The Champion

She nodded, her expression still troubled, and hurried over to the window. “It is because I love you that I am worried, Thurstan,” she said as she drew the window shut.

“Do not fret, my dear Linnet. I am feeling stronger by the moment. In a few days, I will send for you.” By then, he might know who had planned this vile deed. “We will sit together in the garden.” He would extract the charter from its hiding place in the journal and make the critical changes that would shift Blackstone Heath from Jevan’s grasp into Simon’s.

Simon flung out of the bishop’s palace, barely hanging on to the temper that had plagued him all his days. He kicked stones from his path, imagining each was Bishop Thurstan.

Dieu, the man was even more of a coldhearted, unfeeling monster than Simon had remembered.

“It is because I love you that I am worried, Thurstan.” A choked female voice carried in the still air.

Simon stopped in his tracks. He turned, looked over his shoulder and scanned the bishop’s palace, four stories of impressive stonework, broken at regular intervals by small windows. A lit one on the second story was just closing. A moment’s calculation told him it was the room he had just left. The bishop’s withdrawing room.

Thurstan’s important visitor was a woman. A woman who openly professed her love for him. For an instant, Simon was sickened. Dieu, was there no limit to the man’s crimes?

What if it was his mother?

The notion hit Simon so hard he trembled. Then he crept up beneath the window and cocked his ear, but heard no more. Still shaking, he leaned against the building for support. The voice had been soft and so choked with emotion as to be ageless.

Did she live here?

On the chance that even Thurstan would not be so brazen as to keep his mistress within the cathedral, Simon ducked around the side of the building and hid in the bushes. The scent of roses from the nearby garden assailed his senses, temporarily piercing his turmoil. There had been nights in the desert when he’d lain awake, pining for England, for the damp air, the lush smell of grass and roses.

He knew why.

That last night in England he had dreamed of a woman, a woman whose skin smelled of roses, and whose touch had ruined him for all other women. Four years he’d spent searching in vain for a woman who completed him as she had.

The crunch of footsteps on the gravel walkway shattered Simon’s reverie. Peering out, he saw a cloaked figure hurry away from the palace. The cowl hid face and hair, but the person was small and moved like a woman.

His mother?

His heart atangle with hope and dread, Simon emerged from hiding and followed.

Thurstan stood with his hands braced on the table, his head bowed as he sought the strength to negotiate the winding stairs to the ground floor and endure the six-course meal. Hearing the door open, he lifted his head, hoping that Simon had returned.

Odeline entered in a whisper of bright silk, gems winking like stars in the crispinette that held her hair back. She was the image of her mother, a clever, sensuous beauty who had caught Robert de Lyndhurst’s eye when he was fifty and she twenty, luring him to the altar, much to the disgust of Robert’s children. “Are you coming down to sup?”

“Aye.” Thurstan rounded the desk, his slow, shuffling gait in marked contrast to Odeline’s catlike glide as she closed the distance between them. It was then, as she moved from shadow into the golden circle cast by the candles on the table, that he saw the fury in her emerald eyes. “You are upset.”

“Upset?” She spat the word. Her hands came up, fingers curled into talons. “He is back, your bastard son.”

Thurstan started. “What makes you say that?”

“I saw him going down the stairs.”

“Ah.” Thurstan sighed. “Few people m Durleigh know of Simon’s and my…connection. I would keep it that way.” At least until he’d discovered who was poisoning him.

“As if I would want the world to know my brother the bishop did father a son on—”

“Have a care, Odeline, lest your own indiscretions become common knowledge.”

“A trade. My silence in exchange for Blackstone Heath.”

“Blackstone is Simon’s. I’ll find another bone for your pup to chew on,” Thurstan said nastily.

Her lips curled back in a feral snarl. “You promised my

son that estate, and he will have it.”

“Not without my say so. And I say nay.”

“Bastard.” She struck him in the chest with both hands. Her shove sent Thurstan backward.

He cried out, reaching for her as he lost his balance. She didn’t move. The last thing he saw before his head struck the desk was the smile that spread over her face. Even that winked out in a shower of inky stars.

