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Wolf Hall, Northumberland, England

Late September 1542

“You come none too soon, Mark.” The bed ropes creaked as Sir Brandon Cavendish shifted his weight. He did not bother to mask his grimace of pain from his former squire.

Sir Mark Hayward, lately returned from Ireland after a fruitless seven years seeking riches and honor in His Majesty’s service, offered his arm to his bedridden mentor. “Your message smacked of urgency, my lord. I rode posthaste from London. Thank God the roads were dry.” He eased Brandon nearer to the bedside table. “Am I to avenge you against the blackguard who broke your hip?” he asked with a grin.

Brandon lay back against a flock of bolsters and closed his eyes for a moment. “Belle’s in trouble,” he announced without a preamble. “At least, methinks she is.”

Mark groaned inwardly. He had known Brandon’s natural daughter ever since the little minx first appeared at Wolf Hall dressed in a ragged infant’s gown. LaBelle Marie Cavendish attracted disasters like honey drew bears.

“Tis an old tale twice-told, my lord,” he muttered. He sipped his mulled cider to steady his nerves. “Methought Belle was married a few years ago. Her troubles should be her husband’s now.”Poor sot!

Opening his eyes, Brandon leveled an icy blue glare at the younger man. “She was. The boy’s dead. Thereby hangs the reason for her present distress.”

Mark squelched his impulse to ask if Belle had driven her late spouse into his early grave. Instead he took another drink of cider while his heart beat faster.

Brandon emptied his own mug before he continued. “Cuthbert Fletcher was never my idea of a husband for Belle. The boy was a weakling, though pretty in his features. Belle took one look at that milksop—God rest his soul—and declared that she must have him as a husband or else she would die. Nearly drove me stark mad with her artful wheedling.”

Mark snorted in his cup. Comes from spoiling her rotten since the age of two. “But you allowed the match,” he observed aloud.

When Mark had heard of Belle’s nuptials four months after the event, he had toasted the health of her luckless bridegroom in Irish whiskey. He had never gotten so drunk in his life as he did on that rainy night.

Brandon gave him a meaningful look. “Because Cuthbert would take her, despite her…background.” He cleared his throat. “None of the young noblemen looked twice at my Belle once they learned she was born of a French commoner on the wrong side of my blanket. Belle was the fairest maid at Great Harry’s court when we took her there two years ago, yet not one of those strutting peacocks would stoop to woo her—except that whey-faced Cuthbert—the son of a wool-merchant.”

Mark tightened his grip around his mug at the thought of pretty Belle being snubbed by a gaggle of flap-mouthed galliwags dressed in satin. The lass had more spirit in her little finger than most men possessed in their bodies—and that was usually the trouble with the headstrong vixen. He massaged his forearm where it had broken eight years ago—the last time he had seen Belle.

“Most men never bother to look beyond their own noses,” he remarked. A trickle of sweat rolled down the back of his neck despite the coolness of the twilight’s air. “So Cuthbert died?” he prodded.

“Aye,” Brandon growled. “Of a fever this past June. Belle wrote us a heartbroken letter.”

Mark blinked. “She doesn’t live nearby?”

Brandon attempted to pour himself more cider from the pitcher but splashed most of it on his nightshirt. After swearing under his breath, he replied, “Nay. My good Kat gave Bodiam Castle to the newlyweds as Belle’s jointure estate. Belle is still in Sussex.”

Mark’s eyes widened. “A most generous gift from your lady wife,” he murmured.

He remembered Bodiam well. Nestled in the middle of Sussex’s rich farming country, the castle’s honey-colored walls had mellowed since it was first built in the fourteenth century. The moated fortress had turned into a comfortable home under the loving care of Brandon’s wife, Lady Katherine. Now the estate reaped a huge annual profit from its diverse crops. A dart of jealousy skewered Mark.

As the fifth son of a middling nobleman, he had inherited nothing from his father except a good family name. Nor had Mark gained any land of his own in Ireland as he had expected, despite the blood, sweat and tears he had poured into that contentious sod. No wonder Cuthbert had been eager to marry Belle! Mark himself would have married a hag witch for such a prize as Bodiam.

Brandon frowned into his half-filled mug. “Cuthbert’s brother and sister were with Belle when her husband died. In July, she wrote that they were still at Bodiam to keep her company. Then…nothing. I sent her a letter in August but received no answer. Belle may have her faults, but she has always been an excellent correspondent.”

Mark raised an eyebrow at this revelation. That brat never sent me one word of contrition for nearly destroying my sword arm. Not one jot or tittle of remorse!

