Face Down Beneath The Eleanor Cross Part 20

"I'd have told you, even in Sir Walter's presence." He came up beside her. "I could have you on a s.h.i.+p in an hour and it would take you anywhere you chose."

Susanna could not help herself. She started to laugh. There were tears streaming down her cheeks by the time she had control of herself again. Baldwin looked alternately alarmed and confused by her reaction. When she explained the reason for her outburst, he stared at her with somber eyes.

"You put overmuch faith in the law. Perhaps your friends, all of us, have the right of it."

Perhaps they did, but Susanna could not allow herself to think that way. She would be plunged into the depths of despair if she let herself dwell on the horrifying possibilities.

"Say rather that I trust in mine own abilities and the common sense of a jury." She was determined to sound optimistic. "There's time yet."

To her surprise, he took her hands in his. "I hope you are right, Susanna. I find I want very much to keep you in my life."

He said no more, to her relief, and s.h.i.+fted his grip to her elbow to guide her outside to the waiting Bernard Bates. It was nearly dusk, for she had spent far longer than she'd intended in Nick Baldwin's company.

With a final wave, he vanished back into the warehouse.

Susanna started walking. The oyster sh.e.l.ls beneath her feet gave way to cobblestones. She followed no particular route as she considered what to do next and paid little attention to her surroundings. She had only a vague awareness of many tenements and a proliferation of narrow alleys, dark as the inside of a coal mine, that ran between the close-set buildings.

The attack came without warning. Bates, struck down by a blow to the head from behind, had no chance to defend her. Susanna was roughly seized and dragged into an opening no wider than a doorway. Before she could draw breath to scream, a dirty hand clapped over her mouth.

The upper stories of buildings on either side jutted out, narrowing the alley still further and preventing anyone above her from seeing what was happening. Susanna kicked out, her wooden heel connecting with her captor's s.h.i.+n, but her only reward was a clout to the head. Ears ringing, she fought dizziness as he shoved the fabric of her own hood over her face to cut off her air.

What must have been a shout, perhaps even a bellow of rage, reached Susanna only as a dull grunt. She was perilous near unconsciousness when a second pair of strong hands seized her and pulled her backwards. Bates had recovered, she thought, as she tumbled to the hard, filthy ground and rolled over twice before she could stop herself. By the time she'd thrown back her hood and struggled to a sitting position, the battle was over.

A man stood over his fallen opponent, his breathing ragged and his chest heaving. Not Bates. Baldwin. As if he felt her eyes upon him, he turned to stare at her.

"Are you hurt?" he asked.

"No." She got her feet under her and rose. "Are you?"

Instead of answering, he knelt by the attacker for a moment. "I hit him too hard," he said.

Approaching with caution, she was near enough when Baldwin flexed his fist to see that his knuckles were flecked with blood. "You are hurt. Let me see."

But he shook his head and evaded her touch. "I hit him too hard," he said again. "He is dead."

"You saved my life."

"Thank my mother," he said in a grim voice. "She's the one who was watching for your departure from her window and saw that you were followed when you left the warehouse."

The implications. .h.i.t Susanna all at once. She swayed. If the wall of a house had not been there to support her, she might well have fallen.

"Someone just tried to kill me," she whispered.

And it might not have been the first time.

Chapter 37.

"Marry me, Eleanor."

Slowly her eyes opened. The pa.s.sion that had been there moments before faded away, replaced by sudden alarm. Then that, too, vanished. She sat up in Walter's bed, brought her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and began to sob.

"Eleanor, I did not mean... I-I-" He broke off, bereft of words, and before he could regroup there came a knocking too loud and insistent to ignore.

"Stay here, love," he told her as he struggled into hose and s.h.i.+rt, doublet and ruff. "A moment!" he shouted in the direction of the outer room. He'd given his manservant the day off shortly after Eleanor arrived at his door.

Her sobbing subsided into m.u.f.fled sniffles. Walter was loath to leave her this way. Memories of an unfortunate incident in his youth haunted him.

"Promise me you will not do anything foolish." He fixed her with a hard stare. A grim note entered his voice. "Swear it, Eleanor."

Wiping the tears from her face, she took the clothing he pa.s.sed through the bed curtains and gave him a watery but rea.s.suring smile. "I swear."

The outer room contained signs he'd had a visitor but none that would give away her ident.i.ty. Walter closed the door to his bedchamber, tugged a final time at his doublet to make sure it hung straight, and answered the insistent hammering, which had now resumed with less force but just as much urgency.

