returned to the tray was empty. He took the small cup offered him and managed to sip the brandy it contained without spilling it.
“My lord of Southampton was very kind,” Richard muttered, fighting against the sleep that was overwhelming him. “I thought that I hated him.”
“Sleep, Richard. I shall send Jehan or Rhys to sit with you. Now, sleep,” I repeated, gratified to see the boy’s eyelids droop, then caught the cup that fell from the slack fingers.
Hal was standing by the fire, fondling the reliquary on the mantel, just as he had been those few short weeks before, the night that he had first become my lover. He turned and smiled before kneeling to draw the poker from its resting place in the coals and plunge it into the waiting flagon. The scent of boiling wine, sweet with spice, filled the room as I settled into a chair by the fire. Hal drew the cushion from the other chair, tucking it under him as he sat leaning against my legs and staring at the fire. He poured the wine into the waiting cups and passed one up to me.
“It is arranged, then? Where will you go?”
“The letters will arrive tomorrow, and I think that I will go first to Blackavar. I must consult with Nicolas and Geofri, then I will go . . . I don’t know, somewhere obscure, until Richard is fit to travel abroad. After that, oh, Paris, probably, or Brittany. I should not be out of reach of London for a few weeks yet. I must make some arrangements about the women, though. Richard will want to be away from them for some time to come, I am afraid.” I saw the question that Hal refused to ask, and told him the entire ugly story, omitting nothing.
“Do you think that Robin knew what use Harry meant to make of the boy?” Hal asked, and spat into the fire.
“I doubt it. I doubt it very much indeed. Percy can be very discreet when his skin is on the line, and Essex has no stomach for murder, so I deem. Richard said that you had been kind to him,” I finished, my hand resting on the auburn curls spilled across my knee.
“I felt that I owed him that, at least, seeing as how it was my arrogance that sent him from the house and into that coil in the first place.”
I slid from the chair to join him on the floor. “And he’s ruined your shirt,” I said, reaching for the tear-stained silk, smiling as Hal caught my hand, and raised it to his lips.
“You can buy me another.”
I nodded. “Then I must be sure to have my money’s worth,” I said huskily, and ripped the fine silk from his body, smiling at the desire this act kindled in his eyes.
Chapter 19
The wind howled and tore at the thatch, catching at the chimney pots, and hurling one to shatter on the cobbles of the paved yard. The storm had come up suddenly an hour or so before, sending its biting breath through every crack and cranny of the old house. Richard and I sat side by side on the high backed settle near the kitchen fire, poring over the large book we held between us. I soon closed the volume with a snort of disgust. “It is useless, Richard,” I growled. “I cannot tell one letter from another. Perhaps I never shall.” Richard flinched at the depth of the anger and the despair that I could not keep from my voice. It had been just over a month since his deliverance, but he still could scarcely endure the sight of a woman. We had come to this secluded manor as soon as he was well enough to travel, he and his brother, his cousin Jehan, and me, the vampire. Richard seemed to have lost the feelings of fear and disgust I had engendered in him such a short time before. They had been spent, perhaps, as payment due for his life.
“You, my lord, are what you are, and that is all,” he had said. Now he gently took the book from my trembling hands and returned it to the sideboard.
“Perhaps,” he began, but broke off at the sound of hooves ringing on the cobbles of the yard. I started for the door, but it burst open, bearing Southampton in on a wave of wind-driven snow. Hal looked about him wildly for a moment, then pitched face forward onto