Sentenced to Hell, with no hope of protecting her. Or restored to the eternal solitude of Heaven, and barred from ever loving her.
Either way, they were doomed.
“Zamiel?” Her soft fingers brushed his nape. He shuddered beneath her touch.
Reining in his unruly passions, he wrenched away with a ferocity that made her eyes widen. Her shock and hurt poured through him.
“I’m no guardian angel—especially for you,” he said roughly.
Awkwardly she straightened, shaking her skirts into order. Embarrassment stained her skin. “Why especially for me? Is it because I’m a Papist then, not a proper Protestant like ye? Are our beliefs so vastly different?”
“This has nothing to do with your being a Papist,” he muttered, covertly making his own adjustments behind the bloody codpiece. He was still burning for her, a condition not conducive to clear thinking. “I meant that you have no guardian angel. And if you did, I’d be the last one He’d choose.”
He meant that she had Faerie blood and Faerie magick, hence no guardian angel. The Fae followed their own gods. But he’d lay odds she knew naught of that.
Clearly he’d blundered into dangerous territory. When her stubborn chin came up, he groaned inwardly.
“Don’t ye and yer Protestant believe in angels?” she challenged.
He barked a bitter laugh, which he knew was another mistake. “I assure you, I do believe in angels. Linnet, for Heaven’s sake, will you stop going on about religion for one bloody minute?”
“So now ye wish to silence me? Am I not allowed to speak my beliefs?” Her golden eyes turned incandescent with outrage.
Aye, he was handling this badly. He’d known she was devout, that her faith was rooted deep. It was one of the many fascinating qualities that gave her such depth and texture.
Feeling unequal to extricating himself from this quagmire he’d stumbled into, he sleeked back his tousled hair. “Look, we’re both freezing. Let me fetch us a cup of mulled wine.”
“In that fleshpot ye call a home?” she said tartly. “I daresay I’d rather freeze. If ye’re through groping me like one of yer whores, perhaps ye’ll tell me whether ye’ve any counsel about my journey. Or should I just go elsewhere?”
“Groping you?” Now it was his turn for outrage—a remarkably energizing emotion. “And you did naught to encourage me? I seem to recall you wanted my gloves off, my lady, so I could touch you properly. Was that meant to discourage me?”
“Varlet!” She stormed to the bay mare and snatched up her reins, face crimson with shame and temper. Indeed, she all but stamped her booted foot. “Forget that I asked ye. I should never have—”
“Linnet.” He gripped her bridle in a steadying hand. “Since you’re so bloody determined to fling yourself into this mad adventure, I’ll do what I can to assist you. And in case you were wondering, I’d made up my mind to that before I kissed you.”
She stared at him, annoyance struggling with hope in her changeable features. “Ye’ll help me? Truly?”
“I will,” he said grimly, quashing another stab of regret. “And you’re going to need more than counsel if you want to survive this dangerous business.”
Chapter Ten
When the bells at St. Paul’s tolled high noon, Linnet stood simmering on London Bridge. She’d arrived a good hour ago from the quiet inn where she’d passed the night in anonymous comfort, disguised as a merchant’s wife. And here she commenced to wait, with naught to do but fret.
Whatever good man Zamiel had hired to guide her, the fellow was an hour late.
“How utterly predictable,” she muttered to Moibeal. “He’s probably still abed, sleeping off the night’s hochmagandy.”
Heat climbed into her cheeks at the searing memory of the redheaded harlot spread naked across Zamiel’s dining table like an elaborate dessert. When she’d glimpsed him draped carelessly over the lord’s chair, foot swinging idly as he perused the girl’s tawdry charms, her blood had boiled.
Not five minutes later, she’d found herself in his arms, his lips searing her throat, breasts full and tingling beneath his touch. Never had she allowed any man such sinful liberties.
Never had she dreamed how deeply she would enjoy them.
When he rebuffed her so abruptly, she’d been mortified, humiliated by the inadequacy of her feminine charms. No doubt he’d returned to his interrupted dalliance the moment she left him.
And why should it trouble ye if he did? ’tis plain yer kisses meant naught to him. He’s probably kissed a thousand women, the wee fiend.
