Falcon's Mistress
Berkley Sensations
ISBN: 0-425-20634-3
October 2005

Prologue

Lockwell Hall

Havershire, England

October 1761

Forgetting the two hundred guests gathered in the ballroom for his birthday, the Duke of Canby ran through the woods, his gait uneven, his heart unusually light.

Overhead, a web of branches split the late afternoon sky into fragments. The falcon he’d trained for more than a year soared above the trees, its silhouette crisscrossing the crimson sky.

For a boy of twelve, there could be no better birthday gift.

Canby’s neck ached from watching the bird, and more than once he found himself flat on the ground after tripping over a branch or rock. But he followed. He’d never seen anything so beautiful.

Behind him he heard Selena calling. He couldn’t make out what she said, but he couldn’t stop to listen, either. The falcon caught a current just as Canby burst out of the woods into a meadow surrounded by low-growing brush.

The raptor folded into a dive, chasing a small bird toward the ground. Canby’s breath caught. He wished now he’d brought a dog to retrieve the prey.

As quickly as it dove, the falcon rose and flew across the clouds again. Canby’s heart raced--in time with the falcon’s, he imagined. He chased the bird’s shadow across the meadow and charged through the brush.

Selena shouted, but before he could turn to answer her, the earth fell away. For a moment he thought he’d taken flight, soaring with the falcon against the darkening sky. Too late he realized his mistake.

The falcon had flown over the edge of a steep embankment and he had gone with it.

The force of landing knocked the breath from his lungs, and the heavy leather gauntlet he carried flew from his hand. A thousand limestone teeth bit into him as he slid downward, tearing his fine silk hose and satin breeches, biting his flesh. Instinctively he reached out.

He grabbed at a tiny sapling growing sideways out of the rock. Miraculously, its roots held.

He hung there flat against the embankment, the toe of his finely cobbled shoe balanced precariously on the smallest of rock ledges. Below him, where the sun no longer reached, all was blackness. Above him the peregrine falcon perched on the rocks, gripping and releasing its talons in a nervous dance.

And then she was there. Selena, her face illuminated by the waning rays of sunlight reflecting off the rocks. She peered over the edge, no doubt searching for his body at the base of the ravine. He called out, but his shout emerged as a whisper.

Eventually she noticed him dangling from the sapling. “Canby, you’re alive! Be still. I’m coming down.”

She swung a leg out over the drop. Her feet, now bare, sought purchase on the stone. Her skirts snapped in the wind as she lowered herself down to where he clung. In an instant she was beside him.

Selena grasped his shoulder. Her touch gave him courage.

“When I go up,” she said, “you move into my place. Take note where I place my hands and feet on the rocks.”

She climbed up above Canby’s head. He sidled into the place where the rocks had been warmed by her body’s brief stay. He worked a toe into the space where hers had been but it slipped, sending gravel skittering down into the blackness.

“Kick your shoes off,” she commanded.

He obeyed, trying not to listen for the thumps as they hit the ground below. Once he discarded the impractical footwear, the climb became much easier.

They inched their way up the embankment, Selena stopping frequently to inquire after his safety. By the time they arrived at the top, the sun had moved below the branches of the trees.

Selena grabbed his jacket and dragged him away from the edge. He breathed huge, gulping breaths.

“Didn’t you hear me calling after you?” she said, her voice tinged with the frustration she normally held for a hawk flying at check. “You don’t know this meadow. The ravine is all but invisible behind the brush.”

“The falcon…I wanted to see her.”

Selena’s voice softened. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she? But my father would take the leather to me if anything happened to you. Is your leg…does it hurt?”

“I’m not a cripple,” he said, unable to control the frustration behind his words. “My leg is just weak.”

“Of course you’re not a cripple,” Selena said quietly. “It’s your knee.”

He looked down. A patch of bloody skin peeked out of a hole in his breeches. He should have known Selena would never mention his lameness.

Not for the first time, it struck Canby as odd how this slender girl of fifteen could seem so powerful. He was a duke, a peer of the realm, yet she seemed so much wiser than he. Stronger in so many ways.

Of course, she was four years older than he, and he’d idolized her forever.

