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He felt a smile tug on his frown. “Aye, we both need rest. Although if ye think ye won’t be able to keep your hands to yourself, I’ll find a second bed far down the hall.”
She laughed. A loud bark that she quickly hushed as if remembering that they were intruders and fugitives.
He picked up the lamp, and they walked hand in hand toward the steps that led above. “Although,” she said, “perhaps you should get me with child. Pregnant women are not executed until the babe is born.”
The thought of Lucy pining away in the Tower, her belly growing with his bairn, Lucy being dragged away to the block after it was born made his hand fist. “Or I will take ye away to Scotland, bairn or no bairn.”
He felt her stop and turned to look down to her on the step behind him. “I could… go with you to Scotland?” she asked.
He’d never considered it before when her world was comfortable. That she might want to give all this up. “Aye, Lucy, ye could be safer there even if ’tis not as luxurious.”
“Safer with you?”
“You are always safer with me,” he said.
Her lips opened and closed twice before she said, “I do believe that.”
They kept climbing until they reached a landing. Richly wrought portraits lined the hall where bedrooms opened on either side. He led Lucy into the last one. “’Tis best to be away from the stairs if anyone enters the house.”
He handed her the lamp while he picked up and shook the quilt atop the bed to rid it of dust. No creatures stirred on the fine tick. Norfolk’s house had been well kept. Probably by a contingent of hired servants.
“Greer?”
“Aye?” He watched her walk over to the side table, setting the lamp there. She pulled her French hood from her head, letting her hair fall about her shoulders.
She set it onto the table and turned to him, taking a full breath to look him in the eyes. “Will you marry me?”
Chapter Seventeen
“Ill bread and ill drink / Makes many illthinke.”
Thomas Tusser,Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, 1573
The question hadbeen on the tip of her tongue all night, ever since he mentioned she could be with child. She’d known the risks, of course, but the danger seemed so far off compared to the other dangers around them that she hadn’t thought things through.
“If I’m with your child?” she said. “I must know so I can start to make plans.”
He stood there as if the mythical Medusa had turned him to stone, a mighty warrior made immobile by a woman’s simple question. Although, there was nothing simple about wedding him. He was Scots and she was English. She had a house here in London, and of course, there was the fact that she was probably going to be declared a traitor by morning. Even King James’s regent might support Elizabeth’s declaration of her guilt. And could she leave London if Cordelia was still locked in the Tower?
“I don’t mean to put you to the rack,” she said.
“I will not abandon ye, lass, or my child,” he said.
She frowned slightly. “That’s not an answer to my question.”
Greer ran a hand through his thick hair. “I have so little to offer ye as a husband, Lucy.”
“You’re right,” she said and waved her hand as if brushing off the ludicrous notion. “You have strength, cleverness, and courage. You helped me save Pip and Percy without complaint and encouraged Alyce to look past her scars.” She looked down at her gloved hands. “And me perhaps.”
She walked to the opposite side of the bed. She’d sleep in her clothes in case they must rise quickly to flee. “I can see how deficit you are as a potential husband.”
“Lucy,” he said, coming around the bed to capture her shoulders. He turned her toward him, and she blinked, hoping he couldn’t see the shine to her eyes. “I could not keep ye in what ye are accustomed. Silks and velvet and jewels. I am but a soldier for my king. I come from a humble home.”
“And I come from a traitor’s home,” she said. “A torturous home.” She looked past him. “Silk and velvet stings against burns.”
She turned away, pulling out of his hands.I am pathetic. A fool.Lucy turned to him, a smile back on her mouth, even if she couldn’t make it authentic. “I will do well wherever I am, Master Buchanan. Let it not concern you.”
“Lucy,” he said again, and she looked into his eyes then. They stared at one another without a word between them.
