Free Blood Lance by Jeri Westerson Page A

rose up in his mind. A beautiful face. How a beautiful face could turn his head. She had a face any man would be pleased to wake beside. She had been betrothed to Roger Grey. There was a hint of desperation in her talk of him. She was quick to pronounce him a suicide. But why would she want that?
    Round bold eyes, luscious mouth. He certainly didn’t mind picturing her. She was below Crispin’s station, though … at least the place he used to occupy. She seemed quick and spirited, traits he valued in women, but he knew he shouldn’t get too close. Only close enough to solve this riddle.
    He always got too close and where did it get him?
    He swore he wouldn’t do it, made oath after oath that he would never look at it again. But now that his humor was completely black, he got up, knelt by his bed, and reached under the straw-stuffed mattress. His heart gave a lurch as his fingers closed on the object and pulled it forth.
    It lay in his palm, the small portrait. Framed in twisted golden wire, the figure on the painted surface looked up at him with seductive eyes and he slowly lowered to the bed, staring. How long had it been since he’d seen her in the flesh? How long had it been since he’d touched her, held her in his arms?
    Her face was pale, lips small. Red-gold hair. And those eyes. Even as paint and ink those eyes seemed to know him. Lids beguilingly heavy as they were in truth, they seemed to say they had a secret. And indeed, she had many secrets.
    He choked out a whispered “Philippa,” running a calloused finger down the painted face. Philippa Walcote was married, more than two years now by his reckoning. She had nothing to do with him any more than he had with her. That case had long ago been closed. He certainly had not laid eyes on her since she parted from these very walls. Yet the sound of her name and the face looking back at him still stirred something in him he did not wish to name. So long ago and there had been other women in between, perfunctory couplings, to be sure, but he could not escape that unmistakable feeling in his heart when thinking of her.
    He clutched the portrait. Why did he keep the damned thing? Was it loneliness that made him covet it like a dragon over its treasure?
    The fire in his hearth was low and glowed a dull red. Just toss it in! He’d only told himself that a thousand times, and a thousand times he had hesitated.
    Standing, he moved toward the fire, alternating glaring at the flames and the portrait. He leaned an arm again on the wall above the hearth and stared hard at those slanted eyes looking mildly back at him. Regrets were for the grave. Philippa was lost to him. There was no going back. And no use in feeling sorry for himself.
    After all, he was the one who had turned her away.
    Unbidden, his mind filled with the face of Anabel Coterel again. He shook his head with a disgusted snort. “Don’t be more of a fool than you already are, Crispin.” Love was for poetry and courtly pursuits. Men on the Shambles were lucky to find a wench to wife. A sturdy maid to keep the house and bear the children, children to help the business, to leave one’s worldly goods to. It was a business proposition, and rightly so. Life was too hard on the Shambles to gamble on love. And it wasn’t just the Shambles. A lord married off his daughters to other wealthy and noble lords to propagate the line. If they found love later they were lucky. After all, Lancaster had married twice, yet he still kept a mistress on the side. Was that love?
    The portrait weighed heavy in his hand. His fingers rubbed over the surface, loosening as he held it poised over the fire.
    A knock at the door startled him and, instinctively, he clutched the little frame. Hastily he stuffed it back under the mattress, went to the door, and opened it.
    Crispin took a staggering step back.
    In the doorway stood his old friend, Geoffrey Chaucer.

 
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    “G-GEOFFREY!”
    Chaucer smiled. His eyes danced with the old