Let Slip the Dogs

by Anna Castle

  “What have those wearisome old barristers at Gray’s Inn done to you?” Stephen goggled at him in mock concern.

  Tom hung his head in feigned regret. “I’m tired, my lord, to be honest. I’m not used to spending so many hours walking anymore.”

  “Suit yourself.” Stephen turned away, but Tom grabbed him by the arm to stop him. “Stephen. Don’t catch anything you wouldn’t want to pass on to your wife.”

  Stephen held his gaze long enough to show he understood. “I’m going to drink some ale and play some cards in the company of wenches in unlaced kirtles. I won’t even go upstairs. I know my duty.” Then he flashed a grin. “Besides, why pay when there are ladies right here in Richmond thirsting for amorous adventure!”

  Tom laughed. “Very thrifty, my lord. I’m sure your wife will thank you for the savings.”

  Stephen sauntered over to join his friends. Tom went the other way, down to the kennel office. He sat behind the desk with a pedigree in front of him and a dry quill in his hand, staring out the window at a vision of Trumpet in the diaphanous shift she’d worn on her last ill-fated wedding night.

  She’d tried to seduce him and nearly succeeded. Fear of retaliation from her father and her noble bridegroom had held him back. She’d stopped trying soon after that. They couldn’t risk a pregnancy. They’d both be ruined, especially her, and would probably never see each other again. They hadn’t risked being alone again, usually relying on Catalina to keep them within bounds. She did a good job of it too. She didn’t want her mistress to be ruined either. There was only one big rule: no kissing until Trumpet was married. One thing led to another too quickly for them, and the longer they had to wait, the worse it got.

  But the ban would be lifted in four short days. He could steal a kiss or two tonight, surely. Maybe three, if they could find a quiet spot.

  Every time the chapel bells tolled, he made a mark on a scrap of paper. After the sixth mark, he got up to pace back and forth with his hands behind his back. When the bell chimed the three-quarter hour, he strode out the door and down to the river path, heading for the orchard.

  He let himself in through a door at the end and walked up to the spot where Arthur Grenville died. Trumpet reasoned that if it was private enough for secret messages, it ought to be a safe enough place to meet. And it had the advantage of being unambiguous.

  He was early but found her waiting — a small figure with a long, dark veil falling past her shoulders. He tilted his head courteously and said, “A lovely evening, my lady.”

  “It’s me.” She turned toward him and lifted her veil with both hands.

  The ardent look in her eyes sent Tom’s resolve flying. Devil take that cursed ban! In two swift steps, he grabbed her and pushed her against the wall. He lifted her chin with one hand and kissed her thoroughly. She twined her arms around his neck, tilting her head back and leaning into him. His other hand found her round buttock through the layers of cloth and gripped, hoisting her up a little higher.

  They lost themselves until voices sounded somewhere behind the wall.

  “Pox take them!” Trumpet turned her head so abruptly Tom sucked in a mouthful of hair. She sank back to her feet and pushed him away. “We can’t do this here.”

  “We can’t do it anywhere. It’s too soon. I’m sorry. I saw you, and I couldn’t help myself.”

  “Me neither.”

  “We should talk about Friday,” he said. “But where?”

  “Let’s walk.” She dropped the veil back over her face. They strolled between the trees toward the north end of the orchard. “Have you heard from Nashe?”

  Thomas Nashe was one of their few mutual friends. They’d gotten to know him during Tom’s adventure in Cambridge and renewed the acquaintance two years ago when Nashe came to London. A poet and a pamphleteer, Thomas Nashe was homely, quick-witted, unscrupulous, and well-liked among London’s writers and the wenches who took care of them. Tom had asked him to find a green-eyed whore who looked something like Trumpet. Nashe had leapt at the commission after Tom agreed to pay all reasonable expenses.

  “I had a letter from him this morning,” Tom said. “All is well. He found a woman named Jane Switt who has agreed to our terms. He’ll put her in a wherry himself on Thursday. I went to Petersham before dinner and reserved a room for her at the Old Ship. I even arranged for a man to bring her to Richmond on Friday afternoon.”

