A man as handsome and virile as Nicholas shouldn’t be condemned to chastity simply by virtue of his profession. God’s eyes! Even her father, the rat catcher, had found himself a willing wife.
But even as she was moved to pity by his plight, the devious part of her brain was plotting ways to use this bit of information to her advantage. Knowing his weakness, she might exploit it to secure a more permanent position for herself in the lawman’s household. She could put a significant dent in the armor of Nicholas Grimshaw. And if she could tap away at it long enough...
Hubert had once said Desirée could wrap a man around her heart with the mere wink of an eye. She’d find out tonight if that was true.
“Well,” she said, polishing off her ale, “it seems a terrible waste if you ask me.”
Nicholas drew his brows together as she rose to finish cooking supper. He wondered if she meant that. He wondered if she was right.
Seven years. That was how long he’d been a lawman, how long it had been since he’d lain with a woman. Hell, he might as well be a virgin.
There was a time in his impetuous youth when he’d crawled into a different wench’s bed every night. But now...
Most of the time, he was too busy to think about women. When he wasn’t busy, he was too weary or drunk to care. But having Desirée in his house...
She aroused things in him that had been missing for a long while, not only lust, but tenderness and companionship and laughter.
Perhaps he was wasting away beneath his occupation. But there wasn’t much he could do about it. Desirée was the only woman brave enough to peer beneath his cloak of authority and look him in the eyes.
As he gazed into the flames, sipping at his ale, he almost regretted having told her the truth about Hubert. Now that she realized there was no vengeance to be had for his death, there was no excuse for her to stay in Canterbury.
Perhaps it was a selfish regret, but there was no telling when he’d get to be this close to a woman again. Maybe never. It was a rare wench who didn’t run screaming at the sight of Nicholas Grimshaw, the shire-reeve of Kent. And he was reluctant to give up that pleasure.
Of course the day would come when she’d leave. That had always been his intention. And her wish. But he’d begun to hope it would be later rather than sooner.
Meanwhile, though he might not be able to quench his bittersweet thirst for Desirée, at least he could enjoy a few sustaining sips of her loveliness.
While Desirée finished filling the pot, he rose to stoke the fire. Before long, the cottage was filled with the hearty aroma of chicken pottage bubbling over the hearth.
This was contentment, he decided an hour later as he finished off his supper—a full belly, the slight buzz of ale in his head, Azrael licking his paws by the fire, and a beautiful lass across the table.
He saluted her with his cup of ale. “You’re a very good cook.”
She shrugged. “’Tis sleight of hand. Indeed, I made the pottage from sticks and stones.”
He chuckled. A beautiful, amusing lass. “Well, you fooled me.”
She smirked. “You’re easy to fool.”
“Me?”
“Oh, aye. A prime target.” She ran an idle finger around the top of her cup. “I could rob you blind at Fast and Loose.”
“That sounds like a challenge.”
She answered him with an arched brow and a smug smile.
“Fine,” he said, pushing what remained of his trencher out of the way. “Give it your best, wench.”
“Where’s your coin?”
“No coin. Let’s play for honor.”
“Honor,” she scoffed, shaking her head. “You mean with that box of treasure you’ve squirreled away, you’re not willing to part with a single farthing?”
“That? Nay, that’s to be spent elsewhere.”
“Indeed? On what? Saffron? Lavender? That plunger churn I want?” She wiggled her brows.
“’Tis for taxes.”
“Taxes?” She leered at him, incredulous. “By the saints, how much tax do you owe?”
“Not my taxes,” he said with a chuckle.
“Then whose?”
He shrugged. “Some of the townsfolk can’t afford to pay, so...”
Desirée was struck speechless.
Nicholas, squirming under her amazed regard, replied to her silent question. “’Tis the least I can do.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You’re not half the brute you seem, are you?”
“Shh,” he bade her. “Don’t tell anyone.” He gave her a wink. “So what say you? Will you play for honor?”
