By His Majesty's Grace (6 page)

He might have known a lady familiar with court gossip would be able to work out the sequence of events. He was not inclined to confirm her thought, however. “There was no murder,” he said again.

“Yet someone seems to have done away with the child. It’s not too surprising, I suppose, given the many heirs who have died under mysterious circumstances— Edward IV’s two boys held in the White Tower, the son of Richard III and so many others. If the baby was a boy, even though illegitimate…”

“It was not—”

Rand came an abrupt halt, cursing softly before pressing his lips together.

“A girl child, then, and Henry’s daughter,” she said, leaning back in satisfaction. “It still gives rise to possibilities.”

Rand drew up and stepped down from his destrier, tossing the reins to his squire, who sidled close enough to take them. Catching up with the slow-moving litter in a few long strides, he swung inside and pulled the curtain across the opening, closing himself inside with Lady Isabel.

She dropped the bag of confections and scooted back against the litter’s front panel. Drawing up her legs, she wrapped her skirt around her bare ankles. “What…what are you doing?”

“How can I impress upon you the danger of speaking out of turn?” he demanded, leaning toward her with one arm braced on his raised knee. “You may think you are safe because Henry smiles upon you now and then or because you are a friend of his consort. But Elizabeth is yet uncrowned, and unlikely to be until she has produced an heir to the throne. As a daughter of the house of York, she remains at court on sufferance, so has no power to save you from Henry’s wrath. Indeed, she must keep her tongue between her teeth to protect herself from the watchers set around her by the queen’s mother.”

“Lady Margaret? She would never harm anyone.”

“A woman who can scheme for decades, marrying herself off to lay hands on the money necessary to raise an army strong enough to put her son on the throne, is capable of anything—and you’ll do best to remember it. Lady Margaret has only one thought in her head, and that is to gain whatever may be best for Henry. Cross her, allow her to perceive you as a threat, only at your peril.”

“Why should you care?” she asked so quietly he had to strain to hear. “Why would you warn me?”

“Because I am as devious as they are,” he said in grim despair. “I also have only one thought that has nothing to do with kings or queens.”

“And that would be?”

She should not have asked. It was all the excuse he required.

Reaching for her, he drew her into his arms so quickly he set the litter to jouncing on its straps. “To show you other uses for a lady’s mouth,” he answered in low hunger, “and particularly her small, sharp, pink-and-green-stained tongue.”

She stared up at him from where she rested against his upright knee, her eyes as smoky green as the northern hills, her flat cap and veil fallen away so her hair trailed in silken fire over his knee. Then her lashes fluttered shut as he set his mouth to hers.

She tasted of marzipan and sweet, warm female, a flavor headier than the finest mead. Rand reveled in it, intoxicated, fascinated by the softness of her lips, their moist inner surfaces, the glasslike edges of her teeth. Her breath feathered softly across his face. She was firmly rounded against him, enticing in her stillness. He released her arm, spanned the slender concave of her waist with hard fingers, skimmed upward until his palm cupped the glory of her breast. The nipple was a small, hard berry under the fine wool of her bodice. As it tightened further, he circled it with his thumb again and again in mindless exhilaration.

A low sound—part moan, part protest—left her. He heard but was beyond acknowledging it, deepening the kiss instead. The retreat of her tongue from his enticed him; the taste of her held him in thrall. The need for more, and still more of her, clamored in his head, his chest, his heated groin. Her wet softness was his grail and he searched diligently for it, sliding his hand back down over her hip and underneath the hem of her gown. He brushed upward over her calf, her thigh and higher, to where she lay unprotected, infinitely vulnerable to his marauding fingers.

She writhed, gasping at his touch, his intimate invasion. His overheated brain presented the image of how easy it would be to roll her beneath him and slide into her hot, moist depths, taking her there in the swaying bower of a litter while their guard trotted before and behind them.

He had forgotten the ford.

The litter lurched forward as they descended the near bank. Water splashed against the curtains, coming through as a drenching spray. Rand drew a sharp breath, returning abruptly to his senses. He sat for a rigid instant, fighting for control. Then he smoothed down Lady Isabel’s skirts and set her from him. Not trusting himself to speak, much less look at the woman he had mauled with such fine disregard for their circumstances, he waited until the litter lurched backward as its mules climbed from the ford. He batted aside the curtains then, and stepped down, sweeping them shut again behind him.

Some minutes later, when he had remounted the gray and cantered to the head of the column once more, his half brother fell into place beside him. “Well?” he inquired with a curl to his mouth.

