The Lady Series Read online

  Even in the dimness Kit could see the welcome that ever glowed from Nick’s green eyes when he visited. “I heard you shout for me in your dream, Kit,” his brother said in greeting as Jamie circled the bed for the hearth where he turned one of the two small chairs set before it toward the bed and sat, his expression looking even more hollow in the fire’s uncertain light.

  Nick’s gentle tease tore into Kit’s heart as it always did each time Nick spilled it. Kit refused to stop him, simply grateful that his brother yet lived to say the words. He managed a smile. “Liar, I didn’t shout this time.” Kit replied.

  If Nick’s mouth couldn’t do it, his eyes returned his brother’s smile. “Ah Kit, I know how difficult it is for you to come home, but glad I am you’re here. It’s good to see you.”

  Would that Kit could say the same. “How are you, Nick?” he demanded gently.

  “Me?” his brother replied as if surprised that anyone would inquire. “I’m well.”

  Kit’s eyes narrowed. “Liar,” he repeated. “I hear you struggle for breath.”

  A touch of irritation flashed in Nick’s eyes. “If you don’t like my answers then don’t ask me how I do. I said I’m well, now leave it be, Kit.”

  “How can I,” Kit persisted, “when you dismissed the physician I sent you? He could have helped you, Nick.” No matter how Kit tried to return some of what he’d stolen from his brother Nick ever threw his gifts back into his face.

  Nick sighed. “So that’s what brought you here. I should have guessed it wasn’t me you came to see.”

  Stung that his brother should think this, Kit stepped closer to the bed and laid a hand on Nick’s shoulder. “That’s not true. You’re precisely who I came to see. Am I not seeing you now?”

  “Nay,” his brother retorted with more irritation in his voice, “it’s my ghost you visit, not me. Look at me, Kit. Can’t you see it’s still me behind my scars?”

  The question made Kit frown. “What are you talking about? Of course I see you.” How could he help but see the brother upon whom he’d laid these scars?

  Nick sighed. “He still doesn’t see me, Jamie.”

  “He cannot,” the steward replied from his darkened seat on the other side of the bed. “The past holds him.”

  “What are you two talking about?” Kit demanded irritably, looking from one to the other. “All I asked is why you dismissed the physician.”

  “Because your learned healer was a fool,” Nick retorted. “Everything he did left me weaker still. Only for your sake did I let him stay as long as he did.”

  The scars on Nick’s face shifted into what passed for an expression of wry humor. “He was obsessed with my bowels when there’s nothing wrong with that part of me.”

  “You cannot know how effective what he planned would be after only a week’s time,” Kit protested.

  Nick opened his mouth to retort, but his breath caught as a coughing spasm overtook him. Clutching a hand to his chest, he bent against what wracked him. Kit took the cup from his brother’s hands then rubbed at Nick’s back until the spate passed.

  “Ach, Nick,” he said, “all I want is for you to be well once more. I thought the man might help.”

  Still struggling for breath, Nick leaned into his pillows. “What you want would take a miracle,” he managed, “and only God can offer that. Here, give me the cup.” He extended his hands. With most of the flesh burned off them, his fingers were skeletal and without flexibility.

  Rather than give it to him, Kit lifted the container to his brother’s lips. Nick didn’t need a facial expression to let Kit know how he felt about this attempt at pampering. Resentment burned in his eyes.

  “Give it to me,” he snapped, “then tell me why your creditors come tapping on our gate.”

  Startled, Kit released the cup. Nick ably caught the container between his scarred palms, only a little of the thick, dark liquid sloshing over its rim.

  “May God take those damn tradesmen,” Kit snarled. “How dare they come here.”

  Nick sipped at his brew, watching his brother over the cup’s rim. “I suppose they dare because they want to be paid.”

  “Well, they’ll wait,” Kit growled. His position as gentleman pensioner to England’s queen was compensated at a mere eighty pounds a year, hardly enough to cover his basic needs, much less pay his present debts. It certainly didn’t come close to the fortune he needed to see Nick’s title restored.

