talk to Randall FitzOsbourne and dance with Lady Mary? Have you already determined, as I have, that it was most likely not any of the noblemen in the hall this evening that we heard? Have you, too, concluded that it must be a high-ranking servant, clerk or soldier to speak with such an accent and yet not be in attendance on the king?”
“I’ve not been idle,” he impatiently replied. “I spoke with Godwin, one of the soldiers here, and he told me three men left Ludgershall before the evening meal—a clerk from Salisbury with a message for the bishop, a steward from a castle belonging to Sir Francis de Farnby, and a tailor from London who’d brought some samples of cloth for the queen.”
“I hardly think a London tailor could be the perpetrator of such a plot.”
“If he was a tailor,” Armand shot back.
That gave her a moment’s pause before she continued just as defiantly. “Perhaps the conspirators are not gone, and since they may still be here, we should continue to look for them, in any way we can.”
“I will not allow you to put yourself in jeopardy.”
She wasn’t going to let him, or any man, intimidate her, or tell her what to do. “You have no right to rule me, my lord, so I don’t need your permission, your protection, your approval or your help to do what I must do. Now, if I have your gracious leave, I am going to bed, and tomorrow, I may very well discover I have to speak to several of the king’s clerks. That, I will do, whether I have your permission or not.”
She swept her skirts behind her and continued up the stairs, determined to prove to Armand de Boisbaston that she was no flighty, foolish woman overwhelmed by his looks, his kiss or his masculine arrogance.
While pretending to fall in love with him because he had made that necessary.
ARMAND GLARED after Adelaide a moment, then turned and marched back down the steps to the hall. God’s blood, of all the high-handed, stubborn women! She was precisely the sort of female he would never marry!
He was so angry and engrossed in silently denouncing Adelaide, he didn’t see the shadow that shifted in the flickering torchlight when he left the stairwell.
Or the person who made it.
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