Free The Chalice by Nancy Bilyeau Page A

street. Could I do this—stay with the Courtenays? It would mean living in London, the city I feared, the city where I’d watched Margaret burn. But Gertrude had already assured me that she’d not go near the king’s court. They were both so eager to help. I would finally be privy to the wisdom of parents in raising a child.
    “If you will pardon me for a moment,” said Geoffrey Scovill. Watching Arthur, I’d forgotten about Geoffrey, about Mistress Brooke—everything. But Geoffrey hadn’t left, and now he had something to say to me.
    Henry looked him up and down. “And you are . . . ?”
    “This is a friend of Joanna’s, his name is Geoffrey Scovill,” said Gertrude, with elaborate politeness. “He is a constable.”
    “I see.” Henry smiled at him, but his eyes showed confusion. He probably could not imagine why a Stafford would befriend a town constable.
    “I would like to speak with Mistress Stafford for a moment in private,” said Geoffrey.
    Henry’s smile faded.
    “Geoffrey knew my father.” At once, I regretted saying that. It sounded as if I were trying to elevate Geoffrey’s status. But it served its purpose.
    Curious eyes tracked us as I led Geoffrey out of the parlor. I closed the door once we were inside the kitchen. The wooden table still bore the crumbs of Arthur’s bread and cheese from hours before. My young servant, Kitty, had never appeared. My stomach ached; I was quite hungry. And weary, too. I’d slept so little the night before.
    Geoffrey grabbed me by both shoulders and pulled me toward him. We were so close I could smell the soap he’d scrubbed into his skin. It was ashy, bitter. The sort of soap that servants use because it costs next to nothing. Not the choice for a manwho attempts a fashionable haircut. Alongside my shock at his grabbing me I felt a strange tenderness at Geoffrey’s fumbling toward gentility.
    “Joanna, listen to me,” Geoffrey said. “You mustn’t go with these people.”
    “Why not?”
    “It’s not safe for you.”
    I wriggled out of his grasp. I’d felt such relief at the prospect of the Courtenays helping me with Arthur. The grinding burden of raising him would be lifted. Now Geoffrey wanted to sour the plan.
    I said, “You do know that the Courtenays are one of the wealthiest families in the land? They have an army of servants. How could anyone hurt me while I am their guest?”
    “That’s not the sort of danger I am thinking of.”
    “Then what?” I demanded.
    He did not answer me. I could see he was weighing his words, trying to decide how to frame something. Much as Gertrude Courtenay had measured her words upstairs, when telling me of the Lady Mary.
    “How does Sister Beatrice know you were planning to come to Dartford, to be the town constable?” I asked.
    Geoffrey frowned in surprise. “She wrote to me after the fair. I answered her letters.”
    “I see.”
    “I would have been only too happy to write to you, Joanna. But of course you sent me no letters.”
    An awkward tension filled my kitchen. I couldn’t correspond with Geoffrey. Writing might have encouraged his hopes of more than friendship. I’d thought he no longer harbored such feelings for me, since I’d seen him only once since his declaration in the priory barn, last spring.
    “At Saint Margaret’s Fair,” I began, and then faltered.
    “The fair? What of it?”
    “You were not . . . at ease. I don’t know why.”
    There was bewilderment in Geoffrey’s face, but then it shifted to something else. He laughed. It was not the easy, boyish laugh of earlier.
    “You have no notion, do you, Joanna? I’ve sometimes wondered if you were aware—I’ve thought, ‘No, she has to realize. She’s certainly not stupid.’ ”
    “Realize what?”
    “Your effect on men. How they respond to you, how they look at you. And then when you add Beatrice to it—God’s blood! Two beautiful young women, novices no more but unmarried, fatherless, wandering about the