The Widow's Kiss (39 page)

JANE FEATHER is the
New York Times
bestselling, award-winning author of
The Least Likely Bride, The Accidental Bride, The Hostage Bride, A Valentine Wedding, The Emerald Swan, and
many other historical romances. She was born in Cairo, Egypt, and grew up in the New Forest, in the south of England. She began her writing career after she and her family moved to Washington, D.C., in 1981. She now has over six million copies of her books in print.

Jane Feather's “Kiss” trilogy continues with

TO KISS A SPY

A Bantam paperback

Read on for a preview of Pen's story….

High Wycombe, England, July 1550

T
he attenuated cry of an infant pierced the black miasma of exhaustion. The woman on the bed was slumped motionless against pillows, her eyes closed, her skin the color of old parchment. At the baby's cry her eyelids fluttered but didn’t open and she sank once more into the merciful oblivion.

Not one of the three other women in the stifling chamber glanced toward the bed. The baby's mother didn’t interest them. They worked quickly and in silence and when they had done what had to be done they left the chamber soundlessly, closing the door behind them.

More than three hours passed before Pen emerged from her deep stupor. She was soaked in sweat. The room was like a furnace, the windows tight closed, the fire blazing in the deep hearth. She heard whispers and with a soft moan tried to raise herself on the pillows, but her body ached as if she’d been racked, and she had barely sufficient strength to open her eyes.

“Ah, you are awake.” It was the voice of her mother-in-law. Effortfully Pen opened her eyes. The dowager countess of Bryanston looked down at her daughter-in-law. Her hard brown eyes were dispassionate as stones, her mouth a thin line above a heavy jutting chin. She made no attempt to disguise her contemptuous dislike of the frail young woman on the bed. The young woman who was the widow of Lady Bryanston's elder son. The widow who had just labored for some twenty anguished hours to bring forth her husband's posthumous son, who from the moment of his birth would inherit his father's titles and estates.

“The baby,” Pen said, her voice coming from a great distance through her cracked lips. “Where is my baby?”

Lady Bryanston said nothing for a moment, and there was a rustle of skirts as another woman joined her at the bedside.

Frightened now, Pen gazed up at the two faces bent over her. Her heart felt squeezed. “My baby? Where's my baby?” Panic rose in her voice.

“He was stillborn,” Lady Bryanston said without expression. “He was born early, four weeks too soon. He did not live.”

“But … but I heard him cry,” Pen said. “I
heard
him.”

Her mother-in-law shook her head. “You were unconscious when we pulled him from you with the forceps. You heard nothing unless ’twas in your dreams.” She turned from the bed with a dismissive gesture and left the chamber.

Pen closed her eyes on the tears that filled them, on the despairing weakness that swamped her anew. Since Philip's death she had lived for the child growing in her womb. Philip's child, the child of their love.

“Let me make you more comfortable, madam.” A brisk voice accompanied firm hands, and Pen kept her eyes shut as the woman cleansed her, changed her smock, pulled from beneath her the wadded sheets that had protected the feather mattress.

Pen wanted her mother. It was a childlike want, an all-consuming need. Her mother was on her way, making the long journey into High Wycombe from Mallory Hall in Derbyshire to be at her daughter's confinement, but the baby had come early and the countess of Kendal had not yet arrived. Instead, Pen had endured the cold ministrations of her mother-in-law, and the women, all strangers, that Lady Bryanston had appointed to assist at the birth.

And it had all been for nothing. Those dreadful hours had been for nothing.

But she
had
heard the baby cry. The baby had entered the world alive.

Pen opened her eyes and fixed her attendant with a clear and commanding eye. “I wish to see my son's body,” she stated, pushing aside the cup of warmed wine the woman held to her lips.

“Madam, he was buried immediately,” the woman said. “In this heat, it's not wise to keep a body unburied.” She hurried to the window and drew back the heavy velvet curtains. The pitiless midday sun poured into the already sweltering chamber.

Pen had endured the last weeks of her pregnancy through one of the hottest summers in memory. Bodies did not remain unburied. Pen slipped down in the bed and closed her eyes again. She opened them immediately at the sound of the door latch lifting followed by a heavy tread approaching the bed.

Miles Bryanston, her husband's younger brother, stood beside the bed. His eyes—malicious, brown, cold—so like his mother's, regarded her with a degree of complacency. “Sister, I’m sorry you have had such ill luck,” he declared.

“ ’Tis an ill wind that blows nobody any good,” Pen returned with a cynical smile that despite her weakness came easily. Miles was now the earl of Bryanston. Red-faced, heavily built, thick-witted, strong as an ox, the absolute antithesis of his elder brother. Philip had been thin and quick, but physically frail. A dreamer, a poet, a musician. Everything his brother was not.

And Pen had loved him.

She turned her head aside, away from her brother-in-law's smug countenance.

She
had
heard her baby cry. She
had.

London, December 1552

W
hat I propose is a matter of some refinement, my dear sir. A scheme of some complexity.” Antoine de Noailles paused to lift a silver chalice to his lips. He drank with an assessing frown, then nodded his satisfaction and gestured to his companion that he drink from his own chalice. He waited to see if the wine found favor with his guest before he continued speaking. “Yes, a complex scheme, a two-pronged scheme. Very neat.” Noailles smiled happily. “One perfectly suited to your own particularly delicate methods, Owen.”

Owen d’Arcy contented himself with a raised eyebrow. Antoine de Noailles, the French ambassador to the English court of the young king Edward VI, delighted in taking his time when revealing to his master spy an intrigue that he considered especially ingenious.

