Strong hands lifted her gown free. “It rather spoils your game but I have you fast now.”
“I may cause you pain.”
“It will be sublime agony, I assure you,” he exclaimed huskily, dragging off her chemise. “Wait—what are you doing? Heloise!”
“What you did to me. Do you not like this . . . or . . . this?”
Heaven could not better this—or that—he decided, closing his eyes in divine delectation. A few months ago he did not give a fig for life—but now, with his sorceress stirring his blood to an ecstatic heat with her fingertips, he was learning other values afresh. “You have been waiting for a time like this to torture me, I think.”
“Oh yes,” she growled, moving up to tease her lips across his mouth while her fingers worked their feverish magic elsewhere.
“I will die, you wanton. Mercy, I surrender! Heloise, if you do not get atop me now, I vow I will strangle you.” Iron hands nested her elbows as he hauled her into place, and slowly fitted himself into her with a low cry of pleasure that ancient Pan might have envied.
For an instant, astonishment suffused her fawn’s gaze and then the centers of her eyes grew dark and wide and she rode him, driving him to such exquisite heights that he stayed her, and then it was his turn to play the sorcerer, enforce his own magic upon her, and carry her with him soaring as the world shattered about them into iridescent shards.
Heloise collapsed across him with a soft huff of breath, her hair flooding about his neck and breast. Loving arms wrapped her close, as he chanted softly:
“As moonlight dancing on the sea waves,
So is my fey mistress beauteous;
As a dew necklace spun on a morning web
So my lady’s eyes shimmer with starlight.
Fortunate am I beyond all others,
That I can wind her silver hair
On the distaff of my fingers.”
“That is very beautiful,” she whispered, snuggling against his breast, and he felt her tears like warm rain. “Definitely not Lewis Glyn Cothi.”
“No, an Englishman.” He was out of practice in versemaking but it was not bad for a rusty lover. “An excellent guess, though. The Welsh have written more about loving for their ale money than laments for their lovely, bully chieftains.” Why was she crying?
Could he ever give her his heart? Heloise wondered. How pleasing it would be to find a litter of scrunched-up love speeches, tossed from his pillow: Note IV: if this does not win her, omit VI and VII and proceed to VIII, tell her that you love her and pause here to press a kiss between her breasts. Remember to sigh loudly.
“What is amusing you, my adorable wife?” Her lips were folded into a mischievous seam. “Secrets, hmm? Then while I recover my enfeebled power from your seductive craft, tell me what you observed today.”
Predictably the sanctuary interested him most, especially the laundresses. “Hmm, so there is plenty of opportunity for conspiracy.”
“You still believe that the queen is a force to be reckoned with?”
“I know it. But so long as she has the other little prince, the lord protector cannot take the throne.”
“But if the princes are bastards.”
“No matter. We have the proof that she was dealing with Hastings and I will wager she will smuggle her younger son out into hiding any day now as a rallying point for our enemies. There is a royal council meeting this morning and it is vital they drive their full weight against her and demand the boy, else you will be visiting me in the Tower. Curse this plaguey injury!”
“Has the queen not suffered enough?”
“What!” His eyes glittered. “Do you not want to be a countess?”
“Miles, it is not a game.” Perhaps it was time for truths. “I found the speech you had written for Harry.” The enigmatic gaze shifted from her face. “You have this all planned. We are like a giant chessboard to you.” She watched him evade her accusation, pound the pillow and bolster as if they were scapegoats for the limits on his soaring ambition while he found words to satiate her.
“No, Heloise, not planned. I am merely seizing every opportunity. I warned you I intended to restore my family’s honor. You cannot win the game if you do not toss the dice and, believe me, if you play for high stakes, you cannot afford to lose.”
“But you risk attainder and a traitor’s death if aught goes amiss. Supposing Parliament refuses to accept Stillington’s testimony, you know the Woodvilles will take revenge. Your family will surely suffer.” And so will I. What about us, Miles?
“Take my hand and make the climb. You have the courage.”
“I? Jesu, I see how you move Buckingham like a pawn and if he is a duke, then in God’s name, what am I to you, how expendable?”