Susanna nearly fell into his lodgings. Bernard Bates, eyes gla.s.sy and a huge lump rising on his forehead, followed after.

"What in G.o.d's name-?"

"Someone tried to kill me, Walter."

"Are you hurt?"

She shook her head. "Master Baldwin came to my rescue."

"The attacker?"

"Dead."

"Did you recognize him?"

"No. He was a vagabond by his clothing. But strong." Her hand drifted to her lips. If he looked closely, he could just make out the imprint of a man's fingers in the soft flesh around her mouth.

A table by the window held a large brown earthenware flask of ale, but both Bates and Susanna looked as if they could do with something more potent. Walter unearthed a bottle of aqua vitae from a cupboard and poured out three portions.

"Sit," he ordered. Susanna moved restlessly about the room.

"I cannot be still."

He thrust the cup into her hand and steered her toward the Glas...o...b..ry chair. "Sit," he repeated. "Drink this down."

"Which of us is the healer?" she demanded as reluctant amus.e.m.e.nt made one corner of her mouth quirk upward.

She sat. She drank. She made a face at the fiery taste of the liquid but she obeyed his command. If he had not been so troubled by what had happened to Susanna, Walter would have appreciated the remarkableness of having compelled two strong-minded women to do his bidding in the s.p.a.ce of a few minutes.

With careful questioning, he soon had the details of the attack and had heard, although without specifics, of Susanna's visit to the Lady Mary. She did not think she had been followed from Whitehall, but she could not be sure. Bates had not noticed anything, either. He'd been hit from behind and fallen forward. The lump on his forehead from a hard landing had a twin behind his right ear.

"It might have been a random act of violence," Walter suggested. "A thief after your purse."

"He tried to smother me, Walter, not pick my pocket."

"A pity he is dead and cannot be questioned."

"Yes."

"This Baldwin... had he any enmity with Robert?"

"Not sufficient to want to kill him. And he had no reason to harm me. Or to frighten and then rescue me, either, if that is what you are thinking."

"I do not know what to think," Walter admitted, not about what had befallen Susanna nor about what had pa.s.sed between himself and Eleanor.

"There's more," Susanna said.

"More?"

"What if the robbers north of Islington were paid to attack us? I could as easily have been struck by their arrows as you. If someone is willing to pay to have others kill, then it is even possible the woman with Robert was hired, paid, and given poison to put in his food. Paid to kiss him, too."

"She might have done that of her own accord. Susanna, this seems far-fetched." Absently, he rubbed his arm where the healing arrow wound still felt sore to the touch. "Footpads, on the road or in London, are always a hazard to honest folk."

"And the tainted meat at Coventry?"

"You cannot think-"

"I do not know what to think!" Hands in the air, she gave him a look filled with frustration."Nor do I know who to suspect. It could be any one of them." A rueful smile flashed and was gone. "At least this seems to confirm that I've been on the right track. I had begun to wonder if concentrating on former mistresses was a mistake. But if Robert was killed by some foreign mercenary, or by an old enemy we knew nothing about, then no one would be bothering about me now."

"Unless these are random incidents with no connection to each other or to your investigation." Walter picked up his cup of aqua vitae and drank deeply. "But a.s.suming you are correct, is it not significant that there were no problems until after Annabel joined us?"

"There were none until we started for London. None until I insisted Eleanor and Rosamond accompany me here."

"She could have been struck by that arrow," he reminded her. His body had s.h.i.+elded Eleanor during the attack.

Susanna said nothing.

Walter's experiences working for the queen's government had taught him to be suspicious of everyone but a few hours earlier, when Eleanor had surprised him by arriving unannounced and unescorted at his lodgings, he'd not looked for ulterior motives. She'd said she needed his help, that Matthew Grimshaw was making her life a misery. One thing had led to another, in what had appeared to Walter to be a natural manner. After keeping careful distance from him since that night in Coventry, save for sharing his horse, she'd given herself to him at last, even told him that she loved him.

It had not occurred to him till now that Eleanor might have come to him to distract him, to keep him away from Susanna. In the course of his day, as had been his habit since their return to London, he'd have gone to the Crowne. He'd have been there when Susanna left to meet with the Lady Mary, and he'd have insisted upon accompanying her. If she'd had a two-man escort, she'd not have been so vulnerable to attack. The attempt might not have been made at all.

But he had not been with Susanna, and someone had tried to kill her.

