Perhaps I can make it out the door, if I can just get by him—
Catching myself staring at his smooth, chiseled chest, I turned my face away.
Why had you not expected such a handsome creature to belong to those eyes, those striking blue eyes.
Words as gruff as I remembered filled the cottage. “How did you find me?” His eyes narrowed to fiery slits. “Why are you here?”
My tongue untied as I began in shaky words. “Have—have you been sent to kill me?” I gulped. “Sir?”
“Sir?” The executioner arched a dark eyebrow. “Perhaps we should exchange pleasantries before talk of killing. Don’t you agree?” He stepped inside and pushed the door shut, effectively sealing my exit. “I’m Jean St. Bromaine. Seems you’ve found your way into my home.”
Fear chopped the politeness from my words as I tried to place his accent. A mixture of French and Welsh perhaps? “I know who you are. I saw you this morning.”
“Ah, yes. I knew I recognized you. But the question remains, who are you?”
I dug my fingers into the rock wall behind me. A hot flush crept up my neck. “Forgive me. I am Lady Bridget. I was brought to court—”
My thought trailed off as I realized Jean was no longer listening. He turned his back to me as he continued to dry his hair with the cloth. Muscles rippled beneath his skin, giving rise to an odd emotion in my stomach. We stood together in awkward silence.
Finally, he flung the damp cloth over a peg beside the door and turned back to face me. “Good evening, Lady Bridget.”
My eyes widened at his unspoken insult. My tongue grew bold, and I let go of the stone wall. “Tell me, Jean, why are your quarters not in the castle? Or more appropriately, the Tower?”
I tilted my chin as I had seen Lady Denny do, and elicited a smoldering look from Jean.
He removed a white cloth shirt from over the back of the chair and drew it over his head and arms. Pulling it down, he covered his chiseled chest and stomach before he spoke. “I do my job well. In return, the King affords me the simple luxury of choosing my own quarters.”
I glanced at the headsman’s axe that hung above the mantle, almost a living thing itself. The same curved, double sided blade that took the lives of Catherine Howard and Lady Rochford just this morning no longer dripped with syrupy blood, but instead gleamed.
He followed my gaze. A smile raised the corners of his full lips. “And as you see, I choose to live as far from the castle and as far away from the goings on at Court as possible.” He sunk into the lone chair, a look of contentment on his darkly shadowed face. “After all, I usually see the faces that fill the His Majesty’s Court in my own time.”
I stared at him, any words I could say refusing to untangle themselves and escape my tongue.
Jean linked his fingers together across his chest. “What I mean to say is that those who are favorites at Court one day, often wind up trembling upon my chopping block the next.”
“Yes,” I mused. “I can see how that would be true. That is precisely the reason I’m here, as well.” Muscles in my neck I hadn’t realized were tense began to twitch and relax.
Jean sat forward, his elbows on his knees. “How about a pot of tea?” His gauzy shirt drooped a bit at the neckline. I tried not to let my gaze fall to what the shirt kept hidden. The curious blush that appeared with Jean still burned in my cheeks.
“Tea? Yes, please.” I nodded. “Thank you.”
Bridget, what has come over you?
He rose easily, like water rippling over the rocks in a stream, and gestured wide with his arm. “Do take the chair.”
I took my full skirt in my hands, stepped to where Jean motioned, and did exactly as he commanded. As he moved about the cottage, I was powerless not to track his every move. The seat was still warm. I sucked in a breath and willed my beating heart to slow.
The fire crackled merrily as Jean fed it branch after branch. Taking a silver pot from a peg, he squatted and filled it with water dipped from the bucket on the floor. “The water’s fresh, Lady Bridget. I drew it just before I bathed in the river.”
“Please, just Bridget.” Something in Jean’s words about distancing himself from Court had a kernel of truth in it for me, too.
“As you wish, Bridget. Now tell me. Why are you here? In the middle of the night? In my home.” He thrust the full kettle alongside the fire. A bit of water sloshed over the side and sizzled in the flames. “Alone.”
My aunt’s words scolded sharply from somewhere. Don’t fidget Bridget! Sure enough, I was twirling and rubbing the purple ends of my dress.
Remembering myself, I clasped my hands together at my middle just as she’d taught me. “My cousin Elizabeth and I were visited by two royal courtiers. They chose us to come to Court and be among the ladies His Majesty would choose from for his next wife.”
Jean rose and took a pair of small tin cups from the mantle. “And in His Majesty’s wisdom, he made sure all potential Queens filled the front row of the latest Queen’s execution.” His musical voice was a growl in his throat. “I knew I never had seen all of those beautiful faces before.”
From a small box, he plucked out a pinch of black tea leaves. He rolled each pinch between his fingers, crushing them and letting them fall to the bottom of each cup. Something twisted in my stomach as I watched his practiced fingers demolish the tea leaves. I swallowed hard and crossed my ankles.
His skin was softer than anything I’d touched before when our fingers met this morning—
“Bridget?”
I jumped. “Yes? I’m sorry, I was just—”
Daydreaming of your soft skin touching mine, in places nobody has touched before.
I studied my lap, embarrassed, and completely at a loss as to what to say.
“I asked if you thought it odd that the front row of Catherine’s execution was filled with potential mates.”
This man is a murderer, Bridget. He has killed more people for profit than... than...
“I did find it odd.” Still, I couldn’t look at him. “Do you suppose he had a reason for wanting us to witness the executions?” Something flashed in my mind. Something about the way that brown eye had watched me from behind the tapestry. My modest shyness retreated to the shadowed corners of the cottage. “It was a warning, wasn’t it?”
Jean filled both cups with boiling water and handed one to me. I took it with weak hands. “No, not a warning, m’lady. Coming from King Henry, that was a promise.”
