Winter Blockbuster 2012 (85 page)

‘Why didn’t you come to tell me? To say goodbye?’ she asked, a feeling of numbness spreading over her body.

‘I left a letter with Lady Walsingham to be given to you,’ he answered.

He swung down from the horse to land lightly beside her. He took her hands in his, but Anna could hardly feel it. She stared down at their joined fingers and felt as if she watched from a great distance.

‘What does the letter say?’ she said. ‘That we had a merry time together but now you are off to France and adventures new?’

‘Anna, I would hardly call our time together
merry
,’ he said, his hands still tight on hers. ‘Kidnappings, fights, imprisonments, wounds—you deserve much better than what I brought you.’

‘Is that why you are leaving? Because we are a curse on each other?’ she cried.

‘It’s for the best. I must do this if I am to hold my promise to you,’ he said, his voice cold and distant, as if he was already gone from her.

Anna shook her head. ‘And what promise is that?’

‘To protect you. I failed in that before. I will hold to it now.’

‘How can you protect me if you are in France?’ she whispered in confusion.

‘Men like Sheldon and Ennis will have no need to hurt you if I am not here,’ he said. ‘You can find a better man—a man with no secrets. A country squire who can give you the peaceful home you want, children, quiet days.’

That had long been her dream. But now she found those dreams were as nothing beside her feelings for Robert. She
had come to crave his fire and passion, the passion that ignited something long frozen in her own soul and brought her to life again.

‘You deserve a life, as well,’ she said. ‘Please, Robert, don’t go now. Stay here in England.’

He raised her hands to his lips and kissed them with a lingering caress, as he had so many times. She tried to study him, to memorise the way he felt and looked, but it all seemed too unreal. He was leaving, their affair was over, and she couldn’t quite hold on to that terrible knowledge.

‘I must go, fairest Anna,’ he said. ‘Please—don’t forget me.’

He pressed a soft kiss to her brow and set her away from him. As Anna watched, rubbing her arms against the cold inside her, he swung back into the saddle and led the horse through the courtyard gates and out into the lane.

She hurried after him, but she didn’t call his name or try to bring him back. She knew that would be futile, and now she could only hold on to the tattered remains of her pride.

But she watched him until his horse turned the corner and he was gone from her sight. Gone from her life as suddenly as he had landed in it. She felt hollow inside.

‘Godspeed you, Robert, and keep you safe,’ she whispered. If only she could have done the same. If only—if only he could have loved her as she did him.

Rob stood on the crowded, bustling docks, watching as the ship that would carry him to France was loaded. Yet he truly saw none of it—didn’t hear the shouts and cries around him, the shove and clamour of the crowd.

He could only see Anna’s face as he had told her goodbye—how pale she’d been, her eyes huge and dark with pain. An echo of the same pain he felt in his own heart, sharp and
more cruel than any dagger. That pain had grown and grown ever since he’d made his decision to leave her, and he knew it would never be gone from him. The loss of Anna was a mortal wound.

He gave a bitter, self-mocking laugh at the thought. He had spent his career creating the illusion of passionate, tragic love while keeping himself at a distance from such tumult. He had never really believed it—not until Anna.

She had slipped into his soul before he knew it, and she was there forever. No matter how many seas and mountains there were between them.

He turned away from the ship, telling himself he had to follow his chosen path alone. He had left Walsingham’s service. He was of no use to the Secretary now. He could carry on with such work no longer—not after it had injured Anna. But Walsingham had found him a place with a troupe of players connected to the Queen’s ambassador in Paris, and Rob had chosen to take it. If he was in Paris, Anna could move on with her life, free of him.

But, z’wounds, he did not
want
her to move on without him! He could still feel the touch of her hands, trying to hold on to him, still see the hurt and love in her eyes. She was his, just as he was hers. She had stood with him in the darkest moments, believed in him.

How could he ever do less for her?

Rob was suddenly filled with the burning, urgent need to find Anna, to beg her to give him a chance to prove himself to her. To spend his life trying to make her happy.

