Lords of Conquest Boxed Set

by Patricia Ryan

  “We’ll find Master Aldous,” Phillipa told Claennis. “You go downstairs and welcome his guests—and fetch the stableboy to see to their mounts.”

  “Yes, milady.”

  Hugh turned to Phillipa as the girl was sprinting back down the stairs. “And Orlando Storzi would be...?”

  “A very renowned scientist and metaphysician,” she said. “He wrote a famous treatise on the two essential forces of nature, dissolution and coagulation. He’s also well known for his research into Eastern scientific advances.”

  “Mm hm...fascinating.” Taking Phillipa’s arm, Hugh led her out of the salle. “Any clever ideas as to where Aldous might be?”

  “Didn’t he ask Elthia to bring him a headache powder as supper was ending? Perhaps he’s lying down.”

  At Aldous’s bedchamber door, Hugh raised a hand to knock, but stilled at the sound of the deacon’s voice from within, low and breathless. “Yes...oh...”

  Frowning in bafflement, Phillipa whispered, “I thought he was lying down.”

  “I imagine he is.” A devilish impulse made Hugh grab the door’s handle and swing it open. “Aldous, are you—”

  “Jesu!” Aldous, sitting on the edge of his bed—above which hung an enormous wooden crucifix—with his robes rucked up, grasping fistfuls of Elthia’s blond hair as she knelt between his legs, stared in horror at Hugh and Phillipa.

  “Sorry to disturb you, Aldous,” Hugh said as if naught were amiss, “but Signore Orlando has arrived.” Closing the door, he led a nonplused Phillipa away by the elbow. “It seems he wasn’t lying down after all. Shall we go downstairs and greet Aldous’s guests? The good deacon seems to have more pressing matters to attend to.”

  Phillipa turned to look over her shoulder at the door to Aldous’s chamber as Hugh guided her toward the stairwell. “What were they...I mean...” Slanting a speculative look at Hugh as they descended the stairs, she said, “She can’t have been...that can’t have been what it looked like.”

  “What did it look like?” he asked with studied innocence.

  She made a kittenish little growl of exasperation. “Just please tell me what they were doing.”

  “Why don’t you set your all-too-clever little brain to sorting it out?”

  He guided a scowling Phillipa into the ground floor entrance hall, where they found Claennis ushering the two Italians through the front door.

  “Signore Orlando!” Aldous came pounding down the stairs, furiously straightening his robes, his face flushed, his hair unkempt. His skullcap flew off, but he didn’t seem to notice. “I’m Aldous Ewing. So sorry I didn’t come out to greet you. I was—” he glanced toward Phillipa in apparent mortification “—occupied with...church business.”

  “Encouraging one of your servants in prayer, weren’t you?” Hugh asked. In response to Aldous’s red-faced glare, he added, “I saw someone on her knees. I just assumed—”

  “Signore Orlando,” Phillipa said quickly, “‘tis an honor to meet you. I’m Phillipa of Oxford, and this is my husband, Hugh. I’ve read your Chemicum Philosophorum—most enlightening.”

  Aldous gaped at her.

  “You know my work?” Orlando asked in heavily accented French as he reached for Phillipa’s hands, clasping them tightly in his. “A beautiful woman who read the metafisica! Istagio!” he cried, turning to his companion. “Did I not tell you I would love England?”

  “S, signore,” replied Istagio, leering at the shapely Claennis. “Is very beautiful country.”

  “Signore Orlando,” Aldous said, “I’m sure you could use some refreshments after such a grueling journey. Claennis, would you bring some spiced wine and almond cakes to the salle? Oh, and take the signore’s servant out to the kitchen for a bite of—”

  “Istagio is not my servant,” Orlando corrected. “He...how do you say...he make the bells.”

  Hugh and Phillipa exchanged a look. He make the bells?

  “Yes, quite...” Aldous, looking rather baffled himself, spread his hands and shrugged. “If Signore...Istagio, is it?...would like to join us upstairs—”

  “If I could please to see my laboratorio first,” Orlando said, “so that I can unpack my equipment...”