“Well, what?” The words came out with more of a growl to them than Rand intended.

“How was she?”

“Comfortable,” he said, and felt heat burn the back of his neck.

“No doubt. But was she, is she, of an accommodating disposition?”

Rand gave McConnell a hard stare. “I have no idea. She deserves better than to be molested while half the men within two counties hang on every moan.”

“A sad waste of a fine opportunity, then, especially when you have the perfect excuse.”

“Nor does she need to be bedded by a man who may live only as long as it takes to reach the king’s Star Chamber. She will have a much better chance at another husband if there’s no chance she’s breeding.”

That was, to the best of his understanding, the reason he had left Isabel alone in the litter. The decision was sudden and in stark contrast to his previous intentions, so he had not been thinking too clearly.

There were, of course, those who would willingly take a pregnant woman to wife since her condition proved her ability to bear children. Most preferred a virgin, however, or at least a lengthy betrothal that would prove she was not with child. Anyway, the likelihood that Henry VII would now hand over the stepsister of the Earl of Graydon to a man charged with murder was so remote as to be laughable.

“Very noble, but will offer little satisfaction while you lie in a prison cell. Besides, if she was with your get, she could well inherit Braesford should you hang.”

“Keeping it from your possession? A strong incentive, I must say,” Rand answered in dry tones, looking away toward where the wooded copse they had traveled through followed the curve of the burn.

“Or I could offer my aid and support so she might persuade Henry that she requires a new husband to replace my bastard brother. Who knows? He could agree in honor of your memory.”

“So he might, but I wouldn’t depend on it. Besides, I don’t intend to be a mere memory.”

Rand kicked the stallion into a fast canter and left McConnell in the dust. If only his doubts and fears could be left behind so easily.

Isabel lay where Braesford had left her. She watched the spots of brightness caused by sunlight striking through the trees onto the hemp top of the litter. She should have been incensed. Instead, she was thoughtful.

Why had he stopped?

It seemed unlikely that a mere dash of water in the face could have had such effect. Had it brought him to his senses, as it seemed, or merely served to remind him of a deeper purpose? Had he really intended an object lesson in the proper use of her tongue or something more? Had he wanted to show her what was to come when they were joined in wedlock, or merely to prove she could be brought to succumb to desire for a nobody?

So this was passion, this languor in the blood and compelling urge toward surrender regardless of the cost. How strange it was, when she resented and half feared the man who caused it. She had heard women sigh after handsome gallants, going into ecstasies over their shoulders, their thighs beneath clinging hose or what lay beneath their extravagant codpieces. She had thought they exaggerated or else were being deliberately silly. All men possessed the same basic equipment, did they not?

Clearly, she had erred. Some men walked in an aura of masculinity far surpassing others. Their bodies were better formed, with muscles that moved like oiled silk under the skin. Their touch could inflame. They were a threat to female peace of mind. Dangerous, too, were their smiles. She would not have believed a man’s face could alter so easily from chill sternness to compelling warmth with the mere shift of facial muscles. It began in his eyes, she thought, the sudden rich amusement that she watched for with too much anticipation.

She must be on her guard every minute until they reached London. The Graydon curse had delivered her from immediate marriage to Braesford, and it would be foolish to succumb to his caresses in spite of it. The last thing she needed was to consummate a union she hoped to see dissolved. More, she could hardly claim to fear a husband who was charged with murder if witnesses could swear she had been intimate with him.

That was, of course, if it came to such a pass. It was possible the hangman would deliver her from the necessity.

It crossed her mind briefly that such could be the aim, that the king might have handed her over to a betrothed of lower rank knowing he would snatch her away again. Still, what could be the purpose of such a cruel game of cat and mouse? She could see none that made any sense.

She knew almost nothing about Randall Braesford, of course. There might be all manner of things in his past to cause hidden enmity. The court was a hotbed of jealous intrigue and petty vendettas. Anyone could have decided to play a vicious joke on this baseborn knight of high pride and stalwart courage.

The jest could also be on her. She had rejected a half-dozen offers for her hand while claiming the protection of the curse, turning a near spinster at three-and-twenty. Perhaps someone wanted to show her she was not immune to the fate of most women, of being married without her consent and for what she could bring to her husband. If Braesford knew of the curse and dared to defy it, then it made him the perfect choice. She was sure to be aghast at being handed over to a commoner whose lands were practically falling into the far North Sea. And if they had to see him hanged so she could be snatched back for the greater enjoyment of the joke, then what of it? He was nothing, a nobody.

