In a Treacherous Court (6 page)

He led them through the door out into the freezing rain. “I was nothing.”

W
elcome to Paradise.” Parker spoke with a lift in his voice, as if the words were a private joke.

Susanna looked up at the house before her. “Very nice.” It was beautiful, but she couldn’t find the energy for enthusiasm.

Dusk was already settling, and she had yet to find a hearth to warm her feet. Parker needed to fetch his things from his palace lodgings at Westminster before taking her to his own house, which she gathered he seldom used. All his clothes were here.

“This won’t take long.” Parker opened the door with a key he’d taken from his pouch, and gave a small bow and a flourish for her to precede him.

Grateful to be out of the rain, Susanna entered a magnificent hallway. It smelled of vinegar, clean and sharp, and the richer, rounder scent of beeswax. “You are Keeper of this house for the King?”

“And two others also within the palace grounds, Purgatory and Hell. As well as the palace itself, which includes the King’s personal treasury.” Again, that ironic tone.

“You choose to keep your rooms in Paradise, though?”

He laughed. “No one has ever commented on that before. I don’t know whether to run screaming from you, Mistress Horenbout, or marry you forthwith.”

Susanna spun toward him, surprised.

He was leaning back against the door, arms crossed over his chest, watching her in a way that made the hairs on her arms prickle as they had earlier with the King.

Then he straightened and walked toward the staircase that swept upward to a large landing. “Call me superstitious, but I’d rather live in Paradise than Purgatory.”

“The King stays in these houses when he is in residence at Westminster?” She grasped the banister and hauled herself up the stairs after him.

Parker shook his head. “No. He used to use the main palace, but it caught fire a few years ago. His royal chambers were badly damaged, so he moved his official seat to Bridewell. These houses are used for his courtiers or for foreign dignitaries sometimes.” He unlocked a door off the landing near the top of the stairs and walked in. Susanna stood at the threshold, looking into his chambers.

He pulled out a small trunk and began tossing clothes into it, along with ledgers and a sword, then closed and hefted the trunk easily in his arms.

No lackeys for this man. The time needed to find servants would have considerably lengthened their journey, but some courtiers would have insisted on finding them anyway.

Parker was a man not afraid to carry his own baggage.

She smiled at him.

He froze, then shook his head as if shaking himself awake.

“I know this has been a long day.” He set the trunk down and stepped toward her, lifting a hand to her face. She saw it tremble before he ran a finger down her cheek.

His finger was so warm against her cold skin, she raised her own hand to press his more firmly in place.

His fingers tightened, sliding beneath her cap into her hair, and for a moment he cradled her head in his hand and looked into her eyes. Searching for something.

She would have given anything to know the question. To give the answer.

Someone whistled, sharp and piercing, below the window, and Parker drew back, his face neutral again.

“The barge pilot grows impatient.” He scooped up the trunk again and held it between them as a bear tamer might hold a chair between himself and his animal—although who was being protected from whom, she didn’t know.

“One more journey and we will be home?” she asked.

Parker gave her a strange look as he lifted the trunk onto his shoulder. “Aye. We will be home.”

The Chiefe Conditions and Qualities in a Courtier:
Not to be a babbler, brauler, or chatter, nor lavish of his tunge.

Of the Chief Conditions and Qualityes in a Waytyng Gentylwoman:
To drawe and peinct.

T
he pilot berthed at Old Swan, just short of London Bridge. The rain had not let up, and the dark clouds added to the gloom of a winter dusk. Parker could barely make out the pier.

After he’d hauled their trunks from the barge, he lifted the lantern and its flickering glow illuminated Susanna’s shuttered face, her eyes closed against the sting of the ice-laden rain. She must regret the day she’d left Ghent.

With a loud whistle, Parker summoned the boys who huddled under the pier, waiting for the chance to carry bags or beg. They were slow to respond, but at last one poked his head out to see if there was a chance of earning a crust.

Parker held up four fingers, and four ragged figures scrambled
up onto the wooden boards of Old Swan, shivering against the freezing rain.

They came forward reluctantly. One of the lads, the smallest one, stopped altogether, and Parker felt a prick of warning along the back of his neck.

The boy looked nervously at his companions, then moved forward again, and Parker saw the way the lad in front drew up, as if steeling himself.

Parker raised his lantern, and the light glinted off something sharp in the boy’s hand.

“My lady!” he shouted, but his warning was drowned out in the cacophony of a thousand icicles hitting the wooden pier. He leaped forward and grabbed her with one arm around her waist, the other still holding the lantern up to see the boy. He caught a glimpse of a lifted arm, a few lurching steps, and swung Susanna behind him and turned back to face them.

The boys stumbled to a halt as Parker set the lantern down and pulled his knife from his boot. He drew his sword with the other hand, rolling his shoulders in anticipation of the fight.

