Page 5 of The King’s Man (Guardians of the Crown #2)

T hamsine wiped her hands on a dirty rag and surveyed the pile of dishes stacked on the kitchen table. She looked down at her fingers and sniffed them, wrinkling her nose. The tips were shrivelled like dried sweetmeats and smelt of grease.

Her father would turn in his grave if he could see her now, but when she considered the alternative, she gave a silent prayer of thanks.

The Ship Inn offered her a respite, time to consider what path to take.

For now, the mindless repetition of physical tasks was a balm to her weary soul and she turned to the basket of carrots that Nan had set her to peel.

She sat down on a rickety stool, picked up the first carrot and regarded it from all angles. Her life, until recently, had never required the skill of peeling carrots. She picked up the knife and, flinching from its sharp blade, she attacked the vegetable.

‘You don’t hold the knife like that.’

Thamsine looked up to see Kit Lovell standing over her, his well-shaped lips curved in amusement. Flustered, Thamsine nicked her finger. With a yelp of pain, she dropped both carrot and knife.

‘Didn’t your mother teach you anything?’ he asked.

‘My mother? No, she didn’t.’ Thamsine retorted, removing her cut finger from her mouth and picking up another carrot from the pile.

‘She died when I was nine after a long illness that kept her from teaching me any form of useful domestic skill and nowhere did my books include a lesson on how to peel carrots..’

Kit pulled up a stool. ‘Look, I’ll demonstrate.’ He picked up a carrot and a knife from the table and with remarkable dexterity peeled four carrots in the time it had taken Thamsine to produce one badly mutilated vegetable.

‘Well, well, look who’s here?’ Nan swaggered in carrying a tray of empty platters. She set them down and put her arms around Kit’s neck, pressing her ample bosom to his back and blowing in his ear. ‘Where’ve you been, lover?’ She sniffed. ‘You smell nice. Been off visiting your lady friend?’

Kit looked up at her and winked.

Nan straightened and cuffed his ear. ‘Ah, you’re no fun these days, Cap’n Lovell.’ She shook her head and sauntered out of the kitchen.

Thamsine stifled her laughter as Kit turned to regard her through narrowed eyes.

‘What are you smiling at?’

‘Is there a woman in London you don’t share a bed with?’

Kit returned his attention to the carrot. ‘That is a harsh remark, given I barely know you, Mistress Granville and, indeed, the circumstances of our meeting.’

Thamsine gave the carrot in her hands a couple of vicious swipes.

‘The idea is to remove the skin, not the entire carrot,’ Kit remarked. ‘And I apologise. I didn’t mean to remind you of events you’d rather forget.’

Thamsine sighed and looked up at Kit Lovell. She could see the attraction that seemed to set half the women in London falling at this man’s feet. The dark hair and the grey-green eyes were an irresistible combination.

Even in London, in February, his skin held a tanned glow, but the lines of a hard soldier’s life were etched around his nose and in the shadows of his eyes.

She felt a prickle at the back of her neck.

She did not doubt that the echoes of laughter in the corners of his mouth could disappear in an instant should he be crossed.

A lock of dark brown hair fell into his eyes and he flicked it back, drawing attention to a thin, pale line of a scar that ran from above his right eye to his temple, transecting his eyebrow.

Thamsine reached out a finger, stopping just short of tracing the line of the scar.

‘You were lucky not to lose your eye. Did you get that scar at Worcester?’ she said aloud.

Kit looked up at her and frowned, puzzled by her question. ‘Oh, this,’ he said, his fingers going to the scar. ‘No. It was a running skirmish in ’43. Looks worse than it was.’

‘You were there from the beginning?’

‘Stormed down a hill at Edgehill and just kept going until the bitter end in ’46.

I returned in ’48 and ’51 but I don’t need to tell you what disastrous campaigns those were,’ Kit said.

‘I joined the court in exile, fought a few foreign wars I cared nothing for. Saw things no man should ever see … ’

He lapsed into a silence that spoke more eloquently than words and for a long moment, the only sound in the kitchen was the soft rasp of the knife on a carrot.

‘And then?’ Thamsine prompted.

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I abhorred exile so I swallowed my pride, apologised for my past misdeeds and came back to England.’ He looked up at her and smiled. ‘That, Mistress Granville, is my life.’

‘And do you truly earn a living playing cards?’

‘And dice and whatever else I can find.’ He smiled. ‘I’m very good at what I do.’

Thamsine sniffed. ‘I do not doubt that you are.’

His clothes were not ostentatious, but they were well cut and made from good fabric. Instead of the old-fashioned collar favoured by her father, he wore the more fashionable falling bands. If she passed Kit Lovell in the street, she would probably think him a conservative man of business.

