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The Mistress of Normandy - Сьюзен Виггс - Читать любовный роман онлайн в женской библиотеке LadyLib.Net
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The Mistress of Normandy
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From the deck of the Toison d’Or, Rand studied the Norman coastline. Squinting through a dazzle of sunlight against the chalky cliffs, he watched a pale rider mount a horse and gallop toward two dark gray clefts of rock. In moments the lithe horseman was gone, like a fleeting silver shadow.
Unhappy that his arrival had sparked immediate fear, he moved down the decks. Eu, the town where he planned to land, huddled against the tall cliffs. Denuded orchards and burnt fields, remnants of turmoil, lay about the village. France was a hostile, war-torn land, plundered by its own knights and the chevauchées of the English. Atrocities committed by the nobility had schooled mistrust into the plain folk of France. Rand resolved that when he took his place at Bois-Long, he would prove himself different from those greedy noblemen.
A swarm of tanned and wiry sailors climbed barefoot up the rigging to reef the sails for landing. The chains of the anchor ground as a seaman studied his knotted rope and called out the depth. Horses in the hold stamped and whinnied. The winds and weather had been relentlessly favorable, shortening the voyage from Southampton to a mere three days.
Rand was in no hurry to reach his objective, despite King Henry’s impatience to secure a path into the heart of France.
A moan sounded. His face a sickly pale green, Jack Cade staggered to Rand’s side. “I’ll never get seasoned to these goddamned crossings,” he grumbled. “Praise St. George I’ll be on dry land ere nightfall, upon a sound bed...and, if I be lucky, between a woman’s thighs.”
Rand laughed. “Women. You use them too carelessly.”
“And you use them not at all, my lord.”
“They are meant to be protected, revered.”
Jack belched, grimaced, and scratched his unshaven cheek. “Faith, my lord, I know not how you quell your man’s body into submission.”
“It’s all part of a knight’s discipline.”
“Remind me never to become a knight. I’ll get no comfort from golden spurs.”
Rand regarded his scutifer with affection. The droll face, the merry eyes brimming with earthy humor, marked a man whose feet were planted firmly on the ground, happily distant from the unforgiving demands of chivalry. “Little danger of that,” Rand remarked, “given your complete aversion to anything resembling high ideals and saintly devotion.”
“Goddamned right,” Jack said, and leaned over the side to heave. The bright, mocking laughter of a sailor drifted across the deck. Turning with elaborate casualness, Jack dropped his breeches and presented his backside to the seaman. A chorus of whistles and catcalls arose.
“You’ll not catch a fish on that shrunken worm,” remarked a seaman.
Jack hitched up his breeches and thumbed his nose.
Grinning and shaking his head, Rand looked again at the coast rearing ahead of the bounding ship. He’d crossed the Narrow Sea numerous times, under the colors of the Duke of Clarence, and usually he felt a surge of anticipation at the sight. This time he came in peace yet felt only dread, like a hollow chamber in his heart. His arrival heralded the end of the dreams he’d shared with Jussie, changed the path his life would have taken. That it also heralded the beginning of King Henry’s grand scheme gave him little enough comfort.
“My lord,” said Jack, “you’ve been too silent these days past. Are we not boon companions? Tell me what troubles that too pretty head of yours.”
His hands gripping the rail, Rand asked, “Why me? Why did the king choose me to defend this French territory?”
A grin split Jack’s pale face, and the wind ruffled his shock of red hair. “To reward you for exposing the Lollard plot at Eltham. And Burgundy’s envoys gave it out that the duke would have only the finest of men for his niece.”
Rand held silent; honor forbade him to voice his thoughts on the liberties Henry and Burgundy had taken with his life.
“You should be thankful,” said Jack. “Your new rank gives you a rich wife and her château. What had you at Arundel save a meager virgate to plow and a burden of boonwork to the earl?”
Rand looked at him sharply, felt a rattle of longing in his chest. “I had much more than that.”
The corners of Jack’s mouth pulled downward. “Your Justine. How did she take the news of your betrothal?”
Rand stared at the white breakers exploding against the cliffs. The seascape gave way to Jussie, sweet as cream and biddable as a lamb. As children they’d raced laughing through the ripening wheat that clothed the gentle landscape of Sussex. As youths they’d shared shy kisses, whispered promises. She’d listened to his songs and his dreams; he’d watched her clever fingers at their carding and spinning. He thought he loved her; at least he felt an affection and concern deep enough to control his manly urges and remain loyal. He’d wanted to plight his troth to her years before but couldn’t subject Jussie to the uncertain existence of a horse soldier’s wife.
