By Arrangement

by Madeline Hunter

  Tentatively she placed her arm around his shoulders. A little awkwardly, she reached out and touched his face. It was the first time that she had touched him instead of the other way around. It felt different this way, and she marveled at the sensation of his skin beneath her fingertips.

  She let her fingers caress the planes of his handsome face. They came to rest on his lips, and she lightly stroked their warmth.

  He did not move. She lifted her gaze to his eyes and collected her bravery. After a little false start she leaned forward and kissed him.

  She had never done this before, with him or anyone, and once her lips were on his she really didn't know what to do. It felt very nice though, and she pressed a little harder. His mouth smiled beneath hers.

  She pulled away sheepishly. “You are laughing at me because I don't know how to do it.”

  His hand rose up and cradled her head. “Nay. I am thinking that was the most wonderful kiss I have ever had.”

  She blushed and kissed him again. He took over this time, responding to her artless start.

  She loved the way that he kissed her. She always had. The sensations he awoke in her were always so powerful and sweet and heady. This time she didn't completely lose herself, though, but followed his lead, doing as he did, learning from him. Finally, when he gently bit the corner of her mouth, she parted her lips to him.

  He did not choke and gag her as Stephen had, but instead gently stroked the inside of her mouth at first, sending chill upon chill down her spine. The intimacy startled her, and when he deepened the kiss she sensed a change in him and a rising passion that excited her as much as his warmth and touch. She had always been so caught up in her own reactions that she hadn't noticed his. Sharing the pleasure was much richer than just accepting it, and in a way this kiss moved her more than anything they had ever done before.

  “Oh my,” she gasped when they separated.

  “Surely you have kissed like that before.”

  “It wasn't so nice.”

  “Ah. Well, perhaps it helps now that you know that it won't get you with child.”

  She closed her eyes and groaned in mortification. Burying her face into his shoulder, she muttered miserably, “How did you know?”

  He began laughing. “You have always kept your lips locked like they were the gate to paradise itself, Christiana. I thought that you simply didn't like it. But it is the only misunderstanding that has any logic.”

  She laughed too. She lifted her head and wiped the tears brimming at her eyes. “Oh, dear saints. I assure you, it made perfect sense in light of what Idonia had told me when I was younger. You must think that I am the most stupid girl you have ever met.”

  He shook his head. “I think that you are the most beautiful girl whom I have ever met.”

  It was sweet of him to say that, but he had no doubt known many beautiful women. Still, it felt nice to be wooed with pretty words. He had never done that before.

  “You don't believe me.”

  “I am pretty enough, David. I know that. But not really beautiful. Not like Joan.”

  “Lady Joan is like a sunbeam and is a beautiful girl, Christiana. You, however, are the velvet night. Dark sky”—he touched her hair—“Pale light”—his fingers stroked her skin—“Stars”—he kissed the side of her eye.

  The sounds of voices intruded from the outer garden. She glanced resentfully in their direction. She wanted to stay in this hidden arbor longer, laughing and talking with David. Maybe kissing again.

  “We must go back,” he said regretfully. “John will be here by now.”

  They found John talking loudly with Sieg and peering around the garden for signs of the alerted lovers. He gave David a very male look as the couple emerged through the garden door and greeted him.

  CHAPTER 10

  CHRISTIANA ASSUMED THAT the dinner was more lavish than the household's usual midday meal. The visit of John Constantyn probably accounted for most of the extra dishes and savories, but she suspected that her own presence had inspired Vittorio to some last minute delicacies.

  “He's one of the best cooks in London, I'll wager,” John confided. “I wrangle an invitation to eat here whenever I can.” He patted his thickening girth. “Better not let him cook for your wedding, David. The King will take him from you.”

  Vittorio made sure that everything was perfect on the table, and then took a seat with the apprentices and Sieg. Soon that whole table chattered in Italian.

  “It is easiest for them to learn it at table,” David explained. “They will need it for trade.”

  Christiana watched the boys. Andrew was older than her and Roger just two years younger. They would not find it odd, though, that a girl their own age married their master. Actually, child brides were more common and she was a bit old for the role.

  John helped himself to some salmon. “I heard that you received a shipment today, David.”

  “Carpets from Castile.”

  “You have been taking a lot of winter cargo.”

  “They come when they come.”

  “Like hell. You expect trade to be disrupted in the spring or summer, don't you?” He lowered his voice. “He's going to do it, isn't he? Another damn campaign. Another army to France and every ship in sight requisitioned for it. I'm glad that I only deal in wool. He'll never interfere with that.”

  “If Edward keeps borrowing money, there will be no silver in the realm even to buy your wool, John, let alone Spanish carpets.”

  “You always sell your luxuries, David. You always know what they want.” He leaned toward Christiana. “He has golden instincts, my lady. Wouldn't touch the King's monopoly for exporting raw wool a few years back and talked me out of it too. Saved my ass. Most everyone involved lost their shirt.”

  The meal was long, friendly, and relaxed. David and John chatted about business and politics, and they discussed Edward's policies more bluntly than the courtiers. On occasion certain opinions even sounded faintly disloyal. Barons and knights probably spoke thus amongst themselves, too, she realized, but not in the King's hall.

