Knight of Passion (38 page)

Jamie grabbed the back of her neck and pushed her hard to the floor. She fell flat on her stomach. The black-handled knife
was before her face, where it had fallen when the table crashed. She moved on instinct. The knife was in her hand as she surged
to her knees with her arm outstretched.

She fell backward from the impact as her blade met Pomeroy’s belly. Pomeroy swayed above her, his face ashen and blood seeping
from between his lips.

Reaching his bloody hand out to her, he whispered, “You were… meant… to be… my goddess…”

As she watched, the life left his eyes. Then his body spun sideways and fell with a thump on the ground beside her.

A second blade was in his chest.

“I had him,” Jamie shouted as he hauled her to her feet. “By all the saints, Linnet, what were you doing?”

She swallowed back the tears that suddenly choked her. In a high voice that shook, she said, “I was trying to save you.”

Jamie wrapped his cloak more tightly around her and pulled her against him. How close he had been to losing her. He breathed
in the smell of her hair and closed his eyes.

She was trying to save him.
What was he to do with a woman who would act like that? A woman who would throw herself in the way of danger for him without
a second thought?

He would love her forever. That was what he would do.

L
innet rested her head on the edge of the wooden tub as Jamie sat behind her, running an ivory comb through her hair. After
an hour of soaking, the smell of her captivity was gone from her skin, and she felt almost clean.

“You make a fine lady’s maid,” she said without opening her eyes.

Jamie stopped combing her hair to pour a fresh bucket of steaming water into the tub, then moved his stool to the other end
of the tub and began kneading her foot.

“That feels heavenly,” she murmured.

The hot water and Jamie’s ministrations were the perfect antidote to her ordeal with Pomeroy and the witches.

“ ’Tis almost dawn,” he said. “We should get you to bed.”

Linnet had insisted on waiting at Westminster while Jamie took some of Edmund Beaufort’s men to track down Alderman Arnold
and Margery Jourdemayne. After finding them, he had awakened the mayor to have them arrested.

“We shall have to testify against them,” Jamie said in a quiet voice. “The mayor assured me, however, that it will
not be a public trial. Everyone—the mayor, Gloucester, the Beauforts—has an interest in keeping this quiet.”

Jamie took her hand, encompassing it in the warmth and strength of his own.

“I should have helped you set things right before.” Jamie looked away, clenching his jaw, then brought his gaze back to her.
“I will do whatever you ask to remedy it now.”

“What could I have you do?” She gave him a soft smile. “Take away Lily and Rose’s house? Ruin Mistress Leggett’s trade? Malign
the good mayor’s character? They are innocents. Even if they profited from the wrong, it would give me no satisfaction to
punish them.”

Jamie pressed his lips together and nodded. “Brokely is dying, so we shall have to leave him to make his accounting to God.
The mayor, however, has offered to make whatever compensation you think just for what his father-in-law did.”

Linnet shook her head. “There is nothing I want from the mayor.”

She thought of how her enemies had joined forces against her and covered her face with her hands. “How did Brokely and Pomeroy
find each other?”

Jamie gently pulled one hand free and pressed a kiss to her palm. “Most likely it was the alderman, as he was both a member
of the coven and party to the merchant conspiracy.” He paused, then said, “Yet I suspect Eleanor Cobham played some part in
bringing them together. She knew Pomeroy through Gloucester, and she is closely tied to Margery Jourdemayne.”

“I cannot prove it, but I believe Eleanor and that priest of hers are involved with this sorcery,” Linnet said, and
then she told him about Father Hume’s warning to leave for France. “Eleanor must have disagreed with Pomeroy’s plan to kidnap
me out of fear it would go wrong and expose her.”

Jamie poured another bucket of steaming water into the tub and began to rub her calf.

“What will happen to the alderman and Margery?” she asked.

“They and the others who are caught will be held in royal custody at Windsor,” he said. “It does not seem near enough.”

“I hope you do not feel you must gouge out the alderman’s eyes and slit his throat,” she said, attempting a smile. “He is
too pathetic to be worth the trouble.”

“I would do it if it would help you forget what happened tonight,” he said. “I would kill them all for you.”

