“There’s something else,” he says. He takes her hand in his, raises it to his lips, and kisses it before slipping the ring from her finger. He leans closer and angles the band in the sunlight. A fine inscription runs around the inside.
“What does it say?” she asks.
“Amor vincit omnia,” he reads.
Beatrix knows it is Latin, but she doesn’t know what it means.
He slides the ring onto her finger again. “Love conquers all.”
She reaches for William’s face and caresses his cheek where a blush has risen. His eyes search hers.
She wants to believe him. Love kept her from dying that night in the forest, kept her from the abbey, didn’t it? But sometimes she wakes in the dark in a cold sweat, her chest throbbing with a phantom pain she can’t claw away. Sometimes she is afraid to open her eyes in the morning,afraid that she will find herself not in her own bed in Lancaut but in some bare stone room, alone. Sometimes the villagers whisper their cruel words at William’s back, too. “Do you promise?”
“I swear it,” he says.
She kisses him gently on the lips. “I’ll never take it off.”
June 15, 1605London, England
The Globe is packed.
Beatrix sneaks through the gates behind a rowdy bunch of peasants and avoids paying the penny for admittance. She claims a spot at the far edge of the yard where she can watch the jostling crowd filter in, noting who is more than tipsy and who might have more than a few pennies to their name.
She shields her eyes from the afternoon sun with the back of her hand and gazes up at the three tiers of seating rising above her. It’s where the real money is. She could make up what she lost on the elixir and still have enough to sleep in a bed instead of an alley tonight, if she dared to pick those pockets. She’d be tempted, if those patrons weren’t the same people who’d call for the execution of someone caught looking at them the wrong way, let alone emptying their purse. That might have been an incentive, once. Now, it doesn’t matter that she hasn’t been caught stealing in decades. She’d rather not find out what happens if she loses her head.
The performance begins and Beatrix bides her time. She pretends to watch the play, steals glances at the crowd as she searches for someone who still has their wits about them—and hopefully, some coin, too.
She spots her first mark at the front and center of the audience. She can’t get a clear look at the man’s face because he’s completely entranced by the performance, though she doesn’t miss his strong profile or the fact that he’s a good head taller than the men standing next to him. He pays no mind to the bumps and brushes of the crowd. She could steal the clothes off his back and be halfway to France before he even realized he was naked.
Beatrix slips through the crush of bodies and positions herself behindthe man. She might think her luck was turning, if she believed in luck. He’s dressed too finely to be down here, jostling for a decent view, instead of sitting in a cushioned seat high above the fray. His coat’s not worn or even mended, and though his boots are coated with the filth of London streets, it’s easy to see how well made they are. And he smells too nice. Like fresh autumn apples and lavender blooming in a cottage garden, and a forest of oaks after a storm: earth and wood and a metallic hint of damp.
She stiffens. He smells like Lancaut, like those bright moments she’s revisited so often they are more fantasy than memory. Maybe she is delirious. She hasn’t eaten since yesterday and barely slept in her bed of straw last night. He must be a traveler who hasn’t been in London long enough to reek of the city.
A lithe actor with a crown of leaves set askew on his head steps to the curved edge of the stage. Her hand dips into the man’s coat pocket. The crowd erupts in applause and the actor bows. Beatrix holds her breath. Her fingers brush cool metal. She plucks out a silver coin.
A drunkard bumps Beatrix hard from behind. She stumbles into the man, and the coin slips from her grasp, falling at his feet. He looks down at her as she straightens, eyes like the cloudless sky over the Globe snagging on her own mismatched ones. Her gaze darts to the silver coin lying among the trampled rushes, and the man’s eyes follow it. She glances away, cursing herself, but it’s too late. He retrieves the coin and turns it in his hand.
Beatrix’s chest tightens, caught between trying to salvage the job or fleeing the Globe altogether. She could leave the coin; the man might suspect she tried to take it, but he doesn’t know. Then again, he can’t prove it isn’t hers, either, and without it, she’ll spend another hungry night on the streets.
She lays her open palm in front of the man and turns her coyest smile on him. “Thank you, sir.” She hopes he won’t notice she doesn’t look like someone who has two pennies to her name, let alone sixpence.
“I heard London was crawling with thieves, but I didn’t expect them to be so persistent.” The man’s lips lift at the corner as he slips the coin into his pocket. “Or so pretty.”
Her fake smile turns into a genuine scowl.
He shrugs his broad shoulders. “It won’t do you any good.”
Beatrix bites her tongue. She’d like nothing more than to tell this man exactly how much good his sixpence could do her. It could feed her, for starters. She could buy a proper dinner at the tavern, maybe two if she played her cards right. Or she could stay in a room at the inn that is her own, in a bed all by herself.
“My mistake.” She turns quickly away. She is nothing, has nothing. If it is her word against this man’s, no one will believe her.
“Wait.” The man catches her shoulder.
Beatrix feigns a stumble and drops to her knees. She pulls a short knife from her boot. The man reaches to help her up, and she makes sure he sees the sharp blade in her hand.
He raises his hands in surrender. “I was only going to ask if you’re hungry.”
“What?” Has she picked a madman’s pocket?
