Linda Barlow

by Fires of Destiny

  “Is that why they founder?” Roger asked, his merry smile flashing. “Are you certain it’s not due to the strike of a good English cannonball just below the water line?”

  “How could that be? We are allied to Spain,” Bennett said with a wink at several of his friends.

  “At present,” Roger said dryly, and it was clear in the face of every mariner present that they were thinking of the day when this might not be so.

  Treason, thought Alexandra with a sigh. Yet she could hardly be shocked. No doubt treason was uttered in every tavern. The English had hated Mary’s Spanish husband from the start, and the hostility was all the more powerful now that the Queen had levied taxes to aid her husband in his feud with France.

  Poor Mary! As Alexandra lingered on the edge of the group watching her handsome, dark-haired host adroitly entertain his guests, she realized she wasn’t having such a happy birthday after all. It had been a mistake to come here and torment herself. It only served to remind her of the burden she shared with the Queen of England: both she and Mary Tudor were enamored of men who didn’t feel a groat’s worth of love for them in return.

  Someone offered her a large cup of wine. After draining it, she helped herself to another. She had heard of people drowning their sorrows, but this was the first time she’d ever tried it herself.

  It was not long thereafter that Alexandra set off to search for the privy, which was down a long and badly lit corridor in the rear of Roger’s house. She was just finishing up in the surprisingly commodious compartment when she heard footsteps pass her and continue down the corridor. As she stepped back out into the hallway, she recognized the two men who were entering another chamber—Roger and Francis Lacklin.

  Alexandra told herself later that there was no excuse for what she subsequently did. On previous occasions when she’d eavesdropped, it had been by accident, but this time she boldly followed the two conspirators down the corridor and put her ear to the door through which they’d passed.

  “It’s necessary, Roger,” Lacklin was saying. “I wouldn’t ask you if it weren’t.”

  “I’m not a cold-blooded murderer.”

  “For someone who’s lived such an eventful life in the Middle Sea, you’re cursed with an extraordinary number of scruples.”

  “For someone who’s supposedly a man of God, you’re blessed with damned few.”

  There was a short silence, then Lacklin said, “I’m warning you—if you don’t take action now, you’ll regret it. We all will. Everything we’re doing could hang in the balance. If anyone should discover the contents of your cellars—”

  “Nobody will discover a thing.” Roger sounded impatient. “Although I’d be much more confident of that if you didn’t persist in appearing here, increasing the risk of our being seen together.”

  “Very well, then, I’ll be gone,” Lacklin said, the volume of his voice rising. Alexandra scurried away, looking for a place to hide. She turned and fled back toward the privy closet, forgetting, in her haste, that her head was spinning from an excess of fine French wine. She was grabbing the privy door when she tripped and fell against it. She was unaccustomed to the ill-fitting shoes that rounded out her masculine attire.

  Footsteps rang in the corridor behind her as she struggled to right herself. Moments later she felt a heavy hand grasp her arm. She looked up into Francis Lacklin’s angry, shadowed face.

  Stouthearted Alexandra felt a wave of panic. It was not wisdom, but her dogged instincts for self-preservation that made her accept his grip as if it were solicitous and say in her deepest, gruffest voice, “I thank you, sir. Must have consumed more wine than I thought. Now if I can get this damnable door open before my gut loosens—”

  “Who are you?” Lacklin demanded, shaking her until she was afraid her wig would fly off. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m looking for the necessary, a’ course. And if I don’t get in there directly, there’ll be a mess on the floor.”

  There was a tense moment while Lacklin, obviously suspicious, looked her over from top to toe. If he recognized her… dear God, she prayed, don’t let him.

  “What the devil is going on here?” Roger’s voice made Alexandra’s heart rate accelerate. She hoped he wouldn’t give her real identity away to his good friend Francis.

  “I’m ill, and this gentleman is hindering my entrance to the privy. I was here before you, sir, and I assure you, my needs won’t wait.”

  “He was lurking in the hallway,” Lacklin said to Roger. “There’s no telling how long he’s been here.”

