The Harlot’s Daughter. Blythe Gifford

The word lingered on lips that had moved soft and urgent over hers. The memory brought heat to her cheeks and to places deeper inside. ‘What is there to say?’

      ‘I should not have forced you.’

      So. He regretted his passion now. Well, she would not reveal her weakness for him. He would only use it against her in the end. She shrugged. ‘It is Yuletide. It meant nothing.’

      ‘Really?’

      His question trapped her. To admit he moved her would leave her with no defence. Oh, Mother, how do I protect myself against the wanting?

      ‘Of course not.’ She crafted a light and airy tone so he would not know she had dissolved at his kiss and no longer recognised the new form she found herself in. ‘You took no more than I had offered.’

      ‘Well, then…’ He nodded, finishing the sentence and the incident. His rigid muscles relaxed, but he did not move closer. ‘What brings you to the roof, Lady Solay? It is too late to see the stars.’

      ‘I come to watch the sun.’

      She was grateful that the breeze quickened and blew his scent away from her. One more step and she might reach for his shelter.

      ‘The sun is near its lowest point, Lady Solay. It has withdrawn its light from the world.’

      His words brought back her childhood fears. Sometimes, as her life had changed, she had watched for the sun to rise, uncertain that it really would. ‘Yet it was at this, the darkest hour upon earth, that the brightest son was born.’

      ‘Are you speaking of the Saviour or the King?’

      She smiled. The analogy had not occurred to her, but it might make a flattering conceit for the King’s reading. ‘Both.’

      ‘The sun comes up every morning.’ He leaned on the battlements, facing her. ‘Why do you find it worthy of watching?’

      ‘Why? Just look.’

      He turned.

      In anticipation of sunrise, the sky erupted in colour—bruised purple at the horizon, then striped blue, and finally brilliant pink. ‘The heavens are more reliable than your justice. The sun comes up every morning.’ Her words came out in a whisper. ‘Even in our darkest hours.’

      ‘Have you had many of those?’

      ‘Enough.’ More than dark hours. Dark years after the death of the old King snuffed the life-giving sun from their sky.

      ‘But you survived.’ No compassion softened his words.

      She blocked the memories. She had spoken too much of herself and her needs. ‘Has the world never been harsh to you?’

      ‘No more than to most.’ Pain gilded his answer, but whatever weakness had sent him to the roof in near-apology was gone when he looked at her. ‘Do not try to play on my sympathies. You will not change my mind about your grant.’

      The memory of the kiss pulsed between them. Could an appeal to his sense of justice change his mind? ‘King Richard has given his clerks more than we would need.’

      ‘And the clerks didn’t deserve it either.’

      ‘Don’t deserve?’ Despite her resolution, harsh words leapt to her tongue. ‘The King is the judge of that, not you.’

      ‘Not according to Parliament.’

      ‘Parliament!’ She spat the word. ‘Those greedy buzzards stripped us of everything, not only what the King had freely given, but lands my mother acquired with her own means.’

      ‘Lands she took from others and did not need.’

      ‘She needed them to support us after his death.’

      ‘She had a husband to take care of her, more fool he. Better to ask for a husband to support you.’

      ‘Now you mock me.’ Husbands were for women with dowries and respected families. ‘No one would have me.’

      ‘If the King decreed, someone would.’

      ‘Then perhaps I shall ask him.’ The very idea left her giddy.

      He grabbed her arms and forced her to look at him. Some special urgency burned behind his eyes. ‘Don’t let him force you. Only wed if it is someone you want.’

      Her heart beat in her throat as she looked at him. That was why her mother had warned her against this feeling. If the King decreed, it would not matter whom she wanted.

      She stepped back and he let his hands drop. ‘If someone weds me, be assured that I will want him.’

      Disgust, or sadness, tinged his look. ‘And if you don’t, you’ll tell him you do.’ The brilliant colours of daybreak faded as the sun emerged. The sky had no colour; the sun, no warmth. ‘Here’s your sun, Lady Solay,’ he said, turning towards the stairs. ‘May it bring you a husband in the New Year.’

      As his footsteps faded, the image he had suggested tantalised her like the dawn at the edge of the day. Marriage. Someone to take care of her.

      She pulled her cloak tighter and let the wind blow the fantasy away. Better to focus on pleasing the King with a pleasant poem and a pretty future.

      But Justin’s suggestion tugged at her. Perhaps he had deliberately shown her the path to circumvent the Council.

      If the King had no power to grant her family a living, he might find an alliance for her with a family that would not allow hers to starve.

      And if the King were gracious enough to find her a husband, she would take whomever he gave, even if the man’s kisses did not make her burn.

      Chapter Five

      As the sun rose to its pale peak on the last day of the year, Solay set aside the astrology tables in despair. She read no Latin, so she could understand none of the text. In a week, the Yuletide guests would be gone, and she with them unless she could create a story from the stars to please a King.

      Before she wove a fiction, she had tried to decipher the truth, but the symbols in the chart the old astrologer had drawn blurred before her eyes.

      She trusted no one for help except Agnes. When she had asked what ill omens the old astrologer had seen, Agnes’s already pale face turned white.

      ‘He said the King must give up his friendship with the Duke of Hibernia or the realm would be in danger.’

      No wonder the man had been jailed.

      Idly, she flipped through the tables of planets, wondering when Lord Justin Lamont had been born. He had the stubbornness of the Bull, but his blunt speech reminded her of the Archer. Perhaps one of them was the ascendant and the other…

      Foolishness. She put the tables aside and turned to her real work. Her future lay in the hands of the King, not in the kisses of Justin Lamont.

      She studied the King’s birth chart again. Some aspects didn’t match the temperament of the King she knew. Aggressive Aries was shown as his ascendant, yet he seemed the least warlike of kings.

      The eleventh house was that of friends; the twelfth of enemies. Surely just a slight shift could move the Duke from one to the other.

      A different time of birth would do it.

      She turned pages with new energy. She would populate the chart as she wished and suggest it had changed because she used a different time of birth.

      Smiling, she began to draw.

      By late afternoon, she derived a chart that suited her purpose, and, it seemed, the King much better. A square formed the centre of the chart, Capricorn, his sun sign. Four triangles surrounded it, forming the four cardinal points as triangles from each side. Then, the additional eight houses formed another square around the first.

      The shift clustered