Innocence Unveiled. Blythe Gifford

donned again the voice she used with strangers. ‘The workers respect me. I know my business.’

      ‘How many times every day must you prove it?’

      He heard too much. ‘As many times as I must.’

      Renard walked over to the loom, squatting just beyond the firelight.

      ‘That loom was his,’ she said, watching Renard stroke the uprights, the threads and the batten, as if he were searching for a secret lock. His hands, strong and graceful in all things, seemed awkward only when they neared the loom. ‘He was a weaver before he started dealing in cloth.’

      ‘But he kept weaving, you said. He wove the Duchess cloth.’

      ‘He was always experimenting, trying new things, until the stiffness took his hands.’ Joining him by the loom, she rubbed her thumb over wood worn smooth for more than fifty years. ‘He taught me on this loom. He said I must know how to weave in order to supervise weavers.’

      ‘Show me.’

      She stilled her fingers and tried to read his face. A strange request. ‘Why would you want to learn?’

      He never moved his gaze from the threads. ‘When you are finished, you have something to show.’

      His whispered words seemed a confession. A smuggler’s very life was secret.

      ‘Perhaps tomorrow.’ In daylight. When the intimacy of the night had passed.

      ‘Now.’

      ‘In the dark?’

      His silence, thick and heavy, touched her as his fingers had touched the threads. ‘You were the one,’ he said, finally, ‘who told me I needed to know my trade.’

      No harm in teaching, she supposed. Good weavers worked by touch anyway, so the dark should not matter. And she could prove to herself that she felt nothing unusual when she shared his space.

      Taking a seat on the end of the bench, she patted the wood to her left. ‘Sit.’

      He did, his legs so long they nearly overshot the treadles that she could barely reach with a pointed toe. Through the layers of his chausses and her skirt, she felt his leg muscles flex at the unfamiliar movement.

      ‘These,’ she said, struggling to keep her voice even, ‘are the treadles. Think of them as your stirrups. Your feet ride there to control the loom.’

      He placed one foot on each, his knees within a whisper of the cloth on the loom. ‘Are all weavers such small men?’

      She smiled. ‘You are a very tall man. And this is an old loom that I’ve adjusted to my size. The newer ones must be worked by two men.’

      ‘How tall was Giles de Vos?’

      He asked the question without looking at her, his fingers running ceaselessly over the loom, stroking the batten, reaching for the heddles, smoothing the warp threads.

      The sight of his fingers caressing the loom made her skin tingle. She rubbed her sleeve as if she could scrub away the feeling. ‘Giles was shorter than you. By at least a head.’

      He spread his arms to span the loom, easily reaching the width of the cloth. She caught a whiff of soap and skin. He must have visited the bath house today. His scent, the pressure of his leg against hers hidden in the darkness, made her heart trip.

      Sweet Saint Catherine, is this what they mean by temptation?

      If so, it felt good—warm, cosy, exciting, perhaps a little dangerous and very, very alive.

      She felt no answering surge from him. His concentration was all on the wood and the wool.

      He said I did not need protection from him. I must indeed be an immodest woman, if I feel like this while he feels nothing.

      She slipped off the bench, smoothed her skirt and stood at the corner of the loom, where his scent was fainter and it was easier to fight her shameful urges. ‘I can show you better from here.’

      She ran her hands over the loom, checking the tautness of the threads, trying to concentrate. Where could she start? She had learned as a baby to recognise the right-spun threads that must constitute the warp, the left-spun ones that must be used as the weft, to string the threads evenly, not too tight, not too loose.

      ‘Let me show you how to throw the shuttle.’ She picked up a boat-shaped wooden shuttle, empty of the bobbin thread, but worn smooth by Giles’s fingers. ‘Practise first with an empty one to get the feel of it so you don’t ruin my cloth.’

      He watched her, silent and intent. She forced herself to inhale, letting the air fill her chest and calm her fluttering heart. ‘Hold the shuttle in the palm of your hand, then insert the tip between the threads, flick your wrist, and catch it on the other side. Let me show you first.’

      Reaching over his shoulder, she felt a chestnut curl tickle her cheek. She flicked her right wrist with the expertise of long practice. The shuttle went skimming across the warp threads and flew out the other side, the pointed prow nearly denting the wooden floor.

      ‘Why didn’t you catch it?’ she grumbled. Kneeling, she searched under the loom in the darkness.

      ‘You did not say “catch”, mistress.’ The imperial tone had returned to his voice. ‘Your words were “Let me show you first”.’

      Fleece dust clung to her fingers before she found the shuttle. She rubbed her thumb over both pointed ends. Neither was damaged. ‘You might have broken the point or caused a splinter,’ she said, crawling out from under the loom and losing her dignity with a sneeze. ‘Then it would catch on the warp threads. Now you try. Flick your wrist to throw it and catch it with your other hand. Neither your fingers nor the shuttle should touch the threads. Then throw it back the other way. A master weaver can work equally well left to right or right to left.’

      He took the shuttle, grasping it like a sword.

      ‘No, here.’ She cradled her small hand around his large one, placing his index finger on the well-worn wood. A hot flush crept up her arm at his touch, but she refused to let go. ‘Now, flick like this…’ She guided his wrist inthe familiar gesture. ‘Let go next time…and catch.’

      The shuttle skimmed partway over the threads and stopped in the middle. She sighed, and reached in to pull it out.

      His fingers locked around her wrist. ‘I’ll get it,’ he said.

      She pulled her arm away. A bracelet of fire circled her wrist where his hand had been.

      She stepped away and watched as he rescued the empty bark. Then, after flexing both wrists, he sent the shuttle skimming through the threads. Again it stopped like an arrow short of the target.

      Without a word, he retrieved it. Instead of cursing at the shuttle, or at her, as her uncle did when something went wrong, or at himself, as her father would have, this man calmly threw again.

      And again.

      On his next try, the little boat shot safely through the threads and into his waiting hand.

      Grinning, he waved it in triumph and she clapped with delight, belatedly realising the racket might wake Merkin. ‘You handle the shuttle as if you had weaver’s blood.’

      A look of fierce warning wiped out his first genuine smile. He stood, the lesson over. ‘My blood is none of your concern.’

      She ignored her hurt and turned to light a candle from the embers. ‘I meant it as a compliment. Particularly since you seem to know nothing of the trade.’ She touched another candle to the flame and handed it to him.

      ‘It is more important that I know my buyers.’

      ‘I thought you said the less we know of each other, the better off we both will be,’ she said, surprised to remember his exact words.

      He winked again, conveniently