Owen d’Arcy was a tall man, lithe and slender, and when necessary as deadly as the rapier in the chased silver scabbard at his waist. His black eyes were never still, they missed nothing, and the fertile brain behind them ceaselessly absorbed, sorted, and acted upon the information they transmitted. He knew now without being told that the ambassador was about to drop a choice plum in his lap. So he sipped his wine and waited.

“I believe that the king is dying,” Noailles said calmly. “His Privy Council thinks to keep the true state of the young man's health a state secret, but …” He shrugged and smiled at this absurdity. “The issue, of course, is what happens on the boy's death.”

“The crown goes to Mary,” Owen said, his voice surprisingly dark and rich with a musical lilt to it.

“It certainly
should,”
the ambassador agreed. “King Henry so decreed it. After Edward, if the boy has no issue, Mary is next in line, Elizabeth is second.” He paused and again Owen waited with no sign of impatience.

“I fear, however, that our friend Northumberland, the Grand Master of the realm, has some other plans,” the ambassador said in musing tone.

The two men were standing before the fire in a small paneled chamber in the ambassador's residence at Whitehall. Outside the clerestory window snow was falling softly, dulling the ceaseless sound of traffic along Whitehall, the clop of hooves, the clang of iron wheels on the cobbles, the shouts of barrow boys.

The chamber was lit only by the fire and a many-branched candelabrum on the long table that stood against the wall opposite the window. In the shadowy gloom the ambassador's scarlet gown glowed in vivid contrast to his companion's black velvet, and when he moved his plump hands the firelight caught the jeweled rings on his fingers in flashes of green and red and turquoise.

Owen left the fire and refilled his chalice from the flagon on the table. “Do we know what Northumberland is planning?”

Noailles extended his own chalice to be filled. “That, my dear Owen, brings us to the crux of the matter.”

“Ah.” Owen tipped the flagon and watched the red stream of wine arc into the silver vessel. “This is where I come in?”

“Precisely.” Noailles turned back to the fire. “There's a certain woman who attends Princess Mary who is particularly well-placed to provide us with the most intimate information about what goes on in the princess's household. She is a trusted confidante and a party to Mary's thoughts and intentions.”

Noailles glanced over his shoulder at Owen, who still stood beside the table in the flickering candlelight, his black eyes sharp and alert, belying the impassivity of his countenance.

“You could perhaps become … shall we say acquainted … with the lady,” Noailles suggested. “It's a task most suited to your talents, I believe.” He chuckled, his round face shining.

Owen did not respond to the ambassador's amusement. He said simply, “And the other prong to this attack?” He took a sip of wine, regarding the ambassador thoughtfully over the lip of the chalice.

Noailles beamed. “Ah, yes. Here lies the beauty of it. The lady is closely connected to a man, her stepbrother in fact, who is a trusted friend of the duke of Suffolk and his family. I hardly need tell you that Suffolk is an intimate of Northumberland's. Their interests lie closely bound, and whatever Northumberland is planning Suffolk will be a part of it. ’Tis not unreasonable to assume that Robin of Beaucaire is privy to some of their secrets.”

“And we assume that the lady in question exchanges confidences with her stepbrother,” Owen stated, setting down his chalice. He walked to the window, his short black velvet gown swinging from his shoulders.

“They are very intimate and they spend a great deal of time together when they’re both in London.”

“As happens to be the case now, I presume.” Owen looked down on the street below. The snow was falling heavily.

“Yes, both Princess Mary and Suffolk are in their London residences for the Christmas festivities. I understand that Edward ordered his sister's presence. She’ll find it hard to celebrate a Christmas mass under the king's eye.”

Owen drummed a finger on the glass. The religious differences between the fanatically Protestant King Edward and his equally fanatical Catholic half sister Mary were of little interest to him except where they impinged upon his work. He was much more concerned with the lady who was to be his quarry.

“Exactly how intimate are the lady and her stepbrother?” He turned back to his companion.

Noailles offered a very Gallic shrug. “I’ve heard no whispers of scandal, but they are
very
close. And Lord Robin at the ripe age of twenty-eight has never married.”

“And the lady. What's her situation?”

“The Lady Pen has been a widow close to three years now. Her marriage to Philip, the earl of Bryanston, was promoted by the king and Princess Mary, and to all intents and purposes seemed happy. But Philip died and she gave birth some months later to a stillborn child. Her brother-in-law inherited the earldom and is ruled, it's generally believed, by his mother. He's something of a dolt.” The ambassador's lip curled. “Like most inhabitants of this nasty island.”

Owen smiled slightly. The Frenchman was not happy in his present diplomatic position and made no secret of it to his intimates.

Noailles drank wine and then continued. “The Bryanstons have little or nothing to do with Philip's widow. She lays no claim to any part of her husband's estate. She doesn’t even take the title of dowager countess, leaving that to the sole use of her mother-in-law. ’Tis clear there's no love lost there.”

Owen nodded. He ran a hand over his clean-shaven chin. “Is the lady ripe for plucking?”

“When have you ever failed to
persuade
the fruit to fall from the tree?” Noailles smiled.

Owen did not return the smile. “In the interests of business,” he said somewhat curtly.

“Oh, of course, only in the interests of business,” the ambassador agreed hastily. Owen d’Arcy's private life was a closed book, or had been since that unfortunate business with his wife. As far as Noailles knew, the man lived the life of a monk except when seduction suited his purposes. And then he was a true artist.

“Is she pleasing, this Lady Pen?” A frown crossed Owen's black eyes. “A strange name. Is that truly how she's called?”