‘Is this how you plan to spend the rest of your life?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he snapped, with a hard edge to the single word.

The easy camaraderie on his face had been replaced by a sharp, appraising look. She shrank back on her stool, conscious she had overstepped the unseen line in their relationship.

‘What of you, Thamsine Granville? I still hold your mark. When are you going to tell me what has brought you to the kitchen of the Ship Inn?’

When she didn’t answer he smiled and shrugged. ‘I see. If that is how it is to be, Thamsine, let us agree that I will ask you no more questions about your past if you ask none of mine.’

May poked her head around the door. ‘There you are, Cap’n Lovell!’ she said. ‘Your friends have been waiting on you this half-hour since.’

She walked over and picked up one of Thamsine’s efforts. ‘’Ere, what did this carrot ever do to you?’ she asked.

Kit stood up. ‘A little patience, May, she’s never done this before.’

‘Aye well, I need them carrots, so you take your hide out of here where you don’t belong, Cap’n. I’ll bring some rabbit pie in for you.’

‘God bless you, May.’ Kit put an arm around the girl’s shoulders and kissed her forehead.

She coloured and pushed him away. ‘Get away before I start remembering as how you never come visiting no more.’

May watched as the kitchen door closed behind him and sighed with a shake of her head. ‘He’s a one.’

‘What do you mean?’ Thamsine looked up from murdering another vegetable.

May sat down on the stool vacated by Kit and picked up the knife he had been using. ‘Charm the birds out of the trees, he can, but cross him and he’ll show no quarter.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Jem was his sergeant in the war. Said the men would have followed him into the depths of Hell if he’d just say the word.’

Thamsine glanced at the door through which Kit had left. She could well imagine he would have been an inspiring but ruthless leader.

***

As Kit opened the door to the private parlour, the thick fug of tobacco mingled with smoke from the fire made his eyes begin to water and he coughed. The half-dozen men taking their ease around the table looked up.

‘Lovell! As I live and breathe!’ Dutton jumped to his feet, slapping Kit on the shoulder with such force that Kit had to take a step to steady himself. ‘I’d not expected to see you again so soon!’

‘Thank you for your warm welcome.’ Kit bowed to the assembly. ‘You would think I had been gone years instead of a mere two months.’

‘More to the point, how in God’s name did you get out this time? The amount you owed, I thought you would never see the light of day! I told you that horse was a bad buy,’ Colonel Whitely, a hard-bitten veteran with a cynical sense of humour, remarked, tapping out his pipe on his boot heel.

‘Lovell has acquired a most valuable asset.’ Fitzjames moved into the circle. ‘A wealthy mistress.’

‘Lucky dog!’ Dutton said.

Kit smiled. ‘Indeed, my dearest Lucy could not bear to be without me. Her bed grew uncommon cold in the winter air.’

As the paths of Lucy and these men were never likely to cross, the lie came easily.

Dutton scoffed. ‘God rot you, Lovell. Why can’t I find some pretty little widow to keep me?’

‘One look at your face in the mirror should give you the answer to that question,’ Kit rejoined.

‘You know everyone here?’ Dutton ran an expansive hand around the circle.

Kit recognised the faces of his old companions in arms: his friend Fitzjames, Colonel Whitely, Roger Cotes, Richard Willys and a couple of other familiar faces. The last man was a stranger.

Whitely pulled the young man forward. ‘Jack Gerard, meet our friend and fellow sufferer, Captain Christopher Lovell. Jack is the nephew of Lord Gerard, who is with the King in Paris,’ Whitely said.

‘Welcome to this den of lost causes, Master Gerard,’ Kit said.

Gerard smiled. ‘No cause is a lost cause, Captain Lovell. Not while we still have breath in our bodies and a King denied his rightful throne.’

Kit regarded the youngster. Jack Gerard was younger than the others, too young to have fought in the wars, Kit observed cynically. That made him a young, dangerous idealist.

‘Those indeed are sentiments we all hold dear to our hearts,’ Kit said before his hesitation could be mistaken for something else. ‘Come, gentlemen, a toast to our King.’

Wine sloshed into the glasses and the brimming cups were held aloft.

‘To the King.’

But the words were said in an undertone so as not to carry to the taproom beyond.

Kit set his glass down and settled himself in a chair beside the fire. ‘So, what is the news about London? One hears nothing behind the solid walls of the Clink except what your purse can tell you, and mine was sadly empty.’

‘I heard that some woman took a pot-shot at the Lord Protector the other day,’ Fitzjames said.