The important thing—the only thing she needed from him—was his good counsel. Her journey was a task whose logistical demands were impossible for a lone woman to accomplish in secret in the beehive of the court.
Desperate as she was to quit the place, she understood very well the necessity, for safety’s sake, of doing so by stealth.
Even Blossom believed she’d merely gone to stay with a friend in the city. By the time the tiring-girl realized Linnet had left court and her loose tongue went to work, Linnet hoped to be halfway to Cornwall.
For protocol’s sake, she ought to have begged the Queen’s leave. But, recalling their uneasy interview, she imagined Elizabeth Tudor would be more than relieved to see the back of her. And Sir William Cecil even more so. She imagined herself returning in triumph, a loving Catriona Norwood redeemed and riding at her side.
Restless, Linnet checked the modest panniers strapped to Moibeal’s saddle. Then she mounted for a vantage over the teeming sea of heads, horses, carts and bundles, all fighting for precedence on the narrow bridge, hemmed in by shops and houses on either side. Currently, the flow of traffic was impeded by some commotion involving milling sheep, a drunken carter, an overturned cart and a great quantity of apples rolling underfoot.
Sighing, Linnet was preparing to dismount when a hand closed on her arm. Her heart flew into her throat.
A cry swelling in her mouth, she pivoted toward the threat, images of the Frenchman and his knife looming in her mind.
“Gently go,” a familiar tenor murmured at her ear. “We don’t want to draw any more attention than we must, nor make ourselves memorable in any way.”
She gaped like a halfwit at Zamiel of Briah, who towered over her astride his striking midnight courser.
“My lord,” she gasped, her heartbeat slowing from a gallop to a spirited canter. “I didn’t know ye.”
“That’s rather the point,” he murmured, scanning the jostling crowd.
She’d never seen him attired as anything but a fabulously wealthy and fashionable fop. Yet she had to admit he looked equally striking—and equally dangerous—in a studded black leather jerkin, breeches and high boots, ebony hair streaming beneath a stern-looking helm. With a pair of sturdy leather gauntlets, a serviceable buckler slung from his saddle, and a laden pannier strapped behind his saddle, he probably imagined he’d pass for a hired guard.
Of course, he’d been too vain to forego the blooded stallion prancing beneath him, silken mane framing the white star that blazed on his brow.
No hired sword ever born had a face that burned with his uncanny beauty—the dark wings of his brows sweeping above eyes that shimmered like amethysts in moonlight, the cool elegance of high cheekbones and fine-bladed jaw, and that delectable mouth whose full lower lip would make any woman dream of kissing.
“I was starting to wonder if ye’d changed yer mind, aye?” Tearing her gaze away from his mouth, she glanced at the pale winter sun.
“I needed to be sure I wasn’t followed. Frankly speaking, I’m not entirely convinced I managed it.” He angled his chin away from the city toward the southern shore. “After you.”
Something about the set of his shoulders and the grim line of his mouth sent a warning prickle down her spine. Wordless, she drew up the hood of her wine-colored cloak and kneed Moiread into the press of bodies surging slowly toward Southwark.
Zamiel moved up beside her, choosing the
side that kept his sword arm free.
As they edged past the overturned cart, she leaned toward him. “Why would someone follow ye? And where’s my escort then? Will he meet us in Southwark?”
He slid her a sidelong glance. “Not here, if you please. I’ll explain everything on the way.”
She wasn’t certain she liked the sound of that. But she was forced to concede that, if she wished to keep her plans secret, the crowded bridge was no place to discuss them.
She held her tongue as they inched from the bridge onto the southern shore where the huddled walls of playhouses, bear-pits and fleshpots clustered.
Westward they rode, past the pastoral acres where the Bishop of Winchester had built his riverfront mansion, past hired wherries doing a brisk business ferrying Londoners to the unregulated pleasures of Bankside. From time to time, an elegant barge poled past.
Linnet kept her hood up and wondered if, in her zeal to discover the truth and silence the vicious whispers, she was making a terrible mistake.
