The Maiden's Hand

Lark forced herself to pay close attention to Nance Harbutt, the oldest retainer of the de Lacey family. The housekeeper had a tendency to ramble and a great dislike for being interrupted, so Lark sat quietly by.

Randall, the groom who had accompanied her from Blackrose Priory, was waiting in the kitchen. By now he would have found the ale or hard cider and would be useless to her. This did not bother her in the least. She and Randall had an agreement. She made no comment on his tippling, and he made no comment on her activities for the Samaritans.

According to Nance, the sun rose and set on Lord Oliver. There was no doubt in the old woman’s mind that he had hung not only the moon, but also the sun and each and every little silver star in the heavens.

“I wish to see him,” Lark said when Nance paused to draw a breath.

“To be him?” Nance frowned.

“To see him,” Lark repeated, speaking directly into the horn.

“Of course you do, dearie.” Nance patted her arm. Then she did a curious thing; she smoothed back the hood of Lark’s black traveling cloak and peered at her.

“Dear God above,” Nance said loudly. She picked up her apron and fanned her face.

“Is something amiss?”

“Nay. For a moment you—that look on your face put me in mind of Lord Stephen’s second wife, the day he brought her home.”

Lark recalled what Spencer had told her of Oliver’s family. Lord Stephen de Lacey, a powerful and eccentric man, had married young. His first wife had perished giving birth to Oliver. The second was a woman of Russian descent, reputed to be a singular beauty. Though flattered by the comparison, Lark thought the elderly retainer’s sight was as weak as her hearing.

“Now then,” Nance said, her manner brisk, “when is the babe due?”

“The babe?” Lark regarded her stupidly.

“The babe, lass! The one Lord Oliver sowed in you. And God be praised that it’s finally happened—”

“Ma’am.” Lark’s ears took fire.

“Weren’t for lack of trying on the part of the dear lordling. “Course, ’twould be preferable to marry first, but Oliver has ever been the—”

“Mistress Harbutt, please.” Lark fairly shouted into the trumpet.

“Eh?” Nance flinched. “Heaven above, lass, I ain’t so deaf as a stone.”

“I’m sorry. You misunderstand. I have no…” She lacked the words to describe how appalled she felt at the very suggestion that she might be a ruined woman carrying a rogue’s bastard. “Lord Oliver and I are not that well acquainted. I wish to speak to him on a matter. Is he at home?”

“Sadly, nay.” Nance blew out her breath. Then she brightened. “I know where he’d be. This time of day he’s always going about important business.”

Lark felt vastly relieved. Perhaps the young nobleman was engaged in lordly matters, serving his turn in Parliament or perhaps doing good works among the poor.

It might prove an unexpected pleasure to encounter him in his lofty pursuits.

Deep in the darkest tavern on the south bank, Oliver de Lacey looked up from the gaming table as the black-cloaked stranger entered. A woman, judging by her slight build and hesitant manner.

“Hell’s bells,” said Clarice, shifting on Oliver’s lap. “Don’t tell me the Puritans are at us again.”

Oliver savored the suggestive movement of her soft buttocks. Clarice was no more than a laced mutton in a leaping house, but she was a woman, and he adored women without prejudice.

More than ever, now that he had been given a second chance at life.

“Ignore her,” he said, nuzzling Clarice’s neck, inhaling the scent of lust. “No doubt she is a dried-up old crone who cannot bear to see people enjoy life. Eh, Kit?”

Christopher Youngblood, who sat across the table from Oliver, grinned. “In sooth you enjoy it too much, my friend. Such constant revelry does rob the savor from it.”

Oliver rolled his eyes and looked to Clarice for sympathy. “Kit’s smitten with my half sister, Belinda. He’s saving his virtue for her.”

Clarice shook her head, making her yellow curls bounce on her bared shoulders. “Such a waste, that.”

The other harlot, Rosie, leaned toward Kit, caught his starched ruff in her fingers and turned him to face her. “Let the lady have his virtue,” she declared. “I’ll take his vice.” She gave him a smacking kiss on his mouth and pounded the table in high good humor as his face turned brick-red.

Laughing uproariously, Oliver called for more ale and summoned Samuel Hollins and Egmont Carper, his favorite betting partners, to a game of mumchance. His spirits lubricated by ale and soft womanhood, he rolled the dice in the bowl.