Beside him on the ledge, Selena’s breathing finally slowed. “You’ve lost another glove.”

“I know.” He dared to move closer. Her unbound hair brushed against his arm, and he caught the scent of morning rain. “You saved my life. I shall never forget it.”

“Too bad I wasn’t able to save your fine clothes,” she said, fingering the hole in the knee of his breeches, a hint of amusement in her voice.

But Canby was serious. He took her face in his hands. “Someday, somehow I will repay the favor, Selena Hewitt. I vow to you I will.”

Her cheeks warmed against his palms. Could she be blushing?

She pulled away. “Let’s get you home. You have guests to attend.”

“They’re not my guests. I’m just a falconer.” He pointed to his bird, flying high overhead.

She laughed. “No, my father is the falconer. You are the duke.”

“Aristotle says we are what we repeatedly do.”

“Then you are the loser of many gloves, the destroyer of many clothes.” She pulled him to his feet. “Come. I must help my father prepare for the falconry demonstration tomorrow. We’ll want to put on a good show for your friends.”

“They’re not my friends,” Canby said bitterly. But she was already halfway across the meadow. He limped after her, eyes to the sky.

Overhead, his falcon and Selena’s circled them, their wings spread out across the setting sun.

Chapter One

Montainville, France

September 1776

Jack Pearce hid his loathing for the spoiled French aristocrats behind a carefully constructed expression of indifference and several layers of grime. They paid him not a moment’s notice, which was exactly his aim. He was merely a cadger, carrying hawks to the field for their enjoyment.

He trudged behind them, mouth shut and ears open, and knew he would soon be rewarded for his efforts. The Marquis D’Ligiers never failed him.

“I cannot stand this waiting any longer.” D’Ligiers spoke in low tones to the Compte de Vergennes as he removed the soft leather hood from the head of the falcon resting on his glove. “When will our friends arrive?”

The compte glanced in Jack’s direction and gave D’Ligiers a look of warning. D’Ligiers waved him off.

“Have patience,” said the compte. “It won’t be long, now.”

D’Ligiers’ bird launched into the air, its wingbeat breaking through the morning mist that shrouded Montainville, a small village on the outskirts of Versailles where the Royal Falconer and his staff made their homes.

“I’m weary of Versailles already. Nothing but petty intrigues and gossip. I plan to leave as soon as negotiations are complete.”

Jack suppressed a smile. Some men talked when they were drunk, others while in the throes of passion. The Marquis D’Ligiers could be counted on, almost without fail, to discuss court affairs while hawking.

The Compte de Vergennes watched with disdain as Jack released several partridges from a small wooden cage. One flew toward a line of trees beside the meadow, but it was far too slow.  When D’Ligiers’ falcon spied its quarry, it seemed to stop in mid-flight. In a blink it folded and stooped toward the unsuspecting partridge, attacking it from beneath and knocking it out of the sky.

Jack admired the falcon’s swift efficiency and single-minded purpose, so similar to espionage. It was the falcon’s way, and his own. Perhaps that was why he was so successful in his work. And why his codename was the Falcon.

The Marquis D’Ligiers snapped his fingers. “Cadger! The dog.”

Jack nodded, and signaled a spaniel at his heels to retrieve the wounded partridge as the marquis called the falcon back to his fist.

De Vergennes made a noise of disgust. “Why do you enjoy this barbaric sport? The partridge hasn’t a chance.”

The marquis laughed. “Much like the women you seduce, eh? And how was Madame Pelisseur?”

Now de Vergennes laughed as well. “A bit meaty for my taste, but good for a bit of sport.”

 “My falcon might say the same of this partridge,” D’Ligiers said, as the dog dropped the unfortunate bird at his feet. It flapped weakly in the grass.

The Compte de Vergennes laughed. “Touché!”

Both men averted their eyes as Jack picked up the partridge and in a swift movement, snapped its neck. He held it out to the marquis, who looked at it with horror. “Keep it for your supper.” He handed his falcon to Jack and removed his glove.

The two men strode across the field, mounted their horses and rode off toward Versailles. Jack watched until they were out of sight. He rewarded the falcon with a taste of the partridge and secured the hood over its head before placing it back in the cage.