  Roger took her other arm and opened the wooden door that led into the small privy closet. “I can vouch for him. He’s my brother’s school friend, Martin. He has obviously tippled too much strong drink. You look greener than last week’s haddock, my lad. In you go, then, no vomiting in the hallway.”

  To her relief, Lacklin gave Roger a long look, then left them, moving quietly away, presumably to exit the house as stealthily as he had entered.

  “Are you really unwell?” Roger asked.

  “No. That is, I do feel a little queasy, but it was seeing him here, and fearing he’d recognize me that made me say that.”

  “You’re fortunate he didn’t recognize you. He thought you were spying, and if there’s one thing Francis doesn’t care for, it’s a spy.” He left a pause. “Were you spying?”

  She made her eyes guileless. “Of course not.”

  “Come with me.” He slammed the privy door shut and hauled her down the hallway. “Did anyone see you come out here? Alan?”

  “No. He’s enthralled with Richard Bennett’s tales of the New World. Why? Where are we going?” It occurred to her that his hold on her was no gentler than Lacklin’s had been.

  “Here.” He opened another door and she swept through unthinkingly, looking about in momentary confusion. She was in a small chamber, probably the same one where Roger and Francis Lacklin had just been conferring. It was filled with an assortment of unused furniture covered with dust sheets. The only light was a dim oil lamp in one corner. Behind her, Roger shut the door. There was a click as he twisted the key. Slowly, she turned to face him.

  “What are you doing?”

  It was evident that he was stalking her. For every step he took toward her, she took one back. “I’ve been the epitome of self-restraint so far, but you should have known better than to put yourself at my mercy like this.”

  “That sounds overly dramatic,” she said, not certain why she was retreating, except that it had something to do with the look on his face, which seemed more angry than lustful. He backed her against an upended table, ending her retreat. “If I’m really at your mercy, what do you propose to do with me?”

  “I want some answers. Were you listening outside the door?”

  “Me? No. Why would I be—”

  She never completed the sentence. Roger took one more step forward, trapping her. Ungentle fingers at the nape of her neck forced her head back, and then his mouth covered hers. She made a small sound, muffled by his lips, and pressed her hands ineffectually against his chest. But the warm caress of his mouth and the silky feel of his tongue stroking hers aroused all the aching power of her long-frustrated desire. With a sigh, she melted. Instead of pushing him away, her hands pulled him closer. She parted her lips and gave herself up to pleasure.

  He broke the kiss off as furiously as he had begun it, nipping her throat, her ears, her hairline instead. His breathing was jagged. “I’m obsessed with you, Alix. But not so much that I don’t recognize a lie when I hear one.”

  She didn’t have a good response to that, so she said nothing. Kiss me again, she thought.

  His hold on her subtly altered, his hands sliding down to her elbows and pressing her arms backwards in a grip that didn’t quite, but almost hurt. “Francis was right in his suspicion, wasn’t he? You were eavesdropping, weren’t you?”

  “Why do you think that?” Damnation, she muttered to herself. She had gotten away with
it in the past, but this time it looked as if she’d been caught.

  Roger could feel the tension in the slender form he held so close to his own. She tried to squirm away, so he tightened his hold. This was not a good idea, he knew. He was already aroused, and handling her sweet body made his head spin. He had promised himself to stay away from her, but his will felt weak tonight. Dammit, he had known there would be trouble as soon as he had seen her arrive. And here she was, skulking about like a spy, making matters worse. “I know you, Alix. At the very least you were indulging your infernal curiosity. What I need to understand, though, was if it was something more. Did your father send you here tonight?”

  “Of course not! You can’t possibly imagine that my father would ever try to use me as an agent of his?” She shook her head at the absurdity of this. “He would erupt like Vesuvius if he knew I was here.”

  “I wouldn’t have expected him to send you into my company, but perhaps dear Charles has decided that my raging lust is less dangerous to the State than my political beliefs? Or could it be that you no longer have a maidenhead left to guard after six months at court?”

  “I wish I were a man so I could call you out for that insult.”