“Honor? I’m afraid I have no honor to wager, sir.”
“Indeed?” he said with a thoughtful frown. “All right, then. Let’s play for...cleaning up supper.”
She smiled. “Done.” She rose to get the Fast and Loose chain from her satchel.
She let him inspect it. It appeared to be a normal chain of silver links. She placed the chain on the table, making a double loop in the middle and coiling outward to leave one end at the right and one at the left. Then she looked at him askance.
He chose the left loop, planting his finger in its middle.
“Are you certain?” she asked.
Nay, he wasn’t certain. How could one be certain? It was a game of risk, wasn’t it?
She goaded him. “That’s the loop that will hold fast to your finger, then?”
He narrowed his eyes at her. The sly vixen was trying to get him to change his mind. “Aye, that’s it.”
She drew the ends of the chain apart, and they slithered out of the coil, leaving his finger loose.
“Shite.”
She giggled.
“Do it again,” he grumbled.
“You want to try it again?” She obliged him, winding the chain out carefully while he studied her movements.
It appeared she’d laid out the chain exactly as before, so he reasonably assumed the right-hand loop was the proper choice. He placed his finger there.
“You’re sure?” she asked.
He nodded. He wasn’t going to let her plant uncertainty in his brain.
“’Tisn’t too late to change your mind,” she teased.
“I’m not changing my mind.”
He should have changed his mind. The links slipped out and away from his finger, leaving it free.
“Bloody... How did you do that?”
She wound the chain around her fingers with a shrug. “Luck.”
He didn’t believe that for an instant. The wench was up to something. “One more time. Slowly.”
She grinned, coiling the chain with exaggerated care as he watched her every move. When she was finished, it appeared the same as before.
This time, instead of studying the chain, he studied her eyes for clues, but she looked at him with absolute aplomb.
He stuck his finger in the right-hand coil.
She gave him a skeptical frown. “Are you—“
“Aye, I’m sure.”
“Hmm,” she said thoughtfully. “Fast? Or loose?”
So she was giving him an option now, making him think he might have chosen wrong. Or perhaps the chain never came up fast.
“Loose,” he decided.
But when she pulled the chain, it wound in a perfect circle, enclosing his finger.
He growled and banged his free fist on the table.
She leaned forward, still holding his finger fast in the chain, and arched a brow. “Go once more and I’ll divine your future for you.” She arranged the chain upon the tabletop again. “Loose, and you’ll remain free. Fast, and you’ll wed within the year.”
“Pah!” He crossed his arms.
“Come on,” she goaded him.
“I’m a lawman, Desirée.”
“And?”
He leveled an irritated glare at her. She knew very well what he meant.
“Fast or Loose?” she asked, all innocence.
He unfolded one of his arms to stab a finger carelessly into one of th
e coils, challenging her with a stare. “Loose.”
She clucked her tongue as she slowly pulled the ends apart, leaving the chain neatly wrapped around his fingertip. “Fast.”
He yanked his finger out of the loop. “’Tis nonsense.”
“Oh, but you can’t argue with fate, Nicholas.” She wound the chain around her hand. “You’ll be saddled with a wife come next winter.”
Nicholas grumbled, but the absurd idea secretly pleased him. Especially if his wife turned out as charming and witty as Desirée.
“Perhaps you’d like to try Three Shells and a Pea,” she suggested.
“Why?” he said with a smirk. “Will that tell me how many children I’ll have?”
“Oh, nay,” she said with a laugh, putting away her chain. “I don’t have enough peas for that.”
She dodged his swat, then proved just as handy at Three Shells and a Pea, and by the end of the evening, he owed her not only supper clearing, but his enormous, comfortable bed all to herself for the night.
Yet despite his muttering and grousing the entire time he was scrubbing at the cookpot and cleaning up vegetable scraps, he hadn’t been so cleverly entertained in a long while. And though he punched her pallet in irritation when he discovered his feet hung off the end of the puny thing, a part of him knew he’d gladly sacrifice some of his creature comforts in exchange for more of her warm company.
