Chapter Six #2
He directed his horse up the avenue, steering clear of the archbishop’s escort as he reined his animal across the road. He could hear the clip-clop of horses behind him, knowing his friends were following, but he didn’t turn to see who had come.
He’d find out soon enough.
Because of the archbishop’s entourage, the entry to Adelie’s was quite crowded.
Across the street was a small livery specifically for Adelie’s clients, because they were always high-end clientele and expected preferential treatment, and Aidric dismounted his horse at the mouth of the livery, handing the reins over to the nearest stable servant.
The man and his fellow servants were very well dressed, considering Adelie’s business, and Aidric could see that all of the men who had accompanied him were now dismounting their horses, preparing to enter Adelie’s establishment.
It was clear they weren’t going to let him go in alone.
With a grin, Aidric headed across the street, his focus on the entry door with its elaborately carved doorjamb, consisting of thistles and roses.
A great craftsman had made it. He was focused on that, and that alone, and he certainly didn’t look at any of the soldiers with the Cambridge tunics because they weren’t worthy of his attention.
He was in command of the king’s personal guard and there weren’t many men higher in the chain of command at Westminster.
Aidric wore that air about him as he entered the establishment, immediately finding himself in a room full of women.
Not that he’d expected anything less, but as his gaze moved over the chamber, he could immediately see that there was no Archbishop of Cambridge.
There was no man in sight.
But there was one woman in particular.
Aidric wasn’t sure why this woman caught his attention other than the fact that she was looking right at him with vibrant blue eyes that he could see from all the way across the room.
Brilliant, unnatural blue that blazed like a hot summer sky.
It took him a moment to realize that the reason she caught his attention, other than those eyes, was the fact that she seemed to glow.
She had long blonde hair, so blonde that it was white.
That glistening, pearl-like color that babies sometimes had, a color that darkened with age. But not this woman.
She was positively incandescent.
She wasn’t particularly small, or short, but rather taller than the average woman with a deliciously round figure.
While her hair was white and her eyes a brilliant blue, her eyebrows and eyelashes were a sort of soft brown in color.
He could see them. She had an oval-shaped face, with prominent cheekbones, and the color of the dress she wore was a shimmering cross between gold and silver, elaborately embroidered.
It made her look like an angel on earth, as if something ethereal and spirit-like had stepped through the veil between worlds and onto this earth.
He’d never seen anything so beautiful in his entire life.
“Aidric?”
Someone was calling his name, jolting him from the trance he seemed to be in. “Eh?” he said, startled as he looked toward the source of the sound. “What is it?”
Britt was grinning at him. “Now you hear me, do you?” he said. “I spoke your name three times. Were you not aware?”
Aidric was swiftly coming to realize he was about to make a fool out of himself and struggled to cover his blunder.
“Apparently not,” he said, his gaze inevitably moving back to the brilliant vision that had captivated his attention.
“That woman… I thought I had seen her before and was trying to recall where.”
A lie, but it was better than looking like an idiot. Britt, too, turned to see what had Aidric’s attention, though he’d already seen her. He had the moment they’d entered the business, though it was Aidric who seemed captivated by her.
“You do not know her,” he said, giving Aidric a push in the opposite direction.
But Aidric wouldn’t be so easily pushed. “How do you know?” he said. “Have you ever seen her before?”
“Of course not,” Britt said, still pushing. “Focus, man. We must finish your business and get back to Westminster.”
As Aidric and Britt hissed at each other, heading toward a woman who worked at the establishment, Dirk and Bennet hung back, both of them looking at the white-haired lady, who had been ushered away by her maid.
They could still see the back of her white head at the far end of the room, however, now looking at some fabric while another woman tried very hard to sell it to her.
It was Dirk who seemed the most interested in her.
“Do you know who I think that is?” he finally said.
Bennet wasn’t much interested in looking at other women given that he was happily married, so he was only marginally interested in Dirk’s question.
“Nay,” he said. “Who?”
Dirk glanced around the chamber without moving his head, his eyes darting about. “Look around,” he said. “There is no Archbishop of Cambridge here even though his escort is outside.”
“So? And?”
