By Design (26 page)

J
OAN'S STATUES STOOD
in a dignified procession on the tall table Rhys had made for her. Everyone in the market who walked by noticed them.

A lady who had purchased the Saint George brought a friend back to consider the Saint Sebastian. That one had attracted a lot of attention. Clad only in a loincloth and tied to a tree stump, he looked up to heaven, waiting for the martyr's palm. The arrows piercing his body had not diminished his strength.

The woman eyed the naked chest far too appreciatively. Joan really did not want to sell it, and named a price of two shillings in the hope of discouraging a purchase. It did not work. There was no bargaining, and the coins instantly appeared.

Joan was sorry to see the statue go. She had followed Rhys's lessons about studying real forms when crafting their replicas. Saint Stephen's torso, face, and legs, as a result, were very familiar ones to her.

She watched Saint Sebastian being carried away, and
her heart glowed for the man who had been its model. If Rhys had never given her anything but this improvement to her craft, she would have been grateful forever.

But he had done so much more.

She spent most days managing the tile yard now. It hummed with activity the way it had during Nicholas's life. The King's pavers kept many workers busy, especially her. Still, every day she arranged to steal an hour or so to make her saints. The work was hard and tiring, but she had never known such contentment. And waiting at the house were the little pleasures of sharing bread and stories with Rhys, and eventually the perfect bliss of sleeping in his arms.

Her happy contemplations distracted her. She gazed blindly at her row of saints and thought about that feather bed, and what occurred there, and the way that she never remembered the bad experiences anymore.

She calmly made a decision. She was ready to make it complete. She would make this union all that it might be. She would forget while she could, and later, much later, she would remember when she must.

She did not see the new patron approach. She did not notice him at all until he stood by her table. Even then she did not look up and greet him, but let herself enjoy the warmth of her decision, and the way it stirred her blood. She regretted that Rhys was not at the house. If he were, she would pack up these statues and run back at once. She might even give them all away if it would hasten her return to him.

Rhys would be joining her soon. He was coming to fetch her, so they could visit the King's chambers again and remeasure the floors. She suddenly could not wait to see him.

The man did not move on. His presence intruded more and more. Still only half conscious of him, still absorbed
with her joyful resolve, her lowered gaze saw him only in bits and pieces.

Fine boots. A rich, green, knee-length cotte. The stark line of a good sword.

A vague, spicy scent.

Caution roared through her, stunning her into alertness. Her instincts remembered that exotic, dangerous smell. It made the skin on her neck and scalp prickle.

She froze and refused to look higher. Fear and horror shrieked, obliterating her contentment. She just kept staring at her saints, praying that she was wrong.

A hand reached out. One finger wore a ring that she had seen before.

Her heart dropped and broke, and she knew for certain that her happiness had just been destroyed.

She recoiled from the touch on her chin, but that did not stop him. He forced her head up, until she looked into a face that she loathed.

“Why do you act as though a ghost has appeared?” he said. “After all, you are the one who is supposed to be dead.”

For one despairing moment she wished that she were. For an instant she regretted not walking into that lake three years ago.

He tilted his head and studied her face, much as her patrons did her statues. “Still lovely. And much more clever than I ever suspected.”

She did not move. She had never let him see her fear, and she would not now. But utter terror filled her like an unending, shrill whistle.

Guy Leighton was the devil incarnate, wearing the face of an angel. Beautiful. Almost ethereal. His golden hair and violet eyes and perfect, fine-boned face still appeared boyish when he was calm. But she had seen the fires of hell in those eyes, and the sickening pleasure he took in
meting pain and death. Considering his ugly soul, his physical beauty struck her as a type of sin, a corruption of nature itself.

She had seen at once how crippled his heart was. He had sensed that she could tell. It had fascinated him, and fed both his vanity and his cruelty.

Another man ambled over to inspect her wares. Guy gave him a deadly smile. The man hustled away.