Perhaps she was fleeing London like a frightened mouse because she was terrified. Someone at court wanted her dead. And the Queen herself had warned her.
Beside her, Zamiel swayed gracefully as his courser danced down the road, proud tail held high and streaming. If the Lord of Briah fondly imagined himself anonymous, she thought wryly, he was very much mistaken.
They entered the crooked streets of Southwark, lined with bawdy houses and inns. A steady stream of traffic trundled past, avoiding the central gutter where the stinking sewage seeped. When an overladen donkey brayed beside them, Zamiel’s courser whinnied and reared.
Linnet’s heart lodged in her throat, but Zamiel clung like a burr to the saddle. He coaxed the stallion down, crooning a lullaby in that voice whose resonant beauty had brought the house down the night he played Indolence at the masque.
Seeing the stallion brought to heel, she called, “That was a fine bit of horsemanship, my lord, and a wee canty beast ye’re riding.”
Zamiel gave the black’s glossy shoulder a complacent thump. “This is Morningstar. He’s a beautiful devil, but a tricky one—like his namesake. Best keep clear of him when I’m not in the saddle.”
She arched a curious brow. “Ye named the wee devil after Lucifer, did ye? Well, ye did say ye believe in angels, which I suppose must include the fallen ones?”
Inky lashes thick as a woman’s hooded his gaze. “Oh, especially those. Betimes it’s easier to believe in evil, so active and present in the world, than to hope some distant agent of good will bestir itself on your behalf. Don’t you think so?”
She cast a sidelong glance at his brooding face. She too suffered bitter doubts in her white nights. Since her mother’s abandonment and the death of her kindly nurse a few years later, no one had loved her—save sweet Colin, her baby brother.
Turn and turn about, she’d abandoned him when her time came, fled Jasper’s violence, run mad in the wood...
Colin had paid the price for her negligence, the poor dear lad, with none to care if he played alone on the heights. She blinked back the shimmer of tears.
“There’s good in this world, my lord. I find goodness in the smile of an innocent child, in the pages of a story that comforts the lonely and the grieved, in the works of Christian charity done in God’s name. Surely there’s goodness in yer music, the heavenly voice that spills from yer throat. For such a gift can only come from God, aye?”
His face twisted with sudden doubt. “Do you believe that goodness flows from God as a conscious expression of His will? Or is God like a candle burning in an empty room, shedding light because it’s His nature to shed light, indiscriminately and without concern for where it’s needed?”
The raw anguish in his voice caught her by surprise. She reined closer to lay a gentle hand on his arm, offering him the simple human comfort of touch.
“God is good, Zamiel,” she said quietly. “I do believe it most fervently. Do ye not feel His grace within ye?”
He uttered a choked laugh. His eyes glittered, as though with tears. “The only sign of God’s grace I see in the Purgatory of my existence, such as it is, is you.”
Flustered, she dropped her hand. “Me?”
“Why do you think I joined the court in the first place?” The words burst forth like a dam giving way. “I live like a prince in the Sodom and Gomorrah of this splendid city. I’ve wallowed in vice like a pig at the trough, until the stench of it makes me sick! The only grace I’ve seen in this benighted place, the only thing I’ve found here that means anything or seems to offer any dim hope of salvation—is you.”
Speechless, she stared, assailed by a storm of emotions. The raw torment that roughened his voice—he, who seemed indifferent to all save his own pleasure—filled her soul with pity. The poor man must be lost indeed, if he turned to her in a desperate bid for rescue.
Still, he flattered her. The self-conscious flutter, like a bird with beating wings caged in her chest, made her heart contract.
“If so, I’m the blind leading the blind,” she murmured, breathless under the blazing intensity of his eyes. “Ye can’t save someone from darkness when ye’re lost in it yerself.”
“Lost in darkness?” Tilting his head, he gave her a smile of such unbearable sweetness it twisted her heart. “You’re the light of all lights, Linnet Norwood. If I can’t follow your flame to deliverance, then I’m truly damned.”
She’d forgotten their surroundings, gone blind to the thinning traffic around them. Their road had left Southwark to wind through cultivated countryside, stubbled fields and garden plots sleeping under a blanket of snow. Spirals of smoke unfurled from the chimneys of thatched cottages.
