Winter Blockbuster 2012 (83 page)

And she needed to know. She needed to reclaim her life and move forward once again, to examine her feelings for Rob and discover the truth of his for her. But before she could do that she had one single imperative—to save all their lives.

‘Tell me how I can help you,’ she said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

A
NNA
took a deep breath and carefully folded her hands in her lap. The soft silence around her made the waiting feel interminable, and she had to press down the urge to cry out and run about in futile circles.

Could this scheme of Robert’s and Walsingham’s work? She wasn’t sure her meagre acting skills were up to the task. But it had to be worth a try. She had to do what she could, before Walsingham and his men resorted to Tower torture threats. If Henry Ennis had truly joined forces with Sheldon in treasonous schemes, he had to be brought to justice and her father cleared.

Anna sat back in her chair and listened carefully for any approach that signalled her waiting was over. She had been moved from her small, cold gaol to this sitting room, where there was a fire in the grate and fine tapestries on the walls. Refreshments had been laid out, but she couldn’t eat or drink. She couldn’t do anything but think.

She refused to consider what would happen if this scheme failed and the villains escaped. But what would happen
after
, when Sheldon and Henry and their cohorts were gone and she was back home with her father? Would Rob vanish and
she would never see him again? Would she have only the memories of those days at Hart Castle to remind her of him and what they had been to each other?

And yet—could she forget all the danger and the lies?

Anna shook her head. Her feelings for Rob Alden could not be fathomed now. They were all too tied up in emotion, in hope and fear all tangled together. She had to concentrate first on this one task.

At last she heard footsteps outside her room, and jumped to her feet as the door opened. A tall, thin man clad in the black they all wore in that house appeared there, and gave her a short bow.

‘Secretary Walsingham is ready to see you, mistress. If you will follow me?’ he said.

Anna nodded and followed him along the corridor and down a flight of stone steps that led back to the damp lower floors where she had been kept before. There was a row of stout closed doors and all was quiet behind them, but a cluster of men waited at the far end.

It is just a play
, she told herself as she followed her escort.
Imagine it is the stage at the White Heron
.

But the solemn cluster of men who watched her approach seemed all too real.

Two of them bore swords, and Anna’s escort said quietly, ‘Those men will act as your guards. The ones who are being questioned have been searched for weapons, of course, but it would be best if you stayed close to the guards.’

Anna nodded, and as he opened the door the guards stepped in behind her. They walked in together—a small, curious procession. Anna clasped her hands before her to keep them from trembling.

To her surprise, it was not a dark, cramped cell, but a large, panelled room lit by several lamps and torches that showed
every detail of the careful stage set. Walsingham and two other men sat at a long table at the far end of the room, papers scattered before them. Henry Ennis sat to one side, slumped on a stool, his fine clothes torn and dishevelled, his handsome face sunken and grey. He looked up as she entered the room.

And stared at her as if a ghost had just glided into his presence. His skin turned pale, his eyes growing wide. One hand lifted as if he would reach out for her, but then it dropped back to his side.

Anna’s guard pushed her down into a chair, and she noticed a small gap in the dark panelling behind Walsingham. She glimpsed a flash of white cloth, and realised that was Rob’s hiding place. He was with her in this strange playacting.

She stiffened her back and looked straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge Henry even as he couldn’t cease staring at her.

‘Thanks to your excellent work, Master Ennis, we have been collecting Her Majesty’s enemies in this case,’ Walsingham said, calmly sorting through the papers before him, as if bringing down traitors were an everyday chore in his life—too close to the truth for Anna’s liking. ‘We have already been questioning Sir Thomas Sheldon, and now Lord Henshaw’s Men are being cleaned out. Mistress Barrett here and her father have much to answer for.’

‘Nay, she is not involved in this matter!’ Henry cried, his face growing even whiter.

‘But we have evidence of her father’s schemes, thanks to you,’ Walsingham said coolly. ‘And we know Mistress Barrett keeps her father’s business ledgers and runs most of his concerns. She is the one able to send information to any foreign contacts. Is that not so, Mistress Barrett?’