  “Your lab—”

  “The place where I am to work on the—”

  “Oh!” With a jittery little laugh, Aldous said, “No, no, no. That won’t take place here, Master Orlando. My sister should have been clearer when she wrote to you. First thing tomorrow morning, I’ll escort you and Istagio to Halthorpe Castle, which is northeast of London. That’s where you’ll be staying and, er...” He glanced furtively toward Hugh and Phillipa. “My sister has set aside a place for you, in the cellar, I believe, where you can—” he cleared his throat “—unpack your equipment.”

  “Ah.” Orlando smiled apologetically. “Lady Clare, she write to me in the Frankish tongue, which I am so poor to understand. My fault entirely. Sono spiacente. Please forgive.”

  “Not at all.” Aldous said.

  Phillipa said, “You might have quite a bit of trouble with the anglicized French we speak here in England, signore. Would you prefer to converse in Latin?” Although normally reserved for academic and religious discourse, Latin was a language that educated people everywhere were well-acquainted with.

  “Grazie, but no,” Orlando said. “I am eager to make bigger my mind by speaking in your native tongue. Also, we must think of Istagio—he has very little Latin.”

  “As you wish.” Aldous waved Orlando and Istagio up the stairs, saying, “It’s the door to the right. We’ll join you in a moment.” To Hugh and Phillipa—but mostly to Phillipa—he said, “Of course you know that you’re more than welcome to remain here until I get back from Halthorpe. I shouldn’t be long—I’m only planning on staying over one night.” He sounded guarded and subdued, as well he might, after the unseemly little encounter they’d just witnessed.

  Phillipa darted a troubled glance in Hugh’s direction. He knew what she was thinking: that they could ill afford to be left behind in Southwark while the situation they were investigating unfolded at Halthorpe.

  “Say, Aldous,” Hugh ventured, “You don’t suppose Phillipa and I could go along with you tomorrow?”

  “To Halthorpe?” Aldous frowned. “Why?”

  Hugh shrugged. “‘Twould be a change of scenery. I’ve heard it’s lovely there.”

  Aldous let out a scornful little laugh. “You’ve been misinformed, then. ‘Tis a great, gloomy old pile of rocks. Ugliest castle in England.”

  “Well, I am eager to see your sister again. I remember her well from Poitiers.”

  “You can’t remember her that well,” Aldous muttered, “if you’re eager to see her again.” With a firm shake of his head, he said, “Nay, you’d just be miserable if you came along, and there’d hardly be any point, since I’ll be returning immediately.”

  Hugh cursed inwardly, knowing there was nothing to be gained by pressing the point; Aldous seemed unshakable.

  “After you.” Aldous stepped aside so that Hugh could go on ahead of him. As he turned to climb the stairs, Hugh noticed the deacon reaching out to restrain Phillipa with a hand on her arm.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Aldous promised her in a voice barely higher than a whisper.

  Hugh thought she might press Aldous for an invitation to Halthorpe, futile though that effort would probably be. Instead, she said, in a tone of cool reserve, “I won’t be here, Aldous. I think it best that Hugh and I return to Oxford as soon as possible.”

  Aldous whispered her name like a anguished plea, and then Hugh heard the soft rustle of silk.

  From the top step, he turned to see Aldous guiding Phillipa through the leather curtain hanging across the door to the pantry, directly off the entrance hall. A glance into the salle revealed Orlando and Istagio on the balcony, chatting in their native tongue as they gazed across the Thames at the sun setting on London.

  Hugh stole back down the stairs and up to the leather-
curtained doorway without making a sound.

  “...sorry, so sorry,” Aldous was saying in a tone of abject contrition. “You’re the one I want, the only one. I only turned to Elthia because you have me so mad with desire.”

  “When I saw you with her, like that,” Phillipa said, “it felt as if a knife had pierced my very heart.”

  “Imagine how I feel,” Aldous said unsteadily, “knowing you belong to another, that you share his bed every night while I lie there in a torment of longing...”

  “Aldous...”

  “Come to my room tonight,” he begged, “after Hugh is asleep.”

  Hugh’s hands curled into fists. By Corpus, the lecherous bastard was so determined to have her that he’d risk Hugh’s wrath even after yesterday’s little demonstration with the jambiya.

  Not that Hugh could blame him.

  “No, Aldous.”