He still held her chin. He did not release it. He merely walked around her table and drew her toward the Cathedral wall, leading her like an animal.

He forced her into the shadow, against the stone, and blocked her body with his. Arm braced above her head, he scrutinized her face.

“I have been looking for you, Joan. All week I have been visiting markets in search of the pretty blond potter.”

“How did you know to look?”

“A man came to me. He had been in this city while on pilgrimage, and saw you at a market. Since he had heard of your demise, he could not believe it was really you, but I did. I knew at once that you had deceived me, and not truly died while crossing that river.” He lightly stroked her cheek. Her stomach turned violently. “It wounds me that you ran away after all that we had shared, and the risks that I took for you. You are an ungrateful bitch, Joan.”

The last part came out in a brittle tone. He sounded like a lover who had been betrayed. He acted as though she had abandoned something beautiful. Maybe he thought that she had. The world existed for him only as he saw it.

“Too ungrateful to deserve your attentions. Everyone thinks me dead, and as you can see, I might as well be. Leave me to my humble life and let everyone assume my bones lie in that river.”

He found her desperate argument amusing. “It is not so simple as that.”

Nay, it was not. He had not come here just looking for her at all.

“Your brother survived, too, I assume.”

He made the query very blandly, but she saw the sharp interest in his eyes. And something else. Something she had never seen before. Fear.

“He did not. I almost didn't, either. The river swept him away. I caught a tree branch, but he—”

“Neither of you crossed the river where we found the clothing washed up. It was a ruse, and your breathing body proves it.”

“Nay, he died. I swear it to you.”

“The man said that he saw a blond youth of Mark's age with you later. And a tall dark haired man.”

A new fear spiked, this time for Rhys.

“The man was a stranger. The youth was his kin, and not my brother. I do not know either of them, and was just chatting as one does in markets.”

He took her face in his hand and held it to a deep examination. His grasp squeezed her cheeks just enough to hurt.

“You are lying. You were never good at it, and three years have not taught you much there. He lives, as you do. That is most awkward, Joan. I told my lord that you had both died. It will be very inconvenient to explain the mistake.”

“Then do not explain it.”

He leaned against the wall so that his body lined against hers. His hold released her cheeks and slid lower, caressing her neck and shoulders. She suffered it to buy some time for Mark and herself and Rhys, but her essence cringed with revulsion.

“I have missed you. I think that I even mourned a little when word came that you had perished.”

“I doubt that you have missed me at all. I am sure that your bed is never cold.”

“It is not the same. You were a compelling challenge. Having you gave me wonderful pleasure. I do not think that taking a keep surpasses it.”

“Nonsense. When you take a keep, you can put men to the sword.”

“And when I took you I could make you feel things against your will. Surely you have not forgotten that part.”

She suppressed the urge to vomit, and closed her eyes to him. She stopped breathing so she would not inhale that spicy scent. She wanted him to be gone, and for this day to begin anew. She prayed that when she opened her eyes she would be in Rhys's feather bed and discover this had been a nightmare.

Guy's fingers drifted over her face, outlining her nose and chin and jaw. “Perhaps I need not explain to my lord. Maybe we can continue the bargain from before. No one has ever understood me as you did. I have felt your absence.”

She looked at him in shock, and saw that it was partly true. Not because of physical things. He could get that from other women.

His perverted vanity had always enjoyed her hatred too much. It drew him the way affection did normal people. Everything was upside down with him. Deformed. Her hatred had engrossed him the way love did other men.

He was right. She understood him very well. Even better than he guessed. He might offer the bargain again, but he would no more honor it now than he had the first time. She had never truly kept her brother safe. She had merely delayed his death back then. The accidents that had almost claimed Mark's life had forced her to see the truth. That had been the final degradation, realizing that she had sold herself for nought.

She remembered the exact moment when she had finally admitted that to herself. Pressed against the
Cathedral wall, she experienced the hopeless bleakness again. But that dark moment had given birth to anger and strength, too, and now their fires rekindled in her blood as well.

