When a peddler stopped at the smithy to have his horse shod and idly called the Scots cowards and said Old Noll —meaning Cromwell—would send them baying home like dogs, Jamie’s face went white. He picked a fight with the peddle' and ended up breaking his arm.
That night he didn’t come home at all, and the next day there was ale on his breath and honey-haired Mollie Paxton came strolling by, swinging her hips, and stopped to give him a long, slow look. Lenore, on her way to the well for a bucket of water, stopped in her tracks to watch them. They couldn’t see her, for she was shielded by a luxuriant moss rosebush that was Flora’s pride, but she could see Mollie’s arch look and heard her say something about “last night.”
The two had a bad fight over that, and Lenore ended up slamming her bedroom door in Jamie’s face and latching it. She half expected him to burst through her window and quickly shuttered it, but he did not; instead, he sulked downstairs in the kitchen. The next day even Flora noticed that they weren’t speaking.
They might have made it up, but when the King’s forces advanced on Worcester, Lenore woke to find Jamie gone. Gone to Worcester, Flora told her grimly. Gone, too, was his big two-edged claymore that he kept hidden.
Lenore and Flora exchanged worried glances. They both knew what that meant.
The neighbors knew, too, for some had seen Jamie ride away to the north, claymore in hand. Now even those who had countenanced Lenore’s behavior in moving in with the bonnie Scot turned their heads away bitterly. Some muttered behind their hands to each other, and when she went down into the village with her market basket, more than once she heard the words “hanging tree.”
So Lenore determinedly donned her best summer dress —for hadn’t her mother told her when she was little that a girl always had a better chance of getting her way if she looked pretty? Her wide white linen collar was plain and caught at the throat, but flared out, exposing a smooth expanse of bosom and the tops of her tantalizing breasts. Uncorseted—indeed, needing none for her naturally slender waist—she smoothed down her apple-green bodice, which outlined her lovely thrusting bustline and plunged into a slight V just below her waist. With great care she tucked up her slit overskirt of apple green around her hips on each side to let her gay yellow petticoat show to best advantage. Three-quarter sleeves flared out into great slashed puffs below her shoulders and ended midway down her slender forearms with wide white linen cuffs. Her thick shining hair was combed up from her forehead and caught up behind in a round braid with a few wavy locks hanging fashionably loose.
She was not richly gowned, but there was not a man for twenty miles who would not turn his head to look at her.
Satisfied at last with her appearance, Lenore had set forth on Snowfire and ridden north for Worcester.
Her intention was simple: she was going to bring Jamie home. Home before the battle was joined, if possible, home while they could still lie about it and say he’d been somewhere else and not at Worcester offering his services to the King! For a great battle was shaping up at Worcester, that was certain, and it was best Jamie not be in it. Jamie might be a fool—indeed, Lenore was beginning to believe it—but this time, at least, she intended to save him from himself!
It was uneasy going. She had found food for her horse at a friendly farmhouse. She had told them a glib story about a lost colt, and the farmer’s wife had offered her meat pie and coarse brown bread and had let her stay the night in their loft. Cromwell’s men were everywhere, she told Lenore cheerfully. The next morning it proved true.
In the morning mists Lenore found her way blocked several times by people with carts, hurrying away from the coming battle. Twice she had talked her way through outposts of Cromwell’s men. She had no papers, but she was so young and so lovely and so obviously unarmed that she brought a smile to the lips of even the most war-hardened soldiers. They’d made lewd remarks, but they’d let the girl with hair of molten gold go on her way and watched her departure wistfully.
Now on the crest of the low hill above Worcester, through the puffs of smoke, she studied the way the battle went. Lenore’s vision was excellent. A flash—perhaps of diamonds—caught her eye and she leaned forward, squinting into the blinding sun. That man in the buff coat leading the charge with his sword held high and his black curls streaming behind him—it was his breastplate she had seen glittering. Could he be Charles Stuart, whom Jamie proudly called the “King of Scotland?” As she watched, his horse was shot from under him and a melee of soldiery obscured him from her view. She turned, shaking out her hair in the sticky heat and running her fingers through to comb it—what matter if it were loose or bound? She was like as not to fall to a musket ball, anyway, where she was going! Her resolute gaze swept the field.