Brandon continued, “Kat and I worried about her unusual silence, but we thought she was busy with the onerous tasks of managing the estate. Or that she was still overwhelmed by her grief.”

Mark drained his cider. Belle—someone’s wife! He vividly remembered her on the cusp of womanhood when she was thirteen. The thought of her lying…in bed…her long blond hair streaming on a burgundy coverlet…beckoning…naked…

“More?” Brandon shattered Mark’s increasingly lusty daydream.

“What?”

“More cider?” Brandon waggled the pitcher.

Mark nodded and served both himself and his former master as he had so often done in days of yore.

Brandon furrowed his brow. “I intended to visit Belle as soon as the king’s Michaelmas tournament was concluded. I did not dare to miss that event. Great Harry has not been himself these days after the execution of his latest wife. Poor little Catherine Howard!” Brandon shook his head, then frowned. “Indeed, the king’s temper has grown as monstrous as his body.”

Mark gasped. “Soft, my lord. Your words hover close to treason. These walls could harbor unfriendly ears.”

The young knight had just come from Henry’s court where the nobility of England cowered in Westminster’s drafty galleries while they waited for the next horrific eruption from their erratic sovereign. Mark had been very thankful to receive Brandon’s urgent summons away from that royal hellhole.

Brandon waved aside any disloyalty. He glowered at his lower body that was trussed in splints and miles of tight bandages. “Then this devilish thing happened. A simple jousting practice with my brother in our own tiltyard! My new charger stumbled on a pass and fell—pinioned me under him. The horse is a beauty, but marvelously heavy.”

Mark eyed the bandaging and shuddered inwardly. “Your angel must have been riding on your shoulder. I’ve known men to die that way.”

Brandon chuckled wryly. “You sound like Kat.” His brief smile dissolved. “But to the point. I have lain here for nearly a month, bedridden worse than my aged father on his ‘creaking’ days. Then a fortnight ago, I received this.” He plucked a wrinkled paper from the side table and held it out to Mark. “Tis from Montjoy. Do you remember that old badger?”

Nodding, Mark took the letter. “He still lives?” he asked, picturing the ancient steward of Bodiam, now supposedly in quiet retirement. The man must be nearly a hundred years old. Mark scanned the short note. “He writes with a cleric’s hand. His letters are clear.”

“What do you make of his message?” Brandon growled.

“‘A black cloud has shrouded Bodiam Castle,”’ Mark read aloud. “‘All loyal retainers have been dismissed. Visitors are sent away. Last evening, a village lad spied Mistress Belle high in one of the towers. She begged him to send for her father. Then the boy was chased from the home park by several armed men. Come quickly, my Lord Cavendish. Methinks your daughter is in great peril. Montjoy.”’

“I am a man on the rack, Mark,” Brandon said hoarsely. “My Belle needs me and I cannot move from this dankish bed!” He slammed his fist into one of the bolsters. It exploded in a geyser of goose feathers. The two men stared at the fluttering down that filled the small bedchamber. “Kat will boil my brains for supper,” Brandon mumbled morosely. “Tis the fifth pillow I have destroyed since Montjoy’s letter arrived.”

Mark’s mouth went dry. To the best of his knowledge, Belle had never begged for anything in her life. Bargained, demanded, schemed and coerced—but never begged.

“Mayhap Montjoy exaggerates. Twas always his fashion to look on the dark side of life,” Mark suggested, though a certain unease seeped through him.

Brandon curled his lip. “Aye, I know well his melancholy humors, yet this letter smacks of plain truth. The old man would not have sent it over three hundred miles simply to amuse himself. There is only one remedy for it. You must go to Bodiam in my stead.”

Even though he was prepared for this request, Mark shrank from it. The old break in his arm actually ached at the thought of meeting Belle again, no matter how dire her current predicament might be.

“Surely Sir Guy would be a better choice,” Mark hedged. “As your brother and a man of mature years and wisdom, he would—”

“Crows and daws, boy!” Brandon snapped, reverting to the master Mark had served for nearly fourteen years. “Did you ride your horse blindfolded as you approached Wolf Hall? The harvest is in full swing. Guy must be here, there and everywhere at once to oversee our lands as well as his own since I am bound to this bed like a trussed hen.”

Pausing, he gulped down his cider. “Nor does my good sire know a breath of this tale and twill be your hide on my wall if he does. My father still thinks of himself as a young man of four-and-twenty years when the truth of the matter is that he is nearly seventy. Daily he wages a losing battle with stiff joints and failing eyesight. Still, these infirmities would not stop him from riding south to Bodiam if he thought his beloved granddaughter was in danger.” Brandon shook his head. “My lady mother would never forgive me if Papa went on that fool’s errand.”

