THIRTY-SIX
“GOOD AFTERNOON, Mr. Martyn,” the guard at Windsor Castle’s gate greeted.
“Afternoon,” Kit muttered back.
After all, there was nothing good about it.
He’d arrived at Harold Washburn’s meager rooms on Peascod Street only to find them empty. The only neighbor he could locate informed him that Washburn had carted his belongings out days before.
Of course. As he walked from the Lower Ward to the Upper, Kit cursed himself for a fool. It was obvious enough that if the man had set fire to Whitehall, he’d left Windsor in the time since Kit had dismissed him. Kit had assumed Washburn would return home, but without employment, there was no longer anything to hold him here.
He could still be in London—or anywhere.
Though Kit itched to confront the bastard, he hadn’t the time to mount a full-scale search, not while seeing his projects to successful completion. He would have to hope that the arson at Whitehall had satisfied the man’s thirst for revenge—that he wouldn’t try anything more.
When he finally reached Windsor’s dining room, he breathed a sigh of relief. Here, at least, everything seemed to be going right. The ceiling was nearing completion. The scaffolding was coming down, and new plaster was going up. Over in a corner, men labored to put a fine finish on the last pieces of oak paneling. Pleasant aromas of fresh-cut wood and sawdust filled the air.
The scent of building. It never failed to invigorate him.
“Well done,” he told his new foreman. They spread out the plans and went over them together, then discussed the final schedule.
“Seen Washburn lately?” Kit asked when they were finished.
Though he hadn’t expected an affirmative answer, the foreman nodded. “Just yesterday, in fact. Been parading about town with some mighty fancy doxies.”
Celebrating his successful revenge, Kit thought, seeing red. And spending the money he’d pocketed by purchasing inferior materials.
Through the anger, though, the new knowledge lifted his spirits. Apparently Washburn was here in Windsor, after all.
“Saw him not an hour ago,” another man volunteered through nails held between his teeth. “At the Old King’s Head on Church Street.”
Better news yet. Kit thanked the men for a job well done, then hied himself off to Church Street, feeling more optimistic than he had in days.
As he strode through the castle grounds, his thoughts turned to Rose and what had happened last night in the square. Lord Almighty, she’d made him all but lose his head. He’d never been with a woman so forward, or so responsive.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t at all sure she was as ready to surrender mentally as she was physically.
“Good afternoon, Richards,” he said to the guard this time.
“Afternoon,” the man returned with a gap-toothed smile.
Within sight of the castle gates, The Old King’s Head was a typical inn—a few chambers above a darkly paneled taproom. It was known as the place a group of Parliamentarians met in 1648 to resolve that King Charles I “should be prosecuted for his life as a criminal person.” One would think the current King Charles, the beheaded king’s son, would avoid the street, but the opposite was true. His favorite mistress, the “pretty, witty Nell Gwyn,” owned the house next door, where she stayed—and he paid nocturnal visits—whenever the court was lodged at Windsor.
But the king had moved to Hampton Court, so enchanting Nelly wasn’t here now. Kit could only hope Washburn still was.
He pushed open the door and scanned the dim taproom. Few patrons sat at the long wooden tables this quiet afternoon, and the man Kit sought was nowhere to be seen.
“Can I get you something, milord?” A buxom blond serving maid sidled up to him, eyeing him appreciatively. “Mayhap an ale…or something else?”
Her expression made clear the “something else” involved herself, but Kit wasn’t interested. “I’m looking for Harold Washburn.”
“Ah, His High and Mighty.” The girl rolled her pretty blue eyes. “He’s staying above.” She gestured up a staircase. “Shakespeare’s chamber, no less.”
It was said the Bard had lived here while writing The Merry Wives of Windsor. Kit wasn’t sure he believed that, but he was sure the inn charged a pretty penny for the room purported to be the playwright’s.
Washburn had apparently come up in the world. He must have embezzled even more money than Kit had feared. Money that would be coming straight out of Kit’s pocket.
He saw red again as he took the stairs two at a time.
“Wait, milord!” the serving maid called, lifting her skirts to run after him. “You cannot just go up there!”
Try and stop me, he thought as he reached the top and began pounding on the first door. “Washburn! Are you in there?” When nobody answered, he tested the latch and found the room open and empty.
He strode to the next, rapping so hard he bruised his knuckles. It was a welcome pain, one that fueled his emotions higher. “Washburn!”
The serving maid caught up and tugged on his arm. “Milord, the proprietor—”
“A pox on the proprietor!” Shaking himself free, he opened the door. Finding this room vacant as well, he moved on, banging his fist against the next. “Washburn!”
A loud, startled squeal came from inside. A female squeal. And then Washburn’s voice, a low hiss. “Shut your trap, you damnable wench.”
For the costliest room in the house, Shakespeare’s chamber sure had a thin door.
Kit tried the latch and found the door locked. “Washburn, open up!”
Again, the serving maid tugged on his sleeve. “Milord, you cannot—”
“I can, my dear. Watch me.” His patience at an end, Kit raised a booted foot and rammed it into the door.
It gave incredibly easily, slamming back against the wall and making the cheap porcelain knickknacks dance on Shakespeare’s marble mantel. Another squeal followed, snapping Kit’s gaze to the gaudy purple velvet–draped bed, where a blowzy woman sat straight up, the counterpane held to her bosom.
An obviously naked bosom. And beside her, Washburn wore nothing but the evidence of a day-old beard. Sweat gleamed on his bald head. The tiny red veins on his oversized nose