Now it was too late. His grip tightened on the rail. Justine had taken the news with surprising aplomb. “’Tis fitting,” she’d said simply. “Your father was of noble blood, and French.” At first her response had confused him. Where was her outrage, her weeping, her defiance? She had merely bade him adieu and pledged herself as a novice at a convent.
Rand attributed the gentle reaction to her serene inner strength and admired her all the more for it. When he turned to answer Jack’s query, hopeless longing creased his fine-featured face. “Justine understood,” he said quietly.
“Perhaps it’s for the best. I always thought you two a mismatched pair.”
Rand glared.
“I’m only saying that you’re very different, as different as a hawk from a songbird. Justine is passing sweet and retiring, while you are a man of action.”
“She was good for me,” Rand insisted.
Jack raised a canny eyebrow. “Was she? Hah! Other than keeping you to your inhuman vow of chastity, she had no real power over you, offered you no challenge.”
“Had anyone save you made that observation, Jack, his face would have swiftly met with my fist.”
Jack brandished his maimed hand. Three fingers had been severed to stumps. “You’re ever so tolerant of a cripple.”
Rand clasped that hand, that archer’s hand that had been ruined by a vindictive French knight so Jack might never draw his longbow again. “Soon we will both live in this hostile place.”
“Think you the woman will prove hostile?”
“I don’t know. But she’s twenty-one years old. Why has she never married?”
“You don’t want to think about that,” said Jack. He extracted his hand and spat into the sea. “You’re determined not to like her, aren’t you, my lord?”
“How can I, when she stands between Jussie and me?”
Jack shook his russet head. “You know better than that. ’Twas the king’s edict that took you away from Justine.”
“I know.” Rand let out his breath in a frustrated burst of air. Ever loyal, he said, “I cannot fault Henry. Longwood is vital to him. He’s trying to secure it peaceably, and this is the best way he knows.” Rand tried to fill his empty heart with a feeling of high purpose, of destiny. It felt cold, like a draught of bitter ale after a cup of warm mead. “I suppose winning back the French Crown is larger than one man’s desires.”
* * *
Presently the Toison d’Or dropped anchor in the small, quiet harbor of Eu. Wedged between the granite cliffs, the town seemed deserted. Disembarking with his contingent of eight men-at-arms, his squire, Simon, the priest Batsford, and numerous horses and longbows, Rand recalled the ruined fields he’d observed. His shoulders tensed with wariness.
“Goddamned town’s empty,” said Jack. “I like it not.”
Their footsteps crunched over shells and pebbles littering the road, and the wind keened a wasting melody between the shuttered stone-and-thatch cottages.
His sword slapping against his side, Rand approached a large, lopsided building. Above the door, a crude sign bearing a sheaf of wheat flapped creakily. A faint mewing sound slipped through the wail of the wind. Rand looked down. A skinny black-and-white kitten crouched behind an upended barrel. Unthinking, he scooped it up. As starved for contact as for food, the kitten burrowed into his broad palm and set to purring.
“I puke my way across the Narrow Sea and for what?” Jack grumbled. “A goddamned cat.”
“Easy, Jack,” Rand said. “Maybe she’ll let you sleep with her.” The men chuckled but continued darting cautious glances here and there as if half-afraid of what they might see.
Rand shouldered open the door to the inn. Afternoon light stole weakly through two parchment-paned windows, touching a jumble of overturned stools, tables, and broken crockery. The central grate was cold, the burnt logs lying like gray-white ghosts, ready to crumble at the slightest breath.
Absently Rand stroked the kitten. “The town’s been hit by brigands. Lamb of God, the French prey upon their own.”
“And leave us naught,” Jack said, scowling at an empty wall cupboard. The other men entered the taproom. Jack looked at Rand. “Now what, my lord?”
A chunk of plaster fell from the ceiling and landed squarely on Jack’s head. He choked and cursed through a cloud of dust.
Rand’s eyes traveled the length of the ceiling. In one corner a small opening was covered with planks. “There’s someone in the loft,” he said. Ducking beneath beams too low to accommodate his height, he knocked lightly on the planks.
“We come in peace,” he said in French. “Show yourselves. We’ll not harm you.”
He heard shuffling, and more plaster fell. The planks shifted. Rand saw first a great hook of a nose, then a thin face sculpted by sea winds, its high brow age-spotted and crowned with a sprinkling of colorless hair. Sharp eyes blinked at Rand.