“I’ve wasted too many years seeking revenge,” she said. “Vengeance will not satisfy me.”

“What then?” he asked, brushing his knuckles against her cheek. “Whatever it is, I will do it.”

“If I promise to be a staid wife who never causes you trouble or worry, will you marry me?”

He shook his head. “The only woman I shall marry is the wild and troublesome one I’ve loved since she was a girl.”

She got up on her knees and embraced him, soaking his shirt. She tasted the salt of her tears in the water that dripped down
her face.

“I shall try not to vex you so much in the future,” she said into his neck.

“My family will be gravely disappointed if you do
not,” he said. “They fear that without you to prod me, I am bound to grow dull and tedious.”

“You shall never be that,” she said.

“Since I don’t expect you to change…” He leaned back and pulled a pendant on a silver chain from the pouch at his belt. “I
want you to wear this again. I’ve mended the chain.”

She swallowed against the well of emotion that closed her throat and made her eyes sting. It was the medal of Saint George
he had given her before.

“I found it on the ground near Saint Stephen’s Chapel,” he said as he slipped it over her head. “An angel must have guided
my footsteps.”

Jamie always had the angels on his side.

“After we go to Hertford and see Owen and Queen Katherine married, I’d like to take you to Northumberland to meet my new uncle
and his wife. If you like Northumberland, we will make our home there.”

“Wherever you are shall be my home.”

Jamie wrapped a towel around her and rested his hands on her shoulders. “I will stand between you and any threat of harm,
and I shall be at your side in times of joy and sorrow.”

She felt the warmth of his breath on her cheek as he kissed her. “Now ’tis time for you to rest.”

Linnet wiped her teary face on the towel. “You asked what you could do to make me forget what happened.”

“Anything.”

“Then take me to bed,” she said. “Give me a child.” He made love to her slowly, with a tenderness he had not shown her since
their days in Paris. With every touch, he made her feel she was precious to him. There
would always be times when their passion would run hot and urgent, but this sweet tenderness was what she needed now.

Afterward, she lay in the arms of the man who would be her ballast in stormy seas and her shelter in times of trouble.

“Tell me a tale of one of your victories,” she murmured against his chest.

As Jamie told his tale, she imagined him in his graceful warrior’s dance, swinging high and low with his sword, the strongest
and most handsome knight on the field.

Dawn was bright in the window as she drifted off to sleep, her heart at peace at last.

Northumberland

1431

W
hen Jamie crested the hill and saw the square keep that once belonged to Charles Wheaton, contentment spread through him like
warm honey. Tenants working in a distant field waved a welcome to their lord returned from France.

“A new babe, I see,” he said to a young mother who smiled and bowed to him as he passed her cottage.

Jamie took in the fresh whitewash and new thatch. He had married an industrious merchant wife, and their estates prospered.
Of course, he would have to spend the next fortnight calming his tenants. While they were fond of his wife, they did not always
take well to her attempts to change how they did their work. If their fathers had done something a certain way, that was good
enough for them—but not for Linnet.

Linnet must have had the men watching for him, for she and the children were waiting at the gate to meet him. As always, his
breath caught at the sight of her. Sometimes
he still could not believe his good fortune. To him, she seemed more beautiful each time he returned home.

As soon as he dismounted, she flew into his arms. He held her against him and, for the moment, ignored the little hands that
pulled at his leggings.

“I am home for good,” he said next to her ear. “I shan’t go to France again.”

He turned and rubbed his son’s head. “Have you been taking good care of the womenfolk, John Alan?”

John Alan nodded with such a weary expression on his four-year-old face that Jamie had to laugh.

When his daughter Annie held her arms out for him to carry her, something inside him shifted. With her mother’s fair looks
and headstrong nature, this one was bound to cause a father heartache. Annie shrieked with pleasure as he lifted her onto
his shoulders.

“Francois and Rose are well and send their love,” Jamie said as the four of them headed to the keep. “They will visit in the
autumn and may stay in England through the winter. Things are… difficult in France. This business with Joan of Arc has left
a sour taste in all our mouths.”

