KIT LOOKED down the hill toward Ellen dragging along behind. “Come along, will you?” Walking backward, he squinted at her in the darkness. “What is that you’re carrying?”
“A book.”
“A book?” He stopped to wait for her to catch up. “Since when do you spend your time reading?”
“Since you went stark raving mad and decided I had to spend half the night watching you work. Since then.”
It was dark as hell, too dim to see her expression, but he could hear the pout in her voice.
“Why won’t you let me stay home?” she added.
“I’d let you stay home if you would stay home. But I know you, and you won’t. I’d return to find you’re at the pawnshop again.”
“I love him,” she said for the hundredth time. Or maybe the millionth.
“I want better for you,” he said for the millionth time, too.
As they passed through the gate at Windsor, the drowsy old scarlet-uniformed guard snapped to attention. “Evening, Mr. Martyn.”
“Evening, Richards.”
The man narrowed his rheumy eyes. “Who goes with you?”
“My sister.”
“Pretty thing.” He smiled, displaying half a mouth of teeth. “Go on through.”
“My thanks.” In the torchlight of the gateway, Kit glanced again at the book clutched to Ellen’s chest. “Where’d you get that? It’s not even English.”
She clutched the book tighter, as though she were afraid he might snatch it from her hands. “You don’t want to know.”
“Whittingham?”
“Maybe.”
“He’s a pawnbroker. Can he even read? Why would he give you a foreign book?”
He thought perhaps she blushed, but they were still walking and had left the circle of torchlight, so he couldn’t be sure.
“I’m hoping your friend Rose can translate it for me,” she said, neatly evading his question.
“Rose isn’t my friend.” He didn’t want to be Rose’s friend. He didn’t want to be her brother, either. He hoped he’d made that clear earlier this evening.
“You drew a picture of her.”
“You weren’t supposed to see that.”
“It was good,” Ellen said grudgingly. “You should draw pictures more often. Of things besides buildings, I mean.”
“I’m too busy trying to make you a good life.”
Her reply to that was sullen silence.
He sighed as they skirted the Round Tower. “You cannot see Rose tonight. You’ll be at my construction site. She’ll be at court.” He wouldn’t walk Ellen through the king’s chambers—they’d take the long way around. “Ellen Martyn doesn’t belong at court. Until, that is, she marries a title.”
“I’m marrying a pawnbroker,” she said.