Those who thought so had, just possibly, failed to take proper measure of Sir Randall of Braesford. This was a fact which could not be ignored, as much as it pained Isabel to admit it. Noble blood ran in his veins, regardless of his birth. He had not achieved his current position by being either stupid or unwary.

Easing to a sitting position, she retrieved the bag of marzipan and tied it closed before tucking it under a pillow. She shook the excess water from the litter’s curtain, used the hem of her skirt to wipe her arm where she had been splattered and tidied her veil that had somehow parted company with her hair. She was still tucking in stray tendrils when she heard hoofbeats coming closer.

“Lady Isabel? Are you all right in there?”

The voice belonged to Viscount Henley. It would be like him to make a commotion if she failed to answer. She shoved the curtain aside to gaze up at him with bland inquiry. “As you see, sir. Why should I not be?”

“No reason. I just thought…” He stopped, his broad, scarred face turning an unbecoming shade of purple. “I mean, you were so quiet in there.”

“I was attempting a nap, if you must know.” She crossed her fingers as she voiced that small lie. It was better than explaining her preoccupation.

“Your pardon, milady. Is there aught I can get you, aught you need?”

The man was a champion on the jousting field and arrogant with it at times. Eldest son of an earl, he had lost everything some three years before when his father was attainted for treason by Richard III, after rising in support of Edward IV’s heir, the very young Edward V, who had disappeared into the Tower. His title was complimentary now. What income he had came from sojourns on the continent where he participated in the tournaments held by kings and nobles, gaining ransom from hostages taken after victory on the field. Though lacking the estates which would have made him an acceptable husband, he was persistent in his addresses, with a habit of lying in wait for her in dim corners. Graydon, though standing as Henley’s friend, had always discouraged his suit, being unwilling to give up her fortune to a husband. For once, she had been grateful, as it saved her from having to put him off herself. It also meant she could afford to be gracious.

That had been before Henry had decided she should be wed.

“Not at the moment,” she answered as pleasantly as she was able. “Mayhap later.”

“Aye, milady. I’ll listen for your call.”

No doubt he would, she thought with a sigh as she dropped the curtain. She would not be making a request of him, however, not if she could help it. She would ask nothing of any man.

So they traveled southward toward London and beyond, down the old north road of the Romans through towns and villages large and small, until they clattered onto King’s Street. This thoroughfare, thronged with horses and carts, hawkers and beggars and strolling gentry, brought them finally to the ancient gates of Westminster. Winding through its narrow, fetid streets, they reached the myriad buildings and courtyards of soot-streaked stone known as Westminster Palace.

4

I
sabel barely had time to remove her cap and veil before the door of her chamber, one of many allotted to less important personages housed at court, was flung open. A flurry of skirts and flying veils signaled the arrivals of her two sisters with whom she had shared the tiny space before leaving for her wedding journey, and would again for the time being. First inside was Catherine, three years younger at twenty and known to all as Cate, with Marguerite, the youngest at sixteen, following closely on her heels. Laughing, exclaiming, they welcomed her back with fierce hugs and a spate of anxious questions.

“Why have you returned so soon, dearest of sisters? Not that we are not glad of it, you may be sure, but we thought you gone for months, even years.”

“What occurred? Did Henry’s most loyal henchman reject you? Did you prevail upon Graydon to turn back?”

“Did our curse, perchance, overcome Henry’s decree? Tell us at once, before we run mad with curiosity!”

“No, no and yes,” Isabel answered, swallowing on tears as she returned her sisters’ welcoming embraces. How dear they were, and how she had missed them, their chatter, their smiles and unquestioning acceptance.

“Provoking jade! Is that all you have to say?” Cate rallied her. “Come, tell all. You know you must, for you shall have no peace otherwise.”

Isabel obliged as best she could while her sisters settled themselves on two of the three narrow beds that took up most of the room in the nunlike cell. While she talked, Isabel threw off her travel-soiled clothing and bathed quickly in cold water from a basin.

“I knew it!” Cate exclaimed when she was done. “You consider the curse mere foolishness, I know, but you are wrong. How else to explain the arrival of the king’s men at the very last instant? Admit it. You believe we walk in its shadow.”

Isabel gave her sister a wry smile. Cate was ever ready to see the best of any situation. Yes, and of people, as well. “Even though I concocted it from thin air?”

“Even so!”

“It’s difficult to disagree, I will admit.”

“Miracles are possible,” Marguerite said, “so the priests tell us. We have only to believe. You are protected, dear Isabel, until a husband is chosen who can love you with all his heart.”