Desirée might have been teasing him with her fortune-telling games, but tonight she’d played Fast and Loose with his heart.
CHAPTER 15
Lady Philomena prided herself on her keen eyes and ears. Not a servant sniffled without her knowing. She knew all about the stable lad and his midnight trysts with the kitchen maid. She knew the household priest imbibed too freely of the sacramental wine. She knew that the milkmaid was with child, that the cook sometimes slipped bits of meat to the hounds, that the physician who came to cure her father of his dread disease had no idea what he was doing.
And tonight Philomena could tell by the master of the mews’ odd behavior that something had happened to him in the town.
Perhaps it was nothing. Perhaps he’d been turned down by a whore who thought she was too good for a mewskeeper. Perhaps he’d gotten some bad meat at an inn. Or perhaps he’d met up with an old friend to whom he owed coin. Whatever it was, Odger was less than his usual jabbering self, and she wanted to know why, which meant she’d need to swallow her distaste and pay a visit to the mews.
Lord, why was it she’d been forced of late to go to the most despicable of places? This morning it had been that horrid tomb of a gaol.
Thank God her nightmare had proved to be only that, a nightmare. No one had used the key. Everything had been as she’d left it, and no one but the gaoler had witnessed her arrival and departure.
But now she’d have to visit the mews.
She despised the mews. In fact, if falconry hadn’t been one of the required pastimes of proper ladies, she would have butchered all the birds for supper long ago and turned the coop into something more useful. A slaughtering shed, perhaps. Or a place to confine disobedient servants.
But it was not to be. At least not yet. Not until she commanded enough respect far and wide to dictate fashion. Then she’d declare falconry a distasteful avocation, and ladies all across England would follow her lead, abandoning the messy diversion once and for all.
Until then, she’d pinch her nose and pick her way through the dropping-strewn rushes to confront Odger.
It was past midnight when she threw open the door of the mews, flooding the interior with light from her candle. Odger shrieked, and from their perches around him, the startled falcons screeched in echo and flapped their wings, stirring up the feathers and dust that made a fetid carpet at her feet.
“Oh!” Odger cried, scrambling to his feet, snatching the nightcap from his head and holding it over his heart. “’Tis ye, m’lady.”
She narrowed her eyes and stepped reluctantly into the mews, shutting the door before his precious birds could escape. “Whom were you expecting?”
“No one, m’lady.” She could see by the sideways slip of his gaze that he was lying.
“A withered old trot come to hike her skirts for you?” she guessed. “Or maybe a brute with a cudgel, collecting on a wager?”
He gulped. “Nay, m’lady.”
“Indeed.” She didn’t believe him, not for one instant. There had been terror in his eyes. She was sure of it.
She ambled about the mews, pretending to inspect the hooded falcons, holding the candle flame dangerously close to their feathered breasts. From the corner of her eye, she saw Odger grimace and clench his fists.
“M’lady, if ye please...”
“Have you ever set a bird on fire?”
He gasped.
“Do you think it goes up in a blaze all at once,” she mused, “never knowing what’s happened? Or does it scream in agony, flapping wildly, and setting the rest of the mews aflame?”
“M’lady, these falcons were bred by Father Thomas himself. They’re worth—“
“Pah! I know how much they’re worth!” she snapped. She moved her candle just under the talons of the most valuable bird. It shuffled along the perch, trying to escape the heat.
“M’lady, please,” he begged.
“I’d wager the whole mews would catch fire in a matter of moments. Poof!” She turned to him. “And you? You’d no longer be master of the mews then, would you?”
He gave her a confused frown. She could see he was too dim-witted to understand what she was driving at. She supposed she’d have to clarify.
“I want to know, dear Odger, what has you jumping at shadows.”
He averted his eyes and worried the cap in his hands.
