FLAME OF DESIRE by Katherine Vickery Read Free Book Online

get some color in that pretty face of yours?”
    Heather stood looking at him in confusion. Always before he had wanted her help in counting the coins. Why now would he want to do it alone?
    “Well, don’t stand there.” His tone was one of irritation.
    Shrugging her shoulders in indifference, she left the room. “I care not what the strongbox contains,” she said beneath her breath.
    Walking through the workroom, she eyed the piles of silks, wool, brocades, and furs, wishing for a new dress, yet knowing well that her father would be hard pressed to part with any of his precious materials. Stepping outside, she squinted at the glare which met her eyes. The light had been poor in the counting room and now the sun nearly blinded her.
    “Apples! Ripe red apples,” trilled a voice from the cobbled street.
    “Mussels. Cockles. Oysters,” cried a male voice.
    “Coo, try me fine tarts,” yelled an old woman.
    The air smelled of fish, spices, and musty decay. The breeze tugged at her long unbound mahogany-colored hair as heather walked along the street, carefully avoiding the open gutters and slop pails being emptied overhead. The gabled roofs of the houses, the church spires, and the turreted towers rose from the mists of the chimney smoke and Heather’s eyes took in the familiar sight. London. Her home. Was there any other place quite like it?
    Everywhere there were street peddlers and vendors. London had always been a marketplace before anything else.
    An onion seller stepped in front of her carrying his pole across his shoulders. At each end were tied white and red onions. “Buy me four ropes of hard onions!” he called out, looking at Heather and cocking his brow as if to ask if she wanted some. She shook her head no.
    There were stalls of fresh vegetables and fish—indeed you could find almost any wares on the street.
    “Any knives or scissors to grind? Bring them here, my pretty, and I’ll make them like new,” a tall scissors sharpener implored her as she walked past his large-wheeled grinding machine. His little white dog ran toward her wagging his tail, and she bent down to give him a pat on his furry head. The animal sniffed at the hem of her gown and Heather laughed.
    “You smell my cat, don’t you, dog?”
    “Knives? Scissors? I will make them good again,” the scissors sharpener said, no doubt encouraged by her stopping.
    “Perhaps later. I don’t have them with me right now,” Heather answered, walking away.
    Strolling musicians wound through the crowd with their lutes and harps, strumming as they wandered about. One looked at Heather and gave her a bold wink, singing a song about a red-haired maiden. Smiling at him, but averting her eyes, she threw him a coin and went on her way.
    “Violets.”
    Turning around, Heather found herself looking into the large eyes of a ragged little girl. The child’s frail body and pale face spoke of deprivation, the unfortunate plight of the needy in the city. Sympathy swept over Heather.
    “Please, mum. Buy me violets.”
    Pulling three angels out of her apron pocket and placing the coins into the hand of the street urchin, heather gestured that she wanted one of the bouquets.
    “Thankee, mum,” the child mumbled, biting one coin to make certain that it was real. Thrusting two bunches of lavender flowers into Heather’s hands instead of one, the child scurried off as if fearful lest the coins be reclaimed.
    Heather felt pity for the poor child tug at her heart. It didn’t seem fair that some should have so much and others so little. Was it really, as her father had said, “God’s will?” She sincerely doubted it. More likely it was greed of the few which had caused such misery.
    Henry VIII had swept away the almshouses, hospitals had been abandoned, priories, monasteries, and convents torn down and the bricks carried away to build houses for rich nobles. Now there was nowhere for the sick and famished to go, yet nothing was being done. To add to the