Lords of Conquest Boxed Set

by Patricia Ryan

  Hugh extinguished the lantern and carried the oil lamp back to the table in the salle, where Joanna joined him after pulling the leather curtain across the storeroom doorway.

  “Buttermilk?” Joanna held the cup toward her brother as they sat opposite each other.

  He wrinkled his nose. “Wine, if you have it. Graeham drank all of mine.”

  “Sorry, I’m all out.” And had been for months, ever since her circumstances had begun to deteriorate. “No ale, either, I’m afraid. There’s the Red Boar on the corner. You could get something to drink there.”

  “I’d rather stay here and chat with you while I’ve got the chance. I’ve got to get to the bridge before curfew.”

  “London Bridge?”

  He nodded. “I’m staying across the river in Southwark.” Her disapproval must have shown on her face, because he quickly added, “At an inn, not a stew.”

  “Why would you want to sleep three to a bed—a flea-infested bed, no doubt—at some dreadful public inn when you can stay here?”

  Hugh gave her that too charming lopsided grin that had inveigled its way through her defenses ever since they were children. “The proprietress has been a...special friend of mine for years.”

  “I see.” Half the women of London—and of Byzantium, the Northland, the Rhineland and everywhere else he’d fought these past years—seemed to have become her brother’s “special friends.”

  “I’ll be sleeping just two to a bed,” he added unnecessarily.

  Joanna glanced uneasily toward the leather curtain that separated them from the stranger sleeping in the storeroom. “I’d feel better if you stayed here—just for tonight.”

  “Better? Safer, you mean? You sleep in the solar, right?”

  “Aye.”

  He chuckled. “Even if Graeham took it into his head to ravish you in the middle of the night—and I don’t quite think he’s the type—do you honestly think he’s capable of making it up the ladder with that leg of his?”

  She sighed. “It just feels...odd to have him staying here.”

  “He’s seems a decent enough fellow, Joanna. I’m sure he’s harmless. And it’s just for tonight. Tomorrow I’ll bring a cart and take him back to St. Bartholemew’s and you can forget you ever met him. Now, are you going to eat that bread or not?”

  She shoved the bread at him; he tucked into it ravenously.

  “I take it Prewitt’s in Italy,” he said through his full mouth.

  Joanna drew in a deep breath. “Prewitt is dead.”

  Hugh choked on his mouthful of bread. Joanna handed him the cup of buttermilk. He took a long swallow. His face screwed up in disgust, but the coughing and sputtering eased a bit.

  “Christ, Joanna.” Hugh regarded her with solemn astonishment. “When did this happen?” he asked softly.

  “Last September.” Joanna rubbed her arms. “I received a letter from an official in the city government of Genoa. Prewitt...he was knifed to death.”

  Hugh murmured an epithet and crossed himself.

  “By the husband of a woman he was...”

  Hugh closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead.

  “The letter came in a package that contained his personal effects,” she said. “His keys, his mantle pin, his eating knife, his razor, a few other things. That sapphire ring of his wasn’t in there, though. And no money, of course, although he must have had some—he’d been there to buy silks from the Orient.”

  Hugh sighed. “Joanna...I can’t pretend to grieve for the man.” He reached across the table to squeeze her hand. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded. “It’s odd. I actually mourned him at first. But then I realized I was mourning, not for Prewitt, but for the man I’d thought he was when I married him. And perhaps even for myself, a little.”

  “Verily? You’re not much given to self-pity, that I’ve noticed.”

  She smiled. “‘Twas a momentary lapse. I thought about how he misled me when I was young and naïve. How he used me. And, even worse, how I let him.”

  “As you say, you were young and naïve. You were fifteen, for pity’s sake. ‘Twould never happen today.”

  “I daresay not. I’ve learned a thing or two about men—the hard way. If you’ve got something they want, they take it. They use you for what you can do for them, without regard for your heartbreak when you discover that it wasn’t you they wanted so desperately, but some small part of you—your body, usually. Or, in Prewitt’s case, your position in the social hierarchy.”