Clearly Roundhead troops had been stationed where she now sat astride her white horse—which accounted for its desertion now. They must have pounded down into the valley below and were even now pressing the Royalists back toward the town. Across the Severn was strung a bridge of boats ... so Cromwell held both sides of the river. Her jaw tightened. Jamie was on the losing side this day.
Even inside the city walls she could see bursts of smoke—so there was fighting there, too, the Roundheads had broken through. No matter, she must get in and find Jamie. As she waited for an opening, her head lifted and she tensed. In the sector just below her that led straight to the city gates, there was a momentary slackening in the battle as the cavalry surged forward in another direction, pushing the foot soldiery back, cutting deep into their ranks. That would be the young King’s forces making another charge. But dead ahead there was no hand-to-hand fighting at the moment— though musketry fire came in bursts.
In the momentary lull, Lenore took a deep breath, nudged Snowfire with her knee, cantered down the hill gathering speed, and thundered between the lines at full gallop. A volley of shots erupted nearby, and the white stallion, little deterred by his light burden, took off like the wind, running in long strides like the racer he was.
Men reloading their muskets rubbed smoke-reddened eyes at the sight of the slender girl with her red-gold hair streaming out behind her and the horse’s flying white mane gleaming in the sun. Her white legs flashed as the wind whipped her yellow petticoat up around her thighs, and those men ahorse, who could easily have stopped her, paused in their tracks just to view her, while those with guns who could have brought her down from a distance gaped open-mouthed.
About to give the order to fire, one startled young officer, confronted by this incredible vision, shouted hoarsely, “Hold fire!”
“My mother’s ill in Worcester—I must reach her!” cried Lenore as she raced by. “My mother—” The wind caught her voice even as it caught her shimmering hair that streamed behind her in a fiery golden shower, a moment before she and Snowfire plunged into a pall of smoke. But she was a woman and beautiful, and there was none in all that battle-scarred crew who wished to bring her down as Snowfire emerged from the smoke at a dead run and skimmed like a gull toward the city.
Just outside the gates she plunged in among a rout of dirty, bleeding troops that staggered back into the shelter of the town, while others desperately covered their retreat. They jostled about her, but they did not deter her.
Indeed, to some she must have seemed an angel come to their aid, this fiery-haired beauty on her white horse with its tossing mane, as clean and shining as they were bloody and battle-grimed. In the sticky heat she was swept forward with the massed men, looking anxiously from side to side for sight of Jamie.
Then she was through the gates and into the town.
She found it a place of wild confusion. As the troops around her dispersed down a narrow side street in an attempt to regroup, some limping, some at a staggering trot, she saw that the dead, the moaning wounded, were heaped carelessly about. Racing down the valley she had had no time to grasp the terrible things she saw, but here she was sickened by sights on every side. The gutters were stained red with blood, and at a cross street ahead she co
uld see Roundhead soldiers charging through, their officers shouting orders. Musketry could be heard on nearby streets and a great puff of smoke rose above the housetops to her left where some building must be afire. Townsfolk ran distractedly back and forth, men and women calling out, asking each other for news or help. The King’s men still held the Town Hall, someone shouted. As she wheeled Snowfire sharply about to avoid an overturned baggage wagon and narrowly missed a darting child, Lenore heard a man bawl that the King and a handful of cavaliers were making their stand on the south side of the outer wall at Barbour’s Bridge—but the Ironsides would chop them up!
The Ironsides . . . that was what they called Cromwell’s Roundheads. Cromwell obviously had the young King on the run. God knew where Jamie was now. But somehow she knew she must find him and get him back before news of the battle’s outcome reached the Cotswolds.
Even as she thought it, a number of Roundhead soldiers charged around a corner, scattering some screaming old women carrying a big butter churn. Her white stallion reared up as they dashed by, and she was hard put to keep him from bolting as a boom, which must have been exploding black powder, split the air. Swept along with the tide, with no clear destination, Lenore was impelled forward.
