The Warrior's Game (11 page)

“What a pity,” Roheise said, her voice heavy with disappointment. “However I understand your hesitation. It’s a sorry truth that our king and those base men who serve him are wholly untrustworthy. Forgive me. I would never have called you to me at so late an hour if I’d realized I would recover so swiftly on my own.”

Roheise came to her feet, then rounded the table’s corner to stand beside Ami. “Let me see you to the door while Master Philip calls my men to escort you back to the castle.”

So confident was the noblewoman of her will being honored that she didn’t even look behind her to see if her host did as she bid. Instead, Roheise took Ami’s arm and turned her erstwhile guest toward the exit from the hall. When they were far enough from the table not to be overheard, Roheise bent her head near Ami’s ear.

“Why did you bring your maid? You should have known I expected a private moment.”

“Your servant said you were ill and needed me to act as chatelaine in the merchant’s house. What gentlewoman goes off to serve this way without her maid at her side?” Ami hissed in reply.

Roheise’s eyes hardened at Ami’s defiance. Her mouth twisted into a tight line. When they reached the landing outside the hall Roheise's grip on Ami’s arm insisted Ami pause here on the landing with her. The noblewoman closed the door behind her then waved Maud down the stairs.

Maud went as far as the street door where she hesitated. “My lady?” she called up, worry in her voice.

Ami smiled. “Wait for me outside. I’ll be but a moment or two.”

Once the street door closed behind Maud, Ami freed herself from Roheise’s grip and stepped as far from the lady as possible on the landing’s short space. “Let me guess,” she said quietly. “You want to know what I’ve accomplished thus far. Well, there’s not much to say. Sir Michel is gone. He left two days ago and no one knows where he went.”

“And, let me tell you what I know of your efforts on my behalf,” Roheise retorted, her harsh voice held to a whisper, her face a mask of anger. “You met with him in the courtyard before he departed from Winchester. Why no message to me of your success?”

Dismay shot through Ami followed by dull acceptance. The only way Roheise could know about the meeting in the castle’s yard was through Millicent. That old gossip!

“If you know that much, then you also know I only stooped to that attempt because he's been stalwart in avoiding me,” Ami snapped. “Tell me my lady, how am I to drive a man into doing anything if he refuses to allow me near him?”

“That,” Roheise retorted, her eyes narrowed, “as you informed me over a week ago, was to be your problem. It was mine to achieve rebellion against our king. However, your continuing failure has now made your problem mine and I have already found the resolution I need. It is so much easier to destroy a woman’s repute than to protect it, especially when that woman has gone to a man’s place of residence.”

Ami wanted to turn and bang her head against the wall behind her. How could she have been so blind? Roheise's note had been nothing but a trap, a way to place her victim—a woman acknowledged as chaste by all the court but also known for driving men to the edge of propriety as they pursued her--right where she most needed her. All the court would believe the commoner had had his way with her.

“It won't be enough,” Ami hissed in reply. “Spread what tale you wish but without me to stand beside you, claiming it’s true, all you have is innuendo. There are witnesses, good and true, to testify that no wrong was done.” And none of them would know they lied when they swore this.

Roheise dismissed Ami’s defense with a wave of her hand. “It’s amazing what people will say for coins. Those who hear the tale will believe it true simply because John refuses to execute his mercenary for having had his way with you. As for you, do what you will and we'll see who prevails.”

Mustering what remained of her already tattered dignity, Ami turned on the landing and descended to the foot of the stairs. It took all her will not to tear open that burly panel and to close it gently after she stepped outside when she wanted to slam it with all her might. Once it was shut she leaned her back against it. Maud stood a few feet from her, clinging to the house’s side as she tried to find some relief from the rain under the narrow eaves.

Ami turned her face to the darkening sky. She was ruined. Her future would be as dry and barren as the draper’s door, and it was all her own fault for meddling with her betters.

“My lady?” Maud asked, coming to stand beside her. “Are you ill? What did that noblewoman do to you?

Maud’s words sparked a fire in Ami’s belly. Better she stood before the whole court and admitted to being a whore than give Roheise her victory. Turning on Maud, she caught her maid by the arms.

“Not ill Maud, but angry. That benighted noblewoman! I’ll see to it she pays the highest price possible for what she does.”

Maud’s eyes widened to circles in her face. “What does she do to you, my lady?”

Ami wasn’t listening. Instead, her mouth tightened into a smile. What she needed was a partner, someone motivated by self-interest, to turn Roheise's charge into a lie. And she knew just who that person was.

