The Maiden's Hand

And cursed, alas, to die young. There was no cure for his sickness. The attacks of asthmatic breathlessness were few and infrequent, but when they came, they struck like a storm. For years he had fought each battle, but he knew in the end the disease would conquer him.

“Ollie?” Clarice tickled his ear with her tongue. “Your turn to cast the dice.”

Like a large dog shaking off water, Oliver rid himself of the thoughts. He made a masterful throw. A perfect seven. Clarice squealed with delight, Carper grudgingly gave up his coin, and Oliver rewarded his woman by tucking a ducat deep into her doughy cleavage.

“M-my lord?” A soft, uncertain voice broke in on his revelry.

With a grin of triumph still on his face, Oliver looked up. “Yes?”

The black-clad Puritan gazed down at him. A slim white hand pushed back the hood.

Oliver stood, dumping Clarice from his lap. “You!”

Mistress Lark bobbed her head at him. Her face was stark white, the eyes a luminous rain-colored gray, her lower lip trembling. “Sir, I would like to speak to you.”

Without even looking at Clarice, he reached down and helped her to the bench. “Of course. Mistress Lark.” He gestured at his companions and rattled off their names.

“Do sit down,” he said. She made him feel the most uncanny discomfort. In the smoky lamp glow of the tavern, she did not look as ethereally beautiful as she had at dawn two days before. Indeed, she appeared quite plain in her coarse garb, her hair scraped back into a tight black braid.

“There isn’t any room at the table,” she said. “And besides—”

“I’ve a perfectly good knee just waiting for you.” He grabbed her wrist and lowered her onto his lap.

She yelped as if he had set fire to her backside, and jumped up. “Nay, sir! I shall wait until it is convenient for you to speak to me. In private.”

“Please yourself,” he said, wondering why he felt this urge to bedevil her. “You might have a bit of a wait, then. Fortune is favoring me today.” He held out his tankard. “Have some ale.”

“No, thank you.”

He had the most remarkable urge to kiss her prissy mouth until it became soft and full beneath his. To caress her slender body and melt her stiffness into compliance.

Aware now that he had set the rules of a waiting game, he winked at her and turned back to his companions.

Lark was certain that everything decent about her was being peeled away in layers. What a fool she had been to suppose Oliver de Lacey would be pursuing lordly goals. She was doubly a fool to have left Randall in drunken slumber and come here on her own. She had paid a ferryman to take her across the river. She had moved like a thief through noxious alleyways crammed with vagrants and cozeners, all for the sake of finding a man whom Spencer had, for once in his life, wrongly judged to be a man of honor.

All Lord Oliver seemed to be pursuing were the pleasures of the gaming table, the oblivion of strong ale and the fleshly secrets hidden beneath the laced corset of the woman called Clarice.

Bawdy talk rose like a fog from the gamesters, some of it so wickedly obscure that Lark did not understand. She felt like the flame of a candle buffeted by the winds of corruption. Stubbornly, she refused to be snuffed out.

If he meant to humiliate her by forcing her to wait her turn, then wait she would. Oliver de Lacey did not know her at all. She had learned duty and loyalty from the most honorable man in England. She would endure any torment for Spencer’s sake.

Of course, Spencer would never know how she had suffered. She could not tell him she had stood amid ruffians and doxies and gamesters. And most of all, she could not tell him that she took a secret, shameful interest in her surroundings.

The blatant and lusty sensuality of the people around the gaming table shocked her. It was but midmorning, and they were tippling ale and wine like wedding guests at a midnight feast.

And the center of all the attention, like the sun casting its fire on a host of lesser bodies, was Oliver de Lacey himself.

He bore no resemblance to the pitiful victim who had fallen into the dusty pit of corpses just two days before.