  His brother tilted his head to one side. “What happened? Last you were here you’d invested in a shipping corporation and thought it showed potential.”

  “So it did and it might well have turned profit if not for politics.” Kit rounded the bed and claimed the other chair near the hearth. Carrying it back around the bed’s foot, he set it close to the bed so he could sit and still see Nick as they spoke. After he’d folded his long frame into the seat he braced his chilled feet on the bed’s frame. Although Nick covered the stone floor in here with a plaited rush matting to stop the drafts, cold still seeped through it.

  Not certain how closely his brother followed the doings of court and queen, Kit set himself to explaining. “In November past, four ships filled with treasure bound for Spanish forces in the Lowlands took shelter in Plymouth Harbor.” He offered his brother a wry grin. “I fear our queen couldn’t resist; she confiscated them, keeping the silver that lay within those holds. In retribution the Spanish confiscated my corporation’s ship, which was at harbor in the Lowlands at the time.”

  The only fact Kit wasn’t willing to share with his brother was that the loss of that ship left him so deeply in debt his creditors were set on throwing him in prison.

  Nick tapped a scar-hardened finger against his cup in thought. “How much do you need?”

  “From you, nothing,” Kit replied, his words sharp. “You’ll not pay my debts when you have your own mortgages to worry over.” He wanted nothing to interfere with those payments. The sooner Graceton’s burdens were lifted, the sooner Nick could claim his rightful title as its lord and the sooner Kit would be rid of his guilt.

  “You speak as if we’re bankrupt” Nick started irritably.

  “We?” Kit interrupted. “Graceton is yours, not ours, and I’ll not take your coins. If you’re worried about the tradesmen, don’t be. They’ll wait, they always do.” Only they wouldn’t, not this time.

  Nick’s gaze hardened into an emerald brightness. “What you need is to marry an heiress.”

  Here they were, still battling in mock duels as they’d done as children, only this time their weapons were words not training swords or branches. Nick’s thrust was a bold jab, meant to repay Kit’s parry when he refused to take his aid.

  Kit parried again. “Me, marry? You know full well I cannot, not until the elder son has wed.”

  Nick’s jaw shifted to its most stubborn as he prepared for another thrust, just as determined to force Kit where he would not go as Kit was to resist him. Jamie rose from his chair and leaned into the bed, his fists braced upon the mattress as he looked from man to man.

  “Enough, Nick,” he warned his better. “There’s no reasoning with Kit on this issue. If he doesn’t wish to wed, let him be.”

  Nick turned his hard gaze on his steward. “If you’d like me to put the matter to rest, then you to tell my pigheaded brother he has no choice over marriage. Aye, and after that tell him he is no longer a younger son, but my heir and as such I have the right to marry him where I will. When you’re done telling him that remind him that if neither of us marries Graceton will go to our second cousin.”

  “Throwing Sir Robert into this conversation won’t move me,” Kit retorted, his muscles tensed for battle, “not when you hate him more than I do. If you don’t want Graceton in his hands, wed and breed up children to keep it from him.”

  “I’m too frail for that.” Nick made this lie a flat statement.

  The twist of Kit’s lips was smug. “There’s nothing wrong with your chest and arms, torso and le
gs. You’re as much a man as any other, except that what plagues your lungs eats away at your body mass. As for your ability in bed, I know about Cecily.”

  Cecily was the daughter of the woman who’d nursed Nick back to health after his burning. Being long accustomed to his appearance she was the only woman with whom Nick was comfortable.

  “If you can bed Cecily, you can bed a wife,” Kit said. “Marry first, Nick, and I’ll follow your lead.”

  A garbled sound that was neither laugh nor cry escaped Nick’s stiff lips. “Who would I marry, brother? Look upon my face, and name me one woman at our queen’s court who would take me as I am.”

  So Nick said every time they spoke of this subject. He refused to see that if Cecily could accept him as he was, other women could do so as well. Kit shook his head.

  “You’re a good man, Nick. I know many women who’d put aside appearances if they knew their husband would be gentle and kind.”

