The Maiden's Hand

Wynter Merrifield strolled to the hearth and propped an elbow on the massive mantelpiece. The hall must have once served as the refectory for the Bonshommes, for it was long, with a high, vaulted ceiling. Figures carved of stone and blackened with age-old soot leered down upon the tables and cupboards. Two low doors flanked the hearth, and above it hung a pair of crossed swords.

Wynter subjected the swords to a moment of contemplation. “I don’t understand, my lord. Have we met?”

“The bridge at Tyler Cross,” Oliver said. “Your welcoming party bared its talons.”

Wynter turned, and his austere, handsome face went blank. “Welcoming party? I have no idea what you mean.”

Kit regarded Wynter with unconcealed dislike. “We were attacked,” he said. “Mistress Lark thought perhaps the brigands were in your hire.”

“Mistress Lark is a strange bird.” Wynter spread his arms to convey his bafflement. “She has ever been a victim of rampant imagination. Suspicious little mort. My father has done his best to reform her, but to no avail.”

“Is she your sister, then?” Oliver braced himself. To think that Lark was kin to this smooth, cold creature made his hackles rise. Or worse, was there a marriage in the works? He refused to dwell on the horror.

Wynter laughed, his amusement genuine and oddly seductive. He seemed a man who cloaked himself in shadows, hiding his true essence, showing only a chiseled and icy charm. “No.”

“A cousin, then? Your father’s ward?”

“I suppose you could term it that, after all these years.”

Oliver went to a trestle table, pressed his palms on the surface and leaned forward, forcing out the words. “Then is she betrothed to you?”

This time Wynter threw back his head and roared with laughter. “And I feared being bored today. My lord, you are too amusing. Lark is not betrothed to me. Far from it, thanks be to God.”

Oliver’s shoulders relaxed. He pretended it did not matter, that his question had been an idle one. “Just wondering,” he commented.

Wynter pushed away from the hearth and strolled gracefully toward Oliver and Kit. He held Oliver’s gaze for perhaps a heartbeat longer than polite interest dictated, and in that moment they clashed.

They didn’t touch, nor were any words exchanged, but Oliver felt ill will emanate from Wynter like a breath of wind before a storm.

“Now then,” Wynter said, a smile playing about his thin lips, “you must forgive my manners, but might I inquire as to your purpose here?”

“You might inquire,” Kit said, beefy fists tightening, “but—”

“His Lordship will see you now.”

Oliver turned to see a pale, soberly clad retainer at the main doorway, gesturing for them to follow him up a wide staircase.

Oliver bowed to Wynter. “Excuse us.”

Wynter bowed back. Perhaps by accident, perhaps by design, his slim fingers brushed the hilt of his sword. “Of course.”

Oliver paced back and forth in the master’s chamber, a long, narrow room with a bank of shrouded windows at one end and a fireplace at the other. Spencer Merrifield, earl of Hardstaff, had banished everyone save Oliver from his bedside. But even the old lord’s imperious command failed to evict the shadows that haunted the deep corners. Oliver guessed it had once been the abbot’s lodgings. The draperies over the tall windows held the sunlight at bay and cloaked the chamber in mystery.

“You move like a caged wolf,” Spencer observed in a calm voice from his bed.

Oliver forced himself to slow down. Spencer could not know it, but the darkness and the stale, lifeless smells of the sickroom were all too familiar to him. He had spent the first seven miserable years of his life in such a place, exiled there by the superstitions of his doctors and by the impotent grief of his father. It took the unexpected love of a most unusual woman to induce Stephen de Lacey to bring his ailing son into the light.

“Could I open the draperies?” Oliver asked.

“If you like.” Spencer stirred, making a vague sweep of his arm. “My physician claims sunlight is noxious, but I feel equally ill in light or in dark.”

Oliver parted the curtains. For a moment he savored the view, a beautiful valley cleaved by the silvery river, a patchwork of fields and meadows, all embraced by the forested hills.

Then he turned to get his first good look at the man who had saved him from hanging and then summoned him from a perfectly good day of gaming and wenching. Afternoon light showered through the lozenge-shaped panes of glass, making shifting patterns of black and gold on the flagged floor. Long, dappled shafts fell on a frail man whose skin hung loose upon his skeletal frame. He had wispy hair that might have been black at one time, proud aquiline features and keen eyes.

He hardly looked the hero or the crusader, yet there was something about him. The aura of a powerful mind that had outlived its useless body.

“Why did you tell Kit to leave the room, my lord?” asked Oliver.

“We’ll need him, but not yet. Do sit down.”

Spencer had a pleasant way of giving orders. He was, taken as a whole, a rather pleasant man. The fact that Oliver owed his life to the earl made it easy to like him.

“I should thank you,” he said. “I thought I was done for, that it would all end at the gallows. My lord, I am in your debt.”

Spencer nodded. “The life of an innocent man is payment enough. Still, I do need your help.”

“What is it, my lord? What can I do to repay you?”

Spencer stared at the foot of the bed, where a great chest with an arched lid stood. “The deed is possibly illegal. At best, it’s a manipulation of the law.”

Oliver grinned. “I’ve been known to break a statute or two in my time. In sooth, Oliver Lackey was not wholly innocent. I did indeed incite riots and mayhem when the mood took me. Tell me more of this task.”

“It’s dangerous.”

“My forte.”

“It involves a great deal of record searching.”

Oliver’s spirits fell, for such work bored him. “Not my forte.”

“That is why we’ll need your friend Kit.”

Oliver was suddenly impatient with the whole affair. He resisted the urge to start pacing again. Even in sunlight the room held the dank promise of death. Blackrose Priory was a strange place indeed, peopled with strange inhabitants, not the least of whom was Mistress Lark. He much preferred the rollicking atmosphere of London.

“My lord,” he said, “I cannot help but wonder what you require. Mistress Lark went to a great deal of trouble to find me and bring me here.”

Spencer clutched the tapestried counterpane as if he wished to leave his bed. “You gave her trouble?”

The ferocity of the question took Oliver aback. “No, my lord. But I do confess I wasn’t sitting at home waiting for her to come calling. She found me—” he dropped his voice to a mumble “—at a Bankside tavern.”

“God’s shield,” Spencer snapped. “I expected better from you.”

He sounded like someone’s father, Oliver thought. “She is incredibly loyal to you, my lord,” he observed, hoping to turn the subject.

“Of course she is,” Spencer grumbled. “I have raised her from infancy. Given her every advantage, taught her a woman’s duties—”

“A woman’s duties? And what might they be, my lord?” Oliver had a few ideas of his own, but he wanted to hear Spencer’s answer.