Yet she had eyes only for him, a creature as exotic and beautiful as a bird of paradise in her prosaic world. A contrary, unpredictable enigma whose kisses set her body on fire, whose voice made the very angels sing, whose eyes made her want to weep.
“Ye’ll follow my light,” she said slowly, “all the way to Cornwall, is that it? There’s no guide meeting us, is there?”
“My devious plot stands exposed.” Seeing her indignant look, he laughed a little and looked away. “I’m sorry I lied to you, love. It’s a bad habit of mine. You can blame my father.”
“But why, for Heaven’s sake?” she gasped. “Yer place is at court.”
“I’ve told you why. And I have no place. Surely you’ve begun to sense that much.” Composed and somber, changeable as the tide, he twisted to scan the road. He’d done that frequently, but she assumed it meant he was looking for her guide. If she had no guide...
A pang of dread struck her belly, and she too craned to see behind them. Scattered along the winding road trundled an assortment of ox-drawn carts, a few fleet figures on horseback, and a handful of laborers hauling bundles. None of them looked particularly ominous, but neither had the Frenchman before he struck.
“Is someone following us?” she asked.
“I’ve no way of knowing, but I fear so. I had an unexpected caller this morning, as I made your travel arrangements—Sir William Cecil.”
He spoke the name blandly, but his grim expression struck fear in her heart. Cecil had made little secret of his distrust. He viewed her as a Scottish Catholic nestled like a viper at the heart of the court, a secret ally to Mary of Scots, who was the Catholics’ best hope to regain the Tudor throne.
Still, she’d done nothing wrong, save the minor breach of etiquette of leaving court without the Queen’s permission. She planned to return and make amends, of course.
“Are ye a friend of Cecil’s?” she asked, knowing he was not.
“That man has no friends that I’ve observed, only allies and enemies.” He slapped his reins idly against a lean booted leg. “He wished to know my whereabouts the night of the Frenchman’s murder. Your tiring-girl chattered freely when she went to the laundress with her basket of bloody linens.”
Her stomach knotted. “Servants’ gossip seems a trivial thing for the Quee
n’s Secretary to soil himself with, aye? Who was the groom, did he say?”
“It seems our Frenchman was master of horse for the French ambassador,” he murmured. “Much admired by His Excellency. Worse, I was seen leaving the masque with you just minutes before the murder.”
“Oh, for the love of Bride...”
“Fortunately, I have a facile tongue. I told him I’d dueled, safely beyond the Verge of the Court, with a knave who insulted your honor. And that I won my duel, but graciously left the fellow alive. I swore I knew naught of this murdered Frenchman.”
Linnet twined her fingers unhappily through Moibeal’s mane. “But I’ve done naught to offend the French ambassador, nor the French. Why would they want me dead?”
“I don’t understand these court intrigues.” He shrugged. “But the man was far too skilled with a blade. Likely the master-of-horse position offered access to his betters, allowing him to earn his true income as a hired assassin. The French may have naught to do with the business.”
Her head spun. She too felt poorly equipped to navigate the treacherous waters of Tudor intrigue. Her presence threatened the Protestants, not the French. And the most strident anti-Catholic voice at court was Cecil’s.
“Perhaps ye shouldn’t associate with me. ’tis clear I can’t help ye rise at court.”
Zamiel snorted. “As if I care about rising at court. Cecil’s interest in this affair struck me as unusual, certainly, but I suspect the true target of his interest is you. Once he realizes you’ve left court, he may be placated.”
“Or he may not.” Anxiety fluttered in her belly and tightened her chest. “That’s why we left the city so quietly. Ye think he’s set someone to follow us.”
To this he said nothing, but the coiled tension in his erect carriage, the way his gaze narrowed on every passing wayfarer, was abruptly explained. Nervously she turned again to search the road behind them. That mud-spattered rider cantering in their wake, for instance, could be either an innocent courier or another assassin dispatched to finish them. Her hands tightened on the reins, making Moibeal toss her head.
Laura Navarre - [The Magick Trilogy 02] Page 17