Someone had hired the fellow. That seemed certain. London was not so infected with crime that a woman with an escort was in danger of attack. Not in the ordinary way of things.

One question nagged at him above all others. Had Eleanor arranged today's events? If so, she might have put something in the food at Coventry. She could have hired vagabonds to ambush their party. And if she had done all those things, it could only have been because she had killed Robert.

With sudden bitterness, Walter remembered that Eleanor had claimed Matthew Grimshaw, in a fit of jealous pique, had threatened her, told her that if she did not return with him to Lancas.h.i.+re at once and marry him, he would swear she had been gone from Appleton Manor at Yuletide. A lie, she'd vowed. But would it have been? What if her story about Grimshaw was the lie, told to rouse his jealousy as well as his protective instincts?

Walter knew her servants had been bribed. She'd told him so herself. According to her earlier story, Grimshaw had bribed them to back up his story that he'd been with her when Robert died and could thus swear she'd never left Appleton Manor, a fabrication designed to bolster Eleanor's claim of innocence. Grimshaw, she'd told Walter, had insisted she'd need a gentleman's word to verify her whereabouts and had been willing to perjure himself to help her. Eleanor claimed she'd needed no such saving, but if her servants would lie for Grimshaw's gold, they'd have lied for Eleanor's.

What if she had come to London to be with Robert, her old lover? What if they had fallen out?

Eleanor had cried, and Walter had comforted her. They'd ended up in bed together, pleasuring each other in the most splendid ways imaginable. All a fraud? He wanted to believe in her, but if he was wrong, his error in judgment could cost Susanna her life.

He would have to ask more questions, he decided. Discover if anyone had seen a woman and a child near Robert's lodgings in Silver Street. Or at the Crowne. Or a woman without a baby, he supposed, since Eleanor had seemed willing enough to send the child off to Kent with Susanna's steward.

"Round and round," he muttered. Who was telling the truth? Who was lying? And what had Susanna done to acquire such a relentless enemy?

"Walter, you are behaving in a most strange manner." Susanna's sharp voice broke in on his thoughts.

"I apologize, my dear."

Susanna seemed calm now, her old self. Her gaze, fixed on him, was too sharp for his liking. "Why would anyone want me dead before the trial? We have made so little progress in proving my innocence that most people would conclude my fate sealed. Why attempt to save the executioner the trouble of doing his job?"

"Perhaps someone has reason to fear what might be revealed at your trial."

Susanna sighed and swallowed the last of the aqua vitae, grimacing at the taste. "This attack on me today, at least, must be connected to Robert's murder."

Walter answered her with a reluctant nod. He would not condemn Eleanor out of hand. There were other possibilities. He glanced at Susanna's guard. The fellow had a way of fading into the background. People forgot he was there.

"What did you see, Bates?"

"Stars." He rubbed the lump on his head.

"No one lurking in the shadows?"

"Only the villain who attacked us and him too late."

"Bates did his best." Susanna sighed. "And now, you must agree, we can limit our suspects to those traveling with us."

"And to Alys Putney and her husband." A glimmer of hope raised Walter's spirits. Putney could have hired someone to dispose of Susanna. "According to the most recent report from my agents there, both Putney and his wife were absent from Dover on the third day of January."

"But why would Robert be so friendly with Alys? She makes no attempt to hide her contempt for him."

"To convince her husband to arrange pa.s.sage out of the country?" Resting one hip against the table and staring off into s.p.a.ce, Walter warmed to a theory that had no connection to Eleanor. "Putney is more than a simple innkeeper, Susanna. He's a known smuggler." Walter's men had confirmed that fact in recent months, though they had not proof enough to arrest him.

With irrefutable logic, Susanna dismantled Walter's case. "If Putney wanted Robert dead, why would he resort to poison? It would have been far simpler to provide him with the s.h.i.+p he wanted and then dispose of him at sea. As for the attack on me, what profit in that for Putney or his wife? I am told they look forward to seeing me burn."

"Perhaps that is only what they want people to think. A clever-"

"Putney? Clever?" At Walter's wince, Susanna left the chair to lay a comforting hand on his arm.

"We must consider every one of Robert's former mistresses a suspect," she said, "no matter how painful it is. I have come to like Eleanor, too. Indeed, she would make you an admirable wife."

He choked on the swallow of aqua vitae he'd just taken. "Susanna-"

"No, say nothing. I do but offer my opinion." She hesitated. "'Twas kind of you both to try to spare my feelings about the inn."