Thank God Roheise’s escort hadn’t come for them yet. Holding a finger to her lips to signal silence, Ami pulled her startled maid a few yards down the street and ducked into the alleyway leading to the next house’s courtyard. Although Maud’s eyes flew wide at her mistress’s unusual behavior, she made no sound. Instead, the two of them clung close to the wall a few feet inside the alley.

Ami’s ears pricked. Maud’s breath echoed harshly from behind her. Through the walls of the house beside them came the muted sounds of folk settling in for the evening. From the direction of the goldsmith’s house a man’s whistle sang out. Ami knew the tune, a lewd ditty, imminently better whistled than sung. A pair of lads made their way past the alley’s opening, looking at nothing but the bucket of ale they carried between them, each matching the other’s step to prevent sloshing.

“What is this? With as long as it took to decide which of us had to tromp back through town I thought they’d surely be down here awaiting us.”

The man’s irritable voice echoed to Ami from the front of the draper’s house, his words spoken in the commoner’s language. Although at court Ami used only the French tongue she’d inherited from her parents, she knew the English language well, having learned it at her nurse’s breast.

“No doubt the lady changed her mind and decided to stay,” his companion replied. “Not that anyone would tell us that. Nay, they’ll leave us standing here in the cold and wet.”

“What now? Do we wait or call up the stairs to discover their intent?” the first man asked, sounding younger and more unsure than his companion.

“We’re not doing either,” the elder said in irritation. “We’ll go back to the stables. When they’re ready they’ll call for us again, naming us dolts and churls because we didn’t stand here and freeze our cocks off while we waited for them to make up their minds.” Both men laughed, the sound receding as they retreated back behind the draper’s house.

Ami straightened in surprise. The most she’d hoped for with her ploy was that the soldiers might believe she and Maud had started back to the castle without them and follow. That would have given Ami ten minutes or so to make her plea to the goldsmith’s wife before she returned to the draper’s house to ask when her escort meant to appear. If the soldiers had considered crying up the stairs about missing women, Ami could have stepped into the street and called to them, using escape from the rain as an excuse for being in the alley.

But this! This was a gift from God Himself, and a certain sign that she was meant to win this new turn in Roheise’s game.

Maud stepped closer to her mistress to take Ami’s arm in a worried grip. “What’s happening? Why are we hiding here?” she cried, her voice low and not a little frightened.

“The lady wants something from me I’m not at all willing to give her,” Ami replied, her voice grim. “Indeed, so little do I trust her I won’t even walk with her men.”

Maud’s face whitened. “But my lady, night is falling. We cannot walk alone and unprotected.”

Ami almost laughed. “Trust me, we’ll be fine. We’re going no farther than around the corner. Come,” she caught Maud by the arm and stepped out into the street, turning toward the goldsmith’s house.

Ami drew Maud to a stop before the goldsmith’s house, expecting her maid’s protest after the debacle of their first visit. “Now Maud, don’t worry. Sir Michel isn’t in residence at the moment.”

Rather than shock or disapproval, Maud’s expression flattened until she almost looked disappointed. “I know that. It’s all you’ve talked about for the past two days,” she murmured.

An apprentice, a lad of no more than twelve, answered Ami’s tap. “Aye?”

Ami smiled as if doing so might disguise the fact that she and Maud were two unguarded women, standing under a dripping, darkening sky. “I am Lady de la Beres. Might I have a word with your mistress?”

The lad’s eyes widened as if he recognized her name. Ami could think of no reason that he should. That was, unless the tale of her veil band had made its way through the household. Hardly likely. Mistress Hughette had every reason to conceal that story.

“Wait here,” the lad bid and rudely shut the door in Ami’s face.

At any other time Ami would have stalked off, irate at such treatment by a commoner, vowing to never again frequent this place. She could no longer afford pretensions, not after Roheise’s threat. Worse, if Mistress Hughette refused to see her there was nowhere else for her to go save back to the draper’s, and that meant the ultimate defeat.

A moment later the door reopened. Mistress Hughette stood in the portal, wearing her rich yellow gowns, only at the moment they were covered with a stained apron, something a woman of her wealth and status should never need don. Her fine wimple had been replaced by a simple headcloth. All in all, she looked every inch the housewife. Rather than frown Mistress Hughette’s smile was brilliant as she looked upon Ami. It was the last expression Ami expected to see on her face after their first encounter.

“Why, Lady de la Beres. Whatever brings you to our door so late in the evening?” There was an odd slyness to her words as if she’d divined some intent for Ami’s visit that Ami herself didn’t know.

Clearing surprise from her throat, Ami offered the merchant’s wife the clumsy tale she’d concocted. “I fear my maid and I find ourselves trapped in town, having been separated from our escort. I know you’ve no reason to offer me a boon, not after the mishap earlier this week, but might we bide with you for as long as it takes to send to the castle for a man to lead us home?”