The boy with the knife was so out of his depth, he froze, eyes wide and mouth slack as his companions scattered. The brief, roaring rage in Parker subsided to a howl.

He pounced, flicking the knife out of the boy’s hand with his sword, and grabbed him around the throat.

“Who paid you?” He shook the lad at every word, then half-turned, his knife raised, as someone touched his arm.

Susanna looked back at him, eyes wide, whole body shivering.

“Bring him with us.” Her lips were blue and stiff and he could see she was near collapse, her hand on his arm clinging for dear life.

He raised his head and was surprised to see that one of the boys lingered nearby, the youngest one who had held back earlier. Parker crooked a finger and, careful to stay out of reach, the boy came closer.

“Run to Orchard Cottage in Crooked Lane. Tell Mistress Greene to send round the cart. And to hurry.”

The boy’s mouth turned mulish and his eyes slid to the lad in Parker’s grasp. “Why should I?”

“Because you want to see your brother again, alive and well.” Parker had to shout over the rain, and the boy’s eyes widened. “Now, go.”

“You know these children?” Susanna asked as the boy disappeared into the night.

Parker shook his head, looked down at the older brother. “The only reason the boy would stay was for kin. The rest cleared out fast enough.”

Susanna held herself tight, and he noticed that much of her hair had escaped its hood and was plastered against her cheeks. Her body flinched with every new gust of rain that battered them.

He strained to see up the road, and at last made out the flicker of a lantern. When the cart came into view, Parker saw with surprise that Mistress Greene herself was driving.

“Ho, there, Master Parker. Bit o’ trouble?”

“Just a bit, Mistress Greene. Where is Luke?”

His housekeeper tossed her head. “Lad’s run off on me, and I don’t expect to see him back.”

Parker pushed his captive toward the cart, then lifted him by his collar and set him beside Mistress Greene on the driver’s seat. “Hold on to this devil for me, will you? And mind you get a good hold; I don’t want to have to run after him.”

Mistress Greene took charge, and Parker turned his attention to Susanna, lifting her up into the back of the cart and then hefting the trunks after her.

Finally, he grabbed the younger brother, who’d come skulking along behind the cart, and patted his clothes for any hidden weapons. He felt nothing but the sharp contours of the boy’s ribs through the coarse sacking he wore.

“No need for that, m’lord.” The boy’s indignation made no impression on Parker. He stared the child down for a hard second, then lifted him into the back, where the lad scrambled into a corner and curled up against one of the trunks.

Parker pulled himself up next to Mistress Greene, and took hold of his captive once more.

The boy looked up at Parker, his eyes huge in his thin face. “What are you going to do to me, sir?”

“Make you sorry you were ever born.”

T
he fire in Parker’s hearth fanned Susanna with its heat. Wave upon delicious wave of hot air beat against her cheeks, and she closed her eyes in pleasure.

She had changed out of her soaking clothes into one of the
dry dresses from her trunk, and she could feel her loose hair drying out in the warmth of the study, springing back in small curls around her temples.

Mistress Greene was off in the kitchen, ladling beef soup into bowls for them all, and Parker had given each of the boys one of his shirts. They stood before the fire with the fine cotton hanging to their knees, which made them look even younger and thinner than before.

Susanna studied the older boy—her would-be assassin. It defied imagination that he could be a killer, yet she had seen the knife raised in his hand with her own eyes.

She turned back to Parker, standing at his desk, and saw he watched them all with the blank, shuttered expression he used when he was thinking deeply.

“You have some explaining to do, boy.”

The lad’s face paled despite the heat of the fire. “Sir, I know it, but I beg of you, let my brother go. He weren’t part of it.”

“I don’t think he would go, even if I gave him the choice,” Parker said, and the younger boy shook his head. “Let’s start with your names then.”

With a sigh of capitulation, and a last frustrated look at his younger sibling, the lad rubbed his face with his hand. “I’m Peter Jack, sir, and my brother’s Eric.”

“Well then, Peter Jack. What have you against my lady that you wish her harm?”

Startled, Susanna jerked her gaze to Parker’s face. His lady? Peter Jack stood straight and turned to her. “You did me no
wrong, m’lady. I was paid to attack you. But my heart weren’t in it.” He seemed ashamed he was not yet a hardened criminal.

“You can rest assured that the only reason you are standing here with breath in your body is your reluctance for the work, Peter Jack.” Parker crossed his hands over his chest. “Else I’d have done more with my sword than flick that knife into the river.”

Knowing what he could have done, believing absolutely that Parker would have killed him had he thought Peter Jack had the nerve to follow through, brought home to her how dangerous Parker was. He was as cold-blooded as he needed to be.

Peter Jack seemed to realize it too, and he swallowed and stared hard at his bare feet. Eric reached across and took his arm, as if to confirm that his brother was beside him, alive and well.

Parker moved forward and both boys flinched, but he only eased himself into the chair set at an angle to Susanna’s, facing the fire. “So who paid you?”