Innocence Unveiled. Blythe Gifford

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СКАЧАТЬ needed more room than this just to pace.

      Yet this was all she had. No fields, no vast estates, no serfs toiling for her outside these walls. Only a cherry tree and a bolt of cloth shielded her from starvation.

      No wonder she needs the wool. Couldn’t this husband of hers take care of the woman?

      He knelt before her, his face dangerously close to hers. Before he could stop them, his fingers slipped past his self-control to touch the lock of hair on her cheek. When he tried to tuck it beneath her wimple, the strands slipped through his fingers like silk.

      At his touch, she woke, brown eyes weighed down by a thicket of lashes and a sleepy smile touching her lips.

      A matching smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. He spoke softly, the Flemish rough in his throat. ‘Do you fall asleep over your accounts every night, mistress?’

      She blinked, suddenly awake, and drew away, leaving his fingers empty. ‘The business is all I have. I will do anything I must to keep it.’

      He rose, abruptly, wondering what passion she had left for her husband. If she had one.

      Suddenly, it seemed important to know. He had negotiated with kings. He could certainly force the truth from a simple weaving woman. ‘And your husband, will he, too, do anything he must?’

      Her dark eyes looked huge in her pale face, framed by the rumpled wimple. ‘Of course.’ She hesitated over the words.

      He was certain in that moment she had no husband.

      The rush of blood throbbed in his loins before he could summon his control. No man possesses her.

      Denial struggled with hot, sweet desire.

      He clenched his jaw and felt his eyelid flinch, but he refused to break his gaze, glad to be safely towering over her again. He would resist her, but she mustn’t know that. ‘If you will do anything you must, mistress, will you do anything I ask?’ He must keep her off balance, wondering about his intentions.

      A delicate flush—anger or shame?—spread beyond her cheek. She bit her lower lip with small white teeth, inflicting enough pain to steady her resolve. He had seen a knight in battle try the same trick, slashing his forearm to create a new, superficial wound to distract him from the mortal blow.

      Staring back at him, her defiant eyes did not waver, but he heard the whisper of inheld breath, as if she had recognised the fire in his eyes and was burned by it. ‘What do you ask?’

      Longing rushed through his blood like poison. What he would ask had no words, only the vision of wild joining.

      He fought the image. Even if he permitted himself careless pleasures of the flesh, he was hiding in the belly of a country that might soon be at war with his. One unmeasured word uttered in passion could be his death. He gritted his teeth against the feeling. ‘I ask for the truth.’

      She rose and slipped into the shadows surrounding the loom. Hiding.

      He would not let her. ‘And the truth is, you have no husband.’

      She whirled to face him, the wool of her skirt crushed in her fist. ‘I have no husband.’ Angry words. ‘Would you have dealt with me, had you known?’

      Yes, but he would not tell her that. He shrugged. ‘Then why wear the wimple?’

      Her slender arms crossed her chest like a shield. ‘There is little safety on the streets these days. People are more respectful of a married woman.’

      ‘But you are not on the streets now.’

      ‘I still need protection.’

      ‘I thought I was to protect you.’

      She smiled. ‘Who will protect me from you?’

      She had turned his words back on him. He had thought to keep her off balance, yet he was the one who felt dizzy. He donned a mask of disdain to blot out all traces of attraction. She must not know his weakness for her. ‘What makes you think you need protection from me?’

      Her eyes widened and narrowed in an instant, but he saw his insult had hit its mark. For a moment, he was sorry for it.

      ‘I am glad to hear I do not.’ She patted the wrinkles from her skirt, now all brisk business. ‘When will I see my wool?’

      Uneasiness rippled through him. She had recovered faster than he expected. He had thought her a simple burgher mistress but, so far, this woman was nothing that he had expected. ‘I cannot order contraband wool at the market. If it were easy, you would not need me.’

      ‘How long must I wait?’

      ‘As long as it takes.’ As long as it would take to turn the people of Flanders to Edward’s side. ‘Weeks, not days, mistress.’

      ‘I’ve waited months already.’ Urgency shook her voice.

      ‘Patience is a virtue you don’t possess.’

      ‘Patience is no virtue when dealing with spinsters and weavers. I have no patience for sloppy work or I will have nothing fit to sell.’

      Her words intrigued him. What would it be like to be so pleased with who you were and what you did? ‘You are proud of your work, aren’t you?’

      The smile that transformed her face would have, for most women, come at the mention of a paramour. ‘The Mark of the Daisy is known throughout the Low Countries.’

      She sounded lovesick, he thought, irritably. ‘And what makes your cloth so special?’

      ‘I can recognise the best wool by touch. My spinsters deliver seven skeins a day instead of five. When my dyers are finished, the colour is fast. My weavers’ work is so tight we rarely need the fullers’ craft.’

      ‘Fullers?’ He followed most Flemish words, but sometimes missed the meaning. ‘What do they do?’

      She cocked a suspicious eyebrow. ‘How can you deal in wool and know so little of it?’

      ‘Do I need to know how to grow wheat in order to trade it? Or how to take salt from the mines in order to sell it?’

      ‘Well, if you knew wool, you would recognise our mark. Even before I was born, we made a special fabric for the Duchess of Brabant.’

      A burning numbness filled him, like a blow from a broadside sword. Duchess cloth. A scrap of indigo- dyed wool carefully wrapped around a dagger of German silver. An orphaned bastard’s only inheritance from the princess who had married a duke.

      What terrible fate had drawn him to the very shop that had made the cloth his mother had worn? ‘Duchess cloth? You made that?’

      ‘You know it?’

      He clenched his fist behind his back. ‘I’ve heard of it.’

      ‘I’m surprised. It was so long ago.’

      ‘I was born in Brabant, remember?’ His throat tightened around СКАЧАТЬ