Up ahead she could see officers commandeering horses. She must avoid losing her horse at all costs, for Jamie and she would need to ride fast and far when this rout was over. To her right yawned an open doorway, the oaken door swinging in the breeze; within she could see no one. A deserted house . . . perhaps its owners were among those who lay in their blood in the gutters, being trampled under the horses’ hooves. A driverless cart careened wildly past her over the cobbles and turned over just ahead, obscuring those commandeering the horses from her view. On an impulse, Lenore turned Snowfire and rode him right through that open doorway, ducking her head to clear it. In the gloom she quickly dismounted and slammed and barred the door.
Behind her, Snowfire moved uneasily, disturbed by the screams that reached them from a side street and the whinnies of the frightened horses that were still trying to drag the overturned cart. Still blinded by the bright light from outside, Lenore patted his gleaming coat to soothe him.
From a corner behind her came a low laugh, and she stiffened.
“This wine must be better than I thought,” came a rich masculine voice. “Now I’m seeing visions—a girl on a white horse riding right into the house!”
Lenore whirled around. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw sprawled on a low wooden bench with his back against the wall and one long booted leg stretched out along the bench while his other rested on the floor, a tall fellow surveying her. A lounging black-haired cavalier with all the grace and dash of his kind, he regarded her with interest from beneath his broad-brimmed plumed hat. His sword—a bloody one he had not bothered to wipe clean—was tossed on the table before him which supported his muscular forearm from which the sleeve had been ripped off. She noted that his boots were dusty and that a pewter tankard was grasped in one strong hand.
The stranger raised that tankard slightly in salute. “There’s wine in yon barrel,” he said. “Best we drink it up before it falls to Cromwell’s short-hairs!”
“Why are you not fighting?” cried Lenore, afraid for her Jamie if even the King’s cavaliers were deserting.
The tall man shrugged. “The battle is long since lost,” he said indifferently. “I charged with the King through the Sidbury Gate—’twas a brave charge, but we were too few. Leslie refused to fight, and his men merely watched us cut our way back and forth through Cromwell’s lines as if they were spectators at some game. The reinforcements from Wales did not come—if they arrive now, they’ll be too late. ’Tis folly to continue. The King is mad to do so. Myself, I’ll sit here cozy with my wine and make my way out of town with the dusk. Why came you here?”
“I’ve a—” she tripped over the word—“a husband in the King’s army.”
“Your husband’s a fool to leave you,” he said softly. “We’re—handfasted,” she admitted honestly.
“Ah?” His gaze flickered over her softly rising and falling breasts, round and ripe as apples hanging on the boughs. “Handfasting’s no marriage. You’re a free woman in England. . . .”
Lenore tossed her head. “Why’d you have the window shuttered and the door open?” she demanded.
He shrugged. “That was how I found it. As I passed by I saw food on the table—and fighting makes me hungry.” He offered her an oatcake and she shuddered and shook her head, still queasy from the sights in the streets. “And then I saw the wine.” He held out his tankard invitingly, but she turned away from him, unbarred the shutters, and leaned out to be sickened again by what she saw.
A screaming woman ran by dragging a young soldier who must have been long since dead. And another, weeping, carrying a little girl slumped in her arms. Horsemen moved impatiently over the cobbles of the narrow street now. Some of the horses’ flanks were red with blood and the cavaliers’ faces were grim as they streamed by. Lenore hastily pulled the shutters to a slit so that they would not see her mount behind her and perhaps seize him.
“You should help,” she said sharply. ‘Those are your comrades out there.”
“The cause is lost,” he said, and there was an icy note in his voice that reminded her that he was a tail, broad-shouldered man in his prime with a bloody sword on the table, and she but a girl of eighteen, handfasted or no. “Come dark, ye’ll be glad to slip away with me. How do they call you?”
“Lenore Frankford,” she said, giving him a black look.