  “I didn’t...I didn’t finish with Elthia. Please, Phillipa, I need you. And you need me, although you may not realize it.”

  “Ah, but I do,” she said softly. “I need you desperately. I can scarcely think of anything else.”

  “My God, then why won’t you come to me? He doesn’t love you—you told me so yourself. He doesn’t deserve your fidelity.”

  “I know that, it’s just...”

  “Yes?”

  “I can’t bring myself to betray him while he sleeps beneath the same roof.”

  There came a moment of silence as Aldous thought that over. Oh, you are a clever little thing, Hugh thought grimly. Too damned clever.

  “If we were somewhere else,” she said, “anywhere but here, with Hugh so close at hand, I wouldn’t hesitate to...to be with you. What I wouldn’t give for the chance to make amends for how I acted toward you in Paris. I withheld so much from you then. How I ache to give myself to you, body and soul, to lose my senses in your embrace. When I think of how it could be between us, how passionate, how utterly abandoned...”

  “Come with me to Halthorpe,” Aldous said abruptly. “Just you.”

  She was ingenious, all right; she’d laid her trap and Aldous had tumbled unwittingly into it.

  Part of Hugh wished he hadn’t.

  “Just me?” she asked. “But...what will we tell Hugh?”

  “Tell him...I don’t know, tell him...” Aldous let out a little groan of frustration. “Christ, surely we can think of something!”

  “I know...”

  Hugh raised his gaze to the heavens; of course she knew.

  “Hugh has promised his sister that he’ll spend some time with her while we’re in this part of England,” she said conspiratorially. “We’ve been putting it off because she and I don’t get along, but Hugh’s been chafing at the bit to see her. I could tell him that I’d talked you into letting me stay at Halthorpe while he visits her alone. That way he could spend as long as he likes there without having to listen to me gripe and complain the whole time.”

  “Yes! Yes!”

  “Of course, you’d have to extend your visit to Halthorpe,” she said. “That is, our visit. If it was just overnight, we couldn’t make this work. But if it were a matter of several weeks—”

  “Oh, what I’d give to spend that long with you! I’d consign my soul to the Devil himself for that privilege.”

  Hugh rolled his eyes.

  “As would I,” she said softly. “I can’t wait to share your bed.”

  Hugh wished to God she wasn’t a damned good actress. He’d been secretly relieved when she’d revealed her intention to extract Aldous’s secrets without bedding him. Now that she’d abandoned that naive but comforting notion, Hugh hardly knew how to feel.

  He should rejoice at her decision, because it would advance their mission and possibly save England from another ruinous civil war. Yet, when he imagined her in Aldous Ewing’s bed, taking him into her arms...and her body...his gut twisted in helpless rage.

  Hugh wasn’t used to being at the mercy of his emotions, and he didn’t care for the feeling one bit. He mustn’t let himself imagine that he had some sort of claim on Phillipa de Paris. If she was willing to play the role of Aldous Ewing’s leman, he should encourage her, not just for the good of the realm, but for the sake of his own precious freedom. Indeed, he should be eager for her to sleep with Aldous, for if anything could extinguish his own ungovernable passion for her, it would surely be the be the knowledge that she was another man’s mistress.

  “Starting tomorrow night,” Aldous said, “you will be sharing my bed. I’ll have Clare put us in connecting chambers.”

  Hugh rubbed his pulsing forehead.

  “It sounds like a dream,” Phillipa said.

  Or a nightmare, Hugh thought, depending on one’s point of view. Lord Richard would undoubtedly welcome Phillipa’s decision to hie off with Aldous on the morrow, given that it seemed to be the only way either one of them were going to see the inside of Halthorpe Castle and sort through the gathering intrigue, and regardless that Hugh would not be available for Phillipa’s protection, should she need it. Despite her razor-sharp wits and consummate acting skills, she would be more vulnerable without him. And, too, for all her deductive brilliance, he was far more experienced than she at this type of work.

  Aye, but that’s not why you wish she wouldn’t go.

  “I want you to know,” Aldous said with unctuous sincerity, “that from now on, there will be only you, no...Elthias. That’s a solemn promise.”

  “Thank you, Aldous. That means a great deal to me.”

  There came a lengthy silence. Were they kissing?