  “Nay,” his brother’s insistent voice rose until he coughed. “You’ll do your duty to our family as I command.”

  It was an empty threat. Six years ago, when Kit had been but one and twenty, Nick had tried to force marriage on him. Rather than give way Kit left England for the Continent to battle the Spaniards for the Protestant Dutch, his choice of sides a rebellion against his still-Catholic brother.

  “Do as you must, knowing that I’ll do as my heart demands,” Kit replied, offering the final defense, the one that ever stopped this duel of theirs. “This time I might well come home from war with a knighthood and the two hundred and fifty pounds that comes with that title.” Or suffer far worse than a slash that made for a long scar across his chest.

  Rising from his chair, he stretched, the motion far more relaxed than he felt. “Now, I think we’ve argued enough for one visit.” He leaned into the bed to press his lips against his brother’s rough and ridged brow. “Leave my monetary problems to me, and I’ll see that my creditors no longer plague you.” He turned and started from the room.

  “Kit,” Nick called after him, “I’ll find a way to force a wife on you. You cannot win.”

  Kit didn’t bother to reply as he closed the door to his brother’s apartment then slipped back through the darkness to his own familiar room. Unfortunately, Nick was right. There were few ways to garner the fortune Nick needed to restore his title: a successful business venture, a successful war campaign, a rich wife and royal favor. He’d failed at the business venture and he refused to marry before Nick. God knew soldiering hadn’t worked.

  That left only royal favor and so far in his four years at Elizabeth Tudor’s court he’d proved himself neither handsome nor sprightly enough to dance his way into the realm of the Virgin Queen’s favorites.

  Mistress Anne Blanchemain threw open her second-storey parlor window. Rain, borne inside on the day’s cold breath, spattered the front of her black bodice, plastered her fine cotton shirt to her skin and softened the starch that formed lace into her modest ruff. From the courtyard she couldn’t see came the rattle of harnesses and creak of leather. Tired horses stamped and blew. Men spat and coughed the cold from their throats, their words inaudible against the low moan of the wind.

  Owls House had been built almost a century before when old King Henry, the eighth to bear that name, yet ruled. As was the fashion of that time the house was shaped as an “H”; these days, houses were being built in the shape of an “E” to honor their present monarch. That design resulted in her home’s courtyard being placed in the upper open portion of the “H” with the house’s entry at the center of the letter’s crosspiece while Anne’s parlor was in the forward end of the west leg of the house.

  Seeing into the courtyard from the parlor was a skill Anne had mastered as a child. She leaned out the window as far as she could, her hips balanced on the inner ledge and one hand holding tight to the outer ledge. One foot came off the floor while long experience with this gyration sent her other foot seeking the leg of the heavy desk that stood to one side of the window.

  Once Anne had her balance, she shifted to the side, reached out with her other hand and caught hold of one of the big white blocks of stone that dressed the corner of the house. The stone was cold and slick, but she knew well where to plant her fingers, having long ago found the dips and cracks in its face that served her best. In the room behind her Anne heard her mother’s walking stick hit the floor with three sharp taps.

  “I’m fine, Mama,” Anne replied, stretching to her longest.

  The courtyard came into view and what she saw made her breath catch in dismay. It seemed an army filled that area. At its head was a tall man dressed all in black. Not even the day’s gray light could disguise the glint of the great ruby he had pinned to the band of his flat-crowned cap.

  Anne threw herself back into the parlor and slammed the window shut with such force that the diamond-shaped panes rattled in their frames. As her mother’s stick tapped again, just once this time, Anne whirled to face her.

  Lady Frances Blanchemain sat in a high-backed invalid’s chair beside the room’s narrow fireplace. Like her daughter, Lady Frances also wore black. They mourned the recent death of Anne’s sister, the third of Frances’s four daughters. But Frances’s attire was more bedrobe than gown. Her only nod to fashion was the attifet perched atop her graying chestnut hair, the cap’s heart-shaped front framing a face once lovely enough to cause her banishment from King Henry’s court by a jealous queen.

