Lords of Conquest Boxed Set

by Patricia Ryan

  Gravely the justiciar said, “I meant no disrespect, my lady. It’s just that I’m desperate, as is the king. We both remember all too well the struggle between King Stephen and Matilda Empress that ravaged England thirty years ago—the years of chaos and devastation. Another civil war could destroy England. With your help, we can keep that from happening.”

  Hugh’s chest grew tight as he studied Phillipa, waiting for her response. Don’t do it, he thought, and then silently chided himself. Why should it trouble him for her to play the whore for the good of the realm? She’d done it often enough for less noble reasons.

  Except, of course, for last night, when she’d made it all too clear that she did, after all, have her standards.

  She looked at Hugh, clearly unsettled; he pointedly looked away.

  “You’re the ideal person to infiltrate Aldous and Clare’s inner circle and bring back proof of what they’re up to,” the justiciar told Phillipa. “Given your past with Aldous and your innate cleverness, you could have him confiding in you in no time. And as for ferreting out secrets, Hugh tells me your analytical skills are second to—”

  “Save your flattery, my lord. I’m not susceptible to it.”

  “Are you susceptible to begging?” he asked. “If I plead with you to help us, because you’re the only person we can turn to—”

  “My lord, I...I know you’re desperate, but I...” She shook her head. “You don’t understand. I can’t...”

  “You don’t think you’re up to it.” Lord Richard leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “I can’t say as I blame you for your lack of confidence.”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t confident,” Phillipa corrected.

  You sly dog, Hugh thought. Changing tack yet again, Lord Richard meant to ensnare her precisely as he’d said he would—by issuing a dare.

  “Nay, it’s understandable for you to be intimidated by a mission of this sort,” said the justiciar. “You’ve led a rather sheltered life, after all, and—”

  “Why does everyone think I’ve been sheltered merely because I’ve been educated?”

  “Yes, well...my point is, I understand why you feel overwhelmed at the prospect of an espionage mission, although I was hoping you’d consider it—” Lord Richard shrugged “—a challenge of sorts. As well as being an opportunity to experience a bit of the larger world beyond the walls of Oxford.”

  Phillipa sank back into her chair, chewing her lip. Meeting Hugh’s gaze squarely for the first time that morning, she asked, “What do you think I should do?”

  So taken by surprise was Hugh that she’d asked his advice that he found himself momentarily speechless. She looked so dazed, so torn, that he couldn’t help feeling sorry for her—damned inconvenient, inasmuch as Lord Richard had made him promise not to dissuade her from agreeing to this rather ignominious mission.

  But wherefore should he pity her, when she viewed him with such contempt? Last night she’d told him the story of Abelard and Hèloïse as if he’d spent his life in a cave and had no idea who they were—before informing him that she was too “discriminating” to tup him as she’d tupped half of Oxford. Just how ignorant, how pathetically unworthy of her, did she think he was?

  In the final analysis, did it really matter how he advised her? The decision lay with her, and she did not strike him as the type of woman to be easily swayed; she would accept or reject the mission not on Hugh’s say-so, but in accordance with her own sense of what was right. And as for prostituting herself for the crown, what was it his lordship had said earlier? If she does agree to it, then obviously her sensibilities can not have been all that bruised.

  She was watching him, waiting for him to counsel her; so was Lord Richard, to whom Hugh owed his allegiance...and his obedience.

  Hugh snatched his cup off the table and tossed the wine down in one gulp. “‘Twouldn’t be the first time you’ve had a skullcap hanging on your bedpost, my lady. At least this time, some good may come of it.”

  Bright color stained Phillipa’s cheeks. “I’ll do it.”

  Heat seethed in Hugh’s belly as he pictured Phillipa and this Aldous Ewing locked together in amorous embrace. Grinding his jaw, he silently cursed himself, Phillipa, Lord Richard, the king, his headstrong queen, her damnable sons, and this whole blasted business.

  Lord Richard sagged into his chair with relief. “You won’t regret this, my lady.”

  “You think not?” Hugh refilled his cup and sat back in his chair to sip it. “Just wait till you tell her the rest of it.”

