Innocence Unveiled. Blythe Gifford

delicate flush—anger or shame?—spread beyond her cheek. She bit her lower lip with small white teeth, inflicting enough pain to steady her resolve. He had seen a knight in battle try the same trick, slashing his forearm to create a new, superficial wound to distract him from the mortal blow.

      Staring back at him, her defiant eyes did not waver, but he heard the whisper of inheld breath, as if she had recognised the fire in his eyes and was burned by it. ‘What do you ask?’

      Longing rushed through his blood like poison. What he would ask had no words, only the vision of wild joining.

      He fought the image. Even if he permitted himself careless pleasures of the flesh, he was hiding in the belly of a country that might soon be at war with his. One unmeasured word uttered in passion could be his death. He gritted his teeth against the feeling. ‘I ask for the truth.’

      She rose and slipped into the shadows surrounding the loom. Hiding.

      He would not let her. ‘And the truth is, you have no husband.’

      She whirled to face him, the wool of her skirt crushed in her fist. ‘I have no husband.’ Angry words. ‘Would you have dealt with me, had you known?’

      Yes, but he would not tell her that. He shrugged. ‘Then why wear the wimple?’

      Her slender arms crossed her chest like a shield. ‘There is little safety on the streets these days. People are more respectful of a married woman.’

      ‘But you are not on the streets now.’

      ‘I still need protection.’

      ‘I thought I was to protect you.’

      She smiled. ‘Who will protect me from you?’

      She had turned his words back on him. He had thought to keep her off balance, yet he was the one who felt dizzy. He donned a mask of disdain to blot out all traces of attraction. She must not know his weakness for her. ‘What makes you think you need protection from me?’

      Her eyes widened and narrowed in an instant, but he saw his insult had hit its mark. For a moment, he was sorry for it.

      ‘I am glad to hear I do not.’ She patted the wrinkles from her skirt, now all brisk business. ‘When will I see my wool?’

      Uneasiness rippled through him. She had recovered faster than he expected. He had thought her a simple burgher mistress but, so far, this woman was nothing that he had expected. ‘I cannot order contraband wool at the market. If it were easy, you would not need me.’

      ‘How long must I wait?’

      ‘As long as it takes.’ As long as it would take to turn the people of Flanders to Edward’s side. ‘Weeks, not days, mistress.’

      ‘I’ve waited months already.’ Urgency shook her voice.

      ‘Patience is a virtue you don’t possess.’

      ‘Patience is no virtue when dealing with spinsters and weavers. I have no patience for sloppy work or I will have nothing fit to sell.’

      Her words intrigued him. What would it be like to be so pleased with who you were and what you did? ‘You are proud of your work, aren’t you?’

      The smile that transformed her face would have, for most women, come at the mention of a paramour. ‘The Mark of the Daisy is known throughout the Low Countries.’

      She sounded lovesick, he thought, irritably. ‘And what makes your cloth so special?’

      ‘I can recognise the best wool by touch. My spinsters deliver seven skeins a day instead of five. When my dyers are finished, the colour is fast. My weavers’ work is so tight we rarely need the fullers’ craft.’

      ‘Fullers?’ He followed most Flemish words, but sometimes missed the meaning. ‘What do they do?’

      She cocked a suspicious eyebrow. ‘How can you deal in wool and know so little of it?’

      ‘Do I need to know how to grow wheat in order to trade it? Or how to take salt from the mines in order to sell it?’

      ‘Well, if you knew wool, you would recognise our mark. Even before I was born, we made a special fabric for the Duchess of Brabant.’

      A burning numbness filled him, like a blow from a broadside sword. Duchess cloth. A scrap of indigo- dyed wool carefully wrapped around a dagger of German silver. An orphaned bastard’s only inheritance from the princess who had married a duke.

      What terrible fate had drawn him to the very shop that had made the cloth his mother had worn? ‘Duchess cloth? You made that?’

      ‘You know it?’

      He clenched his fist behind his back. ‘I’ve heard of it.’

      ‘I’m surprised. It was so long ago.’

      ‘I was born in Brabant, remember?’ His throat tightened around the words that jarred against each other. ‘Those who have seen it claim only a miracle of God or the Devil’s witchcraft could produce such an intricate design.’

      She laughed. ‘Neither God, nor the Devil. Just Giles de Vos.’

      He lowered his voice, afraid that he would shout to make himself heard over the blood pounding in his ears. He must ask the question as if the answer made no difference. ‘So he knew the Duchess?’

      He was suddenly hungry to hear of her. No one had spoken of his mother since she had died.

      ‘The Duchess was a great patroness of his,’ Katrine said. ‘He wove a special length and sent it to her every year until she died twenty years ago.’

      ‘Nineteen.’

      She looked puzzled, but did not ask him how he knew. ‘He never wove it again after that.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘He said there is a craft and an art to weaving, and the art must come from the heart. I think he lost heart for it after she died.’

      A woman’s romantic notion. The truth was certainly simpler. De Vos was a merchant. The money had stopped. ‘He didn’t even make some for your mother?’

      ‘My…my mother?’

      ‘You say your father only made this cloth for the Duchess. Surely he wove some for his wife.’

      She shook her head, flinching as if in pain. ‘My mother’s not…’

      Her voice cracked again. He wondered whether she had lost a mother, too.