The Virgin's Spy (Tudor Legacy #2)(76)

After her first, silent, read, she repeated it aloud. Diarmid looked as confused as she was. “Somerset?” he said. “Must be English, but why would Dane involve someone we’ve never heard of? And it will take days—weeks—to get word to England and back.”

“Liadan can’t stay with him for weeks,” Ailis insisted, a little of her desperation leaking through. Surely Dane wasn’t so depraved as to use his own daughter? He was doing this to frighten her, to force her to comply…

“It won’t be weeks.” It was Stephen who spoke, his voice oddly blank. “It’s not even a day’s ride to Templemore. You can have Liadan back in less than two days.”

She looked at him in surprise, and then concern. He had gone dead white, so that the black of his hair and the warm hazel of his eyes stood out like warning beacons. But warning of what? She had never seen Stephen look so remote, or so stern.

“What do you mean?” she asked. “Do you know this Lord Somerset? Is he in Ireland already?”

When Stephen swallowed, she could actually see the movement in his throat, he was so tightly wound. Then he answered, and everything went still. “My name is not Stephen Wyatt. It’s Stephen Courtenay…the Earl of Somerset.”

There was a hiss, then Diarmid lunged at Stephen, dagger drawn. “Stop!” Ailis commanded wildly.

“He’s a traitor!”

“Diarmid, stop it. Leave us alone.”

“Not a chance. He’s just waiting to kill you.”

“If he wanted to kill me, he’d have done so long before now.” She felt unbelievably, icily calm. Stephen did not look away from her gaze. “Search him, Diarmid, then leave us be.”

Diarmid was rougher than he needed to be in the search, for Stephen wore only a shirt and hose, and every line of the body she knew so well could be easily traced. The dagger she’d allowed him was removed by Diarmid, then he backhanded Stephen across the face with a cracking blow that made her wince.

“Out,” she ordered Diarmid. “And keep your mouth shut. We cannot afford the household in more of a panic.”

Then it was just the two of them.

“Why Wyatt?” she asked, softly, circling him where he stood straight and tall.

If he was surprised by the question, he did not show it. English reticence was written all over him. “My grandfather’s name.”

“So, you are not a gentleman’s bastard with a Roman Catholic mother.”

“I am not.”

She stopped and stared at him, then shook her head, everything she knew about the English nobility coming to her as she sought for it. “No, you are Stephen Courtenay. Courtenay,” she spat. “Earl of Somerset and oldest son of the Duke of Exeter. When your father dies, you will inherit the richest dukedom in England.”

He said nothing.

Prowling around him again, as though he were a zoological exhibit, she mused aloud. “Just how well do you know the English queen?”

“Ailis—”

“Don’t! Every word you’ve said since coming to us was a lie. Designed to betray us into English hands. And when one of your countrymen was in danger…well, of course you had to argue to let him go. But why Liadan?”

“It wasn’t me.”

“How can you say that?”

“If I had helped to free Dane, I could have ridden out with him. As Peter Martin did. Dane wants me to come precisely because he couldn’t get at me any other way.”

“Are you telling me Dane is another intelligencer? Making sure his spy is safe?”

“No. There are things Dane has done…it doesn’t matter at the moment. All that matters is getting Liadan home. You have to let me go.”

She bit her lip so viciously she tasted blood, the terror sweeping back in as the first shock of betrayal faded. “How do I know I can trust you to free her?”

“You don’t. Until I do. Then, whatever else you think of me—whatever I deserve you to think of me—perhaps you’ll remember this: since my arrival, I have done nothing to jeopardize your position in Ireland. Indeed, I have refrained from making reports I should have to England. There is reason to suspect Dane wants me for nothing more than to hand me over to the English as a traitor.” He met her gaze squarely. “And he would be right.”

“I don’t care.” She pronounced each word fully and distinctly. “I will let you go because I must. But if you do not bring back my daughter, I will see you suffer to the end of your days.”

“If Liadan is harmed, you won’t have to punish me. I’ll do it myself.”

She glared at him and was shocked to realize that part of her still wanted to throw herself at him, to let him embrace her with all his strength and promise her everything would be all right.

Instead, she swept to the door and, finding Diarmid immediately outside as she’d expected, told her captain, “Find the Englishman a horse.”





They did not let Stephen go alone. Even if Diarmid had trusted him, it was far faster to lead him toward Templemore than leave him to find his own way. But they didn’t get far, he and Diarmid, before they were intercepted by two men wearing Dane’s red and gold boar badge.

“Just the Englishman,” they said.