The Maiden's Hand

“Surely it’s not heaven,” he said. “Purgatory, then?”

“Oh, Dr. Snipes,” the woman whispered, “he thinks he is dead.”

“I am dead,” Oliver stated in his raspy voice. The dust and straw stirred as he lifted his fist. He sneezed. “I died badly. You said so yourself.”

He could have sworn he heard stifled mirth. “Sir, you were hanged, but you did not die.”

“Why not?” Oliver felt slightly miffed.

“Because we would not let you. We bribed the hangman to shorten the rope and saw to it you were cut down, pronounced dead and nailed into your box before you died.”

“Oh.” Oliver thought about this for a moment. “Thank you.” Then he groaned. “You mean I begged and humbled and pis—er, disgraced myself for naught?”

“It would seem so.”

A distant cock crowed.

“Come, time is short. We must get you out of there. Can you move?”

Oliver tried to sit up. Jesu, but his limbs were weak! He managed to prop himself up. “This place is all lumpy,” he complained. “What sort of hellhole do I find myself in?”

“Lark told you,” Snipes said. “’Tis a pauper’s grave.”

Lark. Her name was as lovely as her voice.

“You might wish to make haste,” she called. “You could catch a disease from them.”

“From what?” Oliver asked.

“From the corpses. ’Tis a pauper’s grave, sir. There’s a heap of them down there, covered with straw and lime dust. When the grave is full, it will be covered over.”

“All that lime makes for excellent grazing once the grass starts,” Snipes remarked helpfully.

“You mean…?” Bile rose in Oliver’s stomach. He lurched to his feet. “You mean you dumped me into a heap of…of corpses?”

“A most regrettable accident,” said Lark.

Oliver had spent weeks in Newgate, enduring poor food and putrid air. He had been hanged nearly to death. There was no way he should have had the strength to sink his hands into the damp earth and scramble out of the grave.

But he did.

In mere seconds he was sprawled, gasping for breath, on the cold and dewy grass.

“God’s shield, that’s foul.” Wheezing, he rolled over. His saviors bent to peer at him. Snipes wore the black cloak and tunic of an undertaker, and in the uncertain light Oliver could see a withered, twisted arm, a prominent nose and chin, and wispy white hair beneath a flat cap.

“I’ll just go and tell the gravedigger we’ve buried the poor sinner.” Snipes lumbered off into the shadows toward a wattled hut in the distance.

“Have you the strength to rise?” asked Lark.

Oliver looked at her. “My God,” he said, staring at the pale oval of her face, its delicate, dawn-limned features framed by a nimbus of glossy raven hair escaping a plain coif. “My God, you are an angel.”

Her full red lips quirked at the corners. “Hardly.”

“Tis true. I am dead. I have died and gone to heaven, and you are an angel, and I am going to spend eternity with you. Hallelujah!”

“Nonsense.” Her manner became brisk as she stuck out her hand. “Here, I’ll help you up. We must get you to the safe hold.”

She tugged at his hand, and her touch infused him with miraculous strength. When he stood upright, he saw that he towered over her. Just for a moment he felt a sense of deep connection with her. He could not tell if she felt it, too, or if she always wore that wide-eyed, startled expression.

“A safe hold?” he whispered.

“Aye.” She surreptitiously wiped her hand on her apron. “You’ll stay there until your throat is healed.”

“Very well. I have only one more question for you, mistress.”

“Yes?”

He gave her his best smile. The one that women of good breeding said could dim the stars.

She tilted her head to one side, clearly lacking the breeding to be properly dazzled.

“Yes?” she said again.

“Mistress Lark, will you have my baby?”

One

“Spencer, you would not countenance what that yea-forsooth knave said to me.” Lark paced the huge bedchamber of Blackrose Priory. “Of all the effrontery!”

“Said to you?” Spencer Merrifield, earl of Hardstaff, had the most endearing way of lifting one eyebrow so that it resembled a gray question mark. Sitting in his grand tester bed, his thin frame propped against pillows and bolsters, he was bathed in the early-evening light that streamed through the oriel window. “You spoke to him?”

“Yes. I—at the safe hold.” She cringed inwardly at the small lie and studied the pattern of lozenge shapes that tiled the floor. Spencer would object to her being present for the hanging. But the safe hold was run by godly folk whose goals matched Spencer’s own.

“I see. Well, then. What did Oliver de Lacey say to you?”

She frowned and plopped down onto a stool by the bed, tucking her soft, kerseymere skirts between her knees. “I thought his name was Oliver Lackey.”

“That is one of his names. In sooth he is Lord Oliver de Lacey, Baron Wimberleigh, son and heir to the earl of Lynley.”

“He? A noble?” The man had been wearing a stained shirt and plain fustian jerkin over torn and ragged canions and hose. No shoes; those were always appropriated by prison wardens. He had looked as common as a mongrel dog—until he had smiled at her.

Spencer watched her closely as if seeking to peer into her mind. She was familiar with the look. When she was very small, she used to liken Spencer to the Almighty Himself, with all the powers of His station.

“Betimes he goes about incognito,” Spencer explained, “I suppose to spare his family from embarrassment. Now. What did the young lord say to you?”

Will you have my baby?

Lark’s face burned scarlet at the memory. Her response had been a drop-jawed look of astonishment. Then, humiliated to the depths of her prayer-fed soul, she had flounced away, instructing him to hide in the cart until Dr. Snipes joined them and they reached the safe hold.