“Are you an Englishman?”
Rand rubbed absently behind the kitten’s scraggly ears. “I am a friend. Come down, sir.”
The face disappeared. A muffled conversation ensued above. An argument, by the sound of it, punctuated by female voices and the occasional whine of a child. Presently a rough ladder emerged from the opening. The old man descended.
“I am Lajoye, keeper of the Sheaf of Wheat.”
“I am Enguerrand Fitzmarc,” said Rand. “Baron of Bois-Long.” Yet unused to his new title, he spoke with some embarrassment.
“Bois-Long?” Lajoye scratched his grizzled head. “I did not know it to be an English holding.”
“All Picardy belongs to the English, but a few thickheads in Paris refuse to admit it.”
Lajoye glanced distrustfully at the men standing in his taproom. “You do not come to make chevauchée?”
“No. I’ve cautioned my men strictly against plundering. I come to claim a bride, sir.”
Interest lit the old pale eyes. “Ça alors,” he said. “Burgundy’s niece, the Demoiselle de Bois-Long?”
Rand handed him a stack of silver coins. “I’d like to bide here, sir, while I send word to her and await her reply.”
Lajoye turned toward the loft and rasped an order. One by one the people emerged: Lajoye’s plump wife, two sons of an age with Rand, and six children. More noises issued from the loft.
“The others, sir?” Rand said.
Lajoye glared at the men-at-arms, who were shuffling about impatiently. Instantly Rand understood the old man’s concern. “The first of my men to lay a hand on an unwilling woman,” he said, touching the jeweled pommel of his sword, “will lose that hand to my blade.”
Lajoye stared at him for a long, measuring moment, then flicked his eyes to Robert Batsford, the priest. Although he preferred hefting a longbow to lifting the Host, Batsford also had an uncanny talent for affecting an attitude of saintly piety. “You may take His Lordship at his word,” he said, his moon-shaped face solemn, his round-toned voice sincere.
Apparently satisfied, Lajoye called out, and the women appeared. Children dove for the skirts of the first two; the second two, their hair unbound in maidenly fashion, stood back, fearfully eyeing Rand and his soldiers.
Lamb of God, Rand thought, they must live like rats scuttling in fear of their own kind. Eager to show his good faith, he turned to his men. “Set the room to rights, send for the ship’s stores, and arm yourselves.” He handed the black-and-white kitten to a little girl. “We’ll ride out after the brigands. Perhaps we can recover some of the plunder.”
As the men set about their tasks, Lajoye eyed Rand with new respect. “Your name would be blessed if you could return the pyx those devils stole from our chapel.”
“I’ll try, Lajoye.” Rand moved out into the dooryard, where Simon was saddling his horse.
Lajoye followed. With a gnarled hand he stroked the high-arched neck of the percheron. “So, you lay claim to Bois-Long.”
Rand nodded. “Do you object to my claim?”
Lajoye heaved a dusty sigh. “As a Frenchman, I suppose I should. But as an innkeeper seeking a peaceful existence, I care not, so long as you keep your word on forbidding plunder.” He spat on the ground. “The French knights, they ravage our land, rape our women.”
Rand tensed. “Would the brigands attack Bois-Long?”
“No, the château is too well fortified. Have you never seen it, my lord?”
Rand shook his head.
“The first keep of Bois-Long was built by the Lionheart himself. Your sons will be wealthy.”
Rand furrowed his fingers through his golden hair. “As will this district, if I have my way. Do you know the demoiselle?”
“I’ve never met the lady, but I once saw her mother at Michaelmas time, years ago.”
“What was she like?” Rand asked.
Lajoye shook his head. “What can I say of the sister of Jean Sans Peur?” He grinned impishly. “Her face would better suit a horse—and not necessarily its front end. Like her brother, she wasn’t favored by beauty.”
Rand tried to laugh at the jest. “Pray God she wasn’t like Burgundy in character, either,” he said under his breath, thinking of the dark deeds credited to the ruthless duke.
“The father of your intended, the Sire de Bois-Long, was a fine man by all reports, and handsome as a prince. Perhaps ’tis he, Aimery the Warrior, the daughter favors.”
As he rode out in pursuit of the brigands, Rand clung to the possibility Lajoye had planted in his mind. God, let her be handsome and fine like her father.