Mark gave him a wry grin. “But I am just the fool you can send?”

His mentor’s gaze bore into him. “Aye, there is no one else. Francis is in Paris, studying law and philosophy at the University. It appears he is more skilled with books and quill pens than with a sword and buckler.”

Remembering the serious young man who was Brandon’s other youthful byblow, Mark nodded. He rubbed his forearm again.

Brandon narrowed his eyes. “I know you and Belle have had your disagreements in the past,” he began.

“Ha!” Mark gave him a rueful grin. “From the time she could wield a stick or fire an insult, she has used me as her personal quintain. I would much rather train wild cats to dance a galliard on their hind legs.”

Brandon flexed his fingers. “She has grown into a winsome young lady since you left to fight the Irish.”

Mark snorted. “And pigs fly on golden wings round yon battlement, my lord.”

Brandon gave him a wintry smile. “How did you fare in Ireland? Did you make your fortune as you swore you would? After seven years, are you now the lord of a vast Irish estate?”

Avoiding Brandon’s gaze, Mark stared out the narrow lancet window into the setting sun. “You know full well I am not, my lord. I was fortunate to escape the isle with a few items of clothing and my horse,” he replied in a barely audible voice. “My only wealth is a peck of experience.”

Brandon leaned forward. “What would you say if I gave you a goodly parcel of land east of Wolf Hall—one that was fertile ground and well-watered?”

In the face of such an offer, Mark’s objections melted. He could almost smell the rich loam of those tempting fields. He wet his lips with his tongue. “And the price for this bounty is a trip to Bodiam Castle, my lord?”

Brandon flashed him a wolfish grin. “You were always a clever lad, Mark. Bring my Belle home safe and sound, and a thousand acres are yours.”

Enough to buy me a wife and a manor of my own!“ For such a prize, I would ride into the mouth of hell, my lord.”

“You may very well do that, lad, if Montjoy’s report is true.”

Mark brushed aside the old steward’s dire message. He was more concerned what Belle would do to him once she had learned of the outrageous price her father had paid to Mark for her return to the bosom of her family. “Have no fear for me, my lord. Jobe and I will leave tomorrow at first light. You will have the gentle LaBelle nestled in your inglenook by this time next month.”

Brandon shot him a quizzical glance. “Who or what is Jobe?”

Mark chuckled. “Both my shadow and my guardian angel. You shall meet him anon.”

Bodiam Castle, Sussex

As the last pale ray of the cloud-cloaked sun faded in the west, Belle heard Mortimer Fletcher’s heavy key scrape the lock of her prison door. Drawing in a deep breath for strength and courage, she struggled to her feet to face her brother-in-law and jailer. A wave of giddiness assailed her. She pressed her back against the chill stone wall to steady herself until the weakness passed.

Her stomach growled for the food she knew that he carried. She could smell the succulent aroma of roasted chicken even through the thick oak panels of the door. She took another deep breath. The door swung open with a protesting squeal. A small smile of satisfaction flitted across her lips as she watched the old hinge wobble in its mooring. She had spent many days picking at the mortar with her bodkin.

Mortimer, dressed in a clean linen shirt peeking out from under a fine scarlet velvet doublet, stepped into the tower garret. He balanced a cloth-covered trencher in one hand while he gripped a lighted candle in a brass holder with the other. The key to her freedom protruded from the lock. The flickering golden light sharpened Mortimer’s facial features. The man reminded Belle of a stoat.

“Good evening, mistress.” He smiled in a viperish manner. “Hungry yet?” He brought the candle closer to the trencher. “Sick of bread crusts?”

Against her will, Belle’s mouth watered. She knotted her hand into a fist behind her back. “I prefer to dine on toadstools and bat wings than to touch anything your cook might prepare,” she answered as tartly as she could.

Anger flashed across Mortimer’s face before he concealed it behind another false smile. “Take care what you wish for, mistress. Inside of a week you will beg me for exactly that loathsome nourishment.”

He set the candle on the floor, then lifted the cloth. Belle saw not only half a juicy capon glistening in a red-currant sauce, but a small loaf of fine-milled white bread and a dish of apples stewed in precious cinnamon—cinnamon from her spice chest no doubt! The sight of the tempting supper made her feel fainter. Biting her lower lip, she turned away.

Mortimer drew a little closer to her, but she noticed that he did not make the mistake of swaggering within the range of her fingernails as he had done on the first day he had locked her in this windy eyrie. As if she still had the strength to scratch out his eyes! He must not realize how weak I am.