And won. Lord, how he won. This was his first outing since that unfortunate incident—he refused to call it anything so grim as a hanging—and the luck that had delivered him from death now clung to him like a woman’s sweet perfume.

Lucky as a cat with nine lives, he was, and it never occurred to him to wonder if he deserved it. Nor did it cross his mind that the whole incident had been very unusual indeed. Two strangers had risked their own safety to rescue him.

At a cottage near St. Giles, they had provided him with a basin of hot water, a shaving blade and a set of clean clothing. He had bathed, shorn off his beard, dressed and returned home to sleep ’round the clock.

And he was none the worse for the wear, save for a bruised neck, now artfully concealed by a handsome ruff and some redness in his eyes.

His saviors, Dr. Phineas Snipes and Mistress Lark, had wondered aloud why the mysterious Spencer had singled out Oliver for saving.

Oliver de Lacey did not wonder why. He knew. It was because he was blessed. Blessed with angelic good looks, for which he took no credit but which he used to his utmost advantage. Blessed with a large, loving family whose only fault was that they were too hasty to forgive his every transgression. Blessed with a quick mind and a glib tongue. Blessed with a lust for life.

And cursed, alas, to die young. There was no cure for his sickness. The attacks of asthmatic breathlessness were few and infrequent, but when they came, they struck like a storm. For years he had fought each battle, but he knew in the end the disease would conquer him.

“Ollie?” Clarice tickled his ear with her tongue. “Your turn to cast the dice.”

Like a large dog shaking off water, Oliver rid himself of the thoughts. He made a masterful throw. A perfect seven. Clarice squealed with delight, Carper grudgingly gave up his coin, and Oliver rewarded his woman by tucking a ducat deep into her doughy cleavage.

“M-my lord?” A soft, uncertain voice broke in on his revelry.

With a grin of triumph still on his face, Oliver looked up. “Yes?”

The black-clad Puritan gazed down at him. A slim white hand pushed back the hood.

Oliver stood, dumping Clarice from his lap. “You!”

Mistress Lark bobbed her head at him. Her face was stark white, the eyes a luminous rain-colored gray, her lower lip trembling. “Sir, I would like to speak to you.”

Without even looking at Clarice, he reached down and helped her to the bench. “Of course. Mistress Lark.” He gestured at his companions and rattled off their names.

“Do sit down,” he said. She made him feel the most uncanny discomfort. In the smoky lamp glow of the tavern, she did not look as ethereally beautiful as she had at dawn two days before. Indeed, she appeared quite plain in her coarse garb, her hair scraped back into a tight black braid.

“There isn’t any room at the table,” she said. “And besides—”

“I’ve a perfectly good knee just waiting for you.” He grabbed her wrist and lowered her onto his lap.

She yelped as if he had set fire to her backside, and jumped up. “Nay, sir! I shall wait until it is convenient for you to speak to me. In private.”

“Please yourself,” he said, wondering why he felt this urge to bedevil her. “You might have a bit of a wait, then. Fortune is favoring me today.” He held out his tankard. “Have some ale.”

“No, thank you.”

He had the most remarkable urge to kiss her prissy mouth until it became soft and full beneath his. To caress her slender body and melt her stiffness into compliance.

Aware now that he had set the rules of a waiting game, he winked at her and turned back to his companions.

Lark was certain that everything decent about her was being peeled away in layers. What a fool she had been to suppose Oliver de Lacey would be pursuing lordly goals. She was doubly a fool to have left Randall in drunken slumber and come here on her own. She had paid a ferryman to take her across the river. She had moved like a thief through noxious alleyways crammed with vagrants and cozeners, all for the sake of finding a man whom Spencer had, for once in his life, wrongly judged to be a man of honor.

All Lord Oliver seemed to be pursuing were the pleasures of the gaming table, the oblivion of strong ale and the fleshly secrets hidden beneath the laced corset of the woman called Clarice.

Bawdy talk rose like a fog from the gamesters, some of it so wickedly obscure that Lark did not understand. She felt like the flame of a candle buffeted by the winds of corruption. Stubbornly, she refused to be snuffed out.

If he meant to humiliate her by forcing her to wait her turn, then wait she would. Oliver de Lacey did not know her at all. She had learned duty and loyalty from the most honorable man in England. She would endure any torment for Spencer’s sake.