Thrusting aside the thought, he moved restlessly in the saddle and waved two of his men toward the south. The hoofmarks on the forest floor were scattered; doubtless the brigands had separated. Rand didn’t mind riding alone. The events of the past few weeks had given him a restless energy, a coiled strength. He’d gladly unleash that power on brigands who robbed old men, widows, and orphans.
As he rode beneath the grayish branches of poplars, he noticed a carved stone marker in the weeds. A single stylized flower—the fleur-de-lis—rose above a wavy pattern. With a jolt, he recognized the device of Bois-Long. Burningly curious, he tethered his horse and approached on foot.
Skirting a cluster of half-timbered peasants’ dwellings and farm buildings, he walked toward the river until the twin stone towers of the castle barbican reared before him.
He stifled a gasp of admiration. Thick walls, crowned by finials, encompassed a keep of solid beauty, with slender round towers and tall windows, a cruciform chapel, an iron-toothed portcullis beneath the barbican.
Stone creatures of whimsy glared from the gunports, griffins and gorgons’ heads defying all comers to breach the walls they guarded. Like an islet formed by man, the château sat surrounded by water. The deep river coursed in front, while a moat curved around the back, which faced north. A long causeway—the structure Henry so coveted—spanned the Somme.
This is my home, thought Rand. King Henry has given me this; I need only be bold enough to take it. But not yet, he cautioned himself, moving back toward the woods. There is carelessness in haste.
He passed brakes of willows, stands of twisted oaks, and his thoughts drifted back to his bride. Belliane, the Demoiselle de Bois-Long. The lioness in her den. Rand smiled away the notion. He had the might of England and the right of seisin behind him. How could she possibly oppose him?
* * *
Her weaponry concealed beneath a long brown cloak, Lianna slipped beneath the archway of the barbican. Jufroy, who guarded the river gate, inclined his head.
“Out for a walk, my lady?”
She paused, nodded.
“I should think you’d stay hard by your husband.”
I’d sooner stay hard by a serpent, she thought. “Lazare is out riding again with the reeve.”
“Don’t stray far, my lady. We’ve had word les écorcheurs hit a coastal village yesterday.”
Lianna intended to go very far indeed, but saw no need to worry Jufroy. “Then they will be long gone. Besides, no brigands dare approach Bois-Long. Not with our new cannons on their rotating carriages. They’ll blow any intruders to Calais.”
Jufroy grunted and stared straight ahead at the causeway stretching across the river. Lianna realized she had stung the sentry’s pride by implying that the cannon, not the valor of the men-at-arms, was responsible for the impregnable status of Bois-Long. She stepped toward him. “A cannon is useless without strong men and quick minds to put it to use.”
Jufroy’s expression softened. “Have a care on your foray.”
As always, Lianna crossed the causeway without looking down. To look down was to see the dark shimmer of water between the planks, to feel the dizzy nausea of unconquerable fear. She concentrated instead on the solidity of the thick timber beneath her feet and the sound of her wooden sabots clunking against the planks.
An hour’s walk brought her to the very heart of the manor lands, far enough from the château to test her new weapon in private. The castle folk feared the cannons; surely this gun would send them shrieking. Another hour’s walk would bring her to Eu, where the Englishmen were doubtless billeting themselves among the townspeople. Lianna shivered. No need to venture there. The usurping baron would find her soon enough. She clenched her hand around the gun. She would be ready.
Pulling off her cloak and untying her apron, heavy with bags of powder and shot, she smiled. Chiang had cast the handgun for her as a wedding gift. Chiang alone understood her fascination with gunnery and, like her, believed that firepower in the right hands was the ultimate defense.
She hefted the wooden shaft and curved her fingers around the brass barrel. A bit of Chiang’s artistic whimsy, a tiny brass lily, stood over the touchhole. She ran her hand over the slim, angled rod of the gunlock, then murmured the customary blessing for a gun. “Eler Elphat Sebastian non sit Emanuel benedicite.”
Turning, she spied a plump leveret some yards distant. The rabbit, heedless of Lianna’s presence, nosed idly among a stand of sweetbriar. A live target. The perfect test for the efficacy of her gun. If Longwood proved difficult, it would behoove her to learn to use it well.
She made the sign of the cross over a small lead ball and fitted it into the barrel. Remembering Chiang’s instructions, she crumbled a cake of corned powder into the removable breech. The charge seemed too meager, so she added more, then lit a slow match of tow soaked in Peter’s salt. Fitting the smoking match into the end of the lock, she sank down on one knee and laid the shaft over her shoulder.
