Free 2 A Season of Knives: A Sir Robert Carey Mystery by P. F. Chisholm

from every line of his clothes. He was wearing a plain linen collar on his shirt, rather than a ruff.
    She smiled a little. There was no question he was vain, but she couldn’t help forgiving him for it. He had evidently changed his mind about regrowing his little Court beard because he had shaved that morning. His hair was still dyed black though showing dark chestnut at the roots. She had saved his face quite consciously for last, his long mobile face with that jutting Tudor nose, his blue eyes which could make her laugh only by dancing and quirking an eyebrow…Oh, for goodness sake, he was only flesh and blood and she was mooning like a lovelorn girl.
    She ignored those tediously sensible thoughts and stayed where she was, watching. At the moment he was talking to one of the grooms; now he went and greeted his charger, a large black beautiful creature completely out of place among the scrawny tough little hobbies. He smiled, patted the shining arched neck affectionately, gave him some salt from his hand. It hurt her deep inside her chest—where her heart was, she assumed—to see the casualness of that affection. If only he knew it, she valued that in him far more than his unconcealed passion for her. Passion, she believed, could only be fleeting, no matter what silly poets might say, but kindness…That was built into a man, or it wasn’t. She had never seen her husband show kindness to any creature: from his horses, his dogs, his servants, his son, his wife, from all of them he simply expected obedience, in exchange for not beating them or humiliating them.
    And that memory brought her back to earth with a vengeance. She took a deep breath, let it out again to quell any foolish tremors, and forced herself to march forwards.
    Her grooms had prepared the horses. Young Henry was there checking hooves and legs. Carey turned to face her, one long hand still at his favourite horse’s neck. He bowed to her, she curtseyed. Young Henry straightened up, patted the hobby’s neck and shook his head.
    ‘I’m not happy, ma’am,’ he said to her in his surprisingly deep voice. ‘They’re still not recovered.’
    ‘Why the haste, my lady?’ asked Carey.
    For a moment there was a flood of words in her mouth, battering at her teeth to be let out. Because if I stay in Carlisle much longer, Robin, you’ll have me in your bed and that would not only mean ruin for both of us, it would be a wicked sin in the face of God. The words were so bright in the forefront of her mind, for a second she thought she had said them, but his expression didn’t change the way it would have. She swallowed hard and the nonsense subsided. For answer, because her throat wasn’t working properly, she took a letter from her sleeve and gave it to him.
    Carey took it; his eyes narrowed at the seal. He opened it, and read it. The blue stare scanned the curt lines from her husband, and then lifted to hers.
    ‘I see,’ he said. ‘You told him what you had done to help me at Netherby. Was that wise, my lady?’
    A week before she had lent him the Widdrington horses to provide cover for his masquerade as a pedlar, knowing full well it would take a miracle if she was to see them again. Although the miracle had happened, wrought by Carey somehow, still…
    ‘It would have been foolish to do anything else,’ she said coldly, ‘since his friend Lowther would have told him the full tale, with embellishments. At least this way, I cannot be accused of dishonesty.’
    ‘Yes,’ he said.
    ‘But you understand, I simply cannot stay here against my husband’s clear orders.’
    ‘You told him the horses would be overtired?’
    ‘At the time I wrote to him, I didn’t know whether I would get them back.’
    ‘I wish you would stay a day or two more,’ he said. ‘I could give you a proper escort then, when my men come back from haymaking.’
    ‘We have our own hay to get in,’ Elizabeth said. ‘That’s partly why he’s…angry. And the reivers will be