Ami fell silent, certain of a blunt refusal. Instead, cunning pleasure flashed in Mistress Hughette’s bulging eyes. “But of course we can do that for you. Come in, come in.” She opened the door wider, the sweep of her arm inviting the sodden women to enter.

“Thank you, mistress,” Ami replied, her hope for recruiting an ally battling the sense that there was something intrinsically wrong with the invitation, given the woman’s previous opinion of her.

As she and Maud entered the smith’s wife gave a tsk. “How your cloaks drip. It may be a while before you leave us. Why not remove them, so you’ll be more comfortable as you wait?” The lift of Mistress Hughette’s hand indicated a line of pegs on the wall where the household’s everyday outer garments hung.

Ami unpinned her mantle and handed it to Maud, then tightened the woolen scarf around her head. She should have insisted on donning her linen headdress. Although the scarf covered her hair well enough to keep her decent it felt uncomfortable to be dressed so casually while a guest in a strange household.

Smiling still, Mistress Hughette started up the stairs to the hall. Ami followed her into the big chamber. How empty the room looked after the draper’s crowded hall. The only sound was the cheery crackle of the fire in the hearth, the circle of golden light cast by the flames reaching almost to this doorway.

Perhaps the goldsmith liked a period of quiet and isolation during his evenings. Ami could see the man in one of the two chairs before the hearth. Or rather, she saw one sleeve-clad elbow, which was the only part of him that showed outside of the chair’s enclosing back. Everyone else was in the kitchen, or so said the fragments of genial conversation that managed to waft past the closed door, accompanied by the scent of warm bread.

Mistress Hughette strode toward the chair. Ami stopped at the room’s center, waiting. Maud halted beside her.

As she reached the chair Mistress Hughette glanced back at her visitor and smiled like a cat who’d gotten into the ducklings. To the man in the chair she said, “There’s a visitor.”

Startled, Ami glanced at Maud. Her maid was paying no heed to what went forward in the hall. Instead, Maud watched the kitchen door, her head cocked as if she listened, her expression intent.

The man in the chair shifted, its seat creaking with his movement. He came to his feet. It wasn’t the goldsmith. Ami stared as Michel set his golden cup down on the arm of the chair, the dancing firelight teasing colored glints from the jewels decorating it.

He turned to face her. Firelight marked the aggressive jut of his nose and made his newly shorn cheeks gleam above the line of his beard. Made darker by dampness, his hair seemed as black as his painted mail. His shirt hung to mid-thigh, one sleeve rolled back to reveal a bandage around his wrist, its neckline slit nearly to the center of his torso. With its ties loosened the garment fell open far enough to reveal more than a glimpse of the powerful planes of his chest. Like every man, he wore a rough pair of chausses, the stockings that covered a man from his toes to his hips. Crisscrossing garters on his calves kept his chausses from sagging at the ankles. His feet were bare.

Subtle admiration filled her. Here, her betraying body proclaimed, was just the sort of man any woman might cherish as a husband. Shocked at herself, Ami stepped back, her gaze meeting Michel’s.

“But you’re gone from Winchester.” The unconsidered words leapt from her lips.

“I returned less than an hour ago,” Michel replied. His eyes were as gray and hard as the stones that made up Winchester’s town wall. Fury radiated from him. Not that there was any evidence of his rage in his voice. But then, he was adept at hiding his emotions from those around him. From all save her, that was.

Ami crossed her arms before her. He had no right to be furious at her. “Well then, welcome back,” she snapped, then turned to Mistress Hughette. “I fear my coming here was a mistake. Will you lend me and my maid an escort so we might make our way back to the castle?”

The pleasure in Mistress Hughette’s face dissolved into confusion. “But I thought you came,” she began, only to be interrupted by Michel.

“Amicia stays. We have business to discuss,” he said. It was no request, but a command.

All Ami heard was that he used her given name before the merchant’s wife and Maud. “I fear Sir Michel”--Ami let her voice linger on his title so Mistress Hughette would know that she hadn’t given him permission to use her given name--“mistakes himself for someone other than the mere administrator of my estates. Whatever business he believes he has with me can wait until the morrow and a more appropriate venue. I’ll have that escort now, mistress,” she demanded.

“I’ve just returned from your properties, Amicia,” Michel said, speaking over her.

That brought Ami’s full attention back to him. Outrage deflated with a bang. Panic loosened her tongue.

“If you think I’m going to let you loot my belongings without a fight, you’re sadly mistaken. Come, Maud. We’re leaving.”

Ami pivoted toward the door, managing two steps before Michel closed his bandaged hand around her wrist. She yelped at the feeling of his warm fingers against her skin. Holy Mother, now he was touching her in public and before witnesses! That was it. Roheise didn’t need to say a word.