Anna kept staring straight ahead. Despite the fact that this
was all meant to be a play, she couldn’t help shivering. No wonder Walsingham had captured so many over the years—the very calm ordinariness of his demeanour was chilling. ‘I have nothing to reply to that. I have declared my innocence.’

‘So you have. But we all know the truth, do we not, Mistress Barrett?’ Walsingham queried grimly. ‘As does Master Ennis, who has been of such help in this matter. Perhaps Lord Henshaw should make you a sharer in his company now, Master Ennis? He will be in need of them once we are finished here.’

‘I told you—Robert Alden is the traitor in the company,’ Henry cried. ‘I was wrong before. Mistress Barrett has nothing to do with it.’

‘Ah, but Mistress Barrett is Master Alden’s lover,’ Walsingham said. ‘Surely she has some interesting information to share.’ He studied Anna and added, ‘Is that not so, Mistress Barrett?’

‘A woman can take a lover as she chooses,’ Anna answered. ‘It does not make her a criminal.’

‘It depends on who that lover might be,’ one of Walsingham’s men said with a coarse laugh.

Henry’s face shaded from white to deep red as he stared at Anna. ‘So it
is
true?’ he whispered. ‘You
are
with him?’

Anna looked to him, careful to keep her expression smooth and cool. ‘Is what true, Master Ennis?’

‘You spurned my honourable offer to whore for
him
,’ Henry said. ‘I suspected, but I never …’

‘Why should I not choose him?’ said Anna. ‘He is handsome and dashing. He is a skilful lover. And he is not the one whose accusations have led me to this place. I could never have been your wife, Henry. Or even your whore.’

‘I would have given you everything! A respectable life, my name, my love.’ His voice grew hotter and wilder as he spoke.

‘Love?’ Anna rose to her feet and stalked towards him, a wave of disgust washing over her as she looked at his face. He was a weak man, acting like a cruel, spoiled child denied the toy he desired. He had tried to destroy her father with these lies and secrets, and thus destroy her.

‘Love would never have brought me here,’ she said. ‘You wanted to possess me, or at least the woman you thought I was. You did not even know me, and when I refused you I was arrested as a traitor.’

She stopped mere inches from him and stared up at him steadily. ‘As I die on the scaffold, Henry Ennis, brought low by
your
revenge, I will curse your name to eternal damnation. And I will take my love for Robert Alden with me into eternity. Nothing you have done can erase that. He is a hundred times the man you could ever be.’

She started to turn away, but Henry suddenly grabbed her arm and dragged her back to him, nearly pulling her arm from its socket. His clasp was bruisingly painful, and Anna cried out.

‘I loved you—I worshipped you as a gentle goddess,’ Henry shouted, as if years of frustration and anger were falling out. ‘And all along you were another one of Alden’s bawds, wallowing in the dirt.’

‘Let go of me!’ Anna demanded, a bolt of fear running through her as she remembered her husband’s beatings.

The other men clambered to their feet, her guards drawing their swords, but Henry’s blind fury made him faster than them. He wrapped his arm around Anna’s waist and dragged her against him, her back to his chest, and snatched a sharp letter opener from the table. It was a small but lethal-looking object, and he held it right at the pulse pounding in her neck.

She felt a sharp prick on her skin, the warm trickle of
blood, and Henry cried, ‘Stay back, or I will rob the hangman of his victim!’

The panelling where Rob hid crashed open, and he leaped out with his dagger in hand. ‘Let her go now, Ennis,’ he said roughly. ‘I am the one on whom you seek revenge, not her.’

Henry laughed wildly. ‘So you are here with her. You scheme against me.’

‘You have trapped yourself,’ Rob said. ‘But no one else needs to be hurt. She never meant to wound you.’

‘Ah, but she did. She did it most deliberately.’ Henry’s voice was suddenly terribly calm. ‘As did you, Alden.’

Henry kissed Anna’s cheek tenderly—and plunged the dagger into her side.

He let her go and she slid to the floor. For an instant she felt searing pain, burning down her ribs and through her legs, an agony that stole her breath and left her unable even to cry out. Then there was only numb ice, closing in around her.

She lay on her side on the flagstone floor, vaguely aware of shouts and metallic clashes, pandemonium in that cold, cold room. Yet it all seemed to be happening far away, in a soft bubble of silence.