Blinking against the acrid smoke, she sighted down the stock at her quarry, her hand tensing. Steady, she told herself. A gun is useless in nervous hands. She closed one eye, drew a deep breath, let exactly half of it escape her, and slowly, steadily, began pressing on the lock.
“Poachers do favor the crossbow, pucelle, because it has the advantage of silence,” said a whisper-soft voice behind her.
Surprised beyond caution, Lianna let her hand clutch involuntarily around the lock. The slow match delved into the firing pan.
The ear-splitting explosion deafened her and seared her nostrils with the smell of overheated sulfur. The shaft of the gun recoiled violently, catapulting her backward against something large, warm...and breathing.
Furious at her stupidity in overloading the charge, she scrambled away on hands and knees, prepared to vent her rage on the man-at-arms who’d dared follow her from the château.
She turned.
He smiled.
The impact of her gape-mouthed surprise and his devastating smile sapped her will to rise. Bracing her hands behind her, she stared upward, her astonished gaze traveling a seemingly endless length of broad, blond man.
He picked up the gun, set it aside, and spoke. She couldn’t hear him for the ringing in her ears. Her first thought, if something so absurd could be termed a thought, was that she’d happened upon a mythical Norse deity, a golden forest divinity returned from days of old. For surely a body of such massive power, a face of such sheer beauty, could not possibly be human.
The vision extended a big, squarish hand. Lianna shrank back, afraid that if she touched him, he’d shimmer away like a will-o’-the-wisp from the marshes. His lips were moving; still she could not hear. He cocked his head to one side, his expression mild, quizzical, and perhaps a little amused.
This was no vengeful warrior god from the North, but a more forgiving creature. An angel, perhaps...no, an archangel, for surely only one of the very highest rank could be favored with that clean, powerful bone structure, the chaste innocence that imbued his beautiful smiling mouth and eyes with such heavenly character.
His eyes were not simply green, she noted wildly, but the pure color of a new leaf shot through by sunlight. In their depths she perceived the pain and devotion of the saints in the colored windows of a chapel.
He spoke again, and this time she heard: “Don’t be afraid of me.” He reached down, grasped her by the waist, and pulled her effortlessly to her feet.
In that instant she realized her reckless flight of fantasy for what it was. His hold was firm, his voice a rich velvet ripple over her scattered senses. It was a man’s body pressing against hers, a man’s voice caressing her ears.
Alarmed, she pulled back. “Who are you?”
He hesitated, just for the upbeat of her heart. “Rand,” he said simply. “And you, pucelle?”
She, too, hesitated. Pucelle, he called her. A maid. What would this man say if he knew he was speaking to the Demoiselle de Bois-Long? If he were a brigand, he’d consider her a valuable hostage. And if he were an Englishman... She dismissed the notion. The stranger’s French was not corrupted by the broad, flat tones of a foreigner.
Absently she tapped her chin. The novelty of anonymity intrigued her. The necessity of it, because Lazare had destroyed any trust she might have in a stranger, made her say only, “Lianna.”
“Your face is completely black, Lianna.”
Vaguely annoyed at the mixture of humor and censure dancing in his leaf-green eyes, she lifted her hand, touched her cheek, and looked at her fingertips. Black as soot. At least the concealing powder hid the hot blush pouring into her cheeks.
“I...mismeasured the charge,” she said.
“So it seems.” He took her hands and drew her down to sit on a bed of dry bracken. “I know little of such things.”
“Nom de Dieu, but I do,” she said with self-contempt. “I should have trusted the precision of science instead of my own eyes.”
“Alors, pucelle, how does one so fair possess a knowledge so deadly?”
“My...father was a gunner. He indulged my interest.”
He frowned at the blackened gun. “Then your father was a fool.”
She thrust up her chin but resisted the urge to defend her father and sink deeper into untruths.
“Hold still,” he said. “I’ll clean you off.”
She was never one to obey orders, but, unrecovered from the shock of the explosion and the surprise of meeting this mesmerizing stranger, she sat unmoving. He reached beneath his mail shirt, pulled out a small cloth bundle, and unwrapped a loaf of bread. With the cloth, he began cleansing her face. His light, gentle strokes felt soothing, but the odd intimacy of the gesture revived her anger.
“Why did you sneak up on me? You ruined my aim.”
“That,” he said, brushing her chin, “was my intent. The leveret was a doe, and nursing.”
She scowled. “How could you tell that?”