  She surveyed the people sitting at the other three tables. In addition to Sieg, Vittorio, Geva, and the apprentices, four other servants worked here on a regular basis. David's household appeared large, well run, and efficient. He certainly didn't need a wife to manage things. She suspected uncomfortably that her own presence would be superfluous at best and maybe even disruptive.

  Throughout the entire meal, David let her know that he had not forgotten her presence. His gestures and glances suggested that despite his attention to his guest, most of his mind dwelled on her. When they had both finished eating, his hand rested permanently over hers atop the table, the long fingers absently caressing the back of her palm while he conversed. In subtle ways he maintained the intimacy they had shared in the ivy garden.

  She became very conscious of his touch and looks as the meal drew to a close. As the hall began emptying, the apprentices heading back to the shop and the servants to their duties, she sensed his awareness of her heighten even though nothing changed in his behavior or actions.

  John Constantyn did not linger long after the other tables had cleared. They accompanied him into the courtyard.

  “I will see you at the wedding, my lady,” John said. “Is it true that the King attends, David?”

  “So I have been told. Christiana is his ward.”

  “I hear that the mayor convinced you to move the banquet to the Guildhall.”

  Christiana tried not to embarrass David by letting it show that she knew nothing of the plans for her own wedding. They had never spoken of it. She had never asked, because she had never expected to be there herself.

  She could not blame him if he thoroughly disliked her by now. Maybe he did. He would never let her know. He was trapped as completely as she, but would try to make the best of the situation. Is that all they were? Two people accommodating themselves to the inevitable?

  “Aye. And the mayor made clear
that if the royal family attended, all of the aldermen should be invited,” David said. “We will have the mayor's dull, official banquet, and then another one here for the ward and household. Save your appetite, John. Vittorio cooks for the second one.”

  John laughed. “And your uncle Gilbert, David? Will he come?”

  “I invited him. I borrowed a royal page to send the message, in fact. Gilbert's wife is a good woman and I would not insult her. She will make him attend.” His eyes sparkled mischievously. “The decision will drive him mad. Decline and he misses the King. Accept and he honors me.”

  “Aye,” John said, grinning. “His dilemma might be cause enough to get married if the best reason didn't stand by your side now.”

  She decided not to think about how David came to have use of a royal page.

  John left then. The courtyard suddenly seemed very quiet.

  David's arm slid around her waist. “Come. I'll show you the house.”

  They visited the stable first. Her black horse, unsaddled and brushed, stood in a stall beside David's two mounts. The groom was nowhere to be seen. She reached up and petted the black nose. She supposed that she could name him now that she would be keeping him.

  In the building facing the street she saw the chambers used by Michael, Roger, and some of the servants. Andrew slept at the shop, she knew. It impressed her that each person had his own small room. The servants of this mercer possessed more privacy than the noble wards of the King.

  Silence greeted them as they reentered the hall. Even the kitchen echoed empty. Vittorio was just leaving with a basket on his arm to shop for the evening meal. He smiled indulgently and slipped away.

  As David opened the door to the last building, Christiana thought that there should probably be a little more household bustle going on. She realized with a jolt that everyone had left the premises.

  She followed David to the storage rooms filled with wooden crates on the first level, beyond his mother's old chamber. The scent of cinnamon and cloves wafted toward her. Carpets and spices and silks. Luxuries. John's observation had been correct. David would always sell these things. They defined status and honor and many people would eat only soup in order to purchase them.

  His arm circled her shoulders as he led her back toward the kitchen. The simple gesture suddenly seemed less casual than before. Had he dismissed the whole household, or had natural discretion made them all decide to become scarce so that the master could be alone with his lady?

  They were alone, that was certain. The resonating silence had imbued this simple tour with a creeping intimacy. By the time they returned to the stairs leading to the upper level and David's chambers, her caution was fully alerted.

  David began guiding her up. She balked on the second step.

  His smile of amusement made her feel childish. He took her hand. “Come now, girl. You should see your house.”

  Her mind chastised her instincts. After all, she had been in the solar before. They would marry soon and, despite Morvan's warnings, he had not misunderstood her reason for coming. She let herself be cajoled upwards.

  In the light of day she could see the solar's beauty. The glazed windows on one side looked down on the garden, and in summer the flowers' scents would drift into the square high chamber. David built up the fire and she walked around, admiring the furnishings. Each carved chair, each tapestry, every item down to the silver candleholders, possessed an individual and distinctive beauty.

  She fingered the relief of ivy edging the chair on which she had sat that first night. What had this man thought of the child who faced him, her feet dangling as she announced her love for someone else?

  Stephen. The thought of him could still open a hollow ache.

  She looked up to see David regarding her. “Did these lovely things come to you with the house?” she asked.

  “Nay.”

  She hadn't thought so. Like the severe cut of his clothes, they were, in their own ways, perfect.

  “You must spend a lot of time looking for such things.”

  “Rarely. Something catches my eye and I buy it. It doesn't take long at all.”

