Tarnish by Katherine Longshore Read Free Book Online Page A

way to the dark corner of the back of the mews.
    My merlin, Fortune, is smaller than an average female, but persistent. And tenacious. Once she gets hold of something, she will not let it go. This makes her a less than ideal hunting companion, but I find her character faults appealing.
    Fortune emits a piercing cry when I run out of comfits.
    “Shhh, little one.” She dives at my empty hand. Her sharp beak pinches the skin of my finger, raising a welt. I shake my hand and laugh at her.
    “What’s the matter, little one, don’t you love me anymore?”
    “Actually, falcons are incapable of love.”
    I turn to see Henry Norris haloed by the light around the door. Everyone knows Norris. He tilts in the lists and wins accolades in every tournament. He is a gentleman of the bedchamber, and therefore assists the king in his most private moments. Helps him dress.
    Every time I see Norris, I think of the king’s bare back.
    “Sir Henry,” I stutter as I dip a little curtsy. “You startled me.”
    Fortune pipes her agreement.
    “That certainly wasn’t my intention,” Norris says smoothly, and moves over as if to examine Fortune. This is the closest he’s ever been to me. And the most he’s ever said to me.
    Even in the dim light of the mews, I can see the wear of weather on Norris’s skin. Days spent hunting have tanned his cheeks and chin and chiseled creases around his eyes. He is the same age as the king but appears older. And he is not nearly as alluring, though he would like to think he is. I can feel his presence, and his intention, in the way he breathes, the manner of his stance. Too close. Too encompassing.
    I fight the urge to step away. This is what I wanted. The attention. Someone important who might—just might—listen. Norris is married. And libidinous. But powerful.
    I turn my head to look at Fortune, who ruffles a bit. Nervous.
    “I wonder, sometimes,” I say, stretching my words as if searching for them, “if the court isn’t a bit like a mews.”
    When I look back, Norris appears a little perplexed.
    I finish my thought looking him directly in the eye. “Full of separately caged individuals incapable of love.”
    “Incapable?” His expression is one of mock offense. “All of us? By what reasoning do you come to this conclusion?”
    I think of King François in France. Of the words he spoke to Mary that she shared with me, the eight-year-old confidante of a fifteen-year-old naïf. How he loved her. Worshipped her. Adored her. How Mary believed him. Believed in love.
    How François passed her on to his friends when he was done with her. And each one took a piece of her until finally she was sent away and I was left alone in a foreign land. Again.
    “Evidence of the opposite has yet to present itself to me,” I answer.
    “Wyatt seems . . . suitably passionate.”
    So it’s working. “Oh?” I ask, wanting to know more. “What makes you say this?”
    Norris’s eyes drift down my face to my lips. And lower, to my bodice. Mentally, I shake off my revulsion.
    “I’ve seen the way he looks at you,” Norris answers. “And at cards last night, he . . . mentioned it.”
    Now Wyatt is talking about me?
    “What did he say?”
    Norris grins. “That the passion isn’t one-sided.”
    I narrow my eyes. This wasn’t part of the plan.
    “Passion and love are not the same thing.”
    “Too true,” says a voice behind us.
    We both turn to see George stride in, twirling an empty goblet.
    “Passion is easy to show,” he says, “love, sometimes impossible.”
    I wipe my hands on my skirt to keep them from shaking.
    “Though some of us could try a little harder,” George finishes.
    Norris takes a step backward, eyes twitching between my brother and me. George doesn’t look at him.
    Fortune cries, the tension too much for her. Or perhaps she is just looking for more comfits.
    “Sir Henry, I would speak to my sister alone.”
    Norris doesn’t move, stunned, perhaps, by George’s bluntness