  Chapter 7

  London

  Would she have agreed to this mission, Phillipa wondered as she strolled arm-in-arm with Hugh across London Bridge, if she’d known the two of them would have to execute it posing as man and wife?

  My dear lady, Lord Richard had said when she’d protested the arrangement during their meeting last week, you don’t think I’d send you into such a situation all alone, a defenseless woman with no man along for protection should something go amiss. And, too, for all your cleverness, you’re a novice at investigative work, whereas Hugh is, if not my most experienced man, certainly my most dependable.

  “This is a good spot,” Hugh said as they approached the southern end of the decrepit old wooden structure, which connected London proper with Southwark and everything else on the other side of the Thames. Guiding her with a hand on her back, he led her through the cacophonous swarm of pedestrians to the western edge of the bridge. They braced their elbows on the weathered oak rail, looking out over the great sun-spangled river and the vessels gliding along it this fine afternoon or lying at anchor—longboats, little two-man merchant boats, tall-masted ships with foreign banners snapping, and even a strange, rotund ship with castles at bow and stern.

  “That’s Southwark?” Phillipa asked, surveying the rather unprepossessing cluster of thatched and tiled rooftops on the near shore to the south. “Doesn’t look much like a haven of sin.”

  “And what, pray, did you expect? Naked wenches dancing in the streets?” Hugh chuckled rustily. “You really must get out of Oxford more often, my lady.”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?” And glad of it, despite the circumstances. There was something about being in London, with its raucous sights and sounds and smells, not to mention being a part of this clandestine mission, that sent the blood racing through her veins as never before.

  “Try to face north,” Hugh said, “toward the city. That way, when Aldous passes by, he’ll be more likely to recognize you.”

  He was right; after all, the point of lingering here was to “accidentally” bump into Aldous Ewing, who would presumably cross the bridge sometime before nightfall on his way home from St. Paul’s Cathedral, where he went through the motions of performing his diaconal duties when he was in town. She and Hugh had spent all of yesterday loitering outside the cathedral itself, to no avail; he hadn’t passed by them, or if he had, he hadn’t noticed them—or rather, her. With any luck, he would not only see them this afternoon, but end up offering them the hospitality of his Southwark town house; with a bit more, they might eventually see the inside of Halthorpe Castle, about eight miles northeast of London.

  Turning, Phillipa gazed across the river at the mile or so of bustling waterfront along the city’s south side, delimited on the west by Baynard’s Castle and on the east by the much larger and spectacularly whitewashed Tower of London. A light breeze, redolent of the river, wafted the veil of whisper-sheer samite that floated over her braids, secured by a circlet of silver filigree.

  “I still think it most ill-advised for us to pose as man and wife,” Phillipa said, “given that our intent is for Aldous to pursue me. I can’t believe it wouldn’t discourage him to have you hanging about watching me flirt with him.”

  Hugh shrugged. “Like his sister—and you, for that matter—he seems to be entirely taken in by this nonsense. Matrimony is no impediment to seduction for the likes of him, particularly if the lady’s husband seems inclined to t
urn a blind eye. It appears, my lady, that you can embrace the concept intellectually more easily than you can put it into practice—a common shortcoming among those who spend too much time reading about life and not enough living it.”

  Ignoring the gibe, she said, “It’s just all so foreign to me. When Lord Richard said that Aldous seemed particularly drawn to married women, you nodded as if you understood perfectly, but I can’t for the life of me conceive why someone would welcome a situation that just makes things that much more complicated.”

  “Because,” Hugh said, his tone only slightly patronizing, “it can actually make things that much simpler. Wedded ladies tend to expect very little from a man beyond a certain measure of prowess in the sport of love. It can be damnably refreshing not to have to feign infatuation in exchange for a friendly tumble or two.”

  “Need it always be feigned?” She turned to look up at him, cursing the note of wistfulness in her voice. “Have you never had real feelings for a woman?”

  For one startling moment, his eyes, greener and deeper than the water surrounding them, seemed to look right inside her, seeing everything—her very soul laid bare. He took her chin in his hand, his fingers so rough and hot that they made her heart flutter crazily. He’s going to kiss me again, she thought, and I’m going to let him. I’m going to kiss him back.

