Blythe Gifford - Innocence Unveiled

He was close behind her. ‘This your room, mistress?’

No. It is Giles’s room. She had unpacked her small sack and put on new bed linens in Renard’s absence. ‘Of course.’

‘Strange. It looked different earlier today.’

He did not wait for a response before he mounted the stairs to the third floor. A dismissal. As if she were a servant and he the master.

She closed the door and leaned against it, eyes shut. Above her, his boots hit the floor with a thunk. She listened for the whoosh of his tunic. As the straw rustled with his weight, she envisioned him lying on his pallet, the breeze from the window playing across his naked chest.

Who will protect me from you? Renard had read her secret feelings, feelings that must be sinful, even if she could not quite understand.

But she did not feel sinful. Sin should make you feel full of toads and maggots and bile. Fetid. Festering. Worse than a toothache and a stomachache and her monthly time all on the same day.

Instead, she felt as if it were the first of the twelve days of Christmas.

I must truly be a sinner if I feel no guilt .

Opening her eyes, she jerked away from the door, ashamed of her thoughts. They only proved that her uncle was right.

She tugged at her surcoat, glad she had not rousted Merkin from her kitchen pallet to help her undress. Surely his eyes would not look midnight blue in the sunshine. She had only felt hot and breathless at his touch because she had needed a good night’s sleep. Only felt weak because she needed food.

Surely in daylight, he would look, and she would feel, quite ordinary.

She went to pull the shutters against the night. Glimpsing a man across the street, she blinked. Who was skulking in the shadows so late?

When she recognised the form, she shivered.

Ranf. Her uncle’s man.

With damp palms and a dry throat, she swung the shutters closed, watching through the crack until he was out of sight.

Surely he would not take her by force without a direct order from her uncle.

She shuddered. Perhaps she needed a guard more than she knew.

Chapter Four

Renard rolled from his back to his side, seeking a corner of the thin pallet where straw would not prick his skin. The hum of voices drifted in the window on the cool night air. A neighbouring burgher and his wife arguing in their bed? Or the Count’s men, searching for him? He’d seen someone lurking outside the house. An innocent man-at-arms or a threat?

God’s blood, I make a poor spy .

Every sentence was a trap. Every word could mean his death. But he must play the part. Must convince her he was a rogue smuggler, interested only in money.

Eyes closed, he concentrated on his mission. And on the way the sapphire consecration ring would feel on his right hand when it was over.

Instead, he felt Katrine, small and delicate, in his arms again. He had held her longer than he should have, long enough that her scent, warm and spicy, filled his nose and teased his loins. Somewhere beneath the fabric that covered all but her hands and face, the rhythm of her heartbeat matched his. He knew it.

So with the instinct of a lifetime of practice, he suppressed passion’s pull before he realised that this time, he had not really wanted to.

All the better that his control was second nature.

Who will protect me from you? The words had slipped past the barrier that let nothing escape. An experienced woman would realise what a weapon he had just put in her hands, but this woman seemed anything but experienced. Far from knowing a man’s body, she was not even at ease with her own.

She responded to him awkwardly, as if she were a squire holding her first sword with barely enough strength to control the weapon. The blade wobbled, but it was still sharp, and perhaps even more deadly, because her blow would not be skilful and deft, but accidental. Painful.

Fatal.

As the sky lightened to butter yellow, Renard rose, ready to escape the house unseen. Danger filled the streets, but even these quarters held no safety. Below him was a slip of a weaving woman who wanted nothing more than to break Edward’s embargo.

The tremble in her voice told him she was hiding something. This husband of hers was not searching for wool.

And he had been gone a long, long time.

The mid-afternoon bell was ringing by the time Renard returned to the city after spiriting Edward out and into the hands of the knights who would deliver him to his waiting ship.

Now, instead of moving on to Brabant, he was trapped in hiding. Some of the English knights had arrived, waiting for the Bishop before formal negotiations could begin. He must risk contact to assess the diplomatic situation.

He slipped unnoticed into a house near the Friday Market where Jack de Beauchance had rented rooms.

‘Renard!’ Jack said, clapping him on the shoulder.

‘Keep your voice down,’ he said, though his friend’s cheery words eased his mood. Curly-haired Jack had been knighted beside him on the field in Scotland.

‘Where have you been hiding since we came ashore, you fox? Are you on the King’s business again?’

‘If I were, would I tell you?’

‘Whatever you’re doing, you don’t look as if it’s going well,’ Jack said.

Renard forced a smile, disturbed that his concerns had shown on his face. Such a careless display was dangerous. ‘Look at you wearing that silly red eyepatch when you are alone in your rooms,’ he said, to change the subject. ‘Do you even sleep in that scrap of silk?’

Jack crossed his arms and arched his eyebrows. ‘Handsome, don’t you think? I promise you, the ladies like it.’

‘The ladies like you , with or without it.’ Everyone liked Jack. It couldn’t be helped. A younger son, Jack’s birthright was secure, if not his expectations. ‘Why were you sent ahead while the Bishop tarries elsewhere?’

Jack rolled his eyes to heaven in mock agony. ‘He found me with one of the junior ladies-in-waiting in a very dark corner of the garden.’

‘Let me guess. A lady the Bishop himself wanted?’

‘I don’t think she’ll have him, even with me gone.’ Jack sighed, then the momentary cloud passed and his sunny expression returned. ‘Watch this,’ he said, holding up three cloth balls.

He tossed and caught the first and second, but he stretched so far for the third that he tripped over a stool and crashed to the floor. Three soft balls plopped on his back.

Renard laughed for the first time in a week and reached out to help him up. ‘Is this part of the negotiation strategy? Get the Count to laugh so hard he will switch his allegiance?’

Jack rubbed his right knee and winced. ‘The Count hasn’t even agreed to meet with us. That may be as much of a reason as my lovely lady-in-waiting that the Bishop tarries with the Queen’s relatives.’ King Edward’s wife was related to nobility throughout the Low Countries. ‘He doesn’t want the blame for failure.’

Renard frowned. ‘That bodes ill.’ If official negotiations failed, Edward’s throne would depend on Renard’s success in fomenting a revolt.

‘He sent a few of us ahead to arrange his lodgings.’ Jack winked. ‘And to make friends among the people.’

‘By flinging gold into the streets and stealing a kiss?’ The antics of the English knights were already the stuff of legend. ‘You even managed to enjoy the Scottish Wars. This is much more pleasant duty.’

‘These women have the fairest hair and the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen.’