A bruising question. He swallowed, then reached out to wind threads of her hair onto his finger—yes, like a distaff. “You were an inconvenience. Jesu, when your father’s ruffians hauled me to the altar, it was risible. There was I with my lofty ambitions being handfasted to a merchant’s daughter but now, cariad . . .”
“Now I am worth money to you, not just Bramley.”
“You are my mirror, sweetheart. You show me my soul.” He drew a caressing finger down her curves. “What is it you want from me, madam wife?”
“I do not know how much you are prepared to give.”
“What, every secret, Heloise? There will be nothing to gloat over with a miser’s satisfaction in the bedchamber at the end of the day.”
“Miles!”
“Yes, Heloise, I play with people. That is why I want a fool like Nandik off the board. But you, my darling witch, I keep in my pocket like a talisman to be stroked. Remember that and be content.”
Be content? When she loathed his dangerous lust for power? He was watching her now, his grey eyes wary as if he feared her condemnation. The intelligent mouth that she had begun to love quirked apologetically beneath her scrutiny. His gaze was asking for her acceptance and her trust. The suspicion and dislike of their swordpoint wedding night had been utterly vanquished.
“Oh, Miles.” Heloise reached out a hand to touch his cheek and he turned his head and kissed her palm. She had become Miles Rushden’s talisman, despite her feyness? The warmth of being accepted suffused her with a glorious blessing. If he could welcome her into his future, then he deserved the same of her. For now, she must set aside her fears and rejoice in this wondrous absolution. Loyalty was not to be given lightly but she offered that fealty now in mind—and body, her eyes and lips a mirror of the passion and desire in his. “My lord.”
A knocking upon the arched door made her jump, cursing at the interruption, but her husband’s thumb and finger anchored her and, laughing, he drew her, now sweetly desperate for his arms about her, down for a kiss of peace.
RUMPLED, DIMPLED, AND ONLY STILL PARTIALLY ENLIGHTENED, Heloise let her sister in on Monday morning to annoy her husband.
“I am visiting the invalid,” Dionysia declared provocatively, swishing her skirts as she cornered the oaken bedpost. “Did you know I have moved in, Sir Miles?” Her fingers tiptoed up the shining wood. “I mean, well, since my darling eldest sister sleeps beneath this roof, it makes it respectable for me to dwell here too.”
“Respectable.” Weighed by her husband, the epithet grew furry. “Is she capable of being discreet?” he asked Heloise. “For I, being disagreeably tethered here, unquestionably comply with Gloucester’s standards for a faithful husband. But if his northern grace discovers Harry is busy betraying marital vows and molesting virgins in his leisure time, he may believe him capable of other betrayals. Not that you were a virgin, Denise,” he added acidly.
“Miles!” Heloise agreed with his sentiments, but a reproof was surely her demesne.
“Poor man. Your injuries must really be hurting.” Dionysia delivered her sister a pitying flash of lashes before she flounced closer to the bed. “Is it not in your plans that Harry should fall in love, new brother?”
Miles did not answer imme
diately. No soft pad of humor lay beneath the message now. “Are you familiar with the prophet Jeremiah and the words ‘the abomination of desolation,’ Dionysia?” he asked her wearily. Could this frothy girl, tinseled with golden hair, steer Harry to safe anchorage when the heavens loured? “No? Then let me tell you that I am reminded of that phrase whenever the black moods come upon his grace. Fumblings and tumblings will not keep them at bay, mistress. At such times he detests himself and the whole of Christendom.”
“Pah, it is affection he needs. He told me how there was never anyone in his childhood to love, how all his kinsmen were slain in battle, and that his grandmother sold the wardship of him.”
“That is true.” Harry’s brother had died while still a page. As for the duke’s mother, because she had married her third husband out of love, a knight with less land than he had ability, she had seen little of her son.
“Then let me help, brother-in-law. I can give Harry love.”
Miles leaned upon his elbow, unmoved by the appeal in the kitten eyes. “If you speak true, so be it, but I am warning you, Dionysia, that if he ever weighs you in his balance and finds you wanting, he will make you pay.”
“Pooh, a fine friend you are, to be sure, for you do naught but disparage him.”
“Go away,” he muttered. “You wear me out.”