Chapter Two (#ulink_6b76bd5b-4670-5f09-a130-e49ed4b4c824)

Someone was following her.

The realization pierced the fog of misery that had enveloped Linnet Especer since leaving Thurstan.

Night had fallen while she’d been with Thurstan. The lights from the cathedral and the bishop’s palace winked back at her, islands of light in the darkness, promising a safe haven. Yet she dared not return. Archdeacon Crispin heartily disapproved of her relationship with Thurstan, and, since the bishop’s decline, he had become more vocal in voicing it. Not that she cared what the archdeacon thought of her, but his accusations sullied the good name of a man who was, to her, nearly a saint.

There! A shadow drifted down the path from the palace, cloak billowing in the light evening breeze. One of the archdeacon’s spies, she thought in annoyance. Yet he was tall and moved with more purpose than any monk. As his cloak shifted again, she caught the glint of light on metal. A sword.

The sheriff?

The notion that Hamel Roxby might be after her quickened Linnet’s pulse and deepened her fear. Her closeness with Thurstan had kept the sheriff from pressing his unwanted attentions on her. But maybe Hamel had noted the bishop’s growing weakness and thought to take advantage of her.

Her heart in her throat, Linnet rushed out through the stone gates of the cathedral courtyard and onto the Deangate. The street was nearly deserted, free of the pilgrims and worshipers who flocked to the cathedral by day. The most direct route back to her shop was along Colliergate where the charcoal burners plied their trade and thence across town to Spicier’s Lane. But it was also the least trafficked in the evening.

So she darted along Deangate and into the center of Durleigh. The scent of freshly baked bread rolled over her as she rounded the corner onto Blake Street. The narrow thoroughfare was not crowded, but there were enough people hurrying in and out of the bakeshops lining it to make her feel a bit more comfortable. And the light from the open shop doors made her less afraid. Halfway down the street, she glanced back, hoping she had been wrong about her pursuer.

Nay, there he was, just entering Blake, a head taller than those around him, his stride measured but purposeful. The way he moved, seeming to slide from one group of people to the next, sent a shiver of fear down her spine. He used them for cover as a fox might use stands of brush when sneaking up on a rabbit.

Linnet did what any rabbit would do. She jumped down the nearest alleyway. Durleigh had been her home from infancy, and even in the dark she knew every twist and turn that would take her home. The Guildhall sat on the corner of High Gate and New Street, an imposing stone-and-timbered building, testament to the wealth of Durleigh’s tradesmen. Day or evening, the hall was usually abustle with activity. Tonight was no exception.

Torches lined the front of the building, flickering in the wind, sending light and shadow over the clerks hurrying home for the day and paunchy merchants arriving for some supper. Many of them were known to her, but none would have aided her against the sheriff, either out of fear or because they believed she was Thurstan’s mistress and reviled her for that.

Linnet lingered in the alley long enough to remove her cloak and fashion it into a bundle with the prayer book inside. She loosened her long, tawny braids, shook her hair free and pulled it about her face. As disguises go, it was not much, but if Hamel were indeed following her, he’d be looking for a cloaked woman, not the laundress she hopefully resembled.

Emerging from the alley, Linnet fell into step with a pair of clerks who were heading south on High Gate. She dared not look back to see if Hamel followed for fear of dislodging her flimsy disguise. Her nape prickled, and an icy chill ran down her spine. With every step she took, she expected to be grabbed and spun about to face her longtime nemesis. But she walked on unmolested, past the market square.

When they came abreast of the Royal Oak Inn, Linnet breathed a sigh of relief. Here, at least, she could count on aid. Bidding a silent thanks to the clerks, she slipped around to the kitchen of the tavern. With trembling fingers, she rebraided her hair as best she could, then pushed open the door. Light and the scent of richly spiced food spilled out, welcoming her.

Across the kitchen, Elinore Selwyne looked up from ladling stew into wooden bowls. “Linnet. Whatever are you doing here at this time of night?”

“I—I was passing,” Linnet said breathlessly.

Elinore frowned, her sharp eyes scanning Linnet from head to toe. “What is it? What is wrong?”