  Hugh frowned. “Have there been...other men, besides Prewitt?”

  “Nay—never. Oh, they sniff around me from time to time, like dogs. Usually they’re married, sometimes betrothed. All they want is to slake their lust and move on. They’re quite insistent, some of them.”

  “Is that why you carry a dagger?”

  “It’s proven useful.” She smiled inwardly, remembering Rolf le Fever’s gaping horror when she shoved that blade up his nostril.

  “You should move to the country,” Hugh said. “‘Tisn’t safe for you in London anymore. It wasn’t before, I suppose, with Prewitt gone so much of the time, but at least then everyone knew you had a husband to exact revenge if you were ill used in any way.”

  A gust of bleak laughter escaped her. “Not that he would have. He wouldn’t have cared enough.”

  “But the world at large didn’t know that. Marriage afforded you some measure of protection. Most men aren’t like Prewitt—they steer clear of entanglements with married women.”

  Joanna knew that was true, despite the occasional exception, like Prewitt—or like le Fever, who had made one or two subtle but unmistakable overtures toward her while Prewitt was still alive. For this reason, she’d continued to wear her wedding ring after his death. Nevertheless, male interest in her had increased once news of Prewitt’s death began to circulate through West Cheap, despite her demure attire and lack of encouragement.

  “As a married woman,” Hugh said, “you were shielded from unwanted attention. Now that protection is gone. Cities are dangerous places for women, Joanna—especially women who are all alone.”

  Well she knew it—and city life, with its narrow, teeming streets, its noises and rank odors, had long since lost its charm for her. Increasingly Joanna found herself yearning for the verdant countryside of her youth, but her dream of settling down in a peaceful little cottage somewhere was all the more unattainable now that Prewitt was dead. She could barely scrape by here in London, where there was a market for her embroidery; how would she get by out in the country? And how could she afford to move? The situation was hopeless; it didn’t bear thinking about.

  She took a generous swallow of the cool, tangy buttermilk. “How long are you planning on staying in London this time?”

  Her effort to steer the subject onto another path met with a smirk from her brother, who knew her too well. “I’m expected back in Saxony in the fall.”

  She grinned delightedly. “Do you mean to say you’ll be here through the summer?”

  “I mean to say I could, if I wanted to. I probably will. I can use a bit of a respite from the bloodshed.”

  “But then you’ll be going away again. Must you?”

  His gaze suddenly melancholy, he said, “You know I can’t stay here, Joanna. And you know why.”

  Father. “Does he even know you’re back in England?”

  The expression left Hugh’s face. “I’ve only just returned.”

  “Wexford is but half a day’s ride from London, Hugh. Don’t you think you should pay him a call this time?”

  He cocked a sardonic eyebrow. “Strange advice, considering you haven’t been there in six years.”

  “Not by my choice, as you’re well aware. You do have a choice.”

  “And I choose to exercise it by staying as far away from that son of a bitch as I can manage while I’m in the kingdom.”

  “Hugh...”

  “How are you faring, Joanna?” he asked; now it was his turn to
change the subject. “Tell me the truth.”

  If only she could; she hungered for a sympathetic ear. But Hugh’s automatic response, were she to confide her desperate situation, would be to bail her out of her misery with the foreign gold he’d risked his life to earn. She’d taken his charity once before, and promised herself she would never do so again. If her predicament was dire, it was of her own making; no one had forced her to marry Prewitt Chapman. She got herself into this plight, and she’d get herself out...somehow.

  “I’m getting along fine,” she said carefully. “I...They won’t let me join the Mercers’ Guild, so I can’t sell silk by the yard anymore.”

  “Did he leave you anything at all, any money?”

  “A little.” And she’d lived as frugally as she knew how, but it was almost completely gone now. Unless she could turn things around, she would soon have to sell her shop. In that event, she’d be not only destitute, but homeless. “And I’ve been making small embroidered items—ribbons, scarves, collars, girdles, garters—and selling them.”

  Hugh’s brows drew together. “And you’ve been making an adequate living from that?”