“Come, sister, let us be friends again,” he coaxed in a syrupy voice that sickened her soul.

“I am not your sister, thank the good Lord!” she retorted as she backed away from him. The moldy straw of her bedding rustled underfoot.

Mortimer clicked his tongue against his teeth. “This conceit of yours does you no good, Belle. Indeed, you are pale and wan.” He snickered at his own little jest. “You know Cuthbert was the dearest brother to me.”

Belle knotted her fist tighter to keep from screaming. “Is that why you danced so high upon his fresh-turned grave! Ha! He often told me how his siblings plagued him during his childhood—you especially.”

“Twas all in good sport, I assure you,” Mortimer replied in an oily manner. “But soft, your food grows cold.”

She glared at him in the gathering twilight. “My heart grows even colder at the sight of you—and your food. I know how you expect me to pay for my supper.”

His black brows drew together in an angry knot. He set down the trencher near the open door and lifted a pot of ink from behind the bread. He pulled a folded paper from his doublet. “A mere dip of the pen. A few lines to scribble and all shall be joy between us as before,” he said in a sing-song voice. He ventured to take a step closer to her.

Belle leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. “You don’t even know the meaning of those words, dull worm,” she whispered under her breath. “You were born on a dunghill.”

Mortimer cocked his head. “How now? I did not hear that.”

She sighed. “Methinks you should bathe more often, Mortimer, for your ears are full of wax. Go away! I am not in a writing mood today or tomorrow or ever.” She unleashed a torrent of her pent-up anger upon him. “I will not now, nor ever sign away Bodiam Castle to you. Come rack or ruin to us both. I will see you in hell first!”

Mortimer backed up. His hand shook as he made a sign against a witch’s evil eye. “Hold your tongue, woman! Think whose dreadful name you invoke. They say the devil has his eyes and ears everywhere.” He glanced over his shoulder at the black stairwell behind him as if he half-expected a satanic visitor to ascend the worn steps. “Spit on your palm and say a prayer lest you be damned.”

A small laugh crackled from Belle’s dry throat. “Look who calls the kettle black! Scuttle away to your beetle hole, Mortimer. Your presence offends my nostrils.”

The thin man drew himself up. “I have bathed today, mistress. You, alas, have not done so in a fortnight. Tis you, not I, who offends.”

Belle turned away from him. “Then begone and take your foul paper with you.”

“You are a fool,” he sneered. He turned on his heel and bent to pick up the trencher and candle. “God shield me!” he bleated.

Belle stared at him in the dim light and wondered if he had been bitten by a mouse. He touched the trencher with the toe of his suede slipper.

“What’s amiss?” she asked.

“Bewitched!” he gibbered. “The capon has disappeared!” He pointed at the empty place on the trencher.

Belle rejoiced inwardly. Oh, sweet, cunning Dexter! Aloud, she remarked. “Mayhap the rats bore it away for a feast. The Bodiam rodents grow quite large, you know. Or…” She allowed a small pause while Mortimer twitched like a fish on a hook. “Mayhap twas the ghost that haunts this tower.”

Mortimer turned as white as Belle’s fictional specter. “What spirit? Where?”

She savored her only effective weapon against her brother-in-law. Like her late husband, both Mortimer and his puling sister were deeply superstitious.

“They say tis the ghost of the ancient knight who built this castle on the blood of innocents. Now he walks its galleries as a penance for his sins.”

Mortimer shuddered.

Belle hid her smile of triumph. “And they say he guards the family who abides here in peace but woe to those strangers who break Bodiam’s good cheer.”

Mortimer snatched up the trencher and candle, then backed out of the chamber. “Tis you who have angered this unhappy spirit, not I!” He slammed the door behind him and rattled the key in the rusted lock. “Look to yourself, mistress!”

With another wail, he clattered down the stairs.

Belle sank to the floor. In the darkness, she listened intently for some tell-tale sound. “Dexter!” she whispered. “Dex-ter!”

A large round form filled the tiny window. Then it jumped and landed squarely on Belle’s lap. She stroked the creature’s sleek fur as it pawed and kneaded a bed to its liking among the folds of her bedraggled skirt.

“Have you something for me, you artful thief?” she asked, tickling its pointed ears.

In answer, Dexter dropped the capon in her open hand. He rubbed his cheek against her arm as she greedily devoured his sticky offering.

“Oh, you are a love!” she sighed afterward while Dexter industriously licked her fingers clean of the drippings. “How well you were named, for you are my only friend in this reeky place. You are truly my right-hand cat!”