  But he didn’t kiss her. Instead, he said, “Keep looking north,” and turned her face once more in that direction, his fingertips slowly grazing the edge of her jaw before he withdrew his hand.

  Leaning on the rail next to her, he slid an arm around her waist, as if they were a devoted married couple out for a summer afternoon’s stroll, and not two agents for the crown who had nothing in common save a zealous desire for autonomy—yet who, in some cosmic jest, had been forced to spend every waking hour together for the next few weeks.

  And presumably, if all went as planned, every sleeping hour. Phillipa rubbed her arms, although the breeze was mild.

  “Nervous?” Hugh gently kneaded her back, his palm warm through the thin silk of her tunic—pink shot with silver threads—and the linen kirtle beneath it, one of a wardrobe of luxurious costumes that Lord Richard had commissioned for her from the royal dressmakers after their meeting in West Minster. On the justiciar’s instructions, the gowns had been cut in the provocative new Parisian fashion, with necklines that displayed a generous expanse of bosom and bodices that fit snugly by means of smocking, elaborate tucks and tight lacings.

  He’d provided her with suitable accessories as well—exquisite girdles, slippers, necklaces, earrings, brooches, and of course a wedding ring, all studded with smoothly polished gemstones. The clothes and jewels were hers to keep—along with a little ivory-inlaid casket filled with Spanish gold coins—not only as recompense for her services to the crown, but in order to equip her for her role. You need to look prosperous and elegant, the justiciar had decreed. Both of you.

  Hugh was outfitted this morning in a finely-made deep purple tunic and black chausses, his face cleanly shaven, his hair smoothed into a tidy queue at the nape of his neck. He still wore that curious earring, and that infidel dagger hung from his belt in lieu of a knight’s customary sword; otherwise he was the very picture of a debonair young nobleman, and an extremely handsome one, that slight bump on his nose imparting a rugged note to what might otherwise have been too beautiful a face.

  “I’m not...nervous, exactly,” Phillipa said as she tried to disregard the paths of heat that lingered on her back wherever Hugh stroked her. She’d been doing a great deal of that these past few days, purposefully ignoring the exhilarating hum of awareness generated by his casual caresses, his careless smiles, his very presence. Recognizing that awareness for what it was—sexual attraction—both chagrined and intrigued her. Of all the men to induce in her, for the first time, such unruly desires, why did it have to be cocky, dangerous Hugh of Wexford? Why not a more deserving man, a creature of the mind, one of those deep thinkers she’d always held in such high esteem?

  Because Hugh was different, of course, nothing like the tame scholars and clerics with whom she had been surrounded the first five-and-twenty years of her life. They admirable men, most of them—astute, thoughtful, civilized. She respected them, often even liked them. But never once, even with the most attractive of her erstwhile suitors, had she lain awake at night imagining the heat and strength of his body against hers, wondering how it would feel to be possessed by him, completely...to experience the physical act of love about which she’d heard so much.

  Enthralled as she was by these heady new yearnings, Phillipa cautioned herself to remember that they were spawned by nothing weightier than the simple novelty of Hugh of Wexford. He seemed exotic, and therefore desirable, only because he was everything she was unused to—virile, impulsive, and sexually aggressive. In a company of soldiers, his demeanor would not stand out. There was nothing special about him, not really, nothing to inspire any feelings more profound than carnal hunger—a hunger he evidently shared, judging from the incident in the orchard. Not that she was the exclusive object of his lust, of course, soldiers being accustomed to taking their ease with any accommodating woman.

  She shouldn’t read too much into his little attentions—the frequency with which he touched her, the quiet intensity in his gaze when, from time to time, she turned and found him looking at her. Such gestures meant nothing to a man like him. Indeed, she would do well to remember his taunt about skullcaps hanging from her bedpost.

  The image invoked uneasy thoughts of Aldous Ewing. Bedding him was, of course, out of the question; it was also, as she’d tried in vain to explain to both Lord Richard and Hugh last week, completely unnecessary. They’d paid her no heed, and rather than belabor the point, she’d let them believe what they wanted—that she was willing to become Aldous’s leman—although she meant to coax his secrets from him using her wits, not her body. Not that she wouldn’t have to entice him—she must lead Aldous on, make him think she was ripe for seduction—but surely she could finesse the information out of him without having to actually follow through.