She had beaten this man once. Outsmarted him. She could do so again. She would not let fear defeat her. She would not be his victim.

He had journeyed across England because of her and Mark. He stood alone now, and had searched the markets with no retinue. He had been ordered to make sure that Mark died like her father and all the other men and squires who had defended that keep, and he had come looking for her on his own because he feared Mortimer's learning that he had failed to extinguish every witness to that massacre.

Which meant that only he knew that she and her brother were still alive.

She had to delay him. She needed time to find Mark and get out of London.

“You offer the same terms? My brother will be safe?” Her whole body rebelled against the words. She almost choked on them.

“I will shield him as I always did. It is only a small deception of my lord, and you are well worth it.”

Guy Leighton spoke with sincerity. Lied with impunity. He believed the words as he said them, but would easily abandon the promises when they proved inconvenient. That had always been the most frightening thing about him. He possessed no conscience at all. No normal sense of wrong.

He took her arm. “Come with me now. I am staying at the palace, but no one there will know you. You can show me how grateful you are before we get your brother.”

A spitting denial almost screamed out of her. She fought to keep the disgust out of her voice, and the
resurrected memories out of her mind. “You can not think to stay at Westminster, with Mark and me in your chamber. There is no way we can be safe there.”

“It is only for a short while. I leave two days hence.”

“Then I will come to you two days hence. I am not yours until my brother is safe away from here, and until I see that you are committed to your side of our agreement.”

“You will come now, and tell me where to find Mark.”

“Nay. It will be as I say, or I will die before you ever learn where to find him.”
I will die before I let you know about that house
.

“Three years have made you too sharp-tongued. This humble life has turned you shrewish. I much preferred you as you were, girlish and biddable.”

“I am no longer a girl. If that is what you want, go find another.”

Guy examined her as he would a docile horse that had unexpectedly shown some spirit. “Nay, I think that I will enjoy you this way. It will be exciting to have your hatred out in the open. We will meet at the Temple the day next at tierce, and leave at once from there.”

“You must come alone, ready to ride.”

“I did not journey here alone, and my men must return with me, but you have nothing to fear from them. Your brother and you will be under my protection as before.”

He finally eased away. She swallowed a deep sigh of relief when he ceased touching her.

His gaze locked with hers, and too much passed in those violet eyes. The sick bond of the past, and what awaited in the future. Something else flickered in them, too. Tiny lights of anger and suspicion and jealousy. She knew what would happen if those little flames found fuel.

“The dark-haired man seen with you at the fair. What was his name?”

Her heart pounded horribly. She flattened her palms on
the cool stone at her back to steady herself. “I do not know. He was a stranger to me.”

“I hope that you speak the truth. I trust he has not been stealing what is mine.”

“Nay. You ruined me for other men.”

His vanity liked hearing that. She doubted that he understood how she meant it, and just how thoroughly she had been ruined.

Guy stepped closer again, and took her face in his hands. “Do not think of thwarting me, Joan. The last betrayal was one too many, and I will not be so generous the next time. Be sure you are at the Temple as agreed, or I will hunt your brother down and kill him like a dog. Wherever you go, I will find you, and I will punish whoever helps you.”

She knew that. Only it would happen no matter what she did. If she brought Mark to the Temple, he would die, and then, after a brief hell in Guy's bed, she would too, for she knew too much. If he learned about Rhys … Jesus, if he learned about Rhys…

Aye, she understood him very well. She had nothing to lose in defying him.

He pressed a kiss on her. She barely managed not to gag. He dipped in a courtly bow of farewell.

“Two days hence, sweet Joan. Do not fail to be at the Temple.”

Joan sank against the wall, and desolation engulfed her. She closed her burning eyes and gripped the cool stone along her back. Some mason had hewn those blocks, and set them squarely, and they would stand through time unless another mason pulled them down.