“Yes, of course,” Isabel said, swooping upon her younger sister to give her a swift hug in passing. Marguerite had wanted to be a nun as a girl, had almost become a novice during their time spent being schooled at the convent near Graydon Hall. She had walked the long stone corridors with her hair tucked into a wimple and a breviary in her hand, rather like the king’s mother, Lady Margaret.

The urge did not survive her first infatuation, which happened to be with a French man-at-arms who served their stepbrother. It had been a virulent attachment, but was cut short when she discovered he had bad breath caused by a rotted tooth. She was still quiet, pious and pessimistic, unless the subject under discussion had to do with men. She could be irreverent enough then, though inclined to credit any male in knight’s clanking armor with sterling and noble qualities.

The three of them—Isabel, Cate and Marguerite—were very alike in appearance, all possessed of quantities of golden-brown hair, a little lighter in Cate’s case, a little darker in Marguerite’s. Cate was taller by an inch or so than Isabel, and Marguerite that much shorter. Where Isabel’s eyes gleamed with varying shades of green, however, Cate’s were the rich blue of an autumn sky and Marguerite’s as brown and sparkling as good English ale. Their features were regular, though Cate’s eyes had something of an impish cat’s tilt to them, and Marguerite had dark, slashing brows that could turn her slightest frown into a scowl.

Though Isabel and Cate were slender of form, Marguerite had not quite lost her childhood roundness. They could all still fit into the upright armor chest at Graydon, however, their secret hiding place from the wrath of their stepfather when they were children. They knew this because it had sometimes been necessary to avoid their stepbrother’s rages, as well. Treated as annoying dependents in spite of the rich inheritance of lands and keeps received from their true father, held as less important by far than Graydon’s hounds or hunting hawks, they had banded together from childhood for protection and support. Isabel’s wedding journey had been the first time in their lives that they had been apart for more than a few hours.

Their days had been spent in isolation at Graydon Hall and its environs. That was until Henry VII came to the throne. The king had soon sent to command their presence at court, in company with dozens more like them. The royal treasury had been depleted by war and swift means were required to fill it. More, Henry had need of lands and titles to assure the loyalty of those around him. Naming the unmarried women and widows throughout the kingdom as his wards was an ideal solution. He could take possession of the income from their estates, arrange suitable marriages for payment of a reasonable bride price or, at his discretion, accept a handsome recompense to allow them to avoid matrimony.

Isabel had not been given the last choice. She could only suppose it was because she, with her portion of her father’s wealth, was Henry’s idea of an appropriate prize for his companion in arms.

Who he might consider deserving of Cate’s and Marguerite’s dowries and their hands was still in doubt. They awaited his decision while putting their trust in the curse.

“Graydon returned with you?” Cate asked, continuing at Isabel’s nod. “He must be laughing up his sleeve at the turn of events.”

“As you say. He was quite blithe on the return journey. I heard him humming as he rode.”

“Perhaps he will speak to the king,” Marguerite said, “saying we are too dangerous to be given in wedlock.”

Their stepbrother, having grown up thinking of the vast estates inherited by Isabel and her sisters as his own fiefdom, had been enraged at the idea of losing control of it. He had stormed up and down Graydon Hall, cursing the laws of consanguinity, which prevented him from marrying one of them to preserve at least a portion of it—as his stepsisters, marriage between them was forbidden by the church as surely as if they had been blood sisters. Rather than remain at Graydon while the three of them disported themselves at court, he had journeyed with them to better keep them under his thumb. As the weeks and months passed, however, he seemed to grow accustomed to the idea that they would marry. He was even heard to say that giving up his wardship was a gesture of loyalty to the crown which would redound to his benefit. Falling in with a handful of other malcontents, he spent his time gaming and hunting, drinking and wenching. Isabel could only be glad that he was not expending his energy on more dangerous pastimes, such as plotting sedition.

“Always expecting a way out of dire straits,” she teased with a bright look for her younger sister as she lifted her hair and ran a cool cloth over the back of her neck. “You would never agree, I suppose, that we may bend circumstances to our own desires?”

“As to that, you’ve managed it for us often enough, dear Isabel. Take the way you made Graydon believe it his idea that we should be taught by the nuns, a most marvelous escape.” Marguerite caught the edge of her veil, chewing on a corner in a habit from childhood. “But was this the same? I mean, was it also a marvelous escape?”

“Yes, how did this Braesford strike you as a husband?” Cate demanded. “What was he like?”

