The Maiden's Hand

Wynter had a rare gift for focusing his gaze as sharp as a blade. “My lot has not been easy. Spencer disgraced my mother and sent her into exile. Whatever charm I possess, I did not learn at my loving father’s knee.”

Kit, ever the guardian of right and wrong, lifted his cup and released a huff of breath into it.

Oliver wished he, too, could remain the skeptic, but he could not. Wynter bore the scars of wounds for which he was not responsible. Just as Oliver hadn’t asked to be born with asthma, Wynter hadn’t asked to be born to a woman whose morals were too loose and a man whose morals were too rigid.

“No one’s lot is easy,” Lark stated. She turned to Oliver. “Except perhaps yours, my lord.”

“Indeed,” he said wryly, angling his wine cup toward her in a halfhearted salute. He contemplated telling her what it was like to turn blue for want of air but decided it was inappropriate conversation at table.

The main dish arrived, the platter borne high on the shoulders of two footmen. They planted it with a flourish in the center of the table.

Wynter closed his eyes and inhaled. “Ah, capon. A favorite of mine.”

“Lord Oliver,” said Lark, “why don’t you do the honors and serve yourself first?”

Between his sympathy for the nasty Wynter and his distaste for the main dish, Oliver felt queasy. “No, thank you. I never eat capon.”

Kit smothered a laugh.

Lark tipped her head to one side. “Whyever not?”

“It’s a castrated cock, that’s why. Gives me a bad feeling.”

He expected her to be shocked by his bluntness. Instead he saw a faint spark of amusement in her eyes.

“I take it you’d never ride a gelded horse, either,” she said.

“I ride only mares.” God, he liked her. She stood for everything he hated, everything he found tiresome, and he liked her immensely.

“I have no qualms about eating capon.” Kit wrenched a leg from the roasted bird and bit into it. Wynter took the other leg. Oliver held out his goblet for more wine.

“How is the weaving coming along, Lark?” Wynter asked quite cordially.

“Well enough,” she said without looking at him.

He lifted an eyebrow. “Is it, then? It appeared to me that you’ve been neglectful of late. I’ve seen no progress on the tapestry you’ve been weaving.”

“I didn’t realize I was under your scrutiny.”

“One can’t help but notice when a woman neglects her duties to go traipsing off to London.”

Oliver looked from one to the other as if they were engaged in a tennis match. What an extraordinary pair they made, despising each other with such civility.

“And what have you done with yourself, Wynter?” Lark’s voice was low, yet dripping with venom. In contrast to the servile spaniel who had first entered the room, she seemed to be coming out of herself, brandishing words like a sharp blade. “Turned in any heretics lately?”

Wynter smiled. “Dear Lark. You are always so full of pointed humor.” His hand clenched around the ivory handle of his knife.

When Spencer did finally die, Oliver knew Lark would have to beware Wynter Merrifield.

“Wardens’ Temporal Act…Treasonable Offences by Rank Villains’…. None of these will do.” Kit frowned at the thick, heavy tome on the long library table.

Lark knelt on the bench beside him and dragged a fat, smoking candle closer. “What about this one?” She pointed to an entry on another page of the huge tome. “An Acte for the Disbursement and Recovery of Real Property.”

Oliver rubbed his weary eyes. Midnight was but a vague memory, and they had been in Spencer’s amazingly huge library since sunset, poring over law books and legal tracts.

“We’ll have to go to London. We’ll never find what we’re looking for here.” Kit closed the huge book with a thud.

“Ouch!” Lark said. “You’ve closed my finger in it!” She yanked the book open.

Oliver’s mind kept toying with what she had said earlier. “Disbursement,” he said to himself. “Recovery…” As a youth fleeing the boredom of polite nobility, he had gone to St. John’s at Cambridge to hear shockingly reformed ideas on the law. Unfortunately his memories of that time were obscured by a pleasant mist of women, gambling, drinking and general mischief.

Kit took a sip from the wine jug. “You carry on the search. I’m but a common lawyer. A very weary common lawyer.” Yawning, he left the library.

“Is he really a commoner?” Lark asked.

Common. Oliver’s mind clung to the word for a moment. “His father was a knight who had eleven sons. Kit fostered with my father.” The recollection plunged Oliver into the past. There had been a time, long ago, when his father had barely acknowledged Oliver’s existence. Kit had been the substitute son, the golden lad who learned to ride and hunt and fence at Stephen de Lacey’s side.

If there were wounds from that time, they had healed nicely, Oliver decided. He adored both Kit and his father.

He brought his thoughts to the present and looked at Lark. The pale stranger at supper had given way to the lively maid who had braved a Bankside tavern to find him.

What a charming scholar she made, so sweetly unaware of her provocative pose. She had her elbows planted on the heavy tome, her knees on the bench, and her startlingly shapely backside thrust out and upward in a way that brought the devil to life in Oliver.

Wisps of dark hair escaped the detestable coif, and the locks curled softly around her pale face. The hunt for a loophole in the law seemed to animate her, causing her eyes to dance and her lips to curve into an artless smile. Even better, the angle of her pose allowed Oliver to peer unobstructed into the bodice of her dress. It was a beautiful bosom indeed—what he could see of it. High, rounded breasts, the skin like satin or pearls, and if he craned his neck, he fancied he could just barely make out a shadow where her skin darkened—

“Are you ill?” she asked.

Oliver blinked. He shifted on the bench. He glanced down at his codpiece. Other than being too tightly trussed, he felt fine. “No. Why do you ask?”

“You were looking at me rather strangely.”

He laughed. “That, my darling, was lust.”

“Oh.” Her gaze dropped to the page. Something told Oliver that she had little experience with lust.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I assure you, I can control my base impulses.”

“Perhaps.” She drummed her fingers on the page. “’Tis true, I sense no danger when I’m with you. Yet at the same time, I feel as defenseless as a fledgling fallen from the nest.” A single crease of bafflement appeared between her brows.

He touched the tip of her nose. “That’s because I threaten the most vulnerable part of you, my pet. Your heart.” He gave her no chance to ponder that, but forged on. “Now. What is it you keep reading on that page?”

“It’s about the disbursement and recovery of—”

“That’s it!” Oliver jumped to his feet. He strode to her side of the table, leaned down and skimmed the page. Even as his eyes absorbed the printed words, he noticed her scent of fresh laundry and femininity.

“What’s it?” Lark blinked at him.

He lifted her bodily from the bench. He wanted to share his exuberance, to show her the clean, effervescent joy of a puzzle solved. While she gaped at him as if he’d gone mad, he planted a brief, noisy kiss on her mouth, then spun her around, throwing his head back and laughing.