Page 74 of Never Love a Lord
The soldier kicked his horse lightly and trotted up to the sisters’ cart, his eyes keenly taking in the bed of the conveyance, the blankets, the limp sacks.
“Ladies,” he said dubiously, eyeing Alys’s obviously rounded shape. “What business have you on the London Road?”
“I don’t see how it’s any concern of yours,” Cecily bristled. “What are you now, a toll collector?”
Alys gave Cecily a sharp pinch on the back of her arm before saying, “We’re on our way to London, good sir.” Her face glowed with sweetness.
“Is that so?” the soldier challenged them. “What is your purpose?”
“We’re to see the king, if you must know,” Cecily informed him straightaway.
Even as the guard became obviously wary, Alys gave a merry laugh. “Isn’t my sister funny? Of course we’re not meant to see the king. What would two lone women, in a cart, have need to press the king for? Only a jest.”
The man didn’t look convinced. “You wouldn’t be following a royal caravan containing a dangerous prisoner of the Crown now, would you? Having a little looky? Thinking of making a little mischief?” He looked them both in their eyes, in turn. “For if you were, that could turn out very badly for you.”
“Oh really?” Cecily demanded. “And just who are you to—”
“We’re going into the city to sell our wares, of course,” Alys interrupted her. “Not very much business in the village lately. Thought we’d try our luck with a larger market.”
Alys could feel Cecily fuming at her side.
The soldier looked pointedly into their empty cart once more. “I don’t see any wares,” he accused them. “Only some old blankets.”
Alys swallowed with a gulp. She hadn’t thought this particular charade through.
Then Cecily rescued them both, in a most shocking way. “Our wares are of a . . . feminine nature, you understand.”
A sly, nasty smile grew across the soldier’s bristly face. “I see.” The tail end of the royal caravan was now rolling away in a cloud of dust, leaving the soldier alone at the crossroads with Cecily and Alys. “And where had you been plying your . . . wares?”
“Bellemont,” said Alys, in the same instant that Cecily offered, “Gillwick.”
The man’s eyes narrowed.
Alys laughed again, but this time even she could detect the quiver of uncertainty in her tone. “We do tend to get around.”
“Like the clap, I’m sure,” the soldier said. He eyed Alys’s rounded stomach again. “I can’t see howyourservices would be much in demand.”
“You’d be surprised,” Cecily quipped. “Farmers adore her.”
The man’s eyes flicked to the road, cloaked in a storm of dust as substantial as an earthen wall, then back to Cecily. He didn’t look closely enough.
“Perhapsyoucould give me a little sample then. Atollfor using the road.” He grinned.
Alys’s hand went to her mouth to cover her own smile as Cecily leaned slightly forward on the seat.
“You’d need to ask my employer first,” she said coyly.
“Really?” the soldier said, leaning forward to brace his forearm on the pommel of his saddle. “And where might I find that old bloke on a deserted road such as this?”
Cecily waggled her index finger over the soldier’s shoulder. “It must be your lucky day, for he’s right behind you.”
“Prostitutes!” Oliver shouted for what had to have been the twentieth time. He glared down at Cecily from his perch on his horse. Piers Mallory’s mount followed meekly on its lead.
“I couldn’t very well tell him that we were Sybilla Foxe’s sisters, come to aid her,” Cecily said in their defense. “We’d have been arrested straightaway!”
“Why did you have to be seen at all?” Oliver said. “You could have stayed back off the road until they passed. It wasn’t a holiday parade, Cecily.”
“If you would have taken us with you in the first place, we wouldn’t have been here on our own at all, would we?”
