The Marsh King's Daughter (30 page)

The landlord at The Angel knew Miriel. He had bought fabric from her family's workshop since the days of her grandfather's rule. Today he was wearing a handsome tunic of her famous Lincoln weave. 'Mistress,' he greeted her, 'what can I do for you?'

Miriel licked her lips and glanced around. It was never too early in the morning for customers at The Angel, and already two carters and an off-duty gate guard sat in conversation at one of the trestles.

'I understand that you have a sea-captain staying here, a Nicholas de Caen?'

The landlord's small eyes brightened in amusement. 'You would be understanding aright, Mistress Willoughby.' He leaned one forearm on a wine barrel; the other clutched a cloth at his hip.

'He dined at our house last night,' Miriel said with cold authority, although inside she was quivering like a marrow jelly. 'I have a message for him from my husband. Unfortunately he has business elsewhere this morn and cannot deliver it himself. I need to catch Master de Caen before he leaves.'

'Of course, mistress.' Not by so much as the flicker of an eyelid did he reveal whether he believed her or not. Miriel knew that the presence of a maid would have given her story more credibility, but she could hardly say what she wanted to Nicholas with Elfwen in tow.

The amusement deepened in the man's eyes. 'You will be pleased to know he has not yet departed. He rented the upper chamber for the duration of his stay. You go out the back and up the stairs on the right.' He nodded pleasantly toward the passageway.

Miriel swallowed the urge to stutter out further justification and excuses. 'Thank you,' she said curtly, and walked from the landlord's sight with a brisk confidence she was far from feeling. On the stairs to the sleeping chamber, her nerve failed and she hesitated. Why had she come? What was she going to say? How would Nicholas react? Jesu, this was folly. She tried to turn around, but her feet would not obey her will.

In her arms, Will whined and tried to lick her chin. She put him down, hoping that he would scamper down the stairs and give her the impetus to chase him. Instead, he ran up them, leaping mightily at each step until he stood outside the closed bedchamber door. Standing on his little hind legs, he scrabbled at the heavy wood.

Miriel swallowed, drew a deep breath and followed him. Clenching her knuckles, she rapped on the door and sealed her fate.

A woman's voice called to her to enter. A woman? With tremendous misgiving, Miriel set her hand to the latch and clicked open the door.

There were several beds in the room, but only the one near the shutters was occupied. A woman with creamy skin and sleep-tousled red hair leaned against a pile of bolsters, the sheets drawn up to her breasts.

Will darted past Miriel and leaped on to the bed, his tail wagging furiously. The red-haired occupant laughed with surprise and fussed his silky ears. Mortified, Miriel hastened after her wayward dog.

'I'm sorry to disturb your slumber,' she said. 'I was looking for another guest and the landlord directed me here.' She made a grab for Will, but he jumped off the bed and ran round, exploring the room.

The woman fixed Miriel with smiling eyes of woodsmoke-blue. 'No harm done, I was preparing to rise anyway.' Her

voice had a husky undertone quite in keeping with the languorous aspect of her body. 'My employer has twice called me a slug-abed already.' Completely without modesty, she threw back the sheets and went to a pile of clothes draped across a coffer. Her curves were ripe, with a slight roll of flesh on her belly, offset by perfect, slender legs and good height. She donned an undershift that Miriel's experienced eye appreciated as expensive cotton, threaded with green silk ribbon. 'I adore little dogs like that.' Her gaze followed Will as he snuffled round the other beds. 'I've been promised one as a gift myself.' She eased a comb through the tangles in her thick, silky hair. 'Whom were you seeking?'

Miriel cleared her throat. It had been a mistake to come here; she knew it for certain now. 'A ship's master, Nicholas de Caen. He had business with my husband last night.'

'Ah.' The woodsmoke eyes tensed slightly and the good humour was suddenly overlaid by caution.

'You know him?'

The woman's hair crackled with life, rising from her scalp in sparkling coppery filaments. 'He is my employer,' she said, and although her tone was casual, it still managed to convey a note of challenge.