  He nearly laughed as memories of her feistiness flooded him. “Your sex hasn’t prevented you in the past from offering to duel with me.” He shook her gently. “Stop being evasive. I don’t really think you’re spying for your father, but I do think you were listening. What the bloody hell did you hear?”

  “The door is thick, so I couldn’t hear much,” she tried, endeavoring to make it sound sincere, but suspecting, with a sinking stomach, that it didn’t.

  “The door is actually far too thin.” The tiny room spun as he dragged her over to a divan and pressed her down upon it. “The truth, Alexandra. I’m certain you don’t wish to be roughed up on your birthday.”

  “You’d never hurt me.”

  “I am unlikely to hurt you, but I wouldn’t rule it out entirely.” He wrested the blond wig from her scalp. Her red hair was braided and pinned atop her head. “Unpin it.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Take down your hair.”

  If the command had been given with warmth or passion in his voice, she might have complied. Here she was, alone with Roger in a locked room; a state of affairs she had devoutly longed for ever since the previous summer. But his eyes were hooded and cold, and his manhandling had induced more irritation in her than pleasure. “I’ll never get it hidden again, and the tale of your gallantry toward one of the Queen’s ladies will be all over London before morning.”

  “Precisely.” He pushed her down until she was flat on her back. His hands pinned her hands as he crouched over her, one knee between her thighs. The absence of the usual voluminous yards of skirts and petticoats made him acutely aware of the sweet softness of her body. Desire clawed in him, making him want to fall upon her and love her until they both expired in fierce deliriums of bliss. “My reputation will stand it; in fact, it will probably be enhanced. You have far more to lose than I. Stop looking so innocent. You’re an intelligent woman, accustomed now to the ways of the court, and I’m certain you understand me. Talk, or I will make sure your father learns that you have disobeyed his orders to stay away from me.”

  “Must you grip my wrists so tightly?” was all she said.

  He loosened his hold, but he didn’t free her. Her wrists were slim, small-boned, fragile under his larger, harder hands. He wanted to touch his lips to them, his teeth, his tongue. “Tell me what you overheard.”

  “Oh, very well; it wasn’t all that much, anyway. I’ve known since last summer that your friend Francis is a Protestant agent. On your first night back at Whitcombe we argued and I ran up to bed in a temper. Remember? I regretted it and came back downstairs to put things right with you. But you were talking to Lacklin, and I couldn’t help but overhear what you said.”

  Roger sucked in his breath. “You’ve known from the beginning that I was in league with Francis?”

  “Yes.”

  “Damnation!” Roger flung himself down on his back beside her, his lust vanquished by his fear for her. He pressed a hand to his forehead. Behind his eyes he felt the beginnings of a headache. “Who else knows?”

  “No one. And no one ever will. I’d never betray you.”

  “If Francis were still here, he’d make absolutely certain of that.”

  “How? By killing me?”

  “Of course by killing you. God’s blood! Do you think this is a game?”

  “All I learned was that you’d done some favor for Lacklin that brought you back to England in advance of your ship.”

  “So that’s why you kept insisting that I’d returned earlier than I’d admitted? I wondered how the hell you knew that.”

  “So it’s true.”

  “Yes. I came overland from Marseilles, acting as a courier for some of Francis’ friends,” he confirmed for the first time. “The Argo was delayed by foul winds near Gibraltar.”

  “You were back in England in time to have murdered Will, which was all I was concerned about at the time. But since then, I’ve realized that you must have been mixed up with Francis Lacklin for years, and that whatever treasonous activities you were engaged in when you returned to England last spring, you’re probably still at them.”

  He cursed, absorbing this.

  “Tonight I heard that he wants you to kill someone, and that you are reluctant to do it.” She reached for his hand, her fingers meshing with his. “Perhaps there’s hope for you yet.”

  “Alix. You frighten me.” He squeezed her hand, relishing the touch. “You’re a loyal Catholic and one of the queen’s women. Your father is Mary Tudor’s chief intelligencer. You and I are enemies, beloved.”