Heloise closed the door behind her. “Is that why you will never leave the duke, for fear of his vengeance if you do?”
“I saved his life, Heloise, up on Pen-y-Fan, and in return he gave me his friendship and I have guided him since. I will not abuse that trust.”
“Even if it imperils your life?”
“Even then. With Harry’s support, Gloucester will safeguard England better than any Woodvilles. Is that so wrong? Now hush, changeling, we have company.”
An exuberant duke burst in with Sir William panting behind him. The older man closed the door and leaned against it. “We managed it, Miles. All is done!”
“No wonder you look so smirky, my lord duke.”
Harry, pleased with himself and pretty as a popinjay, raised a brow at Heloise’s presence but Miles kept his arm about her waist. “So spit it out, my gracious lord.”
“The queen has surrendered the other boy. We obtained a royal command from Prince Edward that his little brother should join him, so the royal council went by barge to Westminster. Gloucester and I waited in the star chamber at the palace while Canterbury and Howard went over to the sanctuary with the abbot and requested the boy. It took two hours of arguing but she gave in eventually and we gave the little lad a right royal reception at the palace—mind, there is precious left to sit on, let alone eat off—and then the archbishop escorted the child to the royal lodging at the Tower.”
“That is most excellent. No force was used, I trust?”
“Well, we did surround the sanctuary.”
“Harry!” Miles had not meant to use the familiarism he kept for his thoughts. The duke look surprised but recovered swiftly.
“That is what forced her hand, not old Bourchier’s bletherings. She knew we could have broken the door down and grabbed the boy as soon as blink an eye.”
“At least it has been done with the assent of the prince and the council.”
“Sounds immodest, but I can claim the credit for that. ‘I have heard of sanctuary men—thieves, murderers—but not sanctuary children,’ I scoffed at them. ‘This child is in no danger from the law, and I think if the little fellow was asked to make the decision he would tell you that he would rather not be cooped up like a chicken. And so, if Prince Richard has not asked for sanctuary, it is not breaking the law to remove him.’ They all agreed. It was wondrous pleasing.”
Watching the two men laughing together, Heloise wondered again why a clever man like Miles wasted his time with Buckingham when he might work for Gloucester, but she was at last beginning to understand; Miles was the steel in Buckingham’s backbone. He was manipulating his duke in order to give England the stability it needed. In fact he was doing Gloucester far greater service than any of the White Boar men. Did my lord protector realize how much he owed to Miles’s sensible counsel? Did Buckingham?
THE DUKE BREEZED BACK TO MILES’S BEDCHAMBER LATER THAT night with Knyvett and de la Bere, armed with leather bottles and Spanish apples, skylark high in love and a-thirst with power. Drunk already on civic wine, Harry gleefully boasted that he had persuaded Ralph Shaa, the lord mayor’s famous preacher brother, to amend his Sunday sermon at Paul’s Cross and hint that King Edward’s children were bastards. Such high-handedness bothered Miles. Nor was he pleased when the duke bussed Heloise on the mouth and set her outside the chamber like washing for collection in the morning.
Nandik, hallooed from a straw mattress in the hall, arrived to pour soupy ale down his scraggy throat, and when Harry unstoppered a bottle with his teeth and spat the bung clear across the bed, Miles knew it was going to be a long night.
“Now is the time, Nandik.” The ducal swagger had grown wobbly. “I want you to cast the lord protector’s horoscope. Just for amusement, lad.” A lift of jeweled hands endorsed the feeble claim that no harm was meant.
“For Sweet Christ’s sake, my lord,” protested Miles, wishing they would all go.
“No, your grace,” Nandik replied resolutely. “ ’Tis akin to witchcraft, not to mention treason. You might as well ask me to cast the young king’s too and put my head fully in a noose.”
“Aye, that too.”
“Harry lad!” This time it was Knyvett sobering fast.
“Nay, my lord duke.” Nandik adamantly shook his unkempt head. “My innards ripped out and my balls pulled off while all you may get is a few lousy weeks in the Tower and a dose of penance, your grace. No, I thank you!”
Harry wanted obedience. “Between the four of us, man, and then you may destroy it all. I will pay you well.”
“My gracious lord, you have been generous enough but . . .”
