Free The Widow's Kiss by Jane Feather Page B

eyes now were frightened. “Am I to be so accused, my lord?”
    “The Bishop of Winchester has some interest in discussing such issues with you.” He saw the fear in her eyes and despite his hostility he felt compassion for her. There were few accusations harder to refute and few crimes more grimly punished.
    “I see,” she said in a low voice, turning away from him. “Murder is not sufficient it seems.” Her hands lifted from her lap and then she let them fall again. “I bid you good night, Hugh of Beaucaire. I have nothing more to say.”
    “If you are innocent I will find you so,” he repeated. She made no answer, merely sat still on her chair facing the mirror, and after a minute he turned and softly left her.
    Guinevere let her head drop into her hands. She gazed into the mirror, her eyes fixed upon her reflection as if she could lose herself in it.
How was she to fight them?
    Then she raised her head and stood up slowly. She would fight them. She would find a way.
    The door to the inner chamber opened and Tilly came in. She was in her night robe. “Lord, chuck, I thought you’d never be finished. Such talking at this time of night. Here, let me unlace you.”
    Guinevere gave herself up to Tilly's deft ministrations and climbed into bed. “Bring me a cup of hippocras, Tilly. I’ll not sleep else.”
    “What is it that they want?” Tilly's eyes were sharp, belying her age. “Those armed men at the gate. This Hugh of Beaucaire. What's ’e after, chuck?”
    “He would prove that my husbands met untimely deaths at my hands,” Guinevere said with a little shrug.
    Tilly seemed to hesitate, then she said robustly, “What nonsense! I’ll fetch that ’ippocras now.”
    She hurried away on her errand but there was a worried frown on her brow. By any lights, it was an awkward business to lose four husbands to such accidents. It was ridiculous to imagine Lady Guinevere could have had a hand in any of those deaths, but it was an awkward business nevertheless. And few men had met a more deserved end than Lord Stephen. There was hardly a member of Lady Guinevere's household who hadn’t secretly rejoiced at the end to his drunken, violent tyranny. And no one who had served Lady Guinevere since her childhood would ask too many questions about what had happened that evening in her chamber.

    Hugh made his way thoughtfully to the guest apartments in the west wing. The house was quiet now but when he paused at a window in the gallery to look down into the lower court he saw the lights of the torch men stationed at the two far corners of the courtyard. There would have been torch men so positioned on the night Stephen Mallory fell to his death. They were the first to reach Mallory's body according to Guinevere. Her chamber windows were unshuttered that night and would have been well lit by candlelight.
    On impulse, Hugh retraced his steps and went back through the banqueting hall and once more outside. He crossed the court to where the torch man on the southwest corner stood holding his pitch flare. The man looked startled. He straightened from his slouch and stood to attention.
    “Can I ’elp, sir?”
    Hugh shook his head. “No, I thank you. Be at ease.” He stood with his back to the wall and looked up at the window of the chamber above the entrance. The shutterswere still drawn back, the glow of candlelight still within. Anyone standing at the window would have been visible to the torch man in this corner.
    He made his way to the northwest corner by the arched entrance to the lower court from the driveway beyond. The torch man here regarded him in open puzzlement. Hugh looked up at Guinevere's window immediately above the man's station. The view was obstructed but if he stepped out a few paces from the wall he could see the window clearly. The torch man would have run to the body lying on the cobbles. If he’d looked up from there, the window would have been in full view. As Hugh looked up in frowning thought,