He would do anything at all just to stay with her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

‘S
O
you are home at last, Anna!’ she heard her father call from the sitting room as she stepped into the house behind the White Heron.

She put down her case on the floor and looked around her. The house looked so much the same she might never have left. There was more dust, and the smell of old food and spilled wine in the air without her housekeeping, but otherwise the days seemed to have stood still. Yet she felt so much older.

‘Aye, I’ve come back, Father,’ she answered. She took off the hooded cloak she had borrowed from Lady Essex and went to greet her father.

He embraced her and gave her cheek a hearty kiss, squeezing her until her side hurt and she had to suppress a gasp. ‘I’ve missed you, daughter,’ he declared.

‘So I see,’ Anna said with a laugh, extracting herself from his arms to sit down in her usual chair. She suddenly felt very tired. ‘I don’t think the hearth has been swept since I left.’

‘You haven’t been here to keep an eye on Old Madge, and it’s been busy,’ Tom said. ‘We’ve started rehearsals at
the White Heron! So I have kept myself occupied while you were on your grand travels.’

‘Rehearsals for what? I thought you were reviving old productions for the time being.’

‘Why, Master Alden’s new play, of course. It is sure to be a great success.’

Anna sat up straighter in her chair. It was as if someone she’d thought dead—someone she mourned fiercely—had suddenly appeared before her at the mention of his name, and her emotions ran hot. ‘He sent you a new play?’

‘Certainly. It was delivered here only a few days ago, and then this morning another package arrived. The messenger said it was a gift for you.’

As Anna watched in puzzlement and confusion, her father fetched a small wooden chest from the desk and laid it on her lap. It was heavy and solid.

‘Have you opened this, Father?’ she asked.

‘Certainly not! It is for you.’ He gave a sheepish smile. ‘I may have given it a shake or two, though. Go on and open it.’

Anna slowly turned the little key in the lock and eased back the lid. It felt so strange to find a gift from Rob after their parting—as if a conversation she’d thought abruptly over still went on.

And what a conversation it was. Before her lay a pile of gold and silver coins, along with a smaller box and a note.

She unfolded the paper and read Rob’s bold, slashing hand:
For your peaceful country cottage, fairest Anna. Don’t forget me
. That was all. But when she opened the little box she found a ring—a band of small pearls set in gold. Another note, a mere sliver of parchment, told her this had once been his mother’s but now was hers, if she cared to wear it.

Cared to wear it?
Anna pressed her hand to her mouth to keep from crying as she looked down at the ring. She felt
doubly foolish now—first for letting Rob leave, and then for believing he cared nothing for her when her instincts had told her that he did. Their time together had not been a lie. It could not be.

‘Father,’ she said in a choked voice. ‘What is this new play about?’

‘It’s quite splendid—exactly what an audience could desire,’ Tom answered. ‘A faraway kingdom where a princess falls in love with an assassin who saves her from a murderer, and she in turn saves him and redeems his soul from damnation. But they are parted, and he dies of love for her. Most moving, and several good fights, as well.’

‘What else does a story need?’ Anna murmured. She slid the ring onto her finger and locked up the chest of coins. It would not be for a country cottage where she would live alone, but for one to be shared. The princess had to fight for her assassin and his soul. She had to fight for her love. Rob had given her that strength, that belief in herself, and now she had to use it to bring him back to her.

‘I must leave again, Father,’ she said. ‘But I will return soon.’ And hopefully not alone.

The docks were crowded and chaotic as Anna pushed her way through, past sailors and confused passengers, stacks of crates waiting to be loaded. The salt-fish smell of the water and the hot tang of tar was thick there, and she was elbowed and jostled as she struggled to find her way.

Lady Essex had found the name of Rob’s France-bound ship for her—the
Royal Henry
—and it was to depart on the evening tide. But there were so many ships being boarded for just such voyages, and Anna could not tell them apart.

She was determined to find him, though, and to learn the truth once and for all. If he preferred his work—a life of danger
and excitement—to a life with her, then she would have to let him go, no matter how hard that would be.

