Chapter Thirty
She woke with the warmth of him cupped behind her, and yet she was alone. He must have gone, she thought, only moments before. She lay, still feeling the recent pressure of his legs under hers, his breath on the back of her neck and his hand firm on her breast. But he did not return, and she was disappointed. The tingling sensation of his strength slowly faded from her body and she felt cold again. If he had left and already gone back into the city, she thought she would never forgive it. Then she sighed. Whatever happened now, she knew she would not refuse him. Eventually she sat up, looked around, and clambered naked from the bed.
Searching for something to wrap around herself, she was tiptoeing across the chamber when he came at her from the garderobe shadows, slamming her against the wall with the ridge of a tapestry hem biting into the flesh of her back, and kissed her so hard she bit her tongue. He wore a bedrobe, heavy black brocade untied and swinging open, and his full weight pressed onto her. His fingers twisted into her hair, gripping her tightly against him as his other hand pushed down between her legs, forcing them apart. Instantly he bent his knees, buried his head between her breasts, and was suddenly inside her. He thrust only twice with a savage urgency, then clung to her, shaking. She heard him grunt, as though winded.
During the short, abrupt silence that followed, his clasp on her gentled. He took a deep breath and looked down with an apologetic grin. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘I behave badly.’
Finding the right words seemed too difficult. After a slightly bewildered pause, she simply shook her head. A late winter’s dawn was oozing through the window beside her, lighting the chamber in cold sallow grey. It paled the puddled shadows, but Andrew’s body pressing against her remained dark. His hair, eyes and bedrobe were black and the sheen of his body was painted in shade. Finally she said, ‘I thought you’d left me again.’
He smiled and his hands smoothed the inside of her thighs, then slipped up to the curls at her groin, where they were still joined. ‘Sore?’ he inquired softly. She shook her head again. He eased himself out from her, instead pressing his fingers inside. She gulped, arching her back a little as he began to play. Then he grinned and raised one finger, pushing it between her lips and against her tongue. ‘Too sticky, but from me, not from you.’ He released her at once, swept her up into his arms and carried her back to the bed. She sat where he tumbled her, pulling the covers quickly up around her neck. Drew laughed. ‘So modest? Even after last night? Even now?’
After a pause, she said, ‘Are you going away again?’
‘I don’t think so, not today.’ He sat back a little on the edge of the bed, regarding her. ‘Do you care?’ he asked.
Various answers occurred to her, including some of the words she had heard Borin say in the past, which she had always been careful not to repeat. Instead she said, ‘Last night you told me some things I didn’t really understand. And there are things you don’t understand. I care so much, and if you don’t know that, then you understand me at all.’
He laughed again. ‘So, we take turns with a question?’
‘You have to talk to the others, too. Of course, now they know I’m all right and they know you’re all right. But they don’t know how. They must be terribly confused.’
‘I think we’ll deal with your confusion first,’ he said. ‘Though I’d have thought what I did was fairly self-explanatory.’
‘Not that,’ she sniffed. ‘Though actually it wasn’t … I mean, I hadn’t ever felt so … but that’s not what I mean. I want to ask about Throckmorton and Lord Marrott and what you meant about settling the merchandise and knowing about Hastings and how it all happened. But most of all,’ she said, looking down at her well-wrapped knees, ‘I want to understand something quite different. Last night you said after you came back from Yorkshire you went to Crosby’s because you couldn’t come straight home here. You said it was because I was a distraction. Well, I know I asked to work with you again, and perhaps that was – annoying. And you keep having to rescue me from things. And you still call me a child, even though I asked you not to. So, do you think I’m just a – nuisance?’
He stared at her, momentarily uncomprehending. His smile faded as he reached forwards and clasped her hand. ‘Beetle-brained brat,’ he said fondly. ‘Do I act as though I find you a nuisance? I’m not known as a man who accepts hindrances patiently – and never in my work. But the distraction you cause me is, in fact, entirely my own fault.’
She found it hard to believe. ‘It’s not your fault I got arrested, or locked in Throckmorton’s horrid cellar.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ He looked at her in sudden blank amazement.
She had forgotten for a moment that he didn’t know. ‘It’s complicated. Throckmorton recognised me at the docks. He was furious with me, from before. He just carried me off. That’s when I found out he was plotting to kill you. But I rescued myself that time,’ she said, with a touch of pride ‘No one helped me and I did it all alone. I wasn’t even hurt. At least – only a little bit. And then I tried to rescue you, which wasn’t successful at all. So, I’m sorry about that.’
Andrew had come much closer and she felt his breath in her eyes as he spoke. ‘Three times may seem somewhat insistent in just a few short hours, but it appears I have no choice.’ He grasped her by the shoulders and pulled her towards him. Then he paused, as if something quite unaccustomed had occurred to him. ‘Unless, that is,’ he said rather more softly, ‘you have any objections?’
‘Object to what?’ she said, startled.
‘This,’ he said.
It was some time later when, once again dressed in her stained broadcloth, Tyballis sat meekly at the long table in the hall. It was raining heavily once more, beating against the windows and closing in the day. But the fire had been built to its usual massive proportions and the great chamber expanded, its frame heaving from the heat inside and the cold without. Every wooden beam creaked and sweated. The rich scent of burning wood mingled with the spices of mulled hippocras. Andrew sat at the head of his table, Tyballis to his side, and everyone else gathered tightly together on the long benches. The explanations became mellow as the wine jugs emptied.
‘I ain’t saying I don’t understand,’ muttered Casper, refilling his own cup, ‘but I can’t say it’s right clear, neither. Here was me thinking you was a lord pretending to be an ordinary gent. But now you says you’re just an ordinary gent pretending to be a lord.’
‘And here was me thinking you were just an ordinary thief like the rest of us,’ objected Ralph Tame. ‘But looks like there’s nothing ordinary about it.’
‘A thief maybe, but a sight better at it than us,’ nodded Nat, ‘seeing as how this is your house and everything in it belongs to you. Stolen property maybe, but I’d an idea you won it cheating at dice.’
Andrew Cobham smiled faintly. ‘The truth is far less interesting, I’m afraid.’
Tyballis turned crossly to Nat. ‘That’s a horrid suspicion,’ she said. ‘Of course Drew doesn’t cheat at dice.’
‘I most certainly do,’ Andrew said. ‘In fact, I see no conceivable reason to play at dice otherwise. What possible use would it be to risk losing? But when I play with loaded dice, I play for considerably more important wagers than simple greed. Indeed, this house is of very little service to me, which is why I fill it with a parcel of ne’er-do-wells and misbegotten beggars.’
The ne’er-do-wells and beggars sniggered cheerfully.
‘I could not believe my eyes,’ George Switt said in a voice of awe, ‘when the young Mister Lyttle, Mister Spiers and myself cowered in Lord Hastings’ apartments, expecting at any moment to be clapped in irons, and you, sir, marched in demanding to see his lordship.’