To Kiss A Spy (7 page)

Noailles turned from the mirror. “How so?”

Owen laughed softly. “Leave me to my business, Antoine, and I’ll leave you to yours.”

The ambassador shook his head. “You’ll at least tell me if you think you’ll succeed.”

Owen did not immediately respond. He turned his gaze to the window, where a bare branch scraped irritatingly against the pane. The ambassador was asking whether the chevalier believed he would succeed in getting the lady into his bed.

With vague surprise, Owen realized that he was less than confident about that. He realized that he had no interest whatsoever in seducing Pen Bryanston in order to steal her secrets. He realized that he
wanted
to make love with Pen Bryanston, but for quite other reasons than her usefulness to the French government. He had, however, a task to fulfill. But there were other routes to the same goal.

“I believe you may safely leave matters in my hands,” he said when the silence seemed to have stretched into infinity and the ambassador was staring at him in some puzzlement.

“So how d’you find the lady?” de Noailles asked curiously as Owen drew on his gloves. “As uninteresting as you expected?”

Owen regarded him with a slightly mocking curve to his well-shaped mouth. “You were the one who described her as uninteresting, my friend. Reserved and nondescript as I recall. How should I have found her any different?” He raised a hand in salute and left the chamber as soundlessly as his shadow.

Owen left the ambassador’s residence, Cedric falling in behind him. It was a cold gray morning, a far cry from the bright crisp sunshine of the previous day. The snow had turned to dirty slush and an icy drizzle was just beginning.

Owen turned up the collar of his cloak. “This is an accursed climate,” he muttered. There were times when he could agree with Antoine de Noailles’s oft-repeated description of England as “this nasty island.”

The rain in Wales, on the other hand, as he remembered it, was a soft fall that turned the hilly countryside a lush green. Gentle on the eyes, gentle on the soul. It had been three years since he’d been back to his mother’s homeland. Three years since he’d taken Andrew and Lucy to his mother.

His step quickened and Cedric was forced to trot to catch up with him. “Where are we going, sir?”

Owen glanced over his shoulder at the page, and his black eyes were so cold and bleak that Cedric regretted the question. He didn’t see that look very often, but when he did he knew that it was best to keep a still tongue in his head. He pulled his cap down over his eyes and fell back.

“To Baynard’s Castle, Cedric. We pay a visit to the Princess Mary.”

Cedric was surprised to get an answer and even more by the seemingly equable tones in which it was delivered. But he didn’t venture a reply and concentrated on keeping up with the longer legs of his master.

Owen walked fast to the water steps, as if he would outdistance the bitter drizzle. “Whistle, Cedric.”

The page obliged with two fingers to his mouth. His whistle brought two wherries to the steps, competing for custom, their oarsmen huddled in frieze cloaks. The oarsman in the leading wherry cursed his rival, pushing his boat away with an oar. The air rang with richly blasphemous oaths.

Owen, his face dark, his eyes black as agate, stepped to the edge of the quay. His rapier appeared in his hand, a flash of silver in the wet gray light. “You!” he pronounced, his voice a harsh monotone, pointing with his weapon to the first wherry.

The oarsmen fell silent with their mouths opened on the next execration. Then the second boat moved backwards, yielding the field, and the other pulled in to the steps, throwing a rope that Cedric caught with an expert hand.

Owen stepped into the wherry. “Baynard’s Castle.”

The oarsman took one look at his customer’s face and mumbled something to himself. As soon as the youth had followed his master into the boat the oarsman pulled away strongly, as if he were trying to outdistance the devil himself.

Owen forced himself to relax, driving the blackness away. Only thus could he concentrate on the task ahead. The drizzle had turned to sleet and he raised his face to receive the stinging icy drops on his skin. They scoured his face as he scoured his mind, banishing everything that would interfere with the task that lay ahead.

Pen’s face came to him. Its intensity, the passion as she talked of her lost child. It was the intensity of her passion that drew him, that and her strength and humor. She had little patience for fools, he was convinced.

Even if he was prepared to seduce her in cold manipulation she would not fall for the smooth lines, the practiced moves that had always stood him in such reliable stead. He remembered how she’d laughed at him in genuine amusement when he’d first approached her with the kiss that was intended to throw her into confusion. She had made him feel foolish then. And she would certainly do so again in the same circumstances. For some reason, although the joke was on him, Owen couldn’t help a wry smile.

