In a Treacherous Court by Michelle Diener

left even more shocking.
    “And, tell the truth, I’m glad we got into the thick. I was the one tryin’ to kill you two nights ago. I feel like I earned me right to stay now. I fought for you, and I will again, mistress.”
    Tears, sharp as rose thorns against the backs of her eyes, threatened and then spilled out.
    She could not answer him. If she did, she would sob. She had to breathe in deeply to stop herself as it was. He seemed to understand, because when she blinked her eyes clear, the door was closing behind him and he was gone.
    She composed herself and turned to find Parker staring at her from the doorway.
    “You inspire loyalty, my lady.” His eyes held some emotion that seized her throat and grabbed at her heart.
    “No more than you.” Her voice trembled.
    “Nay. I inspire fear. Or envy. But seldom loyalty.”
    “You inspire it in me.” The way he was leaning against the door, his eyes intense in his lean face, his posture alert and poised, inspired more than loyalty. Her hand reached for her satchel, closed around air, and she remembered it was in her room. She would paint him just like this as soon as she could. She tried to imprint the picture he made in her memory.
    “You honor me.” As he straightened up, his expression was unreadable.
    She felt a tingle at her nape. John Parker was beyond anything she’d dealt with before. A life spent in her father’s atelier had not prepared her for him.
    “Let us talk before Peter Jack returns from the privy.” He gestured down the passageway and she followed him, her mind no longer on the secret. She wanted nothing more than a day of quiet, her paints, and enough light to paint by. And the company of her model.
    “Are you sure you wish to know this?” Parker sat again in the right-hand chair, leaving her the left. They were beginning to have their own chairs by the fire, little rituals of comfort and accommodation. Some sort of shared life.
    Susanna paused. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him she had changed her mind, she did not want to hear the secret. But not hearing it would make none of this go away.
    “I wish only for an end to this, and hearing the secret may help us. It certainly cannot harm us.”
    “It could harm you, if the Tower got hold of you.” His voice was grim.
    “If the Tower called for me in this matter, I would be harmed whether I know the secret or not. And the more I swore I didn’t know, the more harm would befall me.”
    He nodded tersely in agreement, then turned to face the fire.
    “I was a dock rat of gentle birth. The oldest son of a second son. My father was cast out from his family because of a disagreement with his father, and when he died, my younger brother and I worked the docks to help my mother put food on the table.”
    Susanna tried to picture him as he had been, as ragged and sharp as Peter Jack.
    “One day I was working at unloading a shipment of lace from France, and a Frenchman off the ship asked me the way to the palace. The King was in Westminster in those days, just a few short years after he’d been crowned.”
    Parker crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “The Frenchman was a mercenary, by the look of him. Hard, cruel. He was the type to rob bodies on the battlefield. I didn’t know what he was up to, and not wanting trouble, I told him the way.”
    Susanna watched as Parker turned his thumbs around and around each other, seeming to be in another place. “Go on.”
    He started, and flashed her a rueful look. “That night I was skulking around one of the taverns, hoping for some food from the kitchens, and I saw him returning to his ship. As he walked into the deep shadow of a warehouse, he was set upon by two men.”
    Parker sat straighter. “I was torn. It was two against one, yet I had no liking for the man. I went forward with no clear idea what action I would take. Suddenly two other men leaped into the fray, on the mercenary’s side. It seemed to me they must have been