Lindsay Townsend (3 page)

By a mighty effort of will Stephen tore his
attention away from this bewitching, naughty beauty and returned to scanning
roofscapes. Still his eyes kept flitting back as he silently willed her to turn
within her cage, to look out, to look back, to see him.

Know me, girl. Wonder at me, as I do at
you.
He was torn between
admiration and a longing to kiss her thoroughly for her deception.
Kissing
you will be a sweet revenge.

She was tossing flowers, delicate metal posies
of gold and silver that streaked the cobbles like flashing dewdrops or
sun-flashed rain, pretty trinkets that the populace would certainly scramble
for as soon as the nobles had passed. Still staring toward Westminster,
although she must surely know by the mutter of the crowd that the foremost Prince
of England and King of France rode right beneath her cage, she scattered
another handful of golden petals, seemingly oblivious to the gasps of
admiration. Silhouetted against the dark, smoke-stained jetty of the house, her
slim body made a pleasing, subtle curve.

The picture she created then reminded him
of Cecilia, dancing for him alone in their private chamber with her hair loose,
spinning round on the spot with her dark locks flowing and her arms weaving
around the bed-posts. Pierced by the memory he felt his horse stumble, crushing
one of the metal flowers and rearing. He reined his mount in before it could
trample any of the thronging crowd, speaking soothingly, gentling the beast and
all the while watching the girl—the girl now, not Cecilia, not even in memory.

See me
.
Look at me
.

****

Isabella
’
s feet ached in her new shoes, her hands
itched furiously within her new gloves and her face felt increasingly
sun-scorched. Thinking of her son she kept smiling, throwing flowers, ignoring
all Amice
’
s mutterings at her back as the cage swung and tilted
each time she stirred.

“
The
prince!
”
Amice called, her voice one of many as London cooed
like doves, proud of its nobility today and even more of itself. Isabella knew
the royal party was within feet of her, that soon the heir to the throne of
England could reach up off his small black horse and brush the base of her cage
with his gloved hand or feathered cap, but she held her pose of looking away.
Somewhere, please all the saints, somewhere in that glittering retinue was
surely Stephen Fletcher.

Please, Holy Mother, let him be here with
his prince and lord, please, for the sake of my son.

She
swung round in her cage, clasping
one of the gilded wooden bars for support, giving Amice a quick smile to show
she was safe and tipping another golden hailstorm of posies over the closing
nobility. Pretending an imperiousness she was far from feeling, she lowered her
head slowly, as if the retinues clustered in the street beneath her were as
insignificant as bugs.

He's here
! At once her breathing quickened as her body jolted.
The gilded cage shook around her, as if caught in a sudden storm.

“He is here?” Forgetting her fear of
heights, Amice leaned right out of the window. Isabella caught her back.

“Stephen is the tall, well-made man on the gray
horse, just behind that fat knight of the garter,” she said, the admission huge
in her mouth as if she was chewing on pebbles.

“Saffron and pepper, he is handsome! A man
to dream of when he is not busy in your bed.”

“Amice!”

“Hush, Isabella, I speak my mind. Yes, your
man is very fine, shapely and fine. Does he smell of mint? I wager he does. Not
very colorful
in his dress
, though you can ginger him up, and my, his
horse is old…”

Isabella did not hear the rest of her
friend's pithy remarks. Looking down she was lost, her mind a whirlpool of
thoughts and impressions as the rest of the street vanished to her. She had
forgotten how magnetic his eyes were, with their soft tones of green and hard
notes of gray, and how aquiline his nose. He was watching her, indulgence
sparkling in his tanned, craggy face and tugging at the corners of his singer's
mouth, as if he knew very well what she was about and did not care. Even in the
earliest days of her marriage Richard had never stared at her like this, as if
he kissed her with his eyes.

 He had caught one of her flowers, she
realized as he held it aloft, showing it to her before tucking it away into one
of his big, black, serviceable leather gloves.