But there was another way. He would use her straightforward, no-nonsense, rational mind. He would offer her a bargain she would not be able to resist. She might hate him for it, but at least everything would be in the open.

There was something pleasingly neat about a device that would also kill another bird. It would ensure that if Robin of Beaucaire decided to tell Pen what he knew of Chevalier d’Arcy, he could tell her nothing that she did not already know. And what Owen d’Arcy didn’t tell her, Lord Robin himself could never discover.

His pleasure in the neatness of this plan faded. The faces of his own children as he’d last seen them three years ago rose in his mind’s eye with a cold clarity. Andrew had been three, Lucy two. They had their mother’s eyes. Green as moss. What would they remember of him now? Not much. He had told his mother never to mention his name to them. They were as lost to him as Pen’s child was to her.

But his loss was his own doing. He believed he had had no choice, and it was too late now for second thoughts, or the wisdom of hindsight.

The black cloud of a familiar depression loomed large and he thrust it from him with an almost physical effort. He had done what he had had to do and he would live with it. Now he had a task ahead that would require all his ingenuity.

The wherry pulled up at the water steps of Baynard’s Castle. Owen gave the oarsman a penny and stepped out, Cedric on his heels. Owen glanced at the page and seemed to acknowledge him for the first time in an hour. He adjusted the lad’s hat in a paternal fashion and said, “Come, Cedric, you need to get in the warm. You look half frozen.”

“I am, sir,” Cedric agreed, beaming now that the world had come to rights again.

Owen flung an arm around the youth’s shoulders and strode up the path with him. “There’ll be fire and succor within,” he said cheerfully. “What a miserable master I must be.”

“Not at all, Chevalier,” Cedric denied with absolute sincerity. “I wouldn’t wish to learn from anyone else.”

“I’m honored, lad.” Owen laughed and the last residue of bleakness vanished from his eyes.

The porter at the wicket gate received the chevalier’s credentials and sent a lad running with them to the controller of the princess’s household.

“If ye’d care to wait within by the brazier, m’lord.” The porter gestured invitingly to the small gatehouse.

Owen nodded his thanks and stepped into the relative warmth of the gatehouse. Cedric scuttled in gratefully behind him.

As he waited, Owen took his dagger from its sheath and idly pared a loose thumbnail. The porter watched him covertly. The tall, slender, dark man, whose lustrous black velvet cloak seemed blacker than black against the lamplight, made his skin prickle. The man seemed so calm, every movement was considered, gentle almost, but nothing would escape those eyes, they seemed to follow a person around without seeming to move at all.

No one who came to visit Princess Mary was without power, but the porter, who had a fanciful turn of mind, thought the devil’s power could well be sitting on this visitor’s shoulder. Surreptitiously, he crossed himself and went to stand in the door, looking across the courtyard for the controller’s messenger.

The messenger came at a run. He bowed, his message breathless in its hasty delivery. “Chevalier d’Arcy, Princess Mary is most anxious to receive you. If I may escort you . . .”

“You may,” said Owen, sheathing his dagger. “Come, Cedric.”

Owen saw everything as he was escorted across the courtyard and through the corridors of Baynard’s Castle. He noticed the insignificant as much as the significant. He saw who spoke to whom; who glanced at him with interest or acknowledged him with recognition; who should have recognized him and didn’t . . . or pretended not to. He noticed and committed to memory where doors and corridors connected. He didn’t hear what was spoken among the people as he passed but he speculated, and sometimes concluded. Owen d’Arcy knew the lords who inhabited the corridors of London’s palaces a great deal more intimately than anyone in those same corridors could claim to know him.

And then he entered the princess’s private parlor and he saw Pen Bryanston. She raised her eyes from the purse she was netting, saw him, and smiled.

A feeling almost like fear crept over him. For the first time in his adult life he was uncertain. He had never met a situation that he could not dominate, a person he could not use. But he knew in his soul that Pen Bryanston presented a challenge he was by no means confident he could meet.