“Forcing the price up?” Miles took a fruit from the pewter dish upon the coverlet and dug his thumbnail beneath the marigold peel.
Nandik ignored him. “I can promise little accuracy or even truth.”
Harry had the bit between his teeth. “Gloucester’s future, Nandik. His horoscope before morning.”
Nandik’s eyes fell before Miles’s condemnatory gaze and then he lifted his head with the same crafty mien as when he broke the news at Brecknock. “I have already done so. My lord, he will be king.”
Twenty-three
“What took you, changeling?” exclaimed Miles, relief destroying his tense expression. “You did buy a seat in the stands, did you not?” Pleased he had been concerned for her, Heloise leaned over to kiss him and waited as he struggled to unbutton the knop of her Sunday cloak. “Ugh! I thought witches hated water.”
“You deserve a clout, sir! Your leg may be mending but your manners are not. There is a limit to wifely duty.” She had just spent two hours at St. Paul’s Cross. “I was never one for sermons, and I have not changed my mind.”
“Not enthralling?” Disappointment edged his voice.
“About as inspiring as watery gruel—‘These bastard slips shall not take root.’ ”
“Oh.” Distaste wrinkled the Rushden nose.
“Yes. Not a good idea of your noble friend’s.”
“Tell me the worst.”
“Friar Shaa was obviously supposed to show that the princes were bastards and that Gloucester was the most English of the Yorkists.”
“He was born in Fotheringay,” her husband offered pedantically.
“Yes, as opposed to Rouen or Dublin like his brothers. Anyway, my lord protector was so late arriving that the part where Shaa was to flourish an arm at the duke and declare that he was English and the image of his Plantagenet father made no impact. So what does the friar do but stop in midsentence and wait while Gloucester and his retainers settle themselves, and then he repeats a quarter of the sermon at galloping speed so that he can do this grand ges
ture again. Believe me, the reasoning fell as flat as any pancake missing the frypan. The intelligent were not impressed, the stupid were even more confused, and Gloucester was crimson with embarrassment.” She grinned mischievously. “Do you want something to hit?”
“Yes, preferably Harry’s jaw.” Miles carried her hand to his lips. “Thank you for putting up with it and with me.”
Her muddy pattens clattered to the floor as she perched herself on the bed beside him and frowned at her toes pensively. “There is some sinister mischief at work. This ‘being English’ business is fanning the shameful rumor that her grace of York slept with a Flemish archer to beget King Edward, and I can assure you, Miles—having lived in her household—that it is a wonder that she slept with anything save beads and a missal, or begat all those children.”
Miles nodded, his mind’s cogs and wheels turning. “And where is Gloucester now?”
“Gone home to his mother’s to lick his wounds, and she will need soothing too, I imagine. Both dukes need their ears boxed, if you ask me.” There had been gratification in Buckingham’s face as if he had been pleased to see his cousin discomforted.
“Well, Harry shall do better at the Guildhall on Tuesday, I promise you, Heloise, for I have rehearsed him hard, and he is to address Parliament on Wednesday. With luck, we shall have a new king by Thursday night.”
But what of tomorrow—St. John’s Eve, when the Londoners caroused around their bonfires? Were the Woodville retainers planning an uprising? There had been no more glimpses of the future, but Heloise welcomed the reassuring warmth of Miles’s hand.
“What if Buckingham gets a taste for it, Miles?”
“Kingmaking, cariad?”
“The power and the glory. It is heady fare.”
“For a lad from Brecknock? Never fear, I shall nail his feet to the floor.”
Heloise bit back an unwifely retort. The ship was in full sail now. She only hoped that Gloucester would survive the voyage.
***
NEXT EVENING LONDON WAS ABLAZE WITH BONFIRES AS Acrocodilus of armed men clanked its way through the carousing streets. Gloucester and his duchess stood on the stone balcony of Tamersilde, a royal pavilion flanking St. Mary Bow in West Cheap, watching the torchlight procession with Lord Mayor Shaa and Juliana, his wife. Heloise, invited too, and tense to her knucklebones, was carrying a whetted dagger in her sleeve, praying that there would be no rising; fearful a vision of Miles strung up on a scaffold for the executioner’s knife might come to her.
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