'Sounds like a man who does too much reading,' said Gresham, 'and of the wrong type of book, too.' But he was intrigued, despite himself. He would no more mate with his ward than climb into bed with an open mole trap, but any match between two personalities as big as this had to be interesting. If he was honest, he was also annoyed that he had not found out this story himself. If Essex fancied his ward, he might have had the decency to tell him.
'So presumably his Lordship planned to give my ward a right noble seeing to, standing up against an outside wall when nobody was looking,' said Gresham enjoying the conscious use of barrack-room language, largely because he knew George found it offensive and unnecessary. Which it was, of course. That was why it was fun. 'Well, it stops them getting pregnant if you do it standing up. Or so my nurse said. Mind you, she had twelve children of her own, so perhaps she didn't speak with total authority. So what happened? Did my little fire-vixen spread her legs to a belted Earl, or rather an Earl about to take his belt and other things off?'
'She asked for a pen and paper,' said George, straight-faced.
'What?' said Gresham. 'Now I've never heard of anybody doing it with those before.'
'Pen and paper. And he was so surprised he asked someone to bring some. After all, you may not find food in Donne's house, or coal, but you'll always find a pen and ink. So eventually — and in the interim my Lordship's hot breath has put condensation on all the walk — she takes both pen and paper, writes a few lines, and hands it to him.'
'What did it say?' asked Gresham now intrigued.
'It isn't so much what it said,' replied George. 'It's what she said. Apparently she faced up to him — he's quite tall, you know, and so is she — and said, "My Lord, I may have no breeding but I am not a toy to be used by you and then discarded. I've written my polite rejection of your kind offer to copulate with me here in this letter. I've addressed it to your wife.'"
'Did she do that, by God!' said Gresham, amazed and alarmed at the same time. He suspected women had been hung from the ramparts of Essex House for less. 'What did he do?'
'He went as red as his beard, my Lord,' said Jane, 'looked as if he was going to hit me, and then burst out laughing. He has been sending me notes and gifts ever since. I came to ask if you could intervene and ask him to stop. It's getting very boring. A girl must look to her honour, even an orphan such as myself. And you are my guardian, however much you might regret it. A good guardian would be incensed at this assault on his ward's virtue and seek to protect her with all his power.'
Dammit! How much of the earlier conversation had she heard? How had this woman got the knack of entering a room in total silence?
'You need protection as much as a grown lioness needs an escort from a sheep!' said Gresham. Jane was looking very cool, her dark hair worn down as befitted an unmarried woman, her dress a working smock that did little to hide the length of her limbs or the curve of her body. He decided not to look into her eyes. They were disturbing, as deep as the darkest pool and flecked with intelligence. And sulky. Very sulky. All sorts of things would have been much, much easier if she had been stupid. And ugly. 'Are you going to make my life hell over this, as well as everything else? What do you expect me to do? Challenge Essex to a duel? If I do, everyone will think it's because I'm sleeping with you. Or want to. If I kill him the Queen will kill me. Mind you, if he kills me your problems really would be over.'
Jane's perfectly composed features did not shift at all. 'Despite a life lived largely without luxuries, prior to your kind rescuing of me,
I have never felt the need to indulge in self-pity. It's demeaning for anyone, and, if I may say so, particularly for a man.'
'No, you may not say so!' said Gresham. Was it a shout? Of course not. He would never lose his dignity in such a manner. How this woman had acquired the capacity, not only of silent movement, but of breaking through his lifelong self-control was quite beyond him. Once, when she was younger and being equally outrageous, he had moved towards her fully intending to put her over his knee. For the first time in his life Henry Gresham had been halted by a look. He would not try that again. This was ridiculous. He had been shot at, pierced several times by sword and dagger blades, blown up by gunpowder, near-drowned and once actually stretched out on the rack in the Tower of London (most incidents, now he came too think of it, connected in some strange way with Sir Robert Cecil) — and managed to keep his self-control. Yet now he was losing his temper, yet again, with a chit of a girl. It was nonsense. With a massive effort he calmed himself down.
'Please knock before you enter a room,' Gresham said, in as mild a tone as he could muster.
'Yes, my Lord,' said Jane, dropping her eyes from his gaze, but looking up at him for a moment from under her dark, deep eyelashes. 'I was about to when your body servant opened the door and let me in.'
Gresham directed a look of pure hatred at Mannion, who gazed back imperturbably and simply shrugged his shoulders. In answer to the question Gresham had not asked he said, 'Only being polite, wasn't I?'
Damn the both of them! A more unlikely combination than Mannion and Jane could not be imagined in the wildest writings of the stage, yet Gresham had never seen the pair exchange a cross word. There was some deep, unspoken level of communication between them that he could dimly sense but not understand. It annoyed him, because he valued Mannion more than any other person alive, more even than George. He resented her relationship with Mannion, was jealous of it. Mannion thought most women were like a meal, a necessary pleasure to be enjoyed at regular intervals. Yet never for a moment had Gresham sensed anything of that sort between the pair of them. Whatever their relationship was, it was beyond sex and, for that matter, beyond him.
If someone had suggested that what drew them together was a very full understanding of their joint master, Henry would have laughed in their face. No one understood Henry Gresham, not even himself. It was a matter of great pride to him.
'Well,' said Gresham trying not to be rude and managing to be so, 'I'll mention to my friend the next time we meet that you're off limits. Will that do?'
'Thank you for treating it so urgently,' said Jane, the sarcasm dripping like honey from a comb. Acid honey. 'Perhaps you might take care to mention it early on in the evening?'
'What's important about the timing?' asked Gresham before he had thought properly and saw the hole in the road opening up before him.
'Having seen you come home after an evening with the Earl of Essex, I'd have some reservations about your memory after the first hour.'
That was her going too far!
'You've no right to comment on what your master does either in his business or his social life. You are impudent and impertinent.'
She flushed at that, and bowed her head. It was a minor victory for Gresham. He decided to capitalise on it.
'I doubt you came here to discuss the Earl of Essex. Now that you're here what can I do for you?'
'I was hoping to request some money from you,' said Jane simply.
'More fripperies for yourself?' asked Gresham nastily, and regretted it the moment he spoke. Whatever her faults might be, and her continual nagging, she was scrupulous over money. She virtually ran The House and the accounts were superb. She never asked for money for clothes or jewellery. Indeed, it was the old nurse who came to Gresham every now and again and pointed out that even the poorest girl occasionally needed some money spending on her clothes. He had remembered the humiliation of his own childhood in the shadow of St Paul's, when the other boys at school had picked on the poor boy dressed in cast-offs, and had immediately handed Jane a purse that would have bought three gowns for the Queen. She had looked at him very oddly, and a week later had paraded herself in front of him with a sombre day dress in a cheap, dark-green material. At the same time she had given him the purse back, virtually all the coin still in it, together with an invoice for the paltry sum the dress and one other of similar economy had cost. After that he had gone to Raleigh's wife, got a figure out of her of what might be a suitable monthly allowance for a young girl to spend on clothes, and given it to her regularly. He suspected she spent most of it on books, but that was her choice. At least his ward looked presentable and did not disgrace him.