  “Oh, yes,” Joanna said, lifting her cup to her mouth so she wouldn’t have to look him in the eye while she lied outright.

  Hugh shook his head. “I don’t like it. I don’t like to think of you all alone here, laboring from sunrise till sunset just to get by. A woman like you shouldn’t have to live this way.”

  “A woman like me? I’m the widow of a silk trader, Hugh, and not a very prosperous one. I’m used to hard work. Besides, I enjoy embroidery.”

  “You’re the daughter of one of the most powerful knights in England, Joanna. You should be doing needlework for pleasure, not to put food in your belly. God’s bones, you should be wed to a nobleman, living a life of leisure.”

  “I made my choice six years ago,” Joanna said grimly. “I didn’t choose a nobleman. I chose a mercer. Now I must pay for that choice.”

  “You’re how old now—twenty?”

  “One-and-twenty.”

  “That’s too young to resign yourself to perpetual widowhood, sister. You’re a beautiful woman, and accomplished. You can marry again—a man of your own station this time, a knight or the son of a knight. Someone with a good heart, who’ll love you—not some handsome devil with too much charm and too little honor, who’s just out to use you.”

  The words “handsome devil” conjured up for Joanna the image of Graeham Fox, half-naked on Prewitt’s cot, watching her with a drowsy intensity that made her shiver. Prewitt had been handsome, too, deadly handsome with his coal-black hair and deceptively soulful eyes. She’d been powerless to resist him; so, it seemed, had a good many other women.

  “It’s late,” Hugh said, rising from the table. “I must go.” He stole back into the storeroom to fetch his satchel, then Joanna walked him to the front door.

  “You lock yourself in at night, don’t you?” he asked, standing in the open doorway. Wood Street was dark and quiet, most folks having retired for the evening.

  “Of course. Do you take me for a fool?”

  His expression baleful, he said, “I take you for the kind of careless wench who leaves the latch string hanging out the back door when she steps out to the cookhouse.”

  “Ah,” she said sheepishly. “I learned that lesson well tonight. I won’t do that again.”

  “I fret about you, Joanna.”

  “I know, but you mustn’t. I’ll be fine.”

  He paused, as if weighing his words. “You haven’t ruled out remarriage, I hope. I mean, if the right fellow happened along, a man of rank who could offer you the kind of life you deserve—”

  “I take it you have someone in mind.”

  He scratched his stubbly chin, that lopsided smile tugging at his mouth. “Perhaps. Do you remember Lord Suger’s second son, Robert? We were boyhood friends. His father settled a grand manor on him—Ramswick, just south of London.”

  “Of course.” She’d always liked Robert, even entertained a childish infatuation with him for about a fortnight one summer.

  “A splendid fellow,” Hugh said.

  “A splendid married fellow.”

  Hugh shook his head. “Joan drowned in a boating accident last summer, along with their eldest daughter, Gillian.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “He told me yesterday—I stopped to visit him on my way here. Gillian had been only ten, and he’d adored her. He pulled her body from the river himself. He wept, telling me about it.”

  “Oh, how awful. Poor Robert.”

  “On the whole, he seems to be holding up fairly well. He said he can’t afford to dwell on what happened, or he won’t be a proper father to his other children. There are two of them, younger than Gillian, both girls. He was telling me how they needed a mother, but the right sort.”

  “Then he’d hardly be interested in me.”

  “By ‘right sort,’ he doesn’t mean a pampered heiress. He told me he wants a kind, compassionate woman who will be good to his daughters. He’s a fine man, Joanna, a devoted father. And I know he was a faithful husband to Joan. Perhaps I should...bring him round...” He shrugged.

  Joanna sighed. “You’d have to supply your own wine.”

  “But of course.”

  “And you’d have to give me advance notice so I can bathe and...” She looked down at her shabby kirtle with distaste.

  “A bit of brotherly counsel?”

  “Aye?”

  He tugged on the scarf wrapped around her head. “Leave this off when I bring him by. Your hair’s your best feature.”

  “What kind of widow leaves her hair uncovered? I’ll look like a harlot.”