“Fine as my best black pepper,” Amice was concluding,
while Isabella struggled to hold onto herself, not abandon her sense utterly.
Remember
Sir William's threats and the danger to Matthew.
She lifted her hand away
from the edge of the cage and waved to the tall, strong figure below.
Stephen
is surely my lord, my kind and noble lord, and I am forced to beguile him.
Shame engulfed her in a scalding tide.

I must do this, for Matthew
.

Not in so extreme a way, her mind scolded, but it was
as if her body no longer obeyed her reason. Stephen's smile was a welcome and
in truth what time had she? In another moment he would be gone, passed, and her
family would blame her. If she did not do this now they might never allow her
to see her son.

It was the work of a single step and then done. As she
forced her stiffened limbs to stir, Isabella glimpsed the rich tapestries,
captured in France and hung from the first floors as trophies. She saw the
shields, taken from the battlefield of Poitiers and ranged along the street in
a triumphant display, glinting back at her. She thought of Matthew in his brave
blue coat and fell out of the cage, a desperate launch, wondering if the
cobbles would hurt.
Catch me, please catch me
.

In a slow fall, slow as a snail, she saw Stephen's
smile falter, heard Amice's desperate,
“Issa
!” and then
she was floating, down and down.

Catch me, please catch me.

Stephen spurred his horse forward and snatched her
from the air, stopping her headlong crash onto the street. His arms burned,
sinews and tendons twisting and wrenching as he clung on, feeling her slip
away. In that instant, when his shoulders felt dislocated and his groin rammed
painfully against his saddle and his docile little
gray
nag whickered, close to a scream, he was near to
yelling himself. How could one so slight and small weigh so much? Still she
dragged him down to the ground, where the faint scatter of rose petals would
give them no protection.

“Stay!” he roared, to himself, to her, as from the
edge of his vision he saw the knight of the garter catch his horse's bridle,
his bearded mouth a round 'O' of shock. Even Prince Edward, veteran of many a
charge, had frozen.

He heard cloth ripping, wondered from the hot-metal
sizzle in his arms if his muscles were ripping, and then it was over. She was
netted in his grasp and whole.

I have caught a falling angel
, he thought for a wild instant, and then the fancy
was gone. He shook the stinging sweat from his eyes and looked at her, snug in
his arms but gasping like a landed fish.

“Are you hurt?”

She shuddered, her eyes tightly shut like a child
fearing punishment, her mouth trying to work as she fought to answer him. Any
anger that he might have felt at her folly in leaning out so far vanished. He
could tell—and he had seen enough battlefields to know—that she was uninjured
in body, but shocked to her core. He saw, too, how very thin she was, and now, once
fallen from her cage, how very pale.

“Peace, lass, you are safe.” He brought her before him
onto his saddle, settling her sideways so she was cushioned against him. “All
is well.” He stroked her shivering limbs and heard the burly knight growl in
his ear, “You are excused duties, Fletcher, 'tis clearly safe enough. Take the
silly wench away and let us move on.”

Around him, seeping back in tides of sound, he could
hear the crowd gasping and applauding and Prince Edward saying to the French king
that the maiden had been overcome by his royal presence.

Stephen dipped his head to the shivering girl. “Forgive
me, lady, I forgot myself in that moment. You are fallen a long way from a
glovers’ shop.”

Her eyes snapped open then, very blue and wide.

“Forgive me.” Her voice was low and sweet, but steady,
as her breath was now steady. “I am sorry, sir.”

“You should be, and I demand a forfeit.” Before he
knew what he would do, Stephen was kissing her, gathering her even closer, her
unguarded lips yielding and quivering under his. He ran his tongue across her
teeth and caressed her mouth with his, sorry now to have startled her, but by
God he had startled himself.

He broke their embrace, then, unable to stop himself,
he kissed her again. Her skin was smooth as a pearl and inexorably he was drawn
to the deep, enticing groove between her breasts...

Enough, man.
Restraining
himself, he lifted his head. “No debt,” he said, stripping off a glove and
cupping her flushed face with his hand.

“I am sorry,” she repeated, and then, more quietly, “Thank
you.”

“Move on!” grunted the knight, prodding his
gray
horse with his booted foot. “You are holding up the
prince!”