“Her shape. She was not as plump as she looked, only appeared so because her dugs were full.”
Lianna prayed he’d not yet revealed enough of her face to discern her new blush.
“You wouldn’t have wished to slay a nursing mother, would you?”
“Of course not. I just hadn’t thought of it.”
He held out the loaf to her. “Bread?”
“Thank you, no. I wasn’t hunting my dinner.”
“Blood sport, then?” he asked, mildly accusing.
“Nom de Dieu, I am not a wanton killer. I merely wished to test my gun on a moving target.”
“I doubt Mistress Rabbit would have appreciated the difference.”
She shrugged. “I probably would have missed anyway. My aim is imprecise, the weapon passing crude.”
Like a parent wiping away a child’s tear, he daubed the delicate flesh beneath her left eye. “Your eyes are silver, pucelle.”
“Gray.”
“Silver, like the underside of a cloud at dawn.”
“Gray, like the stone walls of a keep during a siege.”
“Argue not, pucelle. I’ve a sense about such things. Stone does not capture the light and reflect it, while your eyes—” he cleansed beneath her right one “—most assuredly do.”
* * *
Bit by bit, Rand uncovered the face beneath the soot. As he worked, his amazement and fascination grew like a bud warmed by the sun. He’d come to survey the area for brigands and have a glimpse of his barony. Instead he’d found a beautiful girl and a deadly weapon, two surprises and one of them curiously welcome.
Moving aside a pale lock of hair, he brushed the last of the soot from her cheeks. Black dust clung stubbornly to her brows and lashes, but at last her face was revealed to him. The cloth dropped from his fingers as he stared.
Sitting in the nest of her blue homespun surcoat, she stared back with huge, unblinking silver eyes. Her face was a delicate, pale oval shaped by fragile bones and small, fine features. Despite a lingering shadow of soot, he could discern that her skin was the ivory of a lily, with the shade of apple blossoms at her cheeks and lips. His body quickened at the sight.
An unexpected thunderbolt of awareness struck him. He desired this girl; he burned for her with a yearning Jussie had never aroused. Calling up all the strength of his vow of chastity, he resisted the idea that they were alone, unchaperoned, far from anyone else.
It was not so much her maidenly beauty that called to him, but the expressiveness in her features. Her eyes held a deep intelligence yet seemed haunted by shadows in their silver depths. Her mouth was full and firm, yet the way she worried her lower lip with her small white teeth hinted at vulnerability.
Years of celibacy faded beneath the onslaught of vivid desire. Rand laid his big hands on her cheeks, letting his thumbs skim in slow, gentle circles. “I’ve never seen a face like yours before, Lianna,” he said softly. “At least not while I was awake.”
Alarm flared in her quicksilver eyes. She drew back. “You are not from around here. You speak like a Gascon.”
He smiled. His father’s legacy. “So I am a Gascon, at least part of me is. And you are from around here. You speak like a Norman.”
“Are you a brigand? Do you burn, pillage, and rape?”
He chuckled. “Preferably not in that order. Are you a poacher?”
She stiffened. “Certainly not. I’ve every right to hunt the lands of Bois-Long.”
Suspicion shot through Rand. “You hail from Bois-Long?”
“I do.”
Sweet lamb of God, Rand mused, she’s from Longwood. He had to duck his head to hide a flash of curiosity. A gunner’s daughter, she’d said, yet she’d have to be of noble birth to hunt. Despite her homespun garb, her speech and manners marked her as no one’s servant.
“Your father was a gunner,” he said slowly. “Was he also a man of rank?”
“No.” She eyed him warily.
“You’re well spoken.”
“I am well schooled.”
“What position do you hold at Bois-Long?”
“I am...companion to the chatelaine.”
He nodded. “I see. It’s common enough for a gentlewoman to surround herself with younger girls, common for those girls to learn polite accomplishments.” One eyebrow lifted. “Gunnery is hardly a polite accomplishment.”
“But far more useful than spinning and sewing.”
“And far more dangerous. Does your mistress know of your experiments with guns?”
A small, tight smile. “Certes.”
“She approves?”
A regal nod. “Most heartily.”
Rand loosed a long, weary sigh. What manner of woman was his bride-to-be that she’d let this girl, clearly little older than a child, dabble in weaponry?
Lianna was staring hard at him. He sensed his questions had aroused her suspicions and so left off his queries. Instinctively he’d kept his identity from the girl. Now he was glad. Soon enough she’d learn he was Enguerrand Fitzmarc, the English knight come to claim the demoiselle and the château. Until then he merely wanted to be Rand to her.
