“Your uncle Stephen found her for me,” she said.Found who?He nearly asked the question aloud before he remembered they were talking about her horse.
“Stephen did?” The traitor. All the members of his family who had met Linnet in France remembered her fondly. But then, they did not know her as he did. He unclenched his jaw to ask, “So you’ve seen Stephen and Isobel?”
“Aye. They were in London when I arrived a few weeks ago.”
Of course Stephen and his wife would see Linnet. “Speaking of kin,” he bit out. “I learned that you and Pomeroy are related.”
“I would hardly call it that.”
“Christ’s blood, Linnet, did you have to marry his uncle? Was there not some other wealthy old man you could have ensnared?”
“There were others,” she said in a pleasant voice, “but Louis was the best.”
Louis. Through clenched teeth, he asked, “How was he best?”
“Hehad a sense of humor.”
“Hmmph.”
“ ’Twas a good arrangement,” she said with that annoying little smile on her face. “We both got what we wanted.”
“I can guess what he wanted,” Jamie muttered, not quite under his breath.
She shrugged one delicate shoulder. “He wanted a young wife to flaunt before his friends.”
“As I recall, you wanted a brief marriage,” he said. “I take it this ideal husband of yours complied?”
She was an effortless rider, sitting tall but at ease in her saddle. To watch her, you would never guess she had rarely ridden as a child—unless you counted riding in a carriage or cart, which he didn’t.
“What I wanted,” she said, her gaze fixed on the road ahead, “was funds to start my business, a house in Calais, and a foothold in the Flemish cloth market.”
Francois had mentioned something about Linnet taking up their grandfather’s trade.
“Francois said you challenged Pomeroy to a duel.” She turned to fix him with that determined look of hers that said she meant to get her way. “You must know how utterly foolish that was. I insist you withdraw the challenge.”
“A man cannot let that sort of brutish behavior go unpunished,” he said, though he felt a bit queasy about his own behavior toward her.
Evidently her thoughts traveled in the same direction for the look she gave him would sear the bacon crisp. He refrained from reminding her that she had been every bit as passionate as he.
“Pomeroy did not harm me,” Linnet said.
“He did.” Seeing the thin line on her cheek where the devil’s spawn had cut her set his blood boiling again.
“A scratch is nothing,” she said. “You cannot murder a close ally of Gloucester over it, when killing him might set off a civil war.”
How he had burned to take his sword to Pomeroy right there in the Great Hall at Westminster. But she was right that any spark could ignite the conflict between the feuding royals into violence. And so, Jamie had issued a challenge for Pomeroy to meet him in single combat at a place outside the city.
Yesterday afternoon, he rode to the appointed place a mile and a half outside the city and waited for Pomeroy.
Three hours he waited.
When Jamie stormed back into the palace, ready to run the cockroach through on the spot no matter the consequences, Pomeroy was gone. He had left London for his estate in Kent. If Jamie did not have a duty to stay near the queen, he would have followed Pomeroy.
For now, he had to content himself with sending a message to Kent renewing his challenge. He left it to Pomeroy to name the place and time. Eventually, he would teach Pomeroy the lesson he needed.
“It is not your place to defend me,” Linnet said, bringing Jamie back to the conversation at hand. “I can take care of myself.”
Jamie snorted. “I have seen how you do that. What can you be thinking, traveling about London with no one but that ancient man for an escort?”