“Let me go,” she demanded, jerking on her trapped hand as she strained away from him. His face might have been carved from marble. His fingers tightened around her wrist, then with a jerk, he pulled her back around to face him.

Ami’s scarf slipped to the nape of her neck. With a wordless cry she snatched for it, trying to rearrange it over her head with her free hand. Instead, it completely unwound.

Bareheaded among strangers and mortified, Ami backed as far from Michel as her trapped arm would allow. “Let me go.” What Ami meant as a command came out sounding like a plea.

“A little privacy, Mistress Hughette,” Michel said.

“But of course,” the goldsmith’s wife replied with such alacrity that it knocked the breath out of Ami.

“Come, lovey,” Mistress Hughette said to Maud. “Join me. I could use your assistance in serving those who travel with our knight.”

As the housewife extended a hand toward Maud, Ami’s maid smiled so broadly it seemed her cheeks might split. Ami gasped as she realized Maud intended to leave her without a backward glance.

“Where are you going, Maud? You have to stay. You’re my chaperone.” She strained away from Michel, reaching for her maid’s arm, only to have him pull her back before she managed to stretch as far as Maud’s skirt.

Rather than rescue her mistress, Maud sidled a few steps nearer to the kitchen door. “Now my lady, you cannot want me here, not when Sir Michel intends to discuss business with you. I’ve no desire to stand in the rain for a second time when the two of you decide your words are too private for me to overhear. Let me aid Mistress Hughette in her kitchen. Content yourself with the knowledge that I’m but a shout away, as is the whole household. After all my lady, you yourself told me that the knight means you no harm.”

Ami reeled at the betrayal. When had Maud become clever enough to rationalize abandonment by using her mistress’s own words against her? Where was her shy and fearful Maud? The woman standing before her was some changeling, a confident stranger determined to flout all convention so she might get behind that kitchen door.

Only neither Maud nor Hughette had any idea how dangerous it was to leave her alone with Michel. Ami turned toward the goldsmith’s wife. “Mistress, you cannot leave me unchaperoned with him.”

“Listen to your maid,” Mistress Hughette replied, once again smiling like that satisfied cat. “You may call out if you have need but we both know that won’t be necessary.”

That left Ami nothing to do but watch in disbelief as the kitchen door closed behind the two women. Shivering, half in terror over what she couldn’t control and half in anticipation of feeling Michel’s flesh against her own, Ami backed as far from him as his grip on her arm allowed. Although his eyes yet reflected the icy depths of his anger, he studied her as if reacquainting himself with her face. His gaze touched her brow, the line of her cheek, then traced the curve of her lips.

It was only a look. Still, throbbing heat woke within her. God help her, but Maud and Mistress Hughette had just departed the room and it was already too late to call for help.

“Let me go!” Ami yanked on her trapped arm with all her might.

Michel grunted. His fingers opened. He gave his hand a quick shake.

As he again reached for her, Ami stumbled back from him, then wheeled into a turn. Her plait flying, her scarf caught in one hand, she sprinted for the hall door. It was safer to be bareheaded and unescorted on Winchester’s streets than to be alone with Michel de Martigny.

She got as far as the landing before he caught her. Ami’s cry ended mid-breath as Michel spun her around and shoved her back against the stair wall, pinning her in place. Panting, she strained against his hold.

He loomed over her, his expression dark. “This time you go too far, madam.” His voice was a raw whisper. “How dare you accuse me of thievery before others when you know very well I have done no wrong.”

Even if he’d shouted at the top of his lungs, Ami would still have sighed at his nearness. The warmth of his body reached out to envelop her. With that heat came his scent, all the more heady because it was familiar to her now.

Loosened, his shirt gaped far enough for her to see his torso almost to his waist. Need stirred sharply as Ami again eyed the masculine planes of his chest. Oh, but he looked nothing at all like her former husband. Although Richard at two score and five, his age when they wed, had yet owned a sturdy frame. Michel was lean, the breadth of his chest suggesting the power that had won him his king's attention.

She swallowed and clenched her fists, crumpling her scarf, then forced her gaze back to his face. His eyes were narrowed. There wasn’t a hint of softness in his expression.

Her gaze caught on his mouth. All too well she remembered the way his lips had moved on hers, filling her with pleasure. It didn’t matter that he raged, and rightfully so. She shouldn't have said what she had. None of that mattered, not when what she wanted was a kiss. Nay, a kiss was what she needed if she was to continue to live.

Lost in her lust for him, Ami’s body relaxed. Her hands opened, her scarf drifting forgotten to the floor. Lifting herself onto her toes, she touched her lips to his.