  Nashe claimed to have outdone even himself with his discovery. Trumpet’s artful maidservant, Catalina, would wield her tools to perfect the illusion. Then the substitute would take Trumpet’s place in the marriage bed. It was a bold gamble that depended on Stephen being three sheets to the wind, but if anyone could pull it off, Trumpet and Catalina could. Tom’s job was to keep the bridegroom’s cup overflowing.

  “Did Stephen wonder where you’d gone?”

  “He didn’t show his lordly face all day. He’s learning to play tennis with some new friends. He went out with them after supper too, in search of a tavern.” He decided not to mention the specific nature of the said tavern.

  “Good. The more new friends, the merrier for us. Didn’t he ask you to go?”

  “I told him I had to copy pedigrees.”

  She laughed, a girlish trill that sent flames of desire licking up Tom’s spine. “And he believed that?”

  Tom shrugged. “I spend a lot of time making fair copies, my lady.”

  “Only for Mr. Bacon.”

  They reached the wall and turned down the next row. Birds twittered all around them, and the sweet evening breeze fluttered leaves over their heads. Trumpet’s skirts swished in the grass. They walked slowly, side by side, flinching every time their hands met, as if each touch burned. Then they spotted another couple strolling toward them.

  “Let’s go out into the garden,” Tom said. “Maybe there are fewer people there.”

  They found a door opening into a large garden where level paths crossed geometrical beds of herbs and flowers. The westering sun laid bands of golden light across the ground, casting long shadows and setting white blossoms aglow. Several other people, including two women in veils walking with men in deep-brimmed hats, meandered along the paths.

  “Let’s keep going,” Trumpet said. “Let’s walk out toward the park.”

  The central path curved up and away from the palace complex. They walked in silence until they reached a fork in the path, where they turned to follow a narrower trail winding up a hill dotted with copses. Trumpet glanced round, then took Tom’s hand and drew him off the trail to stand behind a wide oak. He lifted her veil and bent to kiss her, but she shook her head and placed a finger on his lips. So he kissed that instead, taking her hand and opening it to plant another kiss inside the palm.

  He folded up her hand but held on to it. “Let’s elope. Let’s run away together. Let’s go tomorrow. We could catch a wherry before sunrise and be in London by ten, if the tide runs our way. We could sell our clothes and keep going as far as we can.”

  She bit her lip, regarding him solemnly with her green eyes. “We could buy some captain’s silence and take a ship to France.”

  “There’s a war in France.” Tom’s belief in his mad idea crumbled at the first obstacle. But he tried to push it a little farther. “Maybe we could sail past the war. We could sail around Brittany and across the Bay of Biscay. We could live among the pirates in St. Jean de Luz. You’d like it there.”

  “That’s the first place my father would look, if we got that far, which we wouldn’t.” Trumpet sighed and took her hand back. “I’d be missed by seven o’clock at the latest, when I failed to appear in the queen’s chambers. She’d send someone to look for me. If my clothes were gone too, she’d send someone after me. She hates elopements on general principles, and all noble marriages are hers to arrange. She’d be furious even if you were an earl, and you’re a nobody. No offense.”

  He shook his head. He was a nobody — so far. But he’d turned himself into a gentleman by dint of hard work and
expensive clothing. He’d climb farther before he was done. Never far enough to reach Lady Alice Trumpington though.

  “She’d throw you in the Tower and me into Newgate to await her pleasure.” Tom had spent a week in that inhospitable prison and had no desire for another visit. “I know it’s impossible. I just somehow felt it had to be said.”

  She nodded. “I’m glad you said it.” Then she startled, as if stung by a bee. “I nearly forgot. Speaking of my father, he’ll be here on Friday.”

  “Your father?” Tom stepped three feet away from her without even realizing he’d moved until he saw her rolling her eyes in exasperation. “My lord of Orford? He’s coming here? Now?”

  “I am his only child, you know. Is it so terribly strange that he should wish to attend my wedding supper?”

  Strange enough. Trumpet had been ten years old when her mother died. To hear her tell it, she’d taken charge of her own life from that point forward. She’d managed the crumbling castle on the Suffolk coast and arranged her own education while her father plied the coasts from here to Cartagena capturing Spanish ships and gambling away the proceeds. The Earl of Orford was a privateer, like Tom’s father had been, but less sensible about money.