“And believe me when I tell you,” she added, “that whatever you dread, my punishment will be far worse if your answer displeases me.”
At his hesitation, she swung the candle toward his favorite falcon, sending the bird into a fluttering panic.
“Nay!” Odger cried. “I’ll tell ye! I’ll tell ye!”
She withdrew the candle, and he complied.
“I was in town today, and I met a lass of...of willin’ ways, if ye know what I mean.”
“You met a wench who was willing to overlook the stench of the mews upon you?”
He frowned in shame. “Aye.”
“Go on.”
“I went with her back to her cottage, she took me into her bedchamber, and there she...she...”
Philomena didn’t relish listening to the tawdry details of his afternoon swiving. “What?” she snipped. “Did she drag out your skinny little worm and pump it dry?”
“Nay! She...tied me up.”
“Tied you up?”
“Aye.” His mouth worked in embarrassment. “She told me we were goin’ to have some fun.”
Philomena thought she was beginning to understand. She laughed. “Did the little thief cut your purse, then? Did she steal all your pennies and go on her merry way?”
“Nay.”
“Nay?”
He swallowed hard at the memory. “’Twasn’t her cottage at all. ‘Twas the cottage of...of Nicholas Grimshaw.”
Philomena blinked in surprise. “The shire-reeve?”
He nodded. “He wanted to...to torture me.”
“Torture you?” For a long while, she stared at him, mulling over his claim. “Why?”
“He wanted to know about the murder.”
“The murder?” Philomena’s hand tightened on the candleholder.
“Of course, I didn’t know nothin’, so I didn’t say a word.” At her glower, he added, “I swear. I only—”
She silenced him with her upraised hand. She needed quiet to think. Why the devil would the shire-reeve be looking into the lawyer’s murder? A man had already been hanged for the crime. It made no sense.
“Who was the wench?” She couldn’t imagine any woman keeping the company of Nicholas Grimshaw.
He
shrugged.
“You swear you told him nothing?”
“Not a word, m’lady. Just that I was out here, sleepin’ with my falcons.”
She believed him. He was wholly devoted to the foul-feathered flock. Indeed, she’d no doubt if she were to set the mews afire, he’d willingly burn right along with his precious birds.
But at the moment, she required his dedication to her.
She couldn’t very well intimidate Nicholas Grimshaw. He was twice anyone’s size, with ice in his veins and a penchant for violence.
But his female companion...
“Odger,” she said, modifying her voice to a less strident tone, “I have a very important task I need done.” She glanced carefully about the mews, then whispered, “A task for which I can trust no one but you.”
Her flattery worked. He puffed out his chest like a pigeon. “I’m at your service, m’lady.”
She flashed him a grateful smile, while inside she was thinking how much she despised her father’s gullible servants. The only thing she could depend upon where they were concerned was their undying loyalty, earned under threat of dismissal. She certainly couldn’t rely upon their brains. When she took over the household, she decided, she’d do away with the lot of the whimpering, obsequious cowards.
Desirée picked up a ripe apple from the vendor’s cart, sniffed it, and, while the man’s gaze followed a saucy young lass mincing down the lane, stuffed it into her satchel. She had enough coin to pay for the fruit, but old habits were hard to break.
There was that feeling again, the feeling she was being watched.
She gathered her wool cloak tighter about her throat and continued along the lane. All the while, as she strode from shop to shop in the light rain, purchasing a partridge here, a loaf of pandemain there, a pinch of saffron, a jug of wine, a sack of neeps, she felt eyes upon her back.
She swung her head around, searching the crowd for a spy, but she saw no one.
Perhaps it was only habit after so many years of running from the law. Maybe she simply couldn’t accustom herself to living a life without looking over her shoulder.
It would be a huge adjustment. Yet Desirée thought she might like it once she grew accustomed to it. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to make a living the honorable way, without relying upon sleight of hand and lying lips to provide her supper and a place to sleep.
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