard on her way to the gate in the low stone wall. Graeham shrank back a bit from the rear window, although she had no reason to look in his direction and probably wouldn’t notice his shadowy form even if she did.

  Petronilla jumped onto his bed, rammed her head against his hand and looked up at him, as if to say, “Well?”

  “Voluptuary,” he muttered, and turned back to the window to watch Olive duck into the alley.

  “Olive,” came a young man’s voice from the alley. Graeham saw shadows through the slats of the window shutters.

  “Damian,” she replied softly. “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you.”

  Petronilla head-butted Graeham again, yowling, “Now.”

  Olive gasped.

  “‘Tis but a cat. Olive, I must talk to you.”

  A pause, then, “You oughtn’t to do this. What if someone sees you? What if your father sees you?”

  “Now.”

  Damnable creature. Grudgingly Graeham scratched the cat’s head.

  “I care naught what my father thinks,” he said.

  “Then you’re a fool.”

  “Perhaps I am. But what he wants...what he demands...it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but you.”

  “I’m not...” She drew an unsteady breath. “I’m not what you think I am. There are things about me I could never tell you.”

  Gravely he said, “I have eyes and ears, Olive. There’s naught you can tell me that I haven’t already surmised.”

  “Oh, God,” she murmured, her voice breaking.

  “I love you anyway,” he said, so softly Graeham could barely hear. “I love you, Olive.”

  “Oh, God,” she said, her voice thick with tears. “Oh, God, you can’t know. I don’t believe it.”

  “It matters not. Olive, nothing matters but us. I love you.”

  “Nay...nay...we can never be together. Don’t you understand?” She was weeping in earnest now. “Let go of me.”

  “Olive, no! Don’t go—please. Olive!” Rapid footsteps receded down the alley toward Wood Street. Presently there came an extended sigh and a muttered curse, followed by footsteps headed in the opposite direction. From the rear window, Graeham saw a figure in a black mantle and felt hat heading toward Milk Street.

  * * *

  “Look!” Joanna held out the candles Mistress Hulda had given her as she entered the storeroom; Petronilla jumped down from Graeham’s cot to writhe against her legs. “I sold a kerchief to the chandler, and she paid me in candles. Just tallow, not wax, but they’re a far sight better than a rush stuck in a lump of fat.”

  “Excellent,” Graeham said distractedly. He wasn’t looking at her, but beyond her to the front of the house. Joanna turned and followed his line of sight to the shop window. Her attention was immediately commanded by a young woman sprinting across Wood Street. The hood of her green mantle slipped down, a cloud of coppery hair waving as she ran. She ducked into the apothecary’s and disappeared from view.

  “That’s Olive,” Joanna said. “The apothecary’s daughter.” With a knowing glance at Graeham, she added, “Pretty girl.”

  His look of concentration faltered; he met her gaze and smiled. “Is she?”

  “Is that not why you’re staring after her?”

  “Actually, no. She’s...upset.”

  “Upset.”

  “I heard her in the alley, talking to some fellow—a prospective suitor, from what I could tell, but she was resisting him. She became overwrought.”

  Joanna arched an eyebrow. “Is that how you amuse yourself all day, serjant? Earwigging on strangers’ conversations?”

  “It passes the time.” His expression sobered. “She ran away crying.”

  “Oh, dear.” Joanna turned and peered at the apothecary’s shop. “Life hasn’t been easy for that girl lately. I must find the time to talk to her. Perhaps tomorrow morning, before the fair.” And before Olive’s mother, who slept till nones more often than not, was up and about.

  “Fair?”

  “Aye, tomorrow’s Friday—they’ll be having the market fair at Smithfield. Hugh’s arranged to have your palfrey brought over from St. Bartholemew’s—he’s going to sell it for you.”

  “I’ve put your brother to quite a bit of trouble, haven’t I?”

  “He doesn’t mind. He grows bored and restless during his furloughs.” She smiled conspiratorially. “And the busier you keep him, the less time he has for his wine and his dice and his...easy women.”