Choosing carefully from the remaining birds, he set a pair of hawks on his glove. He removed the leads attached to their jesses—the leather bracelets around their talons. “Do your duty, my friends,” he said, “and you, too, shall have your reward.”

The cast of birds took wing, kee-keeing to each other as they rose toward the clouds. They circled overhead in slow spirals, as if the heat of the early autumn sun made them lazy.

Sending this pair up indicated that Jack had new information, and would drop the missive in a tree just outside the palace walls.

Jack withdrew a spyglass from his vest and scanned the hill to the south of the field. Within moments, a small bird with blue wings and a streaked belly—a merlin—flew out from the trees.

Jack’s communiqué had been acknowledged.

His partner in the hills would relay this message to an operative in the town of Versailles, who would retrieve the drop.

Before Jack could call the hawks back to his glove, another bird, larger and of lighter coloring, joined the merlin in the sky above the hill. Jack frowned. The appearance of this peregrine meant his partner needed to meet with him.

One of Jack’s hawks stooped and dove, snatching a rabbit that zigzagged across the field just before it could disappear into a hole.

The other hawk shrieked its appreciation, and followed close behind as the first dropped its quarry in the grass and circled above it. Jack sent the dog out to collect the rabbit, and the birds flew back to his outstretched arm.

He gutted the dead rabbit retrieved by the dog and held it in his fist, allowing the birds to feed.

As they devoured the prey, Jack wondered what news could be so important that his partner would endanger their mission to relay it.

#

There wasn’t a man of noble blood to be found in the dank common room of the inn.

That fact gave Jack little comfort as he wended his way through benches and tables crowded with drunken commoners toward the rear of the room, the darkest corner in the place.

Though his face was shadowed by the hat pulled down over his brow, Jack couldn’t mistake Ned McQuirns’ broad shoulders. The two had often been told they resembled each other. Jack wondered if it was because he’d worked with the man so many times.

Jack slid onto a bench several tables away from his partner. Though it was unlikely anyone here would notice them together, they could afford to take no chances.

Jack grabbed the skirt of a passing serving maid and ordered a mug of ale. Before he’d finished it, Ned made his move. But it wasn’t the one Jack expected.

“You insult me, sir,” Ned said loudly in French to a burly man at the table beside him. The man looked at him, confused.

Ned grabbed the man’s shirt. “Apologize.”

“Apologize for what?”

“You dare mock me?” Ned said. “Apologize at once, or I will thrash you for the insult.”

The man rose from his seat, the vast expanse of his chest now level with Ned’s nose. “You, thrash me?” He smiled, his lips catching on the space where his two front teeth had gone missing. He drew back a meaty fist and let it fly, straight toward Ned’s face.

Ned ducked, and the behemoth’s blow landed squarely on the back of another’s head, knocking his tricorn through the smoke-filled air.

Within seconds the room was a battleground, fists and mugs and benches hurtling in every conceivable direction. Jack landed a few blows, and took a few as well, before Ned reached him. They fought back to back, Jack reveling in the physical release of the brawl even as he feared drawing attention to himself. But he behaved no differently than any other man in the place.

Suddenly, Ned spun him around.

Jack’s old friend gave him a feral grin. Then he bashed him in the jaw.

Jack rubbed his chin. Bugger all, Ned hadn’t even pulled the punch! He fought his way through the row, ducking flying mugs and splintering boards until he reached the door. He ducked out into the alley behind the inn, taking a moment to catch his breath before heading out into the countryside.

He fingered the sealed missive Ned had slipped it into his pocket during the brawl.

Jack knew he’d have to find a private place to read it. The cramped stone quarters he shared with a half-dozen other low-ranking falconer’s assistants wouldn’t do. The fact that a cadger could read might raise suspicion.

He returned to the room he shared with three other men to fetch a tallow candle, and then proceeded to the latrine.

He secured the stub in a holder beside the door, and hunched over the note, breaking the plain red seal. He recognized Ethan Gray’s sharp, slanting hand immediately. It took Jack only minutes to decipher the code he and his cousin had been using with each other since childhood.

Jack’s pulse leaped as he read the message. This news simply could not be possible.

Selena Hewitt had been arrested for murder.

His.