Figures in Silk Read Online Free

she repeated dully, as reality came back like a sour taste in the mouth. Knowing that her father wouldn’t let her run away from marrying Thomas Claver by paying her dowry to a nunnery instead, since she’d never shown the least sign of having a vocation; wondering if she’d have the nerve to risk walking out of his great place, where she’d always been Miss Isabel, daintily perched on wallows of silk, sewing altar cloths, to become a withered, unregarded, unmarried house keeper in the house hold of the kind of wealthy wife Jane would become. Knowing she wouldn’t. Aware too that there were other, worse possibilities that her imagination was shying away from. “What choices?”
    He glanced over at the chessboard and grinned. “Strategic choices,” he said, with a return of the wolfish energy she’d glimpsed as they left the church. “You mustn’t think life is a romance; that some knight errant will come along and slay the dragon for you.
    Knights don’t really sit and pine at lovely ladies’ gates. They fight.
    That’s reality. War. Chess. All you can do is plan as many steps ahead as you can and position yourself for a good move next time.
    Know what your powers are and what you can do.”
    Briskly, he shook out a couple of pieces. “Look. Say I’m a king: I can move in several directions. If the way I want is blocked, there are others open to me. But let’s call you a pawn. You don’t have so many choices. All you can do is move forward, one step at a time. And I’d imagine your only forward movement now is to say yes.”
    She glanced up; down, at her fingers, plucking at each other; up again through her eyelashes, seeking his eyes but hiding hers when she met them; not wanting to acquiesce. How could he look so soft, but be so hard? Was that what the war had done to him, or just his nature? She didn’t want to accept that her dilemma could be reduced to this ruthless balancing of possible outcomes; this cold- blooded comparison of disadvantage. All she wanted was to come up with some way of talking her father out of his foolishness, she thought; ready to toss her head like an impatient pony, but restraining herself just in time, with the dawning awareness that there was no place left in her life for petulance. Her father wasn’t going to change his mind.
    “Well?” the man in front of her murmured. His voice might be soft, but there was no ignoring the challenge in it. “Do you have any other choices?”
    She shook her head, filling up inside with a darkness that crawled and churned.
    “You’re young,” she heard him add. She thought she heard sympathy. “Take the long view. This is only your first move. You’ll get more chances later.”
    The serving girl was lighting candles in the back vaults; people were crowding in from the markets. She couldn’t bring herself even to nod. Forever yawned ahead of her fourteen- year- old mind like a pit. She got up. Wished she had a cloak to wrap carefully around herself. It would be cold outside. There was nowhere to go but home.
    “Thank you for your company,” she muttered, staring at her feet, and turned to the door.
    He was on his feet in a dark whirl; beside her, a hand on her back. “It’s not easy, I know,” he whispered. “I was lucky we met today: you’ve helped me see what I should do. So thank you. And good luck. I hope I’ve helped you do the right thing too.”
    She was aware of his downturned face just above hers. From very close, she became conscious of his arm stretching around behind her; of long lean muscle and the dizzy moving together of bodies. Or did she misunderstand? Before she quite knew what was happening, it wasn’t happening anymore. He was striding off very fast toward the serving girl, in her pool of candlelight, feeling down his leg for a purse; glancing briefly back at her, still with those half- closed, intent eyes; muttering, “Goodbye, Isabel.”
    She stood there for a moment more. Astonished; still feeling the