The Vagabond Duchess

‘Are you a soldier?’ she asked.

‘A soldier?’ He quirked an eyebrow at her. ‘No. The only cause I’ve ever fought for is my own.’

One of the men in the crowd laughed. ‘Jack Bow’s a soldier of fortune, lass. He goes a-venturing with his sword and his lute. He’s got a host of tales to tell about the far-off lands he’s visited.’

‘Oh.’ Temperance’s gaze focussed on the musician’s hands as she considered that unsettling information. It sounded as if he was a mercenary. He’d saved her from Tredgold when there were witnesses to applaud his actions, but was it wise to be alone with such a man in the dark city streets?

‘I’m afraid there are no interesting adventures to be had in Cheapside,’ she said, making a final, half-hearted attempt to dissuade him from escorting her. ‘You will be very bored, sir.’

‘The man hasn’t been born who could be bored in your company, sweetheart,’ he replied, shrugging into a plain olive-green coat. He slung his lute case over his back and grinned at her dumbfounded expression. ‘Let’s go.’

Temperance followed him out of the tavern. ‘I am not your sweetheart!’ she said as soon as the door closed behind them.

‘So where is your man?’ asked Jack Bow. ‘The one with the right to call you sweetheart?’

‘There isn’t one,’ said Temperance. Her public status as a virtuous spinster was essential to her continuing right to trade in the City as a member of the Drapers’ Company. It didn’t occur to her until too late that she should have been more circumspect with this stranger.

‘Why not?’ he asked.

‘Why…? That’s none of your business.’ She strode off down the road.

‘Such a pretty, hot-blooded wench must have suitors queuing at your door,’ he said, falling into step beside her. ‘Do you beat them off with that stick?’

‘Just because you helped me doesn’t give you the right to make fun of me!’ Temperance exclaimed. ‘Go away and vex someone else.’

‘Oh, sweetheart, the night’s young—and I haven’t finished vexing you yet,’ he replied. ‘You do respond so charmingly.’

‘What?’ She blinked at him in the darkness. ‘You are a cocksure knave. I don’t believe anyone who speaks so brazenly can possess a scrap of delicacy or proper modesty.’

He laughed.

Temperance walked faster.

‘What of father or brothers?’ he asked, easily keeping pace with her. ‘Why did they send you to answer Tredgold’s summons?’

To her surprise she detected an undercurrent of disapproval in his voice.

‘Surely a man of your ilk would have no qualms about sending a woman to the Dog and Bone?’ Temperance said, dodging his question. ‘It ill behoves you to criticise others.’

‘A man of my ilk…?’ he mused. ‘What a pretty picture you have of me. Are your menfolk sick or just lazy?’

‘Isaac is sick,’ said Temperance, uncertain what to make of his persistence. ‘Otherwise he would have come with me.’

‘And Isaac is?’

‘My apprentice.’

‘Your apprentice?’ he repeated. ‘You are the mistress?’ He laughed softly. ‘No wonder you did not take kindly to Tredgold’s insolence.’

‘It is my draper’s shop,’ Temperance said proudly. ‘I am my father’s only surviving child. I inherited it from him and I manage it in every particular. I do it very well.’ She refused to let her voice falter as she made the last statement. There were many things in her life she couldn’t claim, including a queue of suitors calling her sweet names, but she had worked hard to learn her father’s business. ‘I have no wish to marry and be ruled by a man.’

‘But you could continue to do business as a feme sole, could you not? As long as your husband had his own trade and took no part in yours?’

‘In certain circumstances. But if my husband wasn’t a freeman of the City I might lose the right to trade completely.’ Temperance paused, surprised by Jack Bow’s knowledge of City practices.

‘How do you know that?’ she demanded.

She sensed, rather than saw, his shrug. ‘My great-grandfather was a grocer,’ he replied. ‘I know a little about the customs of the City.’

‘A grocer! Why didn’t you follow in his footsteps? If you didn’t care to be a grocer, there are many trades in which a strong, quick-witted man can prosper.’

‘He died before I was born,’ Jack explained. ‘I followed in my father’s footsteps.’

‘And he was a rootless vagabond.’

Silence followed her hasty retort. As it lengthened she wished her words back. She hadn’t meant to insult a man she knew nothing about. There was something about Jack Bow that prompted her to speak far too recklessly.

‘I’m sorry—’ she began, wanting to apologise for her slight to his father, though she had no intention of softening her manner to Jack himself.

‘Uprooted,’ he said at the same instant. ‘Uprooted, not rootless. He knew where he came from. He was thwarted in his efforts to return there.’

‘I do not know him. I should not have said such a terrible thing,’ Temperance said.

‘Why not?’ said Jack. ‘It was me you were describing, not my father, after all.’

‘Well…’ Temperance swallowed. She could sense the change in Jack’s mood. For the first time humour was absent from his voice. He spoke quietly, with perhaps a hint of fatalism in his manner.

‘Where do you come from?’ she asked. The simple question took more courage than she’d anticipated.

‘Most recently from Venice—by way of Ostend and Dover,’ he replied. ‘I must have lost my comb along the way.’

‘Venice! Truly?’

‘Very truly,’ he said. ‘The biggest wild goose chase I’ve ever taken part in. I might as well have stayed in London and lined my barber’s pockets for all the good I achieved. What’s your name?’

‘Temperance,’ she began, disconcerted by the sudden question. ‘Temperance—’

‘Temperance?’ He started to laugh. ‘You were misnamed, sweetheart. Restraint of any kind seems to be completely alien to your character. Tempest would be far more apt.’

Chapter Two

Saturday 1 September 1666

I t was a warm, sunny afternoon as Jack strolled through the City. The wooden shutters of all the shops were opened for business. It was fortunate Cheapside was such a broad thoroughfare because in some cases the lower boards projected as much as two and half feet beyond the shop front. The upper shutters were raised to provide a modicum of protection for the goods displayed on the lower board. Shopkeepers stood or sat in their doorways to guard their goods and attract the attention of potential customers. Often it was women who occupied the carved seats in front of the shops. Cheapside was one of the fashionable meeting places in the City. It had become famous for the pretty tradesmen’s wives who bantered with the men-about-town sauntering past. More trestles and stalls were set up in the street itself, though hundreds of other sellers sold their wares from nothing more than a sack or a basket on the ground.

Jack was in no hurry. He paused to exchange compliments with the blue-eyed wife of a goldsmith, then strolled on a few more yards. He was taller than most of those around him, and an instant later he was grateful for the advantage it gave him. Coming towards him was the last man he wanted to meet in London or anywhere else. He ducked into the nearest shop, which happened to be a mercer’s, and watched the Earl of Windle walk past the door and on towards St Paul’s. He hadn’t seen or spoken to Windle since their encounter at Court six months ago. As far as Jack was concerned, the longer their next meeting was delayed the better.

He left the mercers and continued along Cheapside, his blood quickening in anticipation as he approached Temperance’s shop. He’d enjoyed his encounter with the hot-tempered draper the previous night. They were well matched in several pleasurable ways. For once he was in no danger of getting a crick in his neck when he talked to a woman. She wasn’t a classic beauty, but he’d felt the pull of attraction to her from the moment he saw her in the taproom. It had been impossible to miss her in the crowd. Her personality was so vivid that, even when she was standing quite still, her thoughts and emotions had been easy to read.