Of course, Spencer would never know how she had suffered. She could not tell him she had stood amid ruffians and doxies and gamesters. And most of all, she could not tell him that she took a secret, shameful interest in her surroundings.

The blatant and lusty sensuality of the people around the gaming table shocked her. It was but midmorning, and they were tippling ale and wine like wedding guests at a midnight feast.

And the center of all the attention, like the sun casting its fire on a host of lesser bodies, was Oliver de Lacey himself.

He bore no resemblance to the pitiful victim who had fallen into the dusty pit of corpses just two days before.

He was as comely as a prince, his hair a shimmering mass of white-gold waves, his face carved into a perfect balance of hard lines and angles harmonizing with a sensual mouth and eyes the color of a robin’s egg. In some men such beauty might have created an air of softness, but not in Oliver de Lacey. His expression held a rare blend of humor and male potency that sparked a flare of awareness in Lark.

He had little to show for his suffering in the bowels of Newgate prison. Most men who had been arrested and condemned for inciting a riot, then secretly saved from death, might be loath to flaunt their presence so soon after the event.

A splendidly cut doublet of midnight-blue velvet displayed his broad shoulders to shameless advantage. Flamboyant gold braid laced his sleeves around powerful arms. And when he threw back his head to laugh, displaying healthy teeth and a musical tenor chuckle, she could hardly blame Clarice for clinging to him. He had that air of potency, of magnetism, that made even sensible folk feel safe and treasured when he was near.

Will you have my baby? The memory came unbidden; his words echoed in her mind, and she hated herself for clinging to them. He had meant it as a jest, no more.

It was chilly in the tavern, with its damp plaster and timber walls and the bleak light of oil lamps. There was no reason on earth Lark should feel warm. Yet she did, as if she possessed embers inside, with some force from without fanning them.

“You’re certain you don’t wish to sit with us?” Oliver inquired, studying her so closely that she was certain he noticed her hot throat and cheeks and ears.

“Quite certain,” she said.

He heaved a great sigh. “I cannot bear to have you standing there in discomfort.” He spread his arms as if to embrace all who sat around the table. “My friends, I must go with dear Mistress Lark.”

She saw the disappointment on their faces, and in an odd, intuitive way she understood it. When Oliver withdrew from the table, it seemed the sun had drifted behind a cloud.

Then he did a singular thing. He sank to one knee before Clarice. Gazing up at her as if she were Queen Mary herself, he took her hand in his, placed a lingering kiss in her palm, and closed her fingers around the invisible token. “Fare you well, my lovely.”

Watching the intimate and chivalrous farewell gave Lark the oddest sensation of yearning. Certainly there was nothing remarkable about a rogue parting from his doxy, yet Oliver managed to glorify the simple act with an air of wistful romance and tenderness. As if he cherished her.

She wondered what it would be like to be cherished, even for a moment. Even by a rogue.

Then he spoiled it by reaching around and pinching Clarice’s backside, causing her to bray with laughter. When he stood and donned a blue velvet hat, the plume brushed the blackened ceiling timbers.

“Kit, I shall call for you later.”

Kit Youngblood sent him a jaunty salute. Though somewhat older than Oliver, more blunt featured and quiet, he was nearly as handsome. Taken as a pair, the two were quite overwhelming. “Do. I missed our carousing while you were away. On a pilgrimage, was it?”

The look they shared was steeped in mirth and fellowship. Then, without warning, Oliver took Lark by the hand and drew her out into the alleyway.

As soon as she recovered her surprise, she pulled away. “Kindly keep your hands to yourself, my lord.”

“Is it your mission in life to wound me?” he asked, looking remarkably sober for all that he had quaffed three tankards of ale while she had watched.

“Of course not.” She clasped her hands in front of her. “My lord, I came to see you to—”

“You held out your hand to me when I lay gasping on the ground at a pauper’s grave. Why flinch when I do the same to you?”

“Because I don’t need help. Not of that sort.”

“What sort?” He tilted his head to one side. The plume in his hat curved downward, caressing a face so favored by Adonis that Lark could only stare.

“The touching sort,” she snapped, irritated that her head could be turned by mere looks.