Abruptly, Stephen became aware again of the onlookers
and nobility, the prince, Edward of Woodstock, smirking with a knowing
expression on his long, narrow, bearded face and the retinue taking their cue
from him, laughing as if he and the woman were court jesters. Keen to be away
from their scrutiny, Stephen reined back and turned his mount out of the
procession into one of the side streets.

This alley was clogged with filth and rotting scraps,
ankle deep in waste and rats
. I am mighty glad she did not fall down here
.
Still, despite the sudden gloom and ordure stench he allowed his horse to plod
at its own pace and his dog to browse and nose as it would, giving them all
respite.

“My friend. Please, I must tell her I am safe,” his
passenger whispered. “She has such a dread of heights.”

“If she saw you fall, she knows I caught you.”
Answering, Stephen remembered a tall black woman in a red dress, staring from
an upper window. Recalling the black woman’s horror, he felt aggrieved on her
behalf and now sharpened his address to the girl. “Were you overcome by the
sight of the French king? I know he and Edward of Woodstock are both fair, and
I have learned at court that such
coloring
is greatly
admired.”

“I am not of the court,” she said at once, then
stopped. He knew then, from her tiny pause, that whatever she said next would
be false. “It is a very warm day, sir.”

“Indeed.”
And from that blush, you are a very poor
liar.
Usually falsehood irked him but if there was more here than a simple
misstep, he decided that he did not care. She had fallen out of her cage when
he, Stephen, was passing. “And now we meet again, Mistress Angel. Or should I
say Mistress Truant?”

Her
color
deepened.

Enjoying himself, Stephen went on. “You know my name,
may I ask yours?”

“Isabella.” She cleared her throat. “Isabella of
London.”

“But no glover.”

It should have been impossible for her to blush any
more but she did. “I fear not.”

Had she trembled then? “You have no need to fear. May
I take you home, Isabella? That is, if you will admit to me where you live?”

She nodded once, then worried at her lower lip, her
bright eyes as blue as cornflowers. No longer shaken, she still looked
surprised, but then she could not be any more surprised than he himself. He had
not done this kind of jesting for over two years, when he had gently teased
Cecilia. For an instant he felt disloyal, yet where was the harm? “Show me,” he
coaxed.

****

Stephen was not smiling. yet nor did he frown. He
looked patient and quiet, his black eyebrows faintly raised as if he guessed
and was amused by her confusion. “Point my horse, then,” he said, while she was
wondering what to say. When she nodded so he would not consider her entirely
witless he grinned, his teeth a flash of white in his tanned face. She felt him
urge his horse forward and the narrow shop fronts changed as they plodded on,
passing a few stragglers in festive demon masks.

Be witty, amusing, available
, threatened Sir William in her head, all traits that
had been crushed in her by Richard. What would amuse a royal armourer, who
mixed with princes and kings?
But he likes me
. She knew that from the
way he held her, from his swift admiring glances whenever he thought she was
looking elsewhere, and from his kiss. She wanted to bring her fingers to her
mouth and trace where his sweet mouth had lingered.

I shall have much to reflect and dream on tonight, but
I must not day-dream now.

Amice had been right, though. He tasted of mint and
smelled of leather and a faint whiff of sulphur, perhaps from his time by the
forges. What did he do as royal armourer? Did he ever use gold? That would be
something in common between them. She opened her mouth to ask, then remembered
just in time that he had not told her what he was or did, only his name. If she
asked anything too close he might suspect her of seeking him out, of laying
traps for him.
Which is exactly what I did and must do again.

“Yes, my lady?” He must have sensed her question,
possibly by her face. Richard had always mocked her for being too expressive.

They had reached the end of the alley and she pointed
left. He turned the horse along another narrow lane, this one filled with
stacked firewood and smelling of fish.

“Are you of London, Sir Stephen?” That was surely a
safe inquiry.

“Not me, and no knight, either.” He admitted this
without a seeming care, tucking his loose glove into his belt. He still wore
the other, perhaps to keep the golden flower he had caught safe— she could only
hope.