Six

Pen set aside the purse and rose to her feet. “Chevalier, pray allow me to present you to Her Highness.” She came to him with swift step, one hand outstretched in welcome.

She had a lovely smile, Owen thought, as he bowed over her hand, feeling the warm dry palm and the slight flutter of her fingers against his own. A generous smile, without flirtation or artifice. He noticed for the first time that her teeth were slightly crooked, giving a certain wryness to her smile. His fingers tightened over hers as he held her hand a minute longer than courtesy required.

She wore her hair loose again, confined at the brow with a jeweled band and drawn over her shoulders in an effort to conceal the white bandage that still encircled her neck. He moved one hand up to her neck, beneath the fall of her hair.

“How is it?” he murmured, and Pen heard his soft melodic voice as a caress that stroked her with the same sensuality as the warm brush of his fingers against her skin.

But she had no time to respond.

“Chevalier d’Arcy, you are most welcome.”

At Princess Mary’s clear tones, which carried just the slightest hint of hauteur, Owen released Pen’s hand. His eyes held hers for an instant, his mouth curved in an unmistakably conspiratorial smile, then he moved gracefully across to the princess’s chair, leaving Pen to wonder if anyone else in the parlor had been aware of that moment of contact. It had been so intense, although so short, that it was impossible to imagine everyone in the chamber had not felt it.

A quick glance at the assembled company, however, showed her only the expected degree of interest in the new arrival. No one was looking in her direction. She followed Owen to the princess’s chair.

Owen swept his jeweled cap from his head and bowed very low. “Princess Mary, you do me much honor.”

“We all owe you thanks, sir, for your timely rescue of Lady Bryanston.”

“I count myself fortunate that my assistance brought me to Your Highness’s notice.”

“Pretty words, sir.” The princess gave him a look of approval. “I spend little time in London, otherwise I am sure we would have met before.”

“I have paid few visits to England in the last years,” Owen said. “I prefer a quiet life.” He smiled slightly as he took the stool the princess indicated beside her. “My estates and vineyards in Burgundy provide me with all the excitement I could wish for.”

“Indeed, sir?” Mary raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “You do not have the air, Chevalier, of a man who lives retired from court.”

“Appearances can be deceiving, madam,” Pen said demurely, quoting Owen’s own comment in the inn. Owen flicked a glance up at her, an appreciative glimmer in his black eyes.

Mary nodded and looked quickly between them. “Pen tells me you fought off her attackers single-handed. No mean feat for a man who likes a quiet life.”

“One can enjoy a retiring life but still be capable of dealing with the . . . with the less peaceful side of a more public existence,” Owen observed.

“The chevalier is a harpist, madam,” Pen said. “A reflection of the quiet Welsh side of his nature, I daresay.” She felt very lighthearted suddenly. Playful almost. A most unusual sensation. She hadn’t felt such a thing since Philip’s death.

“An unusual instrument for a man, Chevalier,” Mary said with surprise. “Would you play for us now? One of my ladies plays the harp and has a fine, well-tuned instrument.”

Owen glanced at Pen, and she gave him a look of pure mischief that took him aback. He knew her to be sharp and intelligent. He knew her to be passionate to the point of obsession. But he would not have guessed her capable of girlish mischief. Her sister Pippa, yes. But Pen had more gravity. She had suffered too much, he would have thought, to evince an impish appreciation of catching him on the hop.

“I would prefer to come prepared, madam,” he demurred, flexing his fingers automatically. “I haven’t played in some weeks and my fingers have lacked the exercise.”

“With a harp, perhaps, Chevalier, but not with a rapier,” Pen observed. “For which I, for one, am very grateful.”

“Perhaps you will play for us one afternoon, Chevalier,” Mary said. “With sufficient notice, of course.”

Owen bowed. “It will be my pleasure, madam.”

A stir at the far end of the parlor drew their attention. The Earl and Countess of Kendal entered the chamber and Pen smiled at the sight of them. Affection as always mixed with pride. They were such a handsome couple, so much more striking than anyone else in the room. “You are not acquainted with my parents, I believe, Chevalier.”

“I await the honor,” he returned, noting her pleasure at the prospect of her parents’ company. He wondered how closely involved they were in their daughter’s life. They didn’t support her passionate obsession about her lost child, but it was such a strange tale that their disbelief could be rooted in concern for Pen.