“And I think that woman is with Cambridge,” Dirk said. “I mean that she came with his escort. I would be willing to bet that is the Pearl we’ve been speaking of.”
That had Bennet’s mild interest. “Oh?” he said. “Are you certain?”
“Fairly certain.”
“I’ve never seen a Jewel of London.”
Dirk could still see the back of the woman’s white head. “Nor I,” he said. “But now you have. You can just tell by looking at her that she is no ordinary woman. She glows like the full moon on a cloudless night.”
Bennet’s gaze lingered on the woman in the distance for a few seconds longer before he turned away. “I feel pity for women like that,” he said, finding interest in a display of silk in front of him. “They are beautiful women, but they are kept like pets.”
Dirk shrugged. “That is the life of a courtesan,” he said. “It has been that way since the beginning of time. There were courtesans with the Greeks and the Romans.”
“True,” Bennet said. “But I like to think we are more civilized than they were. A man should not keep a woman as a prize. It is cruel.”
Dirk grinned. “Ever the chivalrous man, Cheppy,” he said, calling him by his nickname. “You are a champion of women.”
Bennet snorted softly. “I should be,” he said. “I have three daughters. I should not like for any one of them to be made a courtesan.”
Aidric picked that moment to make a reappearance, distracting the pair from their conversation. One look at his face and they could see that he didn’t seem pleased.
“Aidric?” Dirk said, brow furrowed with concern. “What is it?”
Aidric’s handsome face was tense. “Nothing I cannot deal with,” he said. “It seems that they may be too busy to complete our tunics by the feast. I have demanded to see Adelie herself and someone has gone to fetch her.”
Dirk and Bennet exchanged somewhat amused glances. “It was suggested to you that she might be too busy,” Dirk said as tactfully as he could. “Where is Britt?”
“Who do you think is summoning Adelie?”
Dirk rolled his eyes. “He will scare the piss out of the woman,” he said. “Why did you send him?”
“Because I want results.”
Aidric wasn’t going to back down from his determination that they should have their unifying tunics by tomorrow evening’s feast. Even if the rest of them thought it was a futile hope, Aidric did not. He wasn’t in the habit of not getting what he wanted, by any means necessary.
Therefore, Dirk didn’t say anything more to that.
He and Bennet went back to inspecting the silks and finery that Adelie had on display.
Aidric was waiting impatiently for Britt and Adelie to make an appearance, folding his big arms across his chest and planting himself near the entry door, watching the Cambridge escort beyond.
But he quickly grew bored with that and ended up wandering into the shop, peering at the items on display.
He also noticed a couple of armed men roaming the chamber, assuming they were guards of some kind.
Most merchant houses employed them. He was coming to the end of the chamber where it branched off into other rooms when he happened to catch a glimpse of a white-haired lady off to his right.
The angel.
Aidric wasn’t one to chase women. He never had been.
The only woman he’d ever been interested in had broken his heart long ago, when he’d been a newly minted knight, and the pain of that sting was something he well remembered.
It had been enough to keep him from falling for any subsequent female charms. His father, a hard man, had made him feel quite ashamed that the woman he wanted to marry had chosen another, and Aidric swore he’d never suffer failure like that again.
He hadn’t since, mostly because he simply steered clear of a situation where failure might actually be an option when it came to a woman.
But in watching that white hair in the next chamber, he felt a pull toward it that he couldn’t resist. He couldn’t even explain it.
He just wanted a word with her, and a brief word at that.
Just a word and he’d be satisfied.
Idiot…
Aye, that was the word.
Because he was one.
Casually, Aidric wandered into the chamber where the white-haired woman was being shown more fabric by a woman who seemed to be pushing the product quite forcefully.
The white-haired woman was touching the crimson fabric, feeling the quality, but she didn’t seem to have much to say about it.
That frustrated the saleswoman, but before she could bully the customer into a sale, the white-haired woman’s maid chased the saleswoman away.
As the saleswoman fled, unhappily, the white-haired woman whispered something to her maid, who reluctantly went after the woman she’d just insulted.
Since Aidric was still standing near the door, partially hidden by some shelves containing fabric and other notions, none of the women had seen him.
The maid departing the chamber left the white-haired woman all alone.