  “It’s the end of June,” Tom said. “He should be somewhere off the coast of Puerto Rico right about now.” Privateers did most of their work in the summer months, when the winds were kinder.

  Although why waste his breath objecting? The man must be on his way already. He must be in England somewhere, riding steadily toward them.

  Trumpet didn’t seem the least alarmed. “I wasn’t expecting him, to be honest. We only set the date after Stephen’s father died and the queen gave us permission to marry here in the Chapel Royal.” She snapped her fingers. “She wrote to him, or more like she asked Sir Walter to do it. He would know how to find a man at sea.”

  “That makes sense.” Tom reached for her hand again and kissed it, for comfort — his as much as hers. “But of course your father would want to be here. I didn’t mean to suggest he wouldn’t.”

  “I know.” She sounded like she didn’t care, but her chin had that upward tilt that meant she was feeling defensive.

  “Are you nervous?”

  “About my father?” She shrugged. “Not really. I know how to manage him. He has friends he’ll want to see. He’ll spend most of his time with them, I imagine. Are you nervous?”

  “Me?” Tom laughed, a false, shrill sound he didn’t recognize as coming from his own mouth. “Why would I be nervous? I won’t meet him. Will I meet him? I will be the father of his grandchildren if everything goes according to plan. I should meet him. Don’t you think? Unless he’s like you. Is he anything like you? Because you can see through me like a rain-washed pane of glass. No, you’re laughing, but it’s true. I should absolutely not —”

  Trumpet flung herself at him and stopped his pusillanimous babbling with a kiss. Tom hauled her closer with one arm and stumbled back to lean against the tree. Another minute — or five — of uttermost bliss.

  Then a giggle rose from somewhere in the woods, and they sprang apart, panting. They saw no one but feared a watcher and walked on up the path.

  “We have to stop doing that,” Tom said. “It’s too risky.”

  “Why do we have to keep waiting?” Trumpet said. “It’s only three days. Surely that’s close enough.”

  “Four, counting all of Friday until your wedding supper ends. And what if something happens to Stephen in the meantime? At best, you’d have to do that test again.”

  Trumpet shuddered. When her first husband turned up dead the morning after the wedding, she and Tom had been seen together in a state of semi-undress. Trumpet had been obliged to undergo an examination by eight matrons of good repute to confirm her virginity. Tom would’ve fought them off with a sword if they’d come anywhere near his privates, but she’d submitted meekly for the greater cause.

  “You’ve gone through too much for this,” he said. “We don’t want to ruin it all on the eve of victory.”

  “I suppose. But the odds of my falling pregnant in the next four days are . . . well, I don’t know what they are, but you’re probably not particularly fertile.”

  “What! I mostly certainly am!”

  “Think about it, Tom. How many whores have you bedded in the past five years?”

  “More like eight years,” he said, counting back. He’d been a forward lad.

  Trumpet rolled her eyes. “Many whores is the point I’m making. How many children do you have?”

  “How would I know?”

  “The women would come to you for money, wouldn’t they?”

  Tom shrugged. “How would they know it was mine?”

  Her chin jutted out. “They might look like you, for example.”

  Tom thought about it. “You don’t tend to see toddlers around in your average brothel. They have their ways, whores do, of not having the babies in the first place. You should ask Catalina. This is the sort of thing she knows.”

  “Hmm.” Trumpet didn’t like to lose arguments. “Well, my point is simply that I’m very unlikely to fall pregnant the minute you touch me.”

  Tom caught her around the waist again and grinned down at her — his best dimpled grin, the one she could never resist. “I’ve barely started touching you, my lady.”

  She pushed him away with both hands. “Don’t you shine that dimple at me. You’re the one that’s so worried about consequences. I’m the one saying let’s go. Let’s stop waiting.”

  “We’ll compromise. We’ll find a place where we can dally for a little while — but fully clothed.”