“Ah.” All male insolence, he reached out and dragged his finger slowly and lightly down the curve of her cheek. It was worse than she had suspected—his touch was as compelling as his lavish handsomeness. She had the most shameful urge to lean her cheek into the cradling warmth of his hand. To gaze into his eyes and tell him all the secret things she had never dared admit to anyone. To close her eyes and—

“I must remember that,” he said, dropping his hand and grinning down at her. “The lady does not like to be touched.”

“Nor do I like walking in a strange alley with a man I hardly know. However, it is necessary. You see, there is a matter—”

“Hail the lord and his lady!” A group of men in sailor’s caps and tunics tumbled past, swearing and spitting and jostling one another as they shoved themselves into the tavern.

“Good fishing to ye,” one of them called out to Oliver. “I hope the perch are biting fair.” The door slammed behind the man, muffling his guffaws.

Lark frowned. “What did he mean?”

She was surprised to see the color rise in Oliver’s cheeks. Why would so shameless a man blush at a sailor’s remark?

“He must have mistaken me for the sporting type.” Oliver started off down the alley.

“Where are we going?” Picking up her skirts, Lark hurried after him.

“You said you wished to talk.”

“I do. Why not here? I have been trying to explain myself.”

A creaking sound came from somewhere above, where the timbered buildings leaned out over the roadway. Oliver turned, grabbed Lark in his arms and pushed her up against a plastered wall.

“Unhand me!” she squeaked. “You rogue! You measureless knave! How dare you take liberties with my virtue!”

“It’s a tempting thought,” he said with laughter in his voice. “But that was not my purpose. Now be still.”

Even before he finished speaking, a cascade of filthy wash water crashed down from a high window. The deluge filled the road where Lark had stood only seconds ago.

“There.” Oliver eased away from the wall and continued down the street. “Both your gown and your virtue are safe.”

Miffed, she thanked him tersely. “Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise.” The sound of his tall, slashed knee boots echoed down the tunnellike lane.

“I don’t want a surprise,” she said. “I simply want to talk to you.”

“And so you shall. In good time.”

“I wish to talk now. Forsooth, sir, you frustrate me!”

He stopped and turned so abruptly that she nearly collided with him. “Ah, Mistress Lark,” he said, his bluer-than-blue eyes crinkling at the corners, “not half so much as you frustrate me.” She feared he would touch her again, but he merely smiled and continued walking.

She followed him along a pathway, passing kennels where dogs for the bull baitings were housed, trying not to gawk at a flock of masked prostitutes gathering to watch the sport.

The north end of the path opened out to the Thames. The broad brown river teemed with wherries, shallops, timber barges and small barks. Far to the east rose the webbed masts of great warships and merchantmen, and to the west loomed London Bridge. From this distance Lark could not see the grisly severed heads of traitors that adorned the Southwark Gate of the bridge, but the whirling scavenger kites made her think of them and shiver.

Oliver lifted his hand, and in mere seconds a barge with three oarsmen at the bow and a helmsman at the stern bumped the bottom of the water steps.

Bowing low and gesturing toward the canopied seat of the barge, he said, “After you, mistress.”

She hesitated. It had been a mistake to leave Randall behind. For all she knew, Lord Oliver was dragging her along the path to perdition.

Still, the open, elegant barge looked far more inviting than the dank alley, so she descended the stone steps to the waterline. The helmsman held out a hand to steady her as she boarded.

“The lady mislikes being touched, Bodkin,” Oliver called out helpfully.

With a shrug, Bodkin withdrew his hand just as Lark had one foot in the barge and the other on the slimy stone landing. The barge lurched. She tumbled onto the leather cushioned seat with a thud.

Mustering courage from her bruised dignity, she glared up at Oliver. His buoyant grin flashed as he grasped the pole of the canopy and swung himself onto the seat beside her.

Lark stared straight ahead. “I assume we are going someplace where we can speak privately.”

Oliver nudged the oarsman in front of him. “Hear that, Leonardo? She wants to tryst with me.”

“I do not.”

“Hush. I was teasing. Of course I will take you to a place of privacy. Eventually.”

“Eventually? Why not immediately?”

“Because of the surprise,” he said with an excess of good-humored patience. “The tide’s low, Bodkin. I think it’s safe to shoot the bridge.”

The helmsman tugged at his beard. “Upstream? We’ll get soaked.”

