So many questions he asked, and she had too many unanswered. But there was one certainty. He wasn’t who he had once been.
It wasn’t only in the years that had hardened his body and in the brutal way his hair was cut, so close to his head, the light blond almost destroyed. It was also in the harshness of his blue stormy gaze, the cynical tilt to his lips. The knowing way he held himself. He was a man, a warrior. One who had seen the world...and found it unworthy.
‘Because you didn’t stop what was started there and because you’re here,’ she said.
Still the same casual stance, but she sensed an alertness in him.
‘What didn’t I stop?’ he said, his tone still conversational. ‘Your status as his mistress obviously had come to an end. You are here, and he is elsewhere. I assumed the King tired of you as he did the others.’
She ignored his words and listened to their meaning. ‘Yet you still hound me with it, which serves no apparent purpose. Just as your presence here makes no sense. You don’t shop; you don’t ever visit Swaffham. I can only conclude that you’re here because the King sent you.’
He glanced around. ‘And why would the King send me here?’
Alice almost stumbled into answering him. If it was possible he didn’t know she spied, then she would be revealing too much. Even now people might be listening.
‘What would I know of the ways of kings and knights. I’m only a wool merchant’s daughter.’
He released his arms. ‘Why do you think the King sent me here?’
Cold sweat slid down Hugh’s back. He could never remain detached when it came to Alice. All the more a fool him, to think he ever could. And losing his composure in front of Alice in the middle of the town square on market day was hardly the behaviour of an accomplished spy.
On the surface, his mission was simple. All he’d been ordered to do was to keep an eye on the Fenton family and find the traitor who sold sovereign secrets. He assumed the King thought the Fentons had something to do with the Seal, even though he knew they didn’t. He merely kept watch so he could report honestly and give an accounting of what they did. He had learned long ago to keep more truths in his tales than lies.
Now, however, Alice acted as if there was something more. As if the King had talked to her about stately matters and lies and schemes. In truth, there had been the opportunity when she’d spent time in the King’s chambers, but he had dismissed that notion. He’d never met a woman spy.
And she hadn’t denied she was the King’s mistress.She hadn’t denied it.
Despite his having no right, he felt jealousy burn through him. Even now he could not quell the frustration and need. Especially not this morning, with the bright sunlight revealing all the colours hidden in her hair and the depth of grey in her eyes.
All his life he had compared other women to her, and now a king had had her. Under the heat of another man’s caresses did her cheeks flush red as beautifully as they did now? Did her curling hair fan across the bed linens as wildly as it blew in the winter wind?
How many nights, days, years had he tortured himself with thoughts of the way her lips would part, the way her breath would taste before his lips claimed hers? How many nights, alone, had he wrapped himself and given in to imagining the softness of her skin, the give of her generous hips. Even now he craved to know the way she would meet him. Finally to know, from the very way she held herself, how she would change as she rode him.
Alice...a king’s mistress tossed away as all the others had been since Eleanor. But every hair on the back of his neck warned him. Alice, King’s mistress or not, wasn’t safe. Her actions today were not merely those of a lady shopping. Her questions to him were not simple enquiries.
‘What did the King want ofyouthat day?’ he asked. ‘Why do you have interest in my being here?’
Abruptly, she strolled on, her eyes observing the wares in the market stalls. ‘It’s been a long time since you were here. Surely others have asked you the same?’
He kept pace with her, kept his voice low, but his heart hammered in his chest and his mind raced at the possibilities. Maybe he had thought wrong that day at the Tower.
‘You refused him, didn’t you? Despite his being the King.’
‘What would I refuse?’
He went to grab her, but she turned too swiftly for that. They had stepped away from the thickest crowd of shoppers and it was time to lay this conversation to rest.
Alice’s heart thumped in her chest and her breath caught. This walk had been a mistake. She hadn’t uncovered anything about Hugh, but she had revealed too much regarding herself.
Now they stood in the quieter part of the market, away from the stalls around the fountain. Now it seemed as if Hugh would not let her run.
Not when he stepped closer, his posture mimicking that time six years ago when she had recklessly asked for his kiss. Why could she not forget that day? Why was she plagued with memories of this man she could never have?
‘Don’t. No more. Whatever is between us—’ he began.
‘Whatever’sbetweenus...?’ she asked.
He looked away, shook his head. ‘There’s nothing that can be done about that. Not now. Not ever. But this—’ He waved his hand. ‘Your shopping early for Twelfth Night. Your asking questions of the vendors. If there’s something more going on, I need to know.’