But if he did leave because he thought it was best for her—because he thought to protect her as his assassin could not protect the princess—then she would have to gather her courage and tell him her own truth. She would rather face any danger with him than a hundred quiet years without him. She had found life again with him—life and hope and passion. If there was any chance at all that he felt the same, she had to seize it.

She stood up on tiptoe and strained to see past the people pressed in all around her. Time grew shorter. Soon all these vessels would slip their moorings and head one by one to the sea, and Rob would be on one of them.

‘Where are you?’ she whispered.

Then, as if to answer her, the crowd before her parted for an instant. In that space she caught a glimpse of Rob, clad in his black leather doublet and breeches and purple short cloak, hurrying past. It looked as if he, too, searched for something, with a fierce frown on his face.

‘Robert!’ she called. ‘Robert, wait for me. I beg you!’

She pushed the people out of her way and ran towards him, dodging around crates and coils of rope.
Don’t let him vanish
, she thought frantically.
Don’t let him be my imagination
.

Her prayers were answered when she saw him again. He was hurrying towards her, and she dashed to him to throw herself into his arms. His embrace came around her, hard and fierce, and he lifted her from her feet.

She wound her arms around his neck and held on tightly, relieved he had not pushed her away or run from her. She—
they
—had this one chance.

‘Anna, why are you here?’ he demanded. ‘Did you come alone?’

‘Lady Essex wanted to send a footman with me, but there was no time to wait.’

‘Lady Essex?’

‘I was at Seething Lane, looking for you, and she found the name of your ship.’ He slowly lowered her to her feet but they still held on to each other. ‘I had to find you before you left—to ask you …’

Anna swallowed hard before she plunged forward. This was no time to hesitate, no time to be scared.

‘To ask you to stay,’ she said quickly. ‘Or to beg you to take me with you. Either way, Robert, let me be with you.’

He stared down at her for a long, silent moment and her heart began slowly to sink. Then he laughed, and lifted her from her feet again to twirl her around.

‘Anna, you have read my mind,’ he said. ‘I had come to the ship only to turn back again. I tried to be noble, to leave you—but I cannot. I’m too selfish. I need you too much.’

Anna laughed in giddy, heady relief. All her fears vanished like a spring storm banished by the sun. ‘Then we are both selfish creatures, for I couldn’t let you go. I had to know how you truly felt—if these days together meant anything to you.’

‘Fairest Anna, they meant everything. All is changed for me—
you
have changed it. I never thought to know joy or peace again, and you brought them to me.’ He kissed her tenderly, and in that soft touch of his lips on hers she tasted the truth of what he said.

All was changed for both of them. They had found the whole world with each other, and that was all that mattered.

‘I love you, Anna,’ Rob said. ‘And if you will let me I will spend all my life striving to be worthy of you.’

‘Robert Alden, I believe you have not said anything so poetical before,’ Anna said with a happy laugh. ‘I love you, too, and I promise you I will follow you wherever you go.
To Paris, or Turkey, or an island jungle—you will never be rid of me.’

Rob grinned and kissed her again as they clung together against the world. ‘That is a promise I will assuredly hold you to, my fairest Anna.’

EPILOGUE

‘I will race you to the top, Mistress Alden!’ Rob called.

Anna laughed and tugged on her horse’s reins as she followed Rob up the slope of the grassy country hill. She had lost her hat, and her hair whipped around her shoulders, but she didn’t care. It was a glorious high summer day, the sun warm and golden in the cloudless sky, bright green fields spread around them as far as could be seen. Hart Castle, which Elizabeth and Edward had loaned them for their honeymoon, loomed in the distance—their own private sanctuary for this precious time.

And she was on her way to a picnic with her new husband. She glanced at Rob as they galloped along the path, dirt and grass flying with their speed. He looked more handsome than ever, his skin darkened by the country sun, his hair tousled and waving over his brow, his leather doublet open over his unlaced shirt. He laughed with her, light-hearted and happy.

Since he had left Walsingham’s service and they had married, it seemed as if a great burden was lifted from them—a rock rolled away to let light and fresh air stream in. Living in the Southwark house behind the theatre was not ideal, but Rob was writing his poetry and they were together.