Oliver laughed. “That’s half the fun. Out oars, gentlemen, to yonder bridge.”

Lark hoped for a mutiny, but the crew obeyed him. In perfect synchrony, three sets of long oars dipped into the water. The barge glided out into the Thames.

In spite of her annoyance with Lord Oliver de Lacey, Lark felt a thrill of excitement. Turbulence churned the waters beneath the narrow arches of London Bridge. She knew people had drowned trying to pass beneath it. Yet the smooth, swift motion of the sleek craft gliding through the water gave her the most glorious feeling of freedom. She told herself it had nothing to do with the benevolent, lusty and wholly pagan presence beside her.

Moments later, white-tipped wavelets lifted the bow of the boat. As the barge neared London Bridge, it bucked like a wild horse over the roaring waters around the pilings.

Lark lifted her face to the spray. She had come to London for a business transaction, and here she was in the throes of a forbidden adventure. She swirled like a leaf upon the water, buffeted, at the mercy of a whimsical man who, with sheer force of will, had turned her from her purpose and swept her up in an escapade she should not want to experience.

“I wish you would listen to what I have to say,” she stated.

“I might. Especially if it involves wine, women and money.”

“It does not.”

“Then tell me later, my dove. First we’ll have some fun.”

“Why do you insist on surprising me?” she demanded, gripping the gunwale of the boat.

“Because.” He swept off his hat and pressed it over his heart. He looked boyishly earnest, eyes wide, a silver-gilt lock of hair tumbling down his brow. “Because just once, Lark, I want to see you smile.”

Two

She did not understand him at all. That much she knew for certain. She could not fathom why he insisted on entertaining her. Nor did she know why it pleased him so to wave to strangers boating on the Thames, to call out greetings to people he’d never met, to run alongside a herring-buss to inquire about a fisherman’s catch.

Most of all, she could not comprehend Oliver’s shouts of humor and ecstasy when they shot the bridge. The adventure was sheer terror for her.

At first. Her senses were overcome by the rush of the water with its damp, fishy smell. Her teeth jarred with the churning sensation as the bow lifted, then slapped down. The rush of speed loosened tendrils of hair from her braid and caused her skirts to billow up above her knees.

Terror, once faced, was actually rather exhilarating. Especially when it was over.

“Was that my surprise?” she asked weakly once the bridge was behind them.

“Nay. You haven’t smiled yet. You’re white as an Irish ghost.”

She turned to him and forced up the corners of her mouth. “There,” she said through her teeth. “Will that do?”

“It is precious. But nay, I reject that one.”

“What is wrong with my smile?” she demanded. “We cannot all be as handsome as sun gods with beautiful mouths and perfect teeth.”

He laughed, tossing his mist-damp hair. “You noticed.”

“I also noticed your vast conceit.” She poked her nose into the air. “It rather spoils the effect.”

He sobered, though his eyes still shone with mirth. “I meant no insult, dear Lark. It is just that your smile was not real. A real smile starts in the heart.” Forgetting—or ignoring—her interdict against touching, he brushed his fingers over her stiff bodice. “Love, I can make your whole body smile.”

“Oh, honestly—”

“It is a warmth that travels upward and outward, like a flame. Like this.”

She sat transfixed as his hands brushed over the tops of her breasts, covered by a thin lawn partlet. His fingers grazed her throat, then her chin and lips. She thought wildly of the oarsmen and Bodkin at the helm, yet even as a horrible embarrassment crept over her, she stayed very still, transfixed by Oliver.

“A true smile does not end here, at your mouth.” He watched her closely. “But in your eyes, like a candle piercing the darkness.”

“Oh, dear,” she heard herself whisper. “I am not certain I can do that.”

“Of course you can, sweet Lark. But it does take practice.”

Somehow, his lips were mere inches from hers. And hers tingled with a hunger that took her by surprise. She wanted to feel his mouth on hers, to discover the shape and texture of his lips. She had been lectured into a stupor about the evils of fleshly desires, she thought she had done battle with temptation, but no one had ever warned her about the seductive power of a man like Oliver de Lacey.

Closing her eyes, she swayed toward him, toward his warmth, toward the scents of tavern and river that clung to him.

“I am touching you again,” he said, and she heard the whispered laughter in his voice. “Please forgive me.” He dropped his hands and drew away.