She disentangled her legs from his and got up on one elbow. “I thought you had an appointment with the bishop.”
“I wanted to see the secret passageway before I met with him.”
She sat up. “Did you not believe me? I am not some silly woman who sees things that are not there.”
“You, silly? What a notion,” he said, rolling his eyes.
“Nay, I never doubted you. In fact, I told the bishop all about the witches’ cabal you witnessed.”
Her cheeks grew warm. “How could you tell him what I saw? He is a churchman!”
Jamie laughed and ran his hand up her arm. “In sooth, I do not believe it is possible to shock the bishop. Though the pleasures of the flesh do not rule him, celibacy is not one of his virtues. He has a mistress, you know.”
“But why would you tell him?”
“If witches are brazen enough to meet in the bowels of Westminster Palace, who knows what evil they are up to? You forget, our young king was in the palace when this happened.”
“I suppose it is good to be cautious, but their interest did not appear to be… political,” she said, thinking of the naked woman on the table.
Jamie sat up and grabbed both her arms.
“Going down that passageway alone was so dangerous, I still cannot believe you did it,” he said, his eyes like blue fire. “What in God’s name made you do it?”
She was not about to confess that she had thought she was following Alderman Arnold.
“We have discussed this already—or rather, you shouted,” she said, arching her eyebrows. “It is over and done with.”
Praise God she’d had the good sense not to tell Jamie the whole tale. If Jamie knew she suspected the wolf-man had seen her—and, God forbid, what he was doing at the time—Jamie would have gone into an even worse rage than he had.
“You are hurting me,” she said, though he was not, truly. When she looked pointedly at where Jamie’s fingers were digging into her arms, he released his grip at once.
“Sorry, but each time I think of you down there alone with them, I want to kill someone.” He looked away from her and narrowed his eyes. “I want to feel my blade buried to the hilt in that wolf-man’s gut… or squeeze the life out of him with my hands around his throat.”
Linnet suppressed a shiver as she remembered the wolf-man’s eyes boring into hers. She felt so blissful—and so safe—with Jamie at her house that she had been able to push aside thoughts of the witches most of the time. When she awoke with nightmares, Jamie’s arms were about her. His solid presence soothed her.
“Another reason I told Beaufort about the witches,” Jamie said, picking up the thread of his conversation again, “is that I thought he might be privy to the secrets of the palace.”
“Did he know of the hidden passageway?” she asked. “The bishop says there was once a secret passageway, but he denies knowing where it was.”
“What will he do about the witches?” Linnet asked.
“He’ll keep his eyes and ears open for sorcery and any sort of treachery against the king,” Jamie said. “And the bishop has a great many eyes and ears.”
“You mean the monks and priests under his purview?” Linnet asked. “What will they know of demon-worshippers?”
Jamie lay back on the bed and put his arms behind his head. “The Winchester geese are the bishop’s best source of information—the prostitutes hear most everything.”
Linnet twisted a strand of Jamie’s hair around her finger as she debated whether to tell him. Finally, she said, “I learned something else the bishop might like to know.”
As Jamie waited in silence for her to tell him, she ran her fingers in a slow circle over his bare chest.
“How well do you know Lady Eleanor Cobham?” she asked and felt Jamie’s muscles tense beneath her fingertips.
“Why do you ask?” he said in a voice that was too casual.
She stopped her hand and looked him in the eye. “I heard something about her when I was in London before.”
“There is always some gossip about Eleanor.”