“Were you glad or sorry to be whisked away before the wedding?” Marguerite added.

“We demand to know all!”

Isabel looked from one sister to the other, trying to decide how to answer. It seemed important, for some reason, to be fair.

“He is an interesting man, and a strong one,” she said finally. “It isn’t difficult to see how Henry came to reward him for his service to the crown.” She turned away, rummaging for a clean shift in her trunk, which had been set at the foot of the bed.

“That’s all very well, but what did he look like?” Marguerite asked with some asperity. “Was he handsome? Did he live up to the description given you before you left? Was he the image of knighthood?”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“No, but surely you can find more to say than that he’s strong and deserving!” Cate protested.

Isabel made no answer as her serving woman swept into the room at that moment, bringing with her a gown of gold velvet that she had taken to the kitchens to steam away its wrinkles. Gwynne, who had looked after them since they were children, as she had looked after their mother before she died, was greeted with nearly as many hugs and exclamations as Isabel had been given. When things had quieted again, and Gwynne was lacing up the back of the gold velvet over Isabel’s clean linen shift, Cate gave the serving woman a saucy look. “Saw you this bridegroom of our sister’s, dear Gwynne?”

“Aye, that I did.” The woman tugged the laces tighter, so Isabel inhaled with a gasp.

“And what did you think of him?”

“’Tisn’t my place to think.”

“But truly, you must have noticed something about him.”

“A fine, braw gentleman. Big.”

“Big?” Cate turned a gleaming gaze on Isabel.

“Welladay, then,” she said, rolling her eyes in mock annoyance. “He is tall and well made, powerful as a man must be who has survived tournaments and battles. He’s actually well-spoken, as befits a companion of Henry’s years in Brittany. I should warn you that he speaks French as well as the king, so beware of attempting to talk over his head. But you may see for yourselves. He returned with me, or rather I with him.” She went on to tell them something of the journey back to Westminster, though leaving out the disturbing few moments spent with Braesford inside the litter.

Marguerite heaved a sigh. “If Braesford is here, then the curse hasn’t provided a true escape. It must do better.”

Isabel’s lips twisted a little. “With any luck, he may be confined to the Tower for years.”

“Oh, no, don’t say that!” Marguerite was the most tenderhearted of the three, the one who picked up baby birds fallen from the nest and carefully returned them, rescued kittens entangled in vines, bandaged the knees and running sores of the street urchins who clustered at Graydon Hall’s back door waiting for the scraps she brought from the kitchen. She could barely stir beyond the palace wall now without a half-dozen scabrous tots clinging to her skirt, calling her their angel. No doubt she was destined to be some great lord’s wife, overseeing the welfare of the people of his villages, succoring the aged and the ill and intervening with her husband to better their lot.

“I don’t mean it, of course,” Isabel assured her at once, which was true enough. There was something about Braesford that made the thought intolerable. “I would not wish such a fate on any man, only…”

“Only you don’t want to marry him,” Cate finished for her with ready empathy darkening the blue of her eyes. Marguerite said nothing, only clasping her hands in her lap with a pained expression on her face.

“Him, or any other man,” Isabel said in instant agreement.

“Do you think him guilty? Could he have destroyed this newborn on the orders of the king?”

Isabel gave Cate a sharp look. It was a question that had occupied her mind often during the past few days. “Why would you think so? Have you heard something in my absence?”

“Not exactly, but Henry has been concerned for the queen’s health. I heard one of her ladies-in-waiting say that he and his mother are fretting her past bearing. They worry if she walks out, worry if she stays in, worry if she eats too much, worry if she eats too little. Her constitution is not strong, they say, and he depends on her to provide his heir.”

Isabel made no answer. They well knew it was the duty of a queen consort to produce small princes to inherit the throne and princesses to cement relationships with other courts and countries. Some said it was her only duty.

“He would be greatly displeased if anything happened to interfere,” Cate went on. “He might consider suppressing any whisper of a child born to his mistress, here so near the queen’s time, as being in the best interests of the crown.”

Gwynne, twitching folds of velvet into place about Isabel, spoke in a quiet mutter. “The soothsayers, so I was told just now, have promised the king the babe will be a prince.”

“I’ve heard it, as well,” Marguerite said.

“Indeed.” Cate gave a light shrug, as if it explained everything.

Mayhap it did, Isabel thought. Most men wished to have a son to carry on their name and their bloodline. For a king, it was paramount. Moreover, piety and superstition went hand in hand everywhere, but particularly at court—to pray on bended knee one