  She gazed at one of the tapestries hanging beside the windows. Superb. She thought about Elizabeth's dependence on his taste. He had a natural eye for beauty. It must give him a tremendous advantage in his trade.

  I think that you are the most beautiful girl whom I have ever met.

  Her eyes slowly followed the sinuous lead tracery that held the pieces of glass together in the windows. She felt him watching her.

  He saw her and wanted her and offered the King a fortune for her.

  A small book rested on a low table near the hearth. She knew that if she opened it, she would find richly painted illuminations. Like everything else in this room, it would be exquisite.

  Something catches my eye and I buy it. It doesn't take long at all.

  Two doors flanked the hearth. She drifted to the one on the right and opened it. She found herself on the threshold to his bedchamber. Ignoring a qualm of misgiving at the way he watched her, she went inside.

  The hearth in this chamber backed on the solar's and the windows also overlooked the garden. The chamber was simply furnished, with one chair near the fire and a large bed on a low dais in the center of the room. Heavy blue drapes surrounded the bed and formed a canopy, and one side was tied open to reveal a rich matching coverlet. A fire burned in the hearth.

  She walked along the wall overlooking the garden and passed through a door at the far end of the chamber. She entered a wardrobe with chests and pegs for clothes. It included a small hearth and wooden tub just like Isabele's, and a door at its end led to a garderobe and privy. A spout in a wall niche, similar to ones seen elsewhere in the house, provided piped water.

  She opened a door cut in the wall and found herself at the top of the stairs leading down to the small ivy garden. Besides the solar, this was the only other way into the apartment.

  Back in the bedchamber, she looked around, trying to grow accustomed to this space. David stood at the threshold, his shoulder resting casually against the doorjamb. She smiled weakly at him, feeling like an intruder.

  “Where is my chamber?”

  “You mean the lady's bower? There is none. Merchants do not live that way. Your place is here with me.”

  He walked to the hearth. There was no need to build up this fire. It sparked and crackled with new logs. She stared at the hot bright flames and read their flickering significance.

  Who had come and prepared this room? Geva? He would not expose his intentions to a woman. Sieg, then. The big Swede had been the first to leave the hall. She doubted that David had said a word to him. It had simply been done. She managed not to glance at that big bed dominating the room. Of course, Sieg would not know of David's reassurances in the garden.

  She could not just stand here forever. She searched for something to look at.

  The solar stretched the width of the building and had windows over both the garden and the courtyard. This chamber was not so wide, and its court wall was solid. She spied a door at its end and strode toward it.

  As soon as she saw the side chamber she stopped in her tracks. It was a study. She quickly surveyed the objects filling it and knew that now she definitely intruded. She began backing out and bumped into David's chest. His hand came to rest over hers on the door and he pushed it forward.

  “This is your home,” he said. “There are no doors closed to you here.”

  Home. She had not had a home since Harclow. Not really. As the royal household moved from one castle or manor to the next, she had never felt at home, not even at Westminster. For eleven years she had been something of a permanent guest.

  This small chamber might not be closed to her today, but it obviously was to everyone else. No housekeeper tended this room, and a thin layer of dust covered some of the items on the shelves flanking the high window. Her gaze took in a stack of books and some scrolls of paper. A small painting in the B
yzantine style and a beautiful ivory carving were propped at one end beside an ancient hand harp whose frame was inlaid with intricate twining lines of silver.

  The only furniture was a large table covered with parchment papers and documents. A chair angled behind it, and underneath she saw a small locked chest on the floor.

  From the corner of her eye she noticed that the wall behind the door also bore shelves. She turned and gasped as a man's face peered back at her.

  David laughed and stepped past her to the shelf.

  “It is remarkable, isn't it?”

  She approached in amazement. The man's face was carved in marble and its realism astonished her. Whichever mason had done this work possessed a god's touch. Subtle shadows modeled the skin so accurately that one believed one could touch flesh and feel bone beneath it.

  “I found it in Rome,” he explained. “Just lying there in the ancient ruins. I picked up a small section of a column and this was underneath. There are many such statues there. Whole bodies just as real, and stone caskets covered with figures that are used now to hold water at fountains. I saw some statues at the Cathedral of Reims recently that come close, but nothing else similar north of the Alps.”

  Reims. Near Paris. What was he doing there recently? Stupid question. He was a merchant, after all.

  “You carried it all of the way home?”

  “Nay. I bribed Sieg to,” he said, laughing.

  “You seem to like carvings and paintings a lot. Why didn't you become a limner or a mason?”

  “Because David Constantyn was a mercer and it was he who gave me an apprenticeship. As a boy I sometimes dawdled around a limner's shop and watched them work, mixing their colors and painting the images in books. The master tolerated me and even showed me how to burn wood to make drawing tools. Fate had other plans for me, however, and I do not regret it.”

  She stepped behind the table. On its corner were some new parchments folded and closed with a seal showing three entwined serpents. Strewn across it were papers with oddly drawn marks. The top one simply showed jagged lines connected by sweeping numbered curves. Little squares and circles lined up along snaking borders. She glanced away carefully. It was a map. Why did David make maps?