She forced herself to move, to push herself up on her elbow and try to call out Rob’s name. Only a strangled gasp escaped as she watched him grapple with Henry Ennis.

In a strange, sparkling haze she saw Rob’s dagger plunge into Henry’s shoulder, and Henry fell to the floor as the guards closed in around him. His threat was done. Anna let herself collapse. The darkness was closing around her, and even as she fought it with all her fading strength she felt its grip tightening.

‘Anna,’ Rob said, and in his voice she heard anger and horror—and stark fear.

Rob fearful? How could that be? She had to be worse off than she feared.

She felt his arms go around her, lifting her up against him. She tried to hold on to him, to use his great strength as her own, but her hands felt so numb.

‘Robert,’ she whispered.

‘Don’t talk,’ he said. ‘Rest now. You’re safe. I have you.’

Anna nodded, but she could hold back the darkness no longer. She closed her eyes and it covered her in its thick, icy oblivion.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

R
OB
hummed a soft tune to Anna as he bathed her shoulders and arms with a cool cloth. She didn’t wake at the sound of his voice, but murmured and frowned in her sleep. Her head tossed on the pillow.

He laid another cloth, freshly rinsed with cool water and essence of lavender, on her brow. She was still warm with fever, her body fighting off infection. Two days she had lain there in the bed at Walsingham’s house, tossing in restless dreams only she could see. She would cry out incoherent words or clutch his hand weakly.

Rob smoothed the tangled hair back from her face and softly kissed her brow. ‘Anna,’ he whispered. ‘My beautiful Anna, please don’t leave me now, I beg you. I can’t live without you. Anna, please.’

He had never begged before in his life, but he would now if it would bring her back to him. He would do anything at all to save her, and the realisation of that, the primitive fear and fury at the thought of losing her, hit him like a sizzling lightning bolt. He, who had never needed anyone in his life, who fought his battles alone, needed Anna.

He loved her. He couldn’t deny his burning, raw feelings
for her any longer, but now she was slipping away from him. All her goodness and beauty was tumbling further and further from him, and without her the world would be cold and cruel again.

‘Anna, fight with me!’ he called out fiercely. ‘Stay with me. Let me show you that I can be a better man. That I can be worthy of you. Or stay just to fight me, to despise me. Just don’t go.’

She turned away from him on the pillows, whispering incoherently. Rob held on to her hand, drawing her back. He kissed her palm and held it against his cheek. Her pulse still beat, just under her pale, fragile skin. She was still alive. There was still a chance.

‘Just hold on to me, Anna,’ he said. ‘I won’t let you go.’

Anna grew quieter, as if she could hear him. Her fierce frown eased and her hand relaxed in his.

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Sleep will help you find your strength again.’ And when she was strong again he would leave her, as he should have long ago. He had hurt her, and he could not bear to do that again. He had failed her as he had Mary.

The bedchamber door opened and Rob glanced back, expecting one of the maids again, or perhaps the doctor he had already tossed out once. But it was Lady Essex who stood there, a tray in her hands.

‘Is Mistress Barrett better?’ she asked.

‘I think she is resting now, Lady Essex,’ he said wearily, rubbing at the back of his stiff neck.

‘That is good. My mother says a fever will never break without quiet. She sent some of her own herbal mixture for Mistress Barrett to drink, and more salve for the wound.’ She put the tray down on the table by the bed, and her jewelled hands quickly set about mixing the sweet-scented herbs into a goblet of wine. She moved with brisk efficiency, but
Rob could see the deep-set lines of sadness and weariness on her pale face.

‘It is very kind of Lady Walsingham,’ he said. ‘And kind of you to bring it yourself, Lady Essex. You must have many duties at Essex House.’

A bitter smile touched her lips. ‘My duties are here at the moment, with my father ill. And my husband rarely misses me. He is much too—occupied.’ She stirred the wine mixture and held it out to him. ‘This will help ease her.’

‘Thank you, Lady Essex,’ Rob said as he took it from her.

‘Let me help you give it to her,’ she said. ‘I am very good at dispensing medicine to the reluctant patient by now.’ She slipped behind Anna on the bed and lifted her to a half-sitting position as she steadied Anna’s head on her satin-covered shoulder.