“You’re trespassing,” she said matter-of-factly, pointing to a line of blazed poplars in the distance.
“So I am,” he replied, looking at the boundary of trees. He took her hand and helped her to her feet. Her hand felt small but strong and seemed to fit his own like a warm little bird in a nest.
“Come,” he said, “I want to be certain your gunshot didn’t frighten my horse all the way to Gascony.” Dropping her hand, he bent to retrieve her cloak and apron. The weight of the apron surprised him. He peered into the pocket, then stared at Lianna. “I don’t know why I expected to find winter stonecrop blossoms in here,” he said. “You’re a walking arsenal.”
She picked up her gun and stood while he tied the apron at her waist and draped the cloak about her shoulders. He let his hands linger there. “Your mistress is wrong to allow you to venture forth with a gun.” Silently he swore to stop Lianna once he took possession of the castle.
“My mistress understands the necessity of it.”
“Necessity?”
Her little wooden sabots kicked up her hem as she walked by his side. “We’ve had no peace since Edward the Third crossed the leopards of England with the lilies of France.”
What a curious mixture of innocence and worldliness she was. At once fragile, forceful, and forthright, she awakened powerful desires in him. She looked like a girl immortalized in a troubadour’s lay, yet her behavior contradicted the image. Jussie, he recalled, had never concerned herself with affairs of state.
“France is more at war with herself than with England,” he said. “King Charles is drooling mad, and the noble houses bicker like fishwives while the peasants starve.”
“And will subjecting ourselves to Henry’s usurpation improve our lot?”
“Better a sane Englishman than a mad Frenchman on the throne,” Rand said.
She stopped walking, whirled to face him. “Under whose banner will you fight? What cause do you champion?”
He swallowed, then affected a rakish grin. “Widows and orphans, of course.”
She sniffed. “A convenient reply.”
Discussing intelligent subjects with a woman, he thought, was not altogether unpleasant. “You speak ably of affairs that most men know nothing of.”
“I’m not one to hide myself away and pretend ignorance. ’Tis exactly what the English god-dons would like, and I’ll not oblige them.”
It’s not what every English god-don would like, he thought, watching the sunlight dance in the silvery mantle of her hair.
They found his horse grazing placidly on salt grass in a glade of water beeches. Nearby stood a weathered stone marker, its four arms of equal length marking it as St. Cuthbert’s cross. The horse looked up, ears pricked. His dappled flanks gleamed in the heatless light of the March sun.
Lianna stopped walking to stare at the hard-muscled percheron, then at Rand. “I think you should explain who you are,” she said. Her gaze slipped from the top of his blond head to the spurs on his mud-caked boots. “You are simply dressed, yet that horse of yours is no plowman’s rouncy.”
Inwardly he winced at the distrust in her tone. She was too straightforward to be easily deceived. “Charbu was a gift.” His hand strayed to the lump created by the amulet beneath his mail shirt. Henry had given him Charbu as one of many gifts and another thread in the web of obligation he’d woven around Rand.
Lianna set down her gun and approached the horse. “Charbu,” she said softly, stroking the handsome blazed face. “A fine, strong name. Tell me, Charbu, about your master. Does he hail from Gascony, as he claims? Does he ride you on raids with a band of écorcheurs?”
The horse whickered gently and tossed its head. Momentarily captivated by the sight of the small girl with her cheek pressed against the horse’s neck, Rand stood speechless. At length he found his voice and strode forward. “If you think me a brigand, why aren’t you fainting or screaming?”
“I never faint,” she replied smugly. “And rarely scream. And you’ve not answered me.”
“I am a...traveling knight, Lianna. I swear to you I do not ride with brigands. But I would like to ride with you. Let me take you to Bois-Long.”
“No,” she said quickly. “I think it best you stay clear of the château.”
Why? he wondered. Did the chatelaine treat trespassers harshly? God, did she mistreat Lianna? He touched a strand of her hair; it felt like spun silk. “Is Bois-Long such an inhospitable place?”
“I fear it has become so,” she replied, her eyes brimming with unspoken regret.
Rand felt a great urge to fold her against him then, to surround her with the tenderness that had been blossoming in his heart since he’d first laid eyes on her. “At least let me take you partway,” he suggested.
