Plague by C.C. Humphreys Read Free Book Online Page A

contents. Drew in a sharp breath.
    A large sapphire rested in her palm, exquisitely cut facets glimmering in the candlelight. She shook her head in wonder, and he smiled. He did not mind that she was so easily impressed. It would take time to remove the actress from the woman. He would spend that time.
    She returned the jewel to the pouch. “No,” she said, thrusting it back, “I cannot accept it.”
    This was not possible. She must have misunderstood. “Madam,” he said, grabbing her wrist, “I insist.”
    She cried out in pain, jerked her hand from his grip. “No! I am a married woman, Lord Garnthorpe. I cannot be bought.”
    He was aware now of others looking. One of the king’s party had turned. He whitened, feeling the chill surge from his stomach intohis chest. He hated this public scrutiny. The cold reached his head. Another whiteness there. Blue white, but not like her eyes. Like a corpse stripped on a battlefield, left out on a winter’s night.
    Did someone murmur his name?
    He looked at her hand holding out the pouch, looked up into her eyes—and saw the pleading there. Not here, they said. Not now. Later and alone. “No words, madam. I understand completely. Later. Alone.”
    “Sir,” she began.
    But he’d taken the gem, turned about, descended to the pit and marched through the playhouse doors onto Portugal Street. A few paces further and he was on Lincoln’s Inn Fields. There he lost himself swiftly in the crowds.
    It took him longer to lose his smile.
    At first she could not breathe, as if the hand she’d felt earlier upon the stage on the back of her neck now squeezed the front of it. Then someone took her elbow again.
    “Heh oops, and steady there,” came a familiar voice. “Was your lover’s offer so high that it causes you to faint? This is what comes of obeying your commandment to let you flirt with gallants, to the advancement of your career.”
    Her husband’s tone was teasing, light enough to lift the weight that pressed her. “Oh, John,” she murmured, and was the next instant in his arms.
    “What’s this?” He held her tight for a moment, then drew back to study her face. “It is not like my Sar to be so discomfited. Nor in such a public setting.” They both glanced around. The king was still upstage in private conversation with Lord Clarendon, the gallants yet at their dice. Even so, she squeezed the arms thatheld her, stepped away. “What’s amiss, love? Did your admirer affront you?”
    “It was him.”
    John stiffened. “The one you’ve felt?”
    “Aye. He made himself known to me.”
    “Did he?”
    “Ah!” she cried out. John had taken her hand, the same one the lord had gripped. She pulled it from his fingers and rubbed at the wrist, a livid red mark upon it.
    “Did he do that?” On her nod, he flushed. “By Christ, I’ll … where is he now?”
    She grabbed his arm as he made to go. “Nay, John, do not.”
    “Leave me! He must be corrected.”
    “For this? John, you spent a month in Clink last year for ‘correcting’ those two wherrymen.”
    “And would again when they presume to ‘know’ my wife.”
    “This is different. He is a nobleman.”
    John ceased pulling away. “He told you his name?”
    “Aye. It was …” She had to close her eyes to remember it. For a moment, all she could see were his eyes, the frigid steel of them, like an unsheathed blade. “Garnthorpe.”
    “Lord Garnthorpe?”
    “You know him?”
    “Of him. He was one of those rare men—a baron who fought for Parliament in the late wars. He was especially brutal, so it was said.”
    “And was he not punished afterwards?”
    “Punish all who were brutal and every tree in England would stand as gallows.”
    Something had come into his eyes. Something, she realized, akin to what she’d seen in Garnthorpe’s when she’d spurned hisgift. Unlike many, her John never talked of his time as a soldier. But she’d held him when nightmares sweated him. She ran fingers over