  “You’ll look like an angel.” Hugh grinned and kissed her on the cheek. “Good night, sister. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  As he was walking away, she said, “You won’t forget the cart, will you?”

  He turned and cupped a hand to his ear.

  “The cart,” she called out. “To take the serjant back to St. Bartholemew’s. You won’t forget, will you?”

  “I won’t forget. After tomorrow morning, Graeham Fox will be completely out of your hair.” Hugh waved cheerily and continued on his way.

  “Good,” she whispered, shivering.

  Chapter 4

  Where the devil am I? Graeham wondered as he opened his eyes. He lay beneath a blanket on a narrow bed in a room awash with moonlight from two small corner windows, one on the wall to his right and one behind him.

  His head pulsed when he turned to look around him; his mouth tasted sour. He’d been drinking; that’s why he didn’t know where he was.

  He saw bolts of silk stacked on a shelf, shimmering in the half-light, and it began coming back to him...the silk merchant’s wife, her brother, the surgeon, his leg...

  His leg. Oddly, it wasn’t until he remembered having broken it that it started hurting again. The pain was intense, but not so overwhelming as to mask the reason he’d awakened in the middle of the night this way. He needed to relieve himself.

  He sat up too quickly, forgetting about his cracked ribs and swallowing down the groan that rose in his chest. On the floor next to the bed he saw a clay jake with a lid. She must have placed it there for him before retiring for the night. Thoughtful of her, but there was something about the lovely Mistress Joanna having to empty and clean his chamber pot that didn’t sit well with him. She wasn’t some maidservant, and he wasn’t her guest. He was a stranger who’d imposed himself on her. She owed him nothing, yet she’d not only tolerated his uninvited presence in her home, she’d done so with considerable grace.

  She’d held his hands while they set his leg, and whispered reassurances to him in that soft, throaty voice of hers. She hadn’t had to do that.

  He’d get up and use the privy. It shouldn’t be too much of a challenge making it there; he remembered having seen the little shed right outside the back door.

  The sledge-hammer that h
ad both crippled him and served as his cane leaned against the wall next to him. Graeham reached for it and propped it on the floor. Clenching his teeth, he hauled himself by excruciating degrees to his feet—no easy task, with his left leg splinted from hip to ankle.

  His leg was on fire now. The pain pounded through his entire body; it was all he could do to stay on his feet. With one hand gripping the handle of the sledge and the other buttressed on the wall, he gradually limped around the perimeter of the tiny chamber, through the leather curtain, and down the utterly dark hallway. He was still woozy from the wine, making the trek all the more arduous.

  Graeham leaned against the back door for a moment to catch his breath and get his bearings, then fumbled in the dark for the bolt, lifted it out of its slot and pushed the door open. By the light of the almost full moon, he saw the white cat, Petronilla, watching him impassively from the thatched roof of the kitchen hut. Shaking now from his exertions, he staggered into the little privy shed and somehow managed to empty his bladder without tumbling into the pit.

  He had to rest his weight against a wall of the shed to get his drawers retied, and then he lurched back through the door, managing not to stumble at the drop-off to the sunken floor. But as he was pulling the door closed behind him, the cat darted inside, a blur of white fur that collided with his legs. He pitched forward, splints and sledge-hammer clattering as he fell. There were no rushes back here to cushion his fall. Pain exploded in his leg; he cried out once, then hissed a stream of invective at the cat as she bolted away.

  He lay panting on the hallway floor, waiting for the pain to subside enough for him to move, when he heard a squeak of wood. There came another squeak, and another; feet descending a ladder.

  “Serjant? Are you all right?”

  Still facedown, he pushed himself up on his elbows, groaning as pain shuddered through him. God, please don’t let me have ruined my leg. I don’t want to lose it.

  “Serjant?” He heard her footsteps in the rushes, and the leather curtain to the storeroom being drawn back. “Serjant?”

  “I’m here,” he said unsteadily, and collapsed onto the floor again, wishing she didn’t have to find him like this. “In the hall.”