The young woman’s courage and single-minded determination reminded Jamie too much of his wife for him not to admire her.

“You have news from London as well?” Linnet asked. “Aye. The new Duchess of Gloucester is increasingly unpopular. ’Twas foolish
of Gloucester to marry Eleanor, for she makes enemies at every turn.”

Jamie only wished he had found proof of Eleanor’s connection to the sorcerers.

Linnet patted his arm. “Eleanor will pay the piper one day.”

They entered the hall, where a large cup of ale and a platter of cold meats and warm bread waited for him on the table. He
made quick work of the meal, despite having a wiggling child on each knee.

When he finished, he kissed his children and set them on their feet. “I have new stories for you, but I must talk alone with
your mother now.”

After their nursemaid had taken the children out, he set a packet of letters on the table. “Mistress Leggett sent these and
said business is going well.”

Mistress Leggett and her sons handled the day-today business of Linnet’s trade. While Linnet still visited London once or
twice a year, she seemed more interested these days in managing the castle’s large household and estates.

“And how is Lily?” Linnet smiled as she asked, for Lily was a favorite.

“Poor Martin! Somehow, she got him to agree to bring her here after he visits his mother. He can face any man in combat, but
he has yet to learn how to say nay to a female. If my sisters come as well, he’ll have no peace at all.”

“Poor Martin, indeed.” Linnet did not sound sympathetic.

“Lily says she wants to gather a special healing herb that grows north of here,” he said.

Lily had surprised them all by apprenticing herself to the old herbalist.

“I do hope they all come,” Linnet said, her face shining. After growing up with just her brother and grandfather, Linnet loved
having extended family and friends about her.

“Did you hear any whispers in London about the queen
and Owen?” Linnet asked. When he shook his head, she laughed. “Surely, the Council must know about them by now? When last
we visited, she was enormous with their second child.”

“Humphrey and the Council either do not know or choose to pretend they do not,” he said. “Either way, let us pray they continue
to ignore them.”

Linnet put her hand over his on the table. “Shall I send word to Stephen and Isobel that you are home?”

There was only one thing Jamie liked better than to sit and talk with his wife. He leaned forward to smell her skin and whisper
in her ear. “Let me have you to myself for a time. I want to spend a week in bed with you.”

“I hoped you would say that,” she said in a husky voice. “I missed my passionate knight.”

“Come, love,” he said, pulling her to her feet. “I have been away far too long.”

Henry V’s widow, the French princess Katherine de Valois, had four or five children with Owen Tudor, her clerk of the wardrobe.
Six hundred years later, many facts about their relationship are not clear—if they ever were. One story commonly told about
them is that the queen fell for Owen after seeing him bathing naked. Another is that Owen caused a stir at court by falling
into her lap while dancing.

It is generally believed that Owen and the queen secretly married, though there is no record of it. I consolidated events
a bit and set their marriage in 1426, when it probably took place closer to 1429.

Prior to her relationship with Owen, the queen was rumored to have had a flirtation with Edmund Beaufort. This is probably
what prompted Gloucester, the young king’s uncle, to persuade Parliament to prohibit the queen from marrying without permission.

Despite the law, the queen and Owen lived in seclusion with their growing family at Hertford for several years. Their quiet
life came to an end in 1436 when Owen was imprisoned on a charge of treason, probably at Gloucester’s
instigation. Queen Katherine “retired” to Bermondsey Abbey, where she died after giving birth to their fourth or fifth child.
Some say she died of heartbreak.

The queen’s death marked a turning point in Gloucester’s influence over the king. Henry VI, now fifteen, ordered Owen released
and elevated his Tudor half brothers, Edmund and Jasper, to earls. Owen lived until 1461, when he was executed as a Lancaster
supporter in the War of the Roses.

Owen and Katherine’s eldest son, Edmund Tudor, married Edmund Beaufort’s cousin Margaret. Margaret was already widowed when
she gave birth—at the age of thirteen—to their son Henry. It was this child, the grandson of Henry V’s widow and her clerk
of the wardrobe, who would later usurp the throne to become Henry VII and begin the Tudor dynasty.