  He took her hand, less worried about being seen out here beyond the palace grounds in the lengthening shadows. They crested the hill and wound down the other side. Tom spotted a small round building with a dome pocked with square openings. “Look, a dovecote! Let’s see if we can get inside.”

  “Ugh. Won’t it be full of bird shit? We’ll besmotter our clothing.”

  “Not if we stand up the whole time.”

  Trumpet stopped in her tracks. “Standing up? Is that possible?”

  “Why not?” Then Tom caught her meaning. “Oh.” He grinned at her, waggling his eyebrows. “Well, yes, as a matter of fact it is, but we’re not going to do that tonight.”

  She bit her lip. “Am I too ignorant?”

  “No. In fact, you know more than a maiden of twenty-one years ought to know, thanks to Catalina.”

  “That’s good though, isn’t it? I don’t want to be bad at this.”

  Tom laughed, but stopped when she failed to laugh with him. He cupped her chin and looked into her eyes. “You could never be anything less than extraordinary, Alice.” Then he winked. “And you’ll have me for your tutor. What more could you want?”

  She swatted at him, humors restored. They tripped down the path to the dovecote hand in hand. Tom tried the door, which opened silently. “Someone’s looking after the place.” The interior smelled musty and somewhat bird-fouled, but not too bad.

  Trumpet pulled him inside and wrapped her arms around him, arching her firm body against him and lifting her face with parted lips. Tom accepted the invitation with a groan of pent-up lust.

  An answering groan rose from somewhere within the lightless depths of the cote. Someone — a woman — moaned, “Don’t stop!” The deeper voice murmured, “I heard something.” Then, “God’s body, the door’s open!”

  Rustling, scraping, and soft oaths followed. “Who’s there?” Tom and another man demanded simultaneously. Tom swung the door full open to flood the round chamber with soft light. Two couples, caught in the act, stared at one another. Trumpet, Bess Throckmorton, and Tom spoke together.

  “Bess!”

  “Alice!”

  “Sir Walter!”

  Sir Walter Ralegh glared at Tom, plainly struggling for the name. He gave up. “You’re the one with the dogs.”

  “Thomas Clarady, at your service.” Tom bowed, torn betw
een alarm and laughter.

  His offer was met with silence. A long silence.

  Sir Walter broke it first. “What will you do?”

  “Nothing.” Trumpet answered without hesitation. “Nothing at all. No one says anything to anyone about anything. Not one word, not ever. All agreed?”

  “Agreed,” Ralegh said. Bess echoed, “Agreed.”

  “Agreed,” Tom said. “Silence all around. Best for everyone.” He flashed Ralegh a man-to-man grin and got a baleful glower in return. “Well, we’ll just be off, then.”

  He grabbed Trumpet’s hand and pulled her out, closing the door behind them. They gawped at one another for a second, then ran pell-mell down the path, sputtering giggles that grew into guffaws as their feet found the level path along the Thames. They stood there laughing helplessly, Trumpet clutching her stomach, Tom leaning forward with his hands on his knees.

  They finally subsided into chuckles and sighs. Trumpet drew in a breath and let it out with one last, “Ha.” Then she looked up and down the path. “Which way?”

  They’d come far enough for the lights in Richmond’s high towers to appear like twinkling yellow stars. Real stars shone in the indigo sky behind the palace. Tom pointed in that direction. “We’d better get back.”

  They started walking, taking their time. “No need for me to rush back,” Trumpet said. “It’ll take Bess at least fifteen minutes to get her bodice back on.”

  “I noticed. Sir Walter has less chest hair than I would’ve expected.”

  They laughed again, but not for long. When Trumpet spoke next, her tone was somber. “They have a motive, Tom. A big one.”

  “For Grenville?” He nodded. “Stephen said he’d been following Bess Throckmorton around. He must have caught her—”

  “Or him.”

  “Or him, putting a message in the wall.” Tom stopped. “Although that’s not enough, unless he read the letter. He’d have to catch them together, like we did.”

  “Maybe he did. Or maybe he saw them acting romancey, which roused his suspicions. Maybe he saw one of them leaving a letter in the wall, read it, and then followed the other one into the orchard to catch them in the act of retrieving it.”