He was as comely as a prince, his hair a shimmering mass of white-gold waves, his face carved into a perfect balance of hard lines and angles harmonizing with a sensual mouth and eyes the color of a robin’s egg. In some men such beauty might have created an air of softness, but not in Oliver de Lacey. His expression held a rare blend of humor and male potency that sparked a flare of awareness in Lark.

He had little to show for his suffering in the bowels of Newgate prison. Most men who had been arrested and condemned for inciting a riot, then secretly saved from death, might be loath to flaunt their presence so soon after the event.

A splendidly cut doublet of midnight-blue velvet displayed his broad shoulders to shameless advantage. Flamboyant gold braid laced his sleeves around powerful arms. And when he threw back his head to laugh, displaying healthy teeth and a musical tenor chuckle, she could hardly blame Clarice for clinging to him. He had that air of potency, of magnetism, that made even sensible folk feel safe and treasured when he was near.

Will you have my baby? The memory came unbidden; his words echoed in her mind, and she hated herself for clinging to them. He had meant it as a jest, no more.

It was chilly in the tavern, with its damp plaster and timber walls and the bleak light of oil lamps. There was no reason on earth Lark should feel warm. Yet she did, as if she possessed embers inside, with some force from without fanning them.

“You’re certain you don’t wish to sit with us?” Oliver inquired, studying her so closely that she was certain he noticed her hot throat and cheeks and ears.

“Quite certain,” she said.

He heaved a great sigh. “I cannot bear to have you standing there in discomfort.” He spread his arms as if to embrace all who sat around the table. “My friends, I must go with dear Mistress Lark.”

She saw the disappointment on their faces, and in an odd, intuitive way she understood it. When Oliver withdrew from the table, it seemed the sun had drifted behind a cloud.

Then he did a singular thing. He sank to one knee before Clarice. Gazing up at her as if she were Queen Mary herself, he took her hand in his, placed a lingering kiss in her palm, and closed her fingers around the invisible token. “Fare you well, my lovely.”

Watching the intimate and chivalrous farewell gave Lark the oddest sensation of yearning. Certainly there was nothing remarkable about a rogue parting from his doxy, yet Oliver managed to glorify the simple act with an air of wistful romance and tenderness. As if he cherished her.

She wondered what it would be like to be cherished, even for a moment. Even by a rogue.

Then he spoiled it by reaching around and pinching Clarice’s backside, causing her to bray with laughter. When he stood and donned a blue velvet hat, the plume brushed the blackened ceiling timbers.

“Kit, I shall call for you later.”

Kit Youngblood sent him a jaunty salute. Though somewhat older than Oliver, more blunt featured and quiet, he was nearly as handsome. Taken as a pair, the two were quite overwhelming. “Do. I missed our carousing while you were away. On a pilgrimage, was it?”

The look they shared was steeped in mirth and fellowship. Then, without warning, Oliver took Lark by the hand and drew her out into the alleyway.

As soon as she recovered her surprise, she pulled away. “Kindly keep your hands to yourself, my lord.”

“Is it your mission in life to wound me?” he asked, looking remarkably sober for all that he had quaffed three tankards of ale while she had watched.

“Of course not.” She clasped her hands in front of her. “My lord, I came to see you to—”

“You held out your hand to me when I lay gasping on the ground at a pauper’s grave. Why flinch when I do the same to you?”

“Because I don’t need help. Not of that sort.”

“What sort?” He tilted his head to one side. The plume in his hat curved downward, caressing a face so favored by Adonis that Lark could only stare.

“The touching sort,” she snapped, irritated that her head could be turned by mere looks.

“Ah.” All male insolence, he reached out and dragged his finger slowly and lightly down the curve of her cheek. It was worse than she had suspected—his touch was as compelling as his lavish handsomeness. She had the most shameful urge to lean her cheek into the cradling warmth of his hand. To gaze into his eyes and tell him all the secret things she had never dared admit to anyone. To close her eyes and—

“I must remember that,” he said, dropping his hand and grinning down at her. “The lady does not like to be touched.”