  “Phillipa? Lady Phillipa?” It was a man’s voice, but not Hugh’s.

  Rousing from her reverie, Phillipa looked around blearily. A tall, arrestingly handsome, dark-haired man dressed all in black, a cleric, was bearing down on her through the crowd of pedestrians.

  “Aldous,” she said, a dull panic seizing her.

  Hugh’s hand tightened briefly on her waist. He turned her purposefully away from the rail, toward Aldous, and, standing behind her, squeezed her hand reassuringly. Leaning in close to her, he whispered, “You can do this, Phillipa. I’m right here with you,” adding, “Smile,” as Aldous approached with outstretched arms.

  She smiled. “Aldous. Is that really you?”

  “Phillipa! My God!” Seizing her by the shoulders, Aldous kissed her soundly on each cheek. “Look at you!” He surveyed her from head to toe, his appreciation obvious. “You’re more ravishing than ever. When was the last time I saw you?”

  Swallowing down her trepidation, she said, “‘Twould have to have been Paris—seven years ago, perhaps eight.”

  “Yes, of course. Paris.” Aldous’s gaze shifted to Hugh, his smile growing just a bit more subdued as he took in their hands still clasped together.

  “Er, Aldous,” Phillipa said, “this is...my husband, Hugh of Oxford. Hugh, this is an old friend of mine from Paris, Aldous of Tettenham.”

  “Ah.” Aldous’s expressive brown eyes flickered, just momentarily, with surprise...and dismay. “So. You married after all.”

  Back when Aldous had been wooing her so ardently, she’d told him what she’d told all her suitors—that she would never marry, lest it destroy her. At the time, she’d believed it.

  Don’t you still?

  “You’re a fortunate man, Hugh of Wexford.” Fixing a polite smile on his face, Aldous offered Hugh a perfunctory little bow.

  “Well I know it,” Hugh replied with a tilt of
his head. He squeezed Phillipa’s hand again as his other arm curled around her waist—a possessive gesture that surprised her, inasmuch as his role in little masquerade was to be that of the willing cuckold. As if the same thought had occurred to him, he released her and stepped away to the side, standing farther away from her than Aldous did.

  “By the way,” Aldous said, “I’ve been known as Aldous Ewing since my ordination to the diaconate.”

  “You’re a deacon!” Phillipa exclaimed. “I thought you had no interest in major orders.”

  With sudden gravity, Aldous said, “It seems we’ve both taken roads we once foreswore.” He abruptly smiled again. “But such is life, eh? Things change. You’ve certainly changed.” Again he appraised her up and down, his attention lingering this time on the feminine contours revealed by her sleekly stylish gown. When he met her eyes again, there was a frank interest in his gaze that he made no effort to disguise. “I see you’ve given up on those shapeless wool tunics—and that ghastly document case as well. Traded away those precious books of yours for silken gowns and fancy baubles, have you?”

  “Er...”

  “As a matter of fact, she’s traded away nothing,” Hugh said, coming to her rescue. “Phillipa still loves her books, only I’ve managed to talk her out of lugging them around with her. She’s far too beautiful to be going about looking like a cross between a nun and a letter courier, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I would indeed,” Aldous murmured, giving her, just briefly, a look that made her feel as if she were standing naked before him...or that he wished she were. “So, what brings you two to London?” he asked. “Or do you live here?”

  “Nay, we’re just visiting from Oxford,” said Phillipa, exhorting herself to look Aldous squarely in the eye as she presented the story she and Hugh had agreed upon—a pastiche of truths and fabrications. If one was obliged to lie, one might as well do it credibly. “We’ve been staying at Wexford Castle with Hugh’s father, but they’ve never gotten on that well, and the visit has become—” she hesitated as if leery of being indiscreet “—a bit tiresome, so we’ve decided to look for an inn in Southwark. Just for tonight. We’ll be heading back to Oxford tomorrow.”