  Somehow Graeham suspected that nothing could keep Hugh from his easy women. “You’re going with him to the fair?”

  “Aye.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought you’d want to leave the shop closed up for a whole day.”

  “A week ago I wouldn’t have. I couldn’t have risked losing any business that might have wandered by. But your four shillings have eased my circumstances a bit, and Hugh....he thought it would be a chance for me to get away from the shop for a while.” And to renew her acquaintance with the old friend he hoped to betroth her to. I’ll have Robert meet us at the fair, Hugh had suggested. I can’t very well bring him by the shop now. What would Graeham think, you entertaining a suitor while your husband is overseas? Wear something pretty Friday, and remember, don’t cover up that hair.

  She would have to bathe tonight, but Graeham’s presence here made that problematic; perhaps after he was asleep...

  “I used to love Smithfield,” Graeham said, somewhat wistfully. “We used to go almost every summer afternoon—the boys from Holy Trinity. Brother Simon, our prior, he liked to say it wasn’t just our minds and souls that needed nourishing, but our bodies. We’d play ball against the boys from St. Paul’s and St. Martin’s. And on Sundays we’d go and watch the jousting there.”

  She smiled, trying without success to envision this virile soldier as a boy. He would have been lanky and rather ungainly, she guessed; men of his stature tended to go through an awkward period as youths, before those rangy bones filled out with muscle.There was nothing awkward about him now, certainly—nor did a hint remain of the derelict she’d thought him to be that night she’d found him in her storeroom, caked with grime and reeking of wine. He’d shaved every day since he’d been here, probably more out of boredom than an obsession with grooming. His hair was always combed, his face clean. He had the most extraordinary, intently blue eyes she’d ever seen on a man—on anyone. His masculine beauty unsettled her. She didn’t like to look directly at him, fearful that her appreciation would show in her eyes.

  His manner was always polite and respectful. Although she knew his days were filled with tedium, and she often sensed that he would like for her to linger when she brought him his meals or tidied up the storeroom—and, in fact, she was frequently tempted to do so—he never pressed her. She had a shop to run, after all, and chores to tend to.

  And he unnerved her terribly, all scrubbed and handsome in Prewitt’s clothes, watching her, always watching her. Yes, he was courteous, the consummate gentleman. But she could not accustom herself to his languid, strangely probing gaze.

  And she could not forget the lingering glide of his fingers over her breast that first night, when she’d come to him after awakening to him groaning in pain. What had started as an inadvertent brush of his hand had become, in the charged and silent darkness, a breathless and purposeful caress. She could still feel the heat of his touch, as if his fingertips had scorched her very flesh. It filled her with a strange agitation, a turmoil of the senses that was both frightening and exhilarating.

  “...and I’d take off my clothes,” he was saying, “and wade in, and let the water envelop me. ‘Twas heaven.”

  She blinked at him. “I’m sorry, I...”

  He chuckled. “I was telling you how I used to sneak away from Holy Trinity late at night in the summer
to go swimming in the horsepool at Smithfield. ‘Twasn’t a very engaging story, I suppose.” His smile was tentative, almost bashful. “I’m just trying to keep you here talking to me. When I took it into my head to stay here, I’m afraid I didn’t count on being quite so insufferably bored.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “‘Tisn’t your fault. You’ve your own affairs to attend to.”

  “Yes, well...”

  “I’m not a guest, after all, merely a border. And you put up with a great deal from me as it is.”

  “Nonsense. You’re no trouble.”

  He smiled dubiously. “You’re a singularly poor liar.”

  Heat rose in Joanna’s cheeks. She edged toward the doorway. “Yes, well. I should be getting back to the shop.”

  He nodded, expressionless. “You’ll be gone all day tomorrow, then?”

  “Until vespers or thereabouts. I’ll leave food and ale for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  She paused in the doorway. “You’ll be even more bored than usual, I suppose. I’m sorry.”