“Pen, my dear, should you be up and about today?” Lady Kendal said, coming over to them.

“I am perfectly recovered from my foolishness, Mama,” Pen replied, choosing her words carefully in the knowledge that she had not yet been fully forgiven for her recklessness. “May I present the Chevalier d’Arcy? I owe him thanks for my deliverance.”

Guinevere heard the ironic note and chose to ignore it. She turned to her husband, who said calmly, “Yes, indeed, we all owe the chevalier our thanks.”

Hugh smiled at his stepdaughter. “I give you good day, Pen. You are certainly in best looks this morning. One would not think you had undergone such an ordeal.”

Pen’s cheeks pinkened as she offered her stepfather a curtsy. He nodded benignly but turned to Owen d’Arcy.

“I was hoping for the opportunity to thank you in person, sir. As was Pen’s mother.”

Owen met the steady appraising eyes of the Earl and Countess of Kendal. His question had been answered. It was as clear as day that the Kendals were very concerned about their daughter and kept a close watch on her doings. How much influence they had remained to be seen.

He bowed, his expression pleasantly bland, his returning scrutiny calm. “Lady Kendal . . . my lord.”

“We cannot thank you enough, Chevalier,” Guinevere said. “Pen has taken no lasting hurt, thank God.”

“The chevalier’s timing was faultless,” Pen said with more than a touch of acidity. She was growing tired of the criticism of her implicit in the thanks heaped upon Owen. “I will stand forever in his debt.”

Hugh caught Guinevere’s eye. It was time to drop the subject. Pen had had all the lessons she needed. “I think that expresses everyone’s feelings,” he said. “Tell me, Chevalier, are you long in London?”

“I arrived a few days ago, my lord. I have some business to attend to and I thought to enjoy the Christmas season in London. It’s been many years since I spent that time in England. Not since I was a boy.” His smile was open and confiding.

“Then may we be among the first to welcome you, sir,” Guinevere said warmly. “I hope you’ll honor us with a visit at our house in Holborn during the Christmas festivities.”

“I should be most honored, Lady Kendal.” Owen glanced at Pen, and there was a glow of amusement in his eyes. He could feel her impatience with these pleasantries. “May I have your permission to walk a little this morning with your daughter?”

“A question best addressed to Pen, I believe,” Hugh observed.

“Yes, indeed, Chevalier,” Guinevere said. “You have no need to ask my permission. Pen is well past the age of consent.”

Owen looked at Pen, one eyebrow raised in question.

Pen was in fact eager to talk privately with Owen. He had said he would consider her problem and surely by now he had done so. Perhaps that explained the tingling, expectant fascination she was feeling in his company.

Philip’s face flashed across her mind’s eye and with it came a hot wash of guilt. She felt her cheeks warm and turned aside, feeling for her handkerchief, feigning a sneeze.

“I trust you haven’t taken a chill in addition to your cuts and bruises,” Owen said. “It was a frigid night.”

“No, not in the least,” Pen denied. “Just a tickle.”

His eyes still glowed with amusement. “So, Lady Pen, would you show me the long gallery? I understand there are some interesting Holbeins.”

“My great-uncle, King Henry, was Holbein’s patron,” a rather childish voice stated.

Jane Grey had crept up to them, a thin figure clad in a dull lavender gown. She turned instantly to Guinevere, her expression now eager. “Lady Kendal, I was hoping to discuss with you that text from Tacitus that was mentioned the other afternoon. I was wondering if perhaps you had a moment now when . . .” She glanced towards the door and seemed to flinch.

Guinevere understood immediately that the girl was afraid her terrifying mother would enter the room and put an end to any discussion of scholarship. She put an arm around Jane’s skinny shoulders and said, “But of course, my dear. I remember the discussion well.” She bore her off to a secluded corner of the parlor.

Hugh paused for a minute, his eyes resting on the chevalier but his expression unreadable. Then he smiled, reiterated his wife’s invitation, and followed.

Pen laughed slightly. “Poor Jane, she would have done well to have had
our
mother. Mama has never said Pippa and I disappoint her, but I know she finds our lack of interest in scholarship puzzling to say the least. And Anna isn’t much more promising.”