“ ’Tis a soft name,” he observed. “But ye look none so soft.” He chuckled. “Faith, ye look as if ye’re eager to join in the battle!”
Lenore, anxiously scanning the street for sight of Jamie, ignored him. She winced as someone ran by outside, howling that the King had fled. She yearned to go looking for Jamie immediately but realized that in the confusion she’d only get trampled or seized and questioned by the soldiers—or worse. Besides, she feared to leave Snowfire here lest she not find him when she returned.
Thinking of Snowfire made her realize he must be hungry. She rummaged around and found a bucket of water and some grain in a crock and gave both to Snowfire. As she patted that lovely arched neck with its tossing mane, he nuzzled her hand softly.
Vaguely comforted, she turned to regard the cavalier with whom she shared this hiding place. He was an easy subject for regard, for there was that about him to stir the blood and set the senses atingle. He had cool dark gray eyes beneath dark brows—eyes that she felt could face up to a cannon or an angry maid with equal aplomb. And a kind of taut watchfulness, for all his debonair manner and easy posture, indicating that he could spring forward in a bound, swinging that bloody sword that lay so carelessly tossed on the table within easy reach of his hand.
“I should think that would worry you—hearing the King has fled,” she said contemptuously.
He shrugged. “Charles has his own hide to consider, as I have mine. He’s a brave fellow, but you see, there weren’t enough of us brave fellows.” His mouth twitched in amusement at her angry glance. “Too many of us refused to fight,” he explained.
She stared at him. “Like Leslie’s horse?”
“Like Leslie’s horse,” he agreed. “Probably halfway back to Scotland by now. As we should be. Better that we’d never left Holland.”
She fetched a sigh. “There is no hope, then?”
“None at all,” he told her cheerfully. “Oh, Charles may reach the throne of England some day, given time and circumstance and a bit of luck. But I doubt not Cromwell will be dead when that happens. For he’s a clever soldier, for which few give him credit.”
She turned away from the dark cavalier, feeling a sudden respect for his view, and continued her anxious survey of the street, where the noise, which had been more distant, was rapidly increasing. Suddenly an avalanche of men poured into her line of vision—Royalists pursued by Roundheads. A volley of
shots shattered the leaded panes of the windows across the street.
“Bar the shutters!” cried Geoffrey, springing forward to drag the heavy table against the door—and none too soon, for even as the table reached position there was a splintering sound as a frightened horse’s hooves drove nearly through the wood.
Lenore, hastily slamming and barring the shutters, turned to soothe Snowfire, made nervous by the pandemonium outside. She stifled a scream as a ball ripped through the door and Geoffrey leaped across the room to push her to the floor.
“Stay down,” he muttered, shielding her with his body. “Ye’ve a better chance that way.”
Half suffocated beneath him, with the hard-packed earthen floor at her back, Lenore gave a screech and clutched him as a pike impaled itself in the wooden shutter with a crunch and was abruptly snatched free. Then with a thunder of hooves the battle surged on up the street to collide with another body of men at the cross street and erupt into neighboring streets and alleys.
Lenore shuddered and pulled away from the arms that held her as the howling madness without subsided into a distant din as the battle took itself elsewhere.
“Faith, tis a grand opportunity missed,” murmured her cavalier, dragging his hand impudently across the soft peaks of her breasts as he rose.
Angrily Lenore slapped his hand away, hearing his low chuckle as she scrambled up and unbarred the shutter to peer out cautiously. Two men lay dead in the street, one with his head blown off and one hacked to pieces. A couple of dazed-looking pikemen were dragging away a third who groaned as he was dragged over the rough cobbles. They swore as a shutter, torn loose in the battle, fell down heavily upon the body they were dragging. The groans stopped abruptly. One pulled the shutter off and said stupidly, “He’s dead. Jeremy’s dead.”
With a half-human howl the other set off down the street at a run. “I’ll kill the bastards!” he sobbed. The other continued pulling dead Jeremy away. “Come back, Tim!” he called frantically.
This Towering Passion Page 5