“I am of Kent,” he continued. “I miss the orchards and
fields there.”

“We have apple trees,” she began, stopping as it hit
her afresh that Matthew was somewhere in Kent.
Surely the family will let me
visit Matthew now? They must!

“Isabella of London,” Stephen went on, in a musing
way. He leaned around a low-hanging jetty and tightened his grip about her
waist as the horse ambled past a rooting pig. “You like London? Of course you
must, for you are of the goldsmiths and they live richly.”

“And you do not?” she replied, stung by his implied
criticism. “Your tunic is very fine, embroidered silk, I think, though you have
burst a seam on the shoulder. I can mend it for you if you wish.”

What have I said?
she thought desperately, as Stephen's piercing eyes narrowed and she
braced herself for a set-down or worse, a blow. But even as she stiffened she
realized he was laughing.

“A most generous offer, mistress! Should I remove it
now?”

Her easy blush, which she so detested, roared up her
face, stinging in her cheeks, but she was determined not to be overcome. “Not
for me, sir. Your wife might not approve.”

Abruptly, like a candle being snuffed out, the light
in his face vanished and he looked older, grimmer. “I have none now—no wife, I
mean. Where next?”

They had reached another junction of alleys. She
pointed blindly right, cursing herself for her blunder in reminding Stephen of
his dead wife and causing him grief, then realized too late that she had told
him wrong. This way they were heading for the
Vintry
,
the district of the wine merchants, a place of busy wharfs, warehouses and wine
stalls, the place where her father did his business.

The thought of her father seeing her, spotting and ignoring
her, as he always did whenever their paths crossed these days, made her
shudder.

“Hey there. I would not have you faint again, or your
kin will think me a ravisher.”

Stephen sounded truly concerned and she was ashamed
afresh.

“Shall we set down a moment, take a little wine?” he
went on. “This is the
Vintry
, I think, so we should be well served.” His full lips
twitched, in returning good humour. “I can even ask a good-wife to stay by you
as a companion, so your betrothed does not object.”

“I know very well where we are and I have no
betrothed. I am a widow,” she responded tartly, seizing the chance to say it.
Before he could say more she decided she would prove she was no fainting
creature, lest he consider her soft. She seized the strut of an overhanging
jetty with both arms, lifted herself away from him, swung and dropped neatly
onto a house-step.

“Do you like wine?” she asked, as if what she had just
done was the most natural thing in the world. Pride compelled her to add, “I
know where to find the best in London, especially the spiced sort.”

Silently he dismounted and strode alongside her where,
with her standing on the step, their heads were exactly level. He looked kind
again, and amused, and overall very much as if he longed to tweak her hair in
its gold
crespine
.

His lips hovered so close to hers that she could smell
his breath and see the tiny folds and creases of his mouth. Would he kiss her
again? Should she kiss him?

He smiled instead, and offered her his arm. “Well
enough, Mistress Isabella, so lead on,” he said.

****

Isabella was an intriguing widow, Stephen decided, as
they strolled beside the riverbank between the wharfs, passing a small skin of
piment
wine back and forth as they walked and talked. She was an enticing mixture of
bold and shy—blushing easily but “escaping” from his horse. She had a rich and
varied knowledge of wine. The one she had suggested he buy, flavoured with
cloves, ginger, honey and other spices, was very good. She had offered to pay
for it, too, but he had refused at once.

“This is my suggestion, mistress, and I am glad to
pay,” he told her and the smiling wine merchant, and he had not troubled to
haggle, so content he had been with how the day was going.

“What is this called again?” he asked now, shaking the
skin.

“Hippocras. Do you like it?”

“Very much.” He passed her the skin for the pleasure
of watching her take a sip and of seeing her long white throat as she tipped
back her head and swallowed. She had removed her gloves and he enjoyed seeing
her slim, nimble fingers at work. She had the knack, too, which he had never
mastered, of drinking from a wine-skin with delicacy, without spilling a drop.

“Are you a vintner's child?” he asked, picking up a
stick and throwing it along the river-side path for his dog. His docile
gray
horse shook its mane but remained content to be
simply led.