Owen laid a hand gently on her arm, turning her towards the door that led to the long gallery. “Your mother is very learned?”

“Oh, yes! She defeated old King Harry himself . . . the machinations of Lord Cromwell, the Lord Privy Seal, and the king’s entire Privy Council when they put her on trial in the Star Chamber.” Pen shook her head in admiration. “No one is as clever as Mama.”

If only her mother and Lord Hugh had believed her about the baby . . .

But only one person had ever seemed to believe her. Deliberately she turned her face up to Owen’s and smiled at him as they left the parlor. She had made a copy of the page taken from the ledger and the names and sums were now burned into her memory. Before the afternoon was over, the chevalier would promise to go to High Wycombe and investigate those names for her.

There was something guileful about that smile, Owen reflected. Quite unlike Pen’s usual open friendliness. Experienced as he was at intrigue, Owen recognized that Pen wanted something from him. Well, she would find a receptive audience.

The long gallery was bustling with servants, ushers, heralds. The ill-fitting glass rattled in the windows and gusts of wind blew through cracks in the panes, sending the heavy arras billowing against the cold stone walls behind. Pen walked briskly. It was not a place for secrets.

“Are we not to look at any of these paintings?” Owen inquired on a plaintive note. “I am most interested in Holbein’s work.”

“Later,” Pen said. “I wish to talk to you.”

“Can we not talk and look at the same time?”

He was teasing her, but she was too impatient to play games.

“Let us go this way.” She set off towards a side corridor.

Owen followed, his long stride keeping easy pace with her quick steps. He found this aspect of Pen Bryanston fascinating. She had the same air about her as she’d had when he’d followed her into the Bryanstons’ library. Both secretive and urgent. He was about to be recruited by a very passionate and strong-willed woman.

Pen led the way through a series of passages until she reached a closed door at the end of a windowless corridor. “I wish to talk privately with you,” she said, opening the door to her own chamber.

“I had rather gathered that,” he replied, following her in.

“Since we have already spent the greater part of a night together, I see no reason why we should not be private in here,” Pen declared a mite defensively.

“No, indeed,” Owen murmured. “What possible reason could there be?” He closed the door quietly at his back.

“You had best leave the door ajar,” Pen said.

“Ah.” He opened the door again. “Wide open? Or just a crack?”

“You’re laughing at me,” Pen accused.

“Perhaps,” Owen agreed, opening the door a fraction. “But, forgive me, Pen, if I point out that we are both at an age and stage in life when such proprieties are no longer necessary. Your mother said as much.”

“I suppose that’s true.” Pen sighed heavily. “A widow of six and twenty summers is practically in her dotage. Reputations belong to the young, do they not, Chevalier?”

“Now
you’re
laughing at me,” he declared, watching laughter light her eyes. She only chuckled.

Owen looked around the chamber, looking for signs that would give him more clues to the person Pen Bryanston was. It was warmly furnished, richly colored tapestries adorning the stone walls, embroidered rugs on the waxed floor. A fire burned in the grate; there was the smell of pinecones; wax candles sent streamers of golden light upwards from the wall sconces, flickering off the thick black beams of the ceiling.

It was a richly comfortable guest apartment in the Earl of Pembroke’s residence, and it contained little that was personal to its present occupant except for a large and somewhat ancient ginger tomcat who lay upon the bed. He blinked green eyes and stirred infinitesimally in what was clearly a gesture of greeting.

“This is Nutmeg,” Pen said as if the introduction were de rigueur. She bent over the old feline, burying her face in his belly. He purred and rolled over, stretching his feet, claws extended in a leisurely ecstasy of welcome.

“Nutmeg’s sixteen,” Pen said, gathering the cat into her arms. Ginger fur and long legs spilled over her arms. “Pippa has his sister, Moonshine. We brought them from Derbyshire when we first came to London.”

She nuzzled the cat’s face before putting him gently back on the bed, saying with a chuckle, “He cannot bear to be left behind so I have to bring him with me whenever the princess travels. I can’t imagine how many litters he’s sired over the years.”

“A splendid animal.” Owen gently pulled the old tom’s ears in a fashion that indicated he knew a great deal about the likes and dislikes of the feline species.