Miriel stared. It did not take a half-wit to fit the pieces together. The word 'whore' came first to mind, and with it a sting of anger. But a less reactionary part of Miriel's mind asked who was she to judge, and what business was it of hers? The woman had done her no harm. Now she knew why the landlord had been smiling as he directed her upstairs. 'Then do you know where I can find him?'

'He went down to the stables, but he should be back at any moment to see if I'm ready for the road.' She donned a gown of fine green linen, and topped it with an overdress of tabby-woven amber silk, becoming the image of a prosperous, respectable noble lady.

'Do you travel with him everywhere?' Miriel was driven to enquire despite herself.

'I keep him company when he asks.' The woman gave her a feline smile, sleepy and knowing. 'Men who sail the seas are a law unto themselves. Sometimes I do not see him for months on end, but that makes the reunions even sweeter.'

Miriel reddened. She could not bear thinking about a reunion with Robert after months on end. Jesu, his lust would be the death of her. 'In the stables, you said?' Miriel turned towards the door. She did not want to encounter Nicholas beneath the curious, knowing eyes of his casual mistress.

The redhead gestured. 'He will not be long if you want to wait, or you can leave a message with me.'

'Neither,' Miriel said with an inward grimace at such a thought. 'I'll go and find him myself.'

'As you wish.' With a shrug, the woman began braiding her hair into a thick, shining plait. Miriel had always been vain of her own honey-gold tresses, but they were no match for this whore's glorious mane. Disturbed and a trifle piqued, she grabbed Will and departed, leaving, had she but known it, very similar emotions simmering in Magdalene's breast.

It was a small mercy that Miriel did not have to walk back through the tap room and face the landlord's broad grin. The stables lay behind the inn within a stockade of various outbuildings and a small byre. Two horses and a pack pony were tethered outside the stalls, and a groom was busy with harness and tack. Nicholas was leaning against the daub and wattle wall, his arms folded as he talked to the man. Yet again, Miriel had to fight the urge to turn and flee. It was too late, she told herself, the wheels were turning too fast to be halted.

Nicholas raised his head and, glancing across the yard, caught her approach. The expression of casual ease departed his face to leave it taut as a wooden mask. He unfolded his arms and pushed himself off the wall. With a murmur to the groom, he walked to meet her.

'You are abroad early, Mistress Willoughby,' he said with a polite bow, made cutting to Miriel by the fact that she knew it was sarcastic. 'You have some urgent business perchance?'

'You know my business full well,' Miriel snapped. 'This matter between us has to be resolved.'

In her arms, Will wriggled and yapped excitedly. Nicholas fondled his silky ears and looked at Miriel with a gaze as cold as the North Sea. 'That is easily done,' he said softly. 'Give to me what is mine.'

Miriel's chin jerked. 'It isn't yours.'

'I damned near died to get it.'

'And if you are standing here now in your fine clothes with merchant ships to your name and a whore you can afford to clothe in silk for your company, then it is because I saved your life!' she hissed.

His complexion darkened. Will growled and bared his teeth. Nicholas looked down at the little dog and carefully removed his hand. He sucked a deep breath into his lungs and let it out slowly. His colour improved. 'When you argue,' he said, 'you go straight for the throat without seeking alternatives. Have you ever apologised to anyone in your life?'

'When apology is due.' Miriel stood her ground, her spine as rigid as an iron rod. She was not going to let him belittle or patronise her. She kicked her toe in the dust. 'I came to find common ground, not a battlefield. If that is going "straight for the throat" then you have some strange notions.'

He shook his head. 'Perhaps I have a different idea of what is common ground and what is a battlefield.'

'Nick!' A woman's voice floated across the courtyard. 'I'm ready, Nick.'

Miriel turned and saw the whore advancing on them, her head decently covered now in a wimple of cream silk, but her braids snaking to her waist and cross-gartered with green silk ribbons like the one adorning her shift. The cut of the silk overgown flattered her curves, and male heads swivelled at stockade and byre as she walked past.