  Hugh found the fingers of his mangled right hand curling reflexively around the walrus-ivory hilt of his jambiya.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, summoning all the strength at his disposal. Don’ think about it. Put it out of your mind. Rise above it...

  “Sir Hugh?”

  He opened his eyes to discover Claennis standing at the foot of the stairs holding a tray laden with almond cakes, goblets and a clay jug of warm, exotically fragrant spiced wine.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “Nay, nothing. I just...” He shook his head, rubbing the back of his neck.

  “Do you have a headache? I can bring you—”

  “I’m fine,” he said brusquely, sweeping past her to climb the stairs two at a time. “I don’t need anything. Nothing at all.”

  * * *

  “That’s it, then, milady,” announced Blythe, the maidservant Aldous had assigned to attend to Phillipa’s needs during her visit to Southwark. Closing the lid of the big, iron-banded trunk that held most of Phillipa’s clothes, she said, “You’re all packed for tomorrow morning. I hope you have a good visit. I’ve heard Halthorpe’s one of the oldest stone castles in England, and huge—almost too huge. They say you can get lost in it if you’re not careful.”

  “I’m sure I’ll enjoy my stay,” Phillipa said as she stood at the open window, gazing out at the night sky and thinking, What am I doing? I must be mad.

  “Let’s get you ready for bed, then.” Blythe removed the circlet from Phillipa’s head, as well as her rings and garnet earrings, stowing them in the enameled chest that held her valuables. Standing behind Phillipa, she unwrapped the golden ribbons from around her two pairs of braids.

  There came a knock at the door, and then Hugh’s muffled voice: “‘Tis I.” He always knocked first, in case Phillipa was bathing or dressing. By the time he came to bed every evening, she was in her night shift and under the covers, with the oil lamps extinguished, but because of the time she’d spent packing tonight, she was late in retiring.

  “Shall I send him away, milady?” Blythe asked as she fetched Phillipa’s oxhorn-handled hairbrush from the wash stand.

  “Nay, let him in.” Phillipa hadn’t had the chance to speak privately to Hugh since the arrival of Orlando and Istagio.

  The maid opened the door for Hugh, who drew up short when he saw that Phillipa was still fully clothed. “Sorry—I thought you’d be...” Turning,
he said, “I’ll come back later.”

  “No, stay. Blythe, you can leave now. I’ll attend to myself.” She held her hand out for the brush, which Blythe gave her.

  After Claennis had departed, closing the door behind her, Hugh and Phillipa regarded each other from across the room in awful silence. He was wearing the most dignified of his new tunics—deep blue with black trim, and his hair was pulled back, the way she liked it. He looked unbearably handsome in the golden lamplight...but also rather distant, perhaps even sad, just as he’d seemed all evening. She wasn’t used to this quiet, sober side of him, and she found she preferred the old, insolent, cocksure Hugh much better.

  Wanting something to do with her hands, Phillipa started unraveling one of her braids and brushing it out. “You didn’t seem surprised,” she said without looking up, “when Aldous told Orlando and Istagio that I’d be coming along to Halthorpe tomorrow.”

  “I overheard you cooking up your little scheme with Aldous.”

  She winced involuntarily, abashed that he’d been privy to that appalling little scene, heard the things she’d said...How I ache to give myself to you, body and soul, to lose my senses in your embrace...

  “Did you kiss him?” Hugh asked.

  She looked up, startled not just by the question but by the pained way he’d asked it, and shook her head. Hugh seemed relieved until she said, “He kissed me.” She recalled her distaste as Aldous’s mouth had ground against hers, her revulsion when he’d tried to worm his tongue between her lips. She’d pushed him away then, saying she was afraid someone would walk in on them. It was then that she realized how wretched it would be to lose her virginity to such a man.

  Hugh looked away, his hands on his hips, his jaw clenching in that way that meant he was grinding his teeth. “I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into. There’s no talking your way out of his bed now—not if you go with him to Halthorpe.”

  “I know that,” she said, with just a hint of a tremor to betray the fear clutching at her stomach.

  He nodded, his gaze on the floor of ornately painted tiles. “I won’t be there to protect you if something goes wrong.”

  “I’ve got my wits to protect me.”