Uncovering The Merchant's Secret. Elisabeth Hobbes

was interesting,’ she said. An understatement, indeed.

      Andrey grunted and sheathed the sword that he was conspicuously wearing.

      ‘What did you find out?’

      ‘Very little.’ Blanche frowned. ‘He claims to have no memory of who he is or where he is from.’

      ‘Do you believe him or do you think he is lying?’

      Blanche considered the conversation that had taken place. The man’s—Jack’s—air of confusion and the look of horror that had crossed his face when he had been unable to supply a name had appeared genuine. The film of perspiration that had arisen across his brow and chest could not have been feigned. Her hand twitched as she recalled the shape of his chest muscles beneath her palm, firm and smooth. A younger body than she had touched for so long. It had taken control not to explore further down to his belly and beyond and see if everything was as well toned. She shook her head to rid herself of the image.

      ‘I believe him. More’s the pity,’ she said. She looked back at the door to the storeroom. A twinge of guilt took her by surprise as she considered what an inhospitable room it was for a man in his circumstances to find himself. A bare room, little more than a cell. She had not bolted the door, but she wondered if he was aware of that, or if he even suspected he had been confined at all. There were other, better rooms and other beds. She blinked, surprised at the direction her thoughts were taking. It was that kiss which had done it. She should never have yielded to the temptation on the beach.

      ‘We’ll have to keep him here a little longer.’

      ‘Why?’ Andrey’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.

      ‘He has no money, no possessions.’ Her conscience gave a twinge; there had been a box somewhere and she had the cross in her room.

      ‘He has no name.’

      ‘Assuming he is telling the truth,’ Andrey said.

      ‘Assuming that.’ Blanche sighed, wishing she had never brought him to the castle. ‘However, we cannot send him out to wander the countryside like a vagrant. Who knows whom he might encounter? Here he is safe from harm.’

      ‘And causing harm,’ Andrey pointed out. ‘Marie didn’t like him.’

      ‘He made her jump, nothing more,’ Blanche said. Andrey was protective of his wife to the point of inanity and Marie’s reaction to being surprised would not have helped Jack endear himself.

      They walked back up the stairs and out into the courtyard. The window that was high in Jack’s room was at ground level in the wall of the storerooms so a breeze could keep grain fresh. If Blanche knelt down beside it, she would be able to look over his bed. Was he sleeping now or lying awake, wondering who and where he was? The fever that had almost claimed his life had been fierce, and his skin had burned even as he shivered. His muscles did not lie—he must be strong indeed to have fought that off.

      She decided against looking in case he was awake and saw her.

      ‘Put a guard on his door,’ she told Andrey. ‘Someone loyal to you.’

      She straightened her sleeves and thought back to the way Jack had seized her by the wrist. He had moved so quickly, but there had been no panic in her. The abhorrence she usually felt at being touched without permission had been mild and she had snapped at him as a matter of course. When the impulse had clearly filled him to try to touch her for a second time he had stayed his hand and that had endeared him to her even more.

      ‘A pity he has no memory,’ she mused to Andrey. ‘I would like to know who he is and what he is doing.’

      She crossed the courtyard from the building where Jack was being housed and climbed the outside stairs to the main tower of the fort. She paused as she always did and pressed her palm against the door. Compared to the grand home that she had shared with her second husband, Yann, it was small, but it belonged to her and no one else. Jack had believed the house belonged to a man, naturally, and the knowledge rankled. But why would he not?

      She lifted her head, proud to have done something so few women would dare to try or succeed in doing. There had been times after Yann’s death when her courage to continue down the path she had chosen had wavered. But she had continued, and Bleiz Mor lived and fought, her name a tribute to the wolf pelts that had decorated their walls.

      ‘Brittany will triumph,’ she whispered to Yann’s ghost. ‘You did not die in vain.’

      She climbed the stairs to her private room on the top floor of the tower and sat in the high-backed chair at the window, shivering a little in the breeze that crept round the threadbare screens. Winter had not fully loosened its grasp, but each time she considered spending some of her plunder on her own comfort she thought of the widowed women who struggled in bare cottages to feed fatherless children, or the men toiling to grow crops in fields turned to battlefields. She did not need it as much as they did.

      She turned her attention to the cross that lay on the table. Keeping this was an indulgence. She had examined it over and over in the days before Jack regained consciousness and could picture it with her eyes closed. It was engraved on the back with the initials J and M on either side. She had been right to suspect his name might begin with that letter. She wondered who M was and a little jealous flame flickered in her breast. She hoped it was his family name and not that of a wife or lover. Perhaps he would remember if she showed him the cross. She would wait until he was well rather than risk agitating him now.

      She held the cross tightly and pursed her lips. That was not the only reason for delaying. If his memory returned and he was proved to be a supporter of Charles de Blois, there were matters she would have to face. Taking a man’s life in combat or on the seas was one thing, but callously executing him in her own home after giving him care and shelter was entirely another. She worried she was allowing her sense of sympathy for his injuries and pity for his circumstances to cloud her judgement. Perhaps he thought a woman would be more easily tricked or cajoled into believing his lies, or that her opinions were of no consequence. He would not be the first man who had tried to dismiss her in such a way.

      She walked behind the tapestry screen and into the shallow alcove of the window and glanced out over the sea, deep in thought. She occupied the whole of the top floor of the tower as her bedchamber and private solar. From her window, and hers alone, high on the highest floor of the tower, it was possible to see that the coast with its shallow inlets and jutting rocks dipped in more deeply and curved round behind the cliff in a loop.

      It was in this concealed cove, safe from the tides and from passing eyes, where her two ships rested at anchor. She inhaled deeply, tasting the salt air in the back of her mouth and feeling the wind enfolding her. She had not sailed since the night before Jack’s shipwreck.

      Although she was still furious at the way the villagers had defied her and lit the church lights, she knew they were growing restless with the continued assaults on houses loyal to the de Montfort cause. She had sworn vengeance on the French, yet had kept her ships at harbour since the night of the shipwreck, the thought of more death turning her stomach in a way that was new and unpleasant. News had come to her earlier in the day through the network of men in her pay of a French ship making its way along the coast. It would not be allowed to pass further up the coast.

      She summoned Marie—the only person Blanche permitted inside her private sanctuary—and sent orders down to Andrey to ready her two ships, White Wolf and White Hawk, by dusk.

      She descended to the large room on the ground floor where her household ate and joined them, passing around the tables to speak with each man and woman. Like her, everyone here had lost someone dear to the French after the siege of Quimper or in other battles. Like her, they had sworn to wreak revenge on those who had taken arms against the rightful claimant to the dukedom of Brittany, but only Blanche had the determination and courage to do what she had done and rebuild her life stronger than she had been before. They loved her for it and were fiercely loyal. She had no fears that her identity would be revealed by anyone within the walls of the castle.