LITMIR.BIZ

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Deeper blue than Lady Joan’s eyes. Deeper even than the sky. More like the coloured glass of the cathedral. Yet blue signified purity. Not exactly the best reminder of Lady Joan’s marital history.

      She met her lady’s glance and shook her head.

      The merchant did not hesitate. ‘Or here, the marbryn.’

      Lady Joan dismissed it with a raised brow. ‘Last Yuletide we wore that.’

      He put the multi-coloured fabric aside. The Queen would be sorry. She had liked that one.

      ‘Now this...’ He pulled out a shimmering fabric.

      Anne blinked. It was like looking at the sun sparkling on a necklace of gold.

      ‘Yes,’ her lady said. ‘The cloth of gold. Have you enough for my gown and a mantle?’

      The merchant closed his eyes and touched his fingers. Then he finished counting, he smiled. ‘Forty ells, I think. Yes.’

      ‘What about for surcoats for the minstrels?’

      The man’s eyes widened and he swallowed. ‘How many minstrels, my lady?’

      Agatha crept back into the room and handed Anne her scissors, a reminder of who, and what, she was.

      ‘Were they not where I said?’ Anne whispered, as the dressmaker and the cloth merchant conferred. She had sent the girl to retrieve them near an hour before.

      Agatha looked down, a tinge of pink on her cheek. ‘Yes.’

      Anne recognised that look. ‘Did something else delay you?’

      ‘I just stopped for a moment. I thought he would be leaving.’

      Oh, so did I, Anne thought. So did I. ‘Eustace, you mean?’

      She nodded, unable to contain a smile. ‘But he’s not. Not until the wedding is over.’

      Anne opened her mouth to warn the girl. She must not hope for things she could not have. The squire would be a knight some day, far above a serving girl. In the end, she would have nothing but a wounded heart and a pilgrim badge.

      Nothing more than Anne herself.

      So she returned to her stitches. She was not qualified to lecture on a lesson she had not learned. Her heart, too, had leapt with joy to think that Nicholas would be here for another day, week, even a month or more. She could only hope their paths would not cross.

      In fact, she would work to make certain they did not.

      * * *

      Nicholas was fortunate not to see Anne again for days. He needed time to think of the words, to steel himself to say a simple apology for being no more chivalrous than a boor.

      And to convince himself the reason for his rudeness was nothing more than fatigue or the phase of the moon.

      Even his speech to the King had not been rehearsed as carefully as this. He had said he was sorry to her, of course. But he had been sorry for what God, or life, or the world had done to her. Not for a regret of his own.

      And then, once he had found the words, he must find the opportunity. A time and place where he would not be overheard. Where his mea culpa would be received by the only person who deserved to hear it.

      In fact, it took several days before he could not only find the words, but the equilibrium with which to say them. Once he did, once he was ready and she did not appear, the resentment flickered again. She must be avoiding him. The thought was laughable, of course, and sent him on a new spiral of arguments with himself.

      So when he finally saw her, it was not at all as he had planned.

      He was as drunk as a sheep.

      The Prince had embarked on a full round of celebrations and Nicholas had been toasted and fêted and honoured day after day. Late one evening, he found himself lost, trying to work his way through the timber-framed building Edward had tucked inside the ancient stone of the Round Tower, clutching a candle and searching for his bed and a garderobe.

      But not in that order.

      So when a woman with a crutch rose out of the darkness before him, at first he thought he dreamt. ‘Anne?’ Would a vision in a dream answer?

      ‘Nicholas?’

      No dream, perhaps. He took another step and tripped, sprawling across the floor.

      The laughter—no, that was not what he would dream. It was Anne.

      He groped for the candle, but it had rolled away, flame extinguished. Gingerly, he moved his legs, his knee and hip as wounded as his pride.

      In the dark, he could hear her catch her breath, trying to douse her mirth. ‘I don’t think I could lift you,’ she began, ‘but I could lend you my crutch.’

      And at that, he had to laugh, too. No way to maintain dignity or present himself as a rational, logical man. No way to apologise in grave tones or explain away a momentary pique. The man who fixed things, solved problems, smoothed over all difficulties, could not even rise from the floor unaided.

      He sighed, his tongue loosened just enough by the wine he had drunk. ‘Ah, Anne. I had planned to apologise for behaving rudely on the way home from Canterbury, but you have just seen me at my worst. Accept my total humiliation as a token of my deep regret.’

      Thankfully, she did not laugh again, but lowered herself to the floor, relieving him of the need to struggle to his feet.

      Sitting next to her, wrapped in darkness, felt as private and intimate as in the confessional booth.

      ‘I accept,’ she whispered. ‘But you must pay a penance.’

      ‘Will the aching head I am sure to have in the morning not be penance enough?’

      She must have shaken her head. ‘I revealed something of myself and you spurned me for it. Your punishment shall be to answer my questions.’

      So that you can scorn me? He had told her already of his greatest failure and she had said nothing, but she was a woman, and did not understand the demands of war. ‘Ask.’

      ‘First, where are you from?’

      Where are you from?

      Why did his lips freeze on the reply?

      He could barely summon an image of the countryside of his childhood. A marsh. A meadow. All things he had left to forget.

      ‘Lincolnshire. I was born in Lincolnshire.’ He pushed himself up from the floor. If he were to deal with the past, he must at least be sitting upright.

      ‘Is your family still there?’

      Family. Did he have such a thing? His mother had died before he could remember. There was nothing for him in Lincolnshire. Not then, and certainly not now.

      ‘My mother died. My father never left. He died two miles from the place he was born.’

      Not in Scotland or France. Not serving his King with the proud English longbow as he had dreamed. Instead, he died a tanner, permeated with the stink of animal skins. Trapped by his lust into marrying a woman who had presented herself as a chaste maiden instead of an experienced wench, already with child.

      Lust was not to be trusted, Nicholas had decided. Even his own.

      ‘So you have no one?’ There was surprise, concern in her voice.

      ‘No.’ No one he wanted to remember.

      His stepmother had preferred her own son to him. And Nicholas had allowed his feelings to rule him. He had kicked, screamed, disappeared for hours. He wanted nothing of home, nor they of him.

      He was no scholar, but his father sent him to the monks, who beat enough Latin into him that he could hold his own as an ambassador to His Holiness. But even then, the plan had been for him to sink into the same pit as his father, surrounded by urine and blood

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