She balked; he persisted and, finally, prevailed. Her gun across the saddlebow, her arms clasped around his waist, she rode behind him and they talked. He learned that she often saved crumbs from her breakfast to feed a family of swallows that nested in the castle battlements. He told her that he invented songs to play on his harp. She confessed to a passion for comfits, and he admitted to holding frequent, absurd discourses with his horse.
Then she was silent for a long time. Glancing over his shoulder, Rand asked, “What are you thinking, Lianna?”
Softly, so softly he could barely hear, she said, “I’m thinking that you’ve come too late.”
The soft throb of sadness in her voice made something inside him ache. His hand stole to hers, cradling it. “Too late for what?”
She withdrew her hand. “For...nothing. It matters not.”
Although curious about her melancholy, he asked no more of her. If she yearned for a suitor, he could not be the one to court her.
Presently they came to a coppice of elm trees, and Lianna asked to dismount. Rand leapt to the ground and, grasping her at the waist, helped her down.
“Lianna?” he murmured, his voice deep and husky. He placed his fingers under her chin and raised her face to his. “Have a care for yourself, pucelle.”
“I will. And you, too, in your travels.”
Their eyes met and held for a breathless moment. Rand lifted a wisp of pale hair from her cheek and set it aside. She smiled, and her smile made everything inside him clamor with joy and fear. God, he thought, will she look at me so when she learns who I am, why I’m here?
His hands came up to frame her face, thumbs tracing the lyrical lines of her cheekbones. Slowly, like a man moving through a dream, he leaned down, drawn by a force that resisted every harsh rule that had been schooled into him. Their lips touched lightly at first, searching, tasting, and then their mouths fused into a kiss of desperate abandon. High, shattering waves of yearning crested within Rand, lifting his soul. He wanted to fill himself with this brave, winsome creature who smelled of soap and sulfur and who tasted of springtime.
His vows began to waver, but guilt bored a hole in his passion. Like it or not, he was betrothed to another woman. In kissing Lianna, he was betraying his obligation to the demoiselle and belittling his years of devotion to Jussie.
Slowly, unwillingly, he released her and drew his fingers from the shining white-blond hair that cloaked her shoulders. She wore a look of bewildered wonderment.
* * *
“I’d...best...go,” Lianna said unsteadily, feeling her every nerve vibrate with exultation. She put her fingers to her lips, to hold the taste of him there, to brand his touch on her memory. Her captivated heart wanted to beg him to come with her, but her cautious mind warned her off. Although a victim of Lazare’s treachery, she was a married woman. Trysting with this stranger was the act of an adulteress. One day, she thought hopelessly. Had I met him one day before, my life would have been different. This Gascon knight would not stray from her chamber, would not deny her an heir, a child. Quelling a surge of sorrow, she said, “I suppose you ought to get back to your travels.”
“I suppose....” He seemed as reluctant to leave as she was for him to go. “Lianna—”
The bright tones of clarions suddenly rent the air. Recognizing the distinctive blare, she froze. The familiar trills could mean only one thing: her uncle of Burgundy had arrived. Reality crashed down around her ears, ripping her mind from the fantasies she’d built around this great, golden archangel of a Frenchman.
“Who comes?” he asked, craning his neck to see the distant road.
“A...guest of rank,” she murmured, her thoughts already racing. Was the kitchen prepared to serve another feast? Was the hall presentable? A soft curse dropped from her lips.
“Did your father the gunner teach you to swear, too?” asked Rand.
She flashed him a smile. “I learned that on my own.” Her grin faded. Burgundy was coming to see her, and she was covered with soot and reeking of gunpowder.
“I must make haste,” she said. She pulled her hand from his, grabbed her gun from the saddlebow, and sprinted toward the château.
“Wait!”
“I cannot tarry,” she called back.
“When will I see you again?” he asked.
“I...we can’t...I shouldn’t...” Torn by indecision, she slowed her pace and turned, walking backward. She had too much to explain, and too little time.
“But I must see you again.”
The urgent, compelling note in his voice brought her to a complete halt. She stared at him, a sun-spangled vision surrounded by blue sky and budding trees, and her heart turned over in her chest. His eyes shone with a deep, inner light that she knew would haunt her for the rest of her days. He looked as if his very life depended on her answer.
“Meet me,” he said, “at the place of Cuthbert’s cross....”
The clarions blared again, startling her anew and driving a hot arrow of hopelessness into her heart. “Nom de Dieu, why?” she asked raggedly.
His face opened into that magical, mesmerizing smile. “Because,” he shouted, “I think I love you!”
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