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She swallowed and pulled the fingers, one by one, of her right glove until she slid it completely off. If Walsingham was disgusted by her red, blotchy scars, he didn’t say anything. Lucy picked up the cake of soap and brought it to her nose, inhaling. She looked at Walsingham. “Rose and musk. ’Tis the queen’s favorite.” She rubbed one finger over the top and held it up for Walsingham to see. “No residue.”
Walsingham studied it, too, and her finger. “You may rewrap it.”
“Nothing but the gift was found that does not normally belong to a lady’s room,” one of the guards said. “Except the gold clasp next to a broken pearl necklace.” He pointed to the dressing table where Lucy had laid it out.
“Does that not belong to Lady Cordelia?” Walsingham said. His voice was conversational, but Lucy knew he was probing for anything that hinted at the sisters lying.
“I was going to take it to a goldsmith to fix it for her. She doesn’t go outside the walls of Whitehall as much as I.”
Walsingham stared at her. “You do go often into town, dressed covertly.”
“To help the poor, Lord Walsingham. As I have said before.” She kept his stare without blinking. He would see no lies in her eyes.
Walsingham sniffed, the one side of his mouth twitching upward as if the strain of staring had made his face pinch. He looked to his guards. “Lady Cordelia’s room is next door. Search it now,” he said, producing a ring with keys on it, probably one to each bed chamber along the hall.
“Someone could have put something incriminating in my sister’s room,” Lucy said, trying to follow him, but Greer caught her arm, anchoring her close.
“Noted, Lady Lucy,” Walsingham said and continued out into the corridor to Cordelia’s door.
Lucy turned to Greer. “He needs someone to blame,” she whispered. “He will see her executed, and the assassin will either flee safely or finish his mission.”
“And ye getting imprisoned will not swing either scenario into our favor.”
“What do I do?” she said, her words snapping with ire even though she felt the pressure of tears gathering in her eyes.
“Nothing,” he said, and her mouth opened to argue. But he continued. “Yewill do nothing.Wewill come up with a plan.” He looked at the doorway. “But not here. Walsingham is looking for a reason to send ye to the Tower.” He glanced at the window. “And things will be found, and ye will be blamed.”
“If we go to Cranfield House, he will find me there,” she whispered. Her mind flipped through other possible hiding places. She looked back at him. “I think I know where we can go.”
*
The narrow houselooked abandoned, like a hollow skull with its windows vacant and dark. “Who owns it?” Greer asked as he followed Lucy behind it where it sat on the Strand.
“The crown now,” Lucy said as she tried the back door, which was locked. “It used to belong to Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk.”
“One of those involved in the Ridolfi Plot?” Greer asked.
She nodded and frowned at the building. “’Tis been empty since he was executed.” The sound of horses coming down the Strand made them press against the back where timbers crisscrossed the daub. The carriage passed, and Greer moved his jaw back and forth to release the tension. He had to keep Lucy out of the bloody Tower.
“I need a rock,” he said, and Lucy pulled her skirts back to kick at shadows in the yard. He withdrew hissgian dubhand worked the six-inch blade into the crack of the back door.
“Here’s one that might fit your hand.”
He reset the point of the blade along the locking mechanism.Clang. He delivered one heavy strike, and the blade broke through the old iron. “Inside before someone investigates the sound,” he said, and they hurried through the door, shutting it.
Greer blinked to help his eyes adjust to the near black. The fleeting moonlight through two glassed windows showed they were in a kitchen with a hearth that looked as lifeless as the rest of the house.
“There’s a lamp,” Lucy said, her voice soft in the tomblike manse.
Greer met her at the raised workstation and used his flint and bit of wool to light the wick. There was enough oil in it to feed the flame, casting a glow about the room.
“I have no tie to this place,” Lucy said. “Walsingham shouldn’t search here if he wants to arrest me.” She looked at him. “You may want to go somewhere else, distance yourself from me.”
He stepped up to her. “I’m not leaving ye in this mess, lass.”
She exhaled as if she’d worried over it. In the candlelight, her lashes looked longer and darker. “You are honorable, Greer, but I don’t want to see you locked away because of it. Your mother—”
“Is strong and safe up in Edinburgh. I will stay to see ye out of this.” And to make certain she wasn’t with his child. If she was, he’d steal her away to Scotland. No child of his would be birthed in the Tower of London.