  The juxtaposition of “enemies” and “beloved” sounded absurd. She must have thought so too, for she grinned at him; unthinkingly he responded by shifting her beneath him again. It seemed so natural an action that when the surge of lust took him, he was momentarily nonplussed. How was it possible that he had never bedded her? Her body felt so dear to him, so familiar.

  “Can I trust you?”

  “With your life.”

  “And with the lives of my friends?”

  “Yes.”

  “Francis Lacklin is my friend, Alix.”

  “I know. I won’t betray either of you.”

  “If you’re ever discovered, and put to the question—”

  “Considering the identity of my mistress and the position held by my father, I think I can safely say I’ll never be tortured.”

  “As Queen Nan Boleyn and Queen Cat Howard could never be beheaded? Depend on nothing. Mary Tudor could turn against you.” He stroked her lovely hair. She had not obeyed his order to take it down, but a couple of her hairpins had come out, freeing one long red lock. “‘Tis you I’m worried about. This is very dangerous, and I don’t want you involved. Have you forgotten your vow to me? ‘No more meddling’?”

  Shame took hold of her as she recalled how guilty she had felt after falsely accusing Roger of killing Will. She’d sworn off interfering in his affairs, and she hadn’t meant to break her promise. “I never intended to meddle tonight. I don’t know why I put my ear to the door; it’s been so long since I’ve done anything on impulse. At court I have to be so vigilant. It isn’t easy being so bloody perfect all the time.”

  His voice gentled. “Is it so difficult, serving the queen?”

  She lifted her chin, determined not to complain. “Not difficult, no. Just a little wearing.”

  His thumbs soothed her cheekbones; then his lips saluted the dark circles under her eyes. “You’re exhausted, aren’t you? We have to think of a way to get you safely home.”

  She smiled mischievously as she wriggled her hips against his. “We can’t think very well in this position. Are you going to let me up?”

  She knew what his answer would be. There was a slight pause, then his expression changed subtly: his mout
h slackened, his eyes dilated to black. It was the face she’d seen in Merwynna’s cottage, and so many times since then, in her dreams.

  “No,” he said, sliding his hips more firmly over hers. “I think not.” Unable to stop himself, he lowered his face to hers and kissed her hard. Pleasure jolted through him, and from the way her body arched, he knew it was the same for her. He deepened the kiss, thrusting his tongue into her mouth with rhythmic ferocity. A tiny moan escaped her. He felt her tongue tentatively brush his, then, more boldly, imitate his own motions, sending bursts of hot desire along his nerves, and increasing the pressure in his groin until he thought he would lose all control.

  God’s blood! It was this rush of emotion, this driving tide of sensuality, this irrational desire for a deeper-than-physical union that he didn’t feel, couldn’t feel, with other women. And yet it wasn’t love. Love was unselfish and gentle, and this was neither of those. I am obsessed with you, he thought.

  That was it. Obsession. Mutual obsession, if the look of dazed delight in her eyes was anything to go by.

  He slid his hand between their bodies, encountering the padded thickness of her doublet. “You’ve bound your breasts, haven’t you?” At that moment he felt he had every right to touch them, caress them, excite the peaks until they stood, hard, erect and achingly sensitive.

  She nodded.

  He drew back, torturing them both. “Sit up and unbind them for me.”

  Dreamily Alexandra obeyed. Holding his eyes, she unfastened her doublet and slipped out of it. She removed her shirt. Underneath, she had swathed her naked breasts in a length of cotton to keep them flat; her fingers trembled as she unwrapped the fabric. When it was done, she flushed at the heat of Roger’s gaze upon her. But she was neither embarrassed nor ashamed. She loved the way he was looking at her.

  One of his hands reached out to touch the opal pendant that was hanging from a thin silver chain around her neck. “This is the one I gave you, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” She wore it nearly every day, hidden underneath her chemise. Her father had provided her with fine clothes and jewels for her appearances at court, but nothing was more precious to her than the gift Roger had brought her upon his return home last summer. “I love it.”