  No more. Anne’s birth had stolen her mother’s beauty and her mobility. A fit shortly after Anne’s coming had frozen the right half of Frances’s body and silenced her tongue.

  Her mother’s tongue might be dead, but not so her ears, her hazel eyes or her quick intelligence. By the light of the fire and the candles set in sconces around the room, Anne had no trouble reading the message in her mother’s gaze.

  “You were right. It’s Sir Amyas.” Anne loosed a steaming breath. “Who does he think he is, tapping upon our door without so much as a note of warning?”

  Frances’s left brow dropped in chiding as half her mouth thinned to a demanding line. Leaning her stick against the table in front of her, she closed her yet functional left hand and rapped her knuckles on the arm of her chair.

  Anne glared. A persistent faith and the words of the apostle Paul gave her mother the ungodly notion all women should happily submit to the rule of men. Anne, having been raised in a family of only women, owned neither her mother’s deep faith nor her ability to submit.

  She crossed her arms in refusal. “You waste your breath, Mama. I’ll not apologize, not when each time my grandsire comes he takes another bite from your jointure. I give thanks that there’s little left for him to take save me.”

  Fear flashed across half her mother’s face. Regret tore through Anne. With a flash of skirts and petticoats, she flew to crouch beside her mother’s chair. Frances caught Anne’s hand, squeezing as if she never meant to let go, terrible shadows filling her eyes.

  Anne pressed a swift and reassuring kiss to her cheek. “You worry when there’s no need. If he comes for any reason this day, it’s to announce that he’s found me a husband now that I’m your only heir. Remember his vow to leave me with you for all time. That means the man he chooses must abide here and, thus, must accept you as you are.”

  This time Frances’s eyes widened in a far different concern.

  Shame touched Anne’s answering smile. The isolation of her life here hadn’t proved a perfect barrier to sin. She gave a half-hearted shrug. “Any man who can accept you will also be accepting of me as I am.”

  From their hall, which filled the full crossbar of the “H”, came the sound of wood scraping stone. As one, mother and daughter looked at the parlor door as if they could see through it. Anne hissed in irritation as she came to her feet, her mother’s hand yet clasped in hers.

  “He doesn’t even ask before he puts his men to setting up the table and benches.” She hated the way Sir Amyas ever behaved as if Owls Hou
se yet belonged to him and wasn’t bound in trust to his second son’s daughters.

  There was a tap on the parlor door. There was no point in refusing Sir Amyas entry, not when he’d simply barge into the room, Anne called, “Come.”

  Cold damp air gusted in on their housekeeper’s skirts as she entered, then danced past her to set the candles to flickering and the flames leaping high upon the hearth. With no warning of visitors, she yet wore a stained apron atop her workaday attire and no veil beneath her cap to hide the bubbled, pocked ruin smallpox had made of her face.

  “Sir Amyas Blanchemain,” she announced then dropped into a deep curtsy.

  Anne’s grandsire strode into the parlor, his sodden cloak yet dripping and mud spewing from his boots. At three score, Sir Amyas was still a handsome man, being fine-featured and olive-skinned. His hair was pure white beneath his black cap.

  He gave no word of greeting to his second son’s widow or her daughter. Instead, he glanced around the room. Anne’s lip curled as she watched him do as he always did, taking inventory of the parlor’s fittings. His gaze alit only upon the room’s most valuable assets: the expensive carpet that covered the narrow oak table, the golden bowl at the center of the walnut mantelpiece, the massive desk.

  Then his attention shifted to the Flemish tapestry on the far wall. Anne’s eyes narrowed. That wasn’t his to covet. It belonged to her mother, brought by Frances into her marriage, thus forever beyond Amyas’s reach.

  Their housekeeper rose from her curtsy, careful to keep her face turned away from their auspicious guest. Sir Amyas’s religious beliefs were far less forgiving than those held by Frances. He claimed the pox scars she wore upon her face were a sign that God had marked her for damnation.