'I see you found him,' she addressed Miriel warmly as she arrived. A possessive arm linked through Nicholas's, the fingers long, slim and finished with manicured half-moon talons.

'Thank you, yes,' Miriel replied tersely.

Nicholas's eyelids tightened. Excusing himself, he drew the woman to one side and murmured in her ear. Miriel saw him fish in his pouch and heard the musical clink of silver pennies. The woman shook her head at first, but then, with an exaggerated shrug of her shoulders and a heavy pout to her lower lip, took the coins. He kissed her cheek. 'I'll meet you back here at the prime bell,' he said.

'You hope.' She gave him a look through her lashes, deliberately ran her hand over his crotch for Miriel's benefit, and strolled away in the direction of the main thoroughfare.

Miriel drew breath, but Nicholas pre-empted her with a hand raised in warning. 'I will not hear a word said against Magdalene. She has never done another soul harm in her life, and while she likes the colour of money, her heart is as deep as her purse. I asked her to come with me to Lincoln, not the other way around.'

'What she is to you is your own concern,' Miriel answered frostily. She was a little irritated at having the jibe she had been about to make silenced. And his words had made her feel mean-spirited too.

'Then on that at least we have an understanding. Come,' he added, with a glance over his shoulder at the groom who was going diligently about his tasks with his ears obviously as wide as trumpets. 'I'll take you to see my new barges. That way, it will seem as if we are discussing the shipping business and there will be no cause for eyebrows to be raised any higher.'

Miriel could see the sense in this. Besides, if they were walking along, there was small chance of anyone hearing enough of a conversation to make matters awkward.

Side by side, but a decorous distance apart, they set off.

'Where is your husband?' Nicholas asked as they descended the hill and headed towards the river. 'Out of the way, I assume, or you would not have come seeking me quite so boldly.'

'Robert is out negotiating wool contracts, but he does not expect me to stay by the hearth minding my distaff in his absence. I would not have married him if that were the case.'

'So why did you?'

Miriel glanced at him and saw that he was as much curious as hostile. 'We had much in common,' she replied with a shrug. She was not going to admit that she had been vulnerable, that the strength of Robert's personality, his solid, mercantile bulk, had been somewhere to hide while she licked her wounds and prepared afresh for battle. That his vigour was both compelling and comforting. . . and sometimes filled her with fear.

'So he lets you have your way.'

Miriel gave an irritated cluck. 'As much as I let him have his,' she said crossly. 'I am his equal, his partner in trade.' She saw the sceptical set of his brows and had a powerful urge to kick him in the shins. 'Whatever you might think,' she added.

'I know your capabilities,' he said ambiguously.

They crossed the main thoroughfares and headed towards the river on the south side of the city. Clouds scudded across the sky, herded by a brisk wind with a sharpening of cold.

'Does he know anything of your past?'

Miriel peeled her billowing wimple off her face to look at Nicholas. 'Is that a threat?'

His eyebrows knotted in a scowl. 'Why must you take my every word as a threat or put-down?' he demanded. 'We have an opportunity to talk, and all you are doing is wasting it.'

Miriel flushed. He was right, but she was not going to admit it. If she was being awkward, it was out of guilt and defensiveness. Nicholas had not been far off the mark with his observation that she had never apologised to anyone in her life.

'He knows that I quarrelled with my family and that I ran away,' she said grudgingly, 'but not that I was shut away in a convent, and obviously he does not know about you.'

'Or the treasure.'

'No, of course not. No one knows about that.' She nodded a greeting to an acquaintance. A tilt of the head, a smile, gave the illusion that everything was as it should be.

'If I had caught you on the day you ran off with it, I would have killed you,' he murmured, inclining his head too for the sake of courtesy. 'You at least owe me a reason for what you did. I would have given you a fair share.'

'Including the Empress's crown?'