  He smiled and shrugged his big shoulders. “I can hardly expect you to stay here just for me.”

  Joanna fiddled with the string that bound the candles together. “Yes. Well.” She turned and started back toward the shop stall.

  “Are you happy?”

  Slowly she spun back around, her candles clutched to her chest.

  He was sitting forward, looking at her with that keen-eyed gaze that sent warm shivers coursing through her.

  “‘Tis a presumptuous question,” he said. “I’ve gotten into the habit of asking them of late. Perhaps it’s the boredom.”

  She nodded warily.

  “Are you?” His white shirt trembled just slightly as his chest rose and fell.

  “Serjant, I...I don’t know how to answer that.” She glanced over her shoulder toward the shop. “I really must be getting back to—”

  “I’d like to eat supper with you tonight.”

  “Supper?” she said inanely.

  “Aye, I’d like to eat with you at the table there instead of having you bring my meal in to me. I’d like to eat all my meals there, in fact—from now on.”

  “But your leg...”

  “It’s much improved.” Reaching for his new crutch, he stood it up and hauled himself to his feet, grinning—although it seemed to Joanna that his teeth were perhaps just a bit tightly clenched. “I can get about well enough to make it to the table at mealtimes.”

  Supporting himself with the crutch, he took a few halting steps in her direction. She rapidly backed up. “You’re supposed to stay in bed. Master Aldfrith said—”

  “My body will waste away if I languish in bed for two months. Come—let me eat with you.” Quietly he added, “I promise not to ask you if you’re happy.”

  * * *

  Chapter 8

  “Are you very unhappy?” Graeham asked as he broke off a piece of hearty barley bread and dipped it in his lamb stew.

  Joanna cast him a censorious look from across the table. “I thought you weren’t going to ask me—”

  “Whether you’re happy,” he finished. “I never said I wouldn’t ask you if you’re unhappy.”

  “You are presumptuous.” She refilled their wooden cups from the ewer of wine that sat on the table between them, a luxury, like the lamb, that he insisted on having—and paying for.

  He regarded her for a thoughtful moment as he ate the broth-soaked bread. “Well, are you?”

  “Do I seem unhappy?”

  “Nay—but there are those who have the gift of persevering with remarkable grace in the face of adversity. I’ve been watching you.”

  She looked at him as she took a sip of wine, then quickly dropped her gaze. Her cheeks might have heated to a deeper pink, or perhaps it was just a trick of the candlelight. Her hair was veiled, as usual, and she wore her ugliest kirtle, the brown one. The wool was threadbare, with a neat little patch near the neckline, above which peeked about an inch of white linen shift. There was often a hint of dishevelment about her, as if she were simply too busy to keep herself put to rights, and tonight was no exception; the shift’s drawstring had come undone, the two cords hanging over the brown bodice of her kirtle. The loosened shift exposed the merest tantalizing swell of upper breast; he’d struggled all through supper to keep his gaze from straying downward as they conversed.

  Graeham ate some more of her excellent stew, washing it down with a generous swallow of wine. The vexatious Petronilla leapt onto his bench for a handout; he grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and tossed her off. His presence at the table had kept the timid Manfrid from showing his face. “You work from dawn till dusk—and beyond,” he said. “Often you’re still stitching away at your embroidery when I retire for the night.”

  “The shop keeps me too busy during the day to get much new work done.”

  “And on top of that, you cook and clean and see to my various needs. And all without the slightest hint of complaint or frustration, as if...” He hesitated, then plunged forward. “As if you were born to this life—as if it were your destiny, and not...cause for disappointment.”

  Her gaze searched his. “What has Hugh told you?”

  “Only that you married beneath you...for love.”

  She pushed her half-eaten bowl of stew away and lifted her cup to her mouth.

  “And that you’ve made quite a success of the shop. But that your husband is usually abroad. I imagine you must get lonely.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  He sopped up the remainder of his stew with the last piece of bread and ate it, dusting his hands. “There’s no sin in being lonely. ‘Tis a feeling I’m all too famil—”

  “I’m not lonely.”

  She was too proud to admit it, he realized. “Very well. I shouldn’t press the issue.”

  “Why do you, then? Why do you interrogate me so incessantly? Are you really that bored?”

  He gave a small shrug. “Perhaps you’re that interesting.”

  A little huff of bitter laughter rose from her. “I’m a West Cheap shopmaid, nothing more.”

  “You were something more, once,” he said quietly. “You still are.”

  She met his gaze uneasily, looking away when Petronilla approached her, yowling for a handout. Joanna clicked her tongue and the cat leapt onto her bench. She fished a morsel of lamb from her bowl and let the animal lick it off her fingertips.

  Beyond her, Graeham saw a figure pass one of the two windows that looked out onto the alley from the salle. The passerby paused and glanced inside; Leoda, in a rust-colored kirtle so snug as to thrust her generous bosom into ripe display. With a glance at Joanna, Leoda smiled and blew Graeham a kiss.

  The whore must have captured his attention for a moment too long, for Joanna noticed and turned toward the window.

  “Evenin’, Mistress Joanna,” greeted Leoda.

  Joanna smiled politely. “If you’re looking for my brother, Leoda, he left here in the early afternoon. I’m afraid I don’t know where he is.”

  “I’m that sorry to hear it, mistress,” Leoda replied, though Graeham was fairly certain it was he she’d come looking for; they frequently chatted during the supper hour. “You’ll tell Sir Hugh I was askin’ for him, then, won’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Many thanks.” Leoda sauntered away without a glance in Graeham’s direction. A good whore didn’t greet a man familiarly if he was in the company of another woman—unless the other woman happened to be another whore, but nobody could make that mistake about Joanna Chapman. In truth, Graeham wouldn’t have cared if she had. He wasn’t ashamed of having befriended her, whore or not, and their relationship was innocent. But then, Joanna would almost certainly assume otherwise. Perhaps it was best that Leoda had opted for circumspection.

  “That was one of the neighborhood...women of the town.” Joanna pulled Graeham’s empty bowl across and nested hers inside it. “She’s a favorite of H
ugh’s when he’s in London.”

  “I wondered how you’d come to know...such a woman by name.”

  She smiled in a way that looked indulgent. “Hugh could have any woman he wants, but he prefers women like that—women who don’t expect anything from him but a few pennies. He’s a hard man to rein in.”

  “Is that why he became a mercenary? For the freedom?” A knight who sold his services to the highest bidder, Graeham reasoned, would enjoy a great deal more autonomy than one who’d pledged an oath of fealty to any one lord.

  Joanna frowned into her wine cup as she thought about it. “Well, he likes the freedom, certainly. But more than that, he loathes being forced to live up to someone else’s expectations. It’s because of how he was brought up—how we were both brought up. There were a great many demands placed upon us.” She collected their spoons and swept up the crumbs of bread with a napkin, her troubled expression giving way to a surprisingly winsome smile. “I went to the bakeshop today, as you asked. They had cream tarts.”

  “Excellent.” Sweets were a staple at Lord Gui’s table, and Graeham missed them. As Joanna cleared the table, he said, “It surprises me to hear you speak of demands. I was under the impression you and Hugh came from quite a privileged background.”

  “It was...well, certainly it was privileged in many ways. Wexford is a grand castle—”

  “Castle.”

  She unwrapped the two little tarts, served one to each of them and took her seat. “Our father is William of Wexford. He’s a very great knight with a vast holding half a day’s ride to the south. Our lady mother died of childbed fever after I was born, but Lord William is still living.”

  “Is Hugh heir to his lands?”

  “We won’t know that until Father dies. He holds Wexford for his overlord—who may or may not choose to grant it to Hugh when the time comes.” She took a bite of her tart, and Graeham followed suit; it was sinfully good.