AT FIRST SIGHT: A Novella(5)
“A wild, rum-fueled idea on your part.”
If he only knew. Her education was thorough and extensive. At the age of sixteen she could write and speak French and Latin fluently and had a good knowledge of mathematics. “I am the daughter of a lowly village schoolmaster. And you are distracting me in order to win, sire.”
“Adam,” his grave tone reinforced. “Perhaps it is you who is intending to distract me. I am curious about you.”
She could feel the muscles in her jaw flickering. Had she given herself away? “Why so?”
He shrugged shoulders uncommonly wide. “A woman, as young as yourself, a proprietress of an inn far flung from the pleasures and comforts afforded by villages and towns – tis most unusual, is it not? I find myself wondering about you rather than attending to the game at hand.”
The room spun and its myriad wall sconce candles dizzily mirrored the same checkerboard effect around the room as that of the chessboard before her. Cautiously, she slid her queen diagonally out to the forefront. “Your move.”
While he considered the board, she studied him. His was a narrow face that further emphasized the bladed nose, sharply angled cheek bones and wide, laughing mouth. But it was his eyes that made a merely good-looking visage arresting. Glinting with amber, the dark brown eyes were thickly fringed with absurdly long lashes. And from behind those eyes a lively intelligence both scrutinized and dared the world.
“Your speech betrays a definite English accent, sire – Adam.” Better to placate him – at least, early on in this game – this game that might well be one of life and death. “From where in England?”
His glance gripped hers. “You are mistaken.”
There, that voice – it was born of lashing rain and sugary sand. She could distinguish the origin of an accent, whether it be Liverpool or Leeds. But this one she could not place. “Then from where, prithee?” she parried.
“The West Indies. Your move.” He had advanced his king’s pawn, freeing both his queen and bishop for attack.
She tried to concentrate on the board, but her mind was clicking like an abacus elsewhere. The West Indies? Then the answer leaped to the forefront of her mind. Lord Lieutenant Sutcliff. But, of course. Her mind rummaged back through years’ past conversations and gossip and broadsides.
At three and twenty, he had returned from Barbados, having profited in some sort of sugar enterprise. Once back in England, he conveniently switched allegiance at a critical time to become a key supporter of Cromwell. An opportunist, he was.
Sutcliff’s reputation had been that of one of the hundreds of mercenaries who, in the hope of pay and plunder, had flocked to England during the Civil War, frankly admitting, “'I care not for your cause, I fight for your half-crowns and your handsome women.”
What had apparently counted was that his stellar performance outspoke any professed words. As a part of Cromwell’s Ironsides, an elite army of full-time professionals rather than part-time militia, Sutcliff had risen rapidly in rank to one of eleven Major Generals, governing England’s eleven designated areas, constituting five-million people, and had assisted in paving the way for Cromwell’s future regime.
Eventually, Cromwell created Sutcliff Lord Lieutenant – and he had quite
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as rapidly acquired a stable of female admirers and male sycophants. The name, Adam Sutcliff, began to have a ring in it that was nigh magic among the common people.
His identity established, she relaxed, but only slightly. A man of his standing would never be sent to a hinterland to search for a single fugitive. Besides, she doubted he even had any recollection of either her or her brother and father.
Aye, her father as one of His Majesty’s fourteen physicians and her brother as one of the Royal Court Physicians had occasionally attended court functions – but she, busily assisting at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital or at the family’s apothecary dispensary, infrequently saw the insides of Whitehall Palace, especially in those latter years in London.
Belatedly, she realized he was watching her, patiently waiting for her move. Her gaze swept the board and spotted an opening. She scooted her pawn to capture one of his. Her quick, triumphant smile betrayed her delight. “Your move.”
He laughed and eyed her merrily. “Pleased as punch, are you?” Then, his brow furrowed, he braced his jaw on his fist and renewed his attention to the game.
Long minutes stretched into a quarter of an hour. She grew fidgety. Rising, she warned, “I know whereat is every piece.” But he did not relinquish his focus on the gameboard.
She went to the kitchen and brought back the jug of warm spiced rum to replenish first her glass and then his. As she leaned over him, she inadvertently brushed his shoulder, and she heard his harsh intake of air.
“’To lie like pawns, locked up,’” he murmured.
His quote from Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew caught her off guard. Taking her seat, she tested him, quoting from Christopher Marlowe. “’I'm armed with more than complete steel - the justice of my quarrel.’”
He laid her low with his response from the playwright’s The Jew of Malta. “Confess and be hanged.” Offhandedly, he took a bite from his apple, leaving crimson toothmarks.
Her hand shot out for her mug and a stalling drink of its potent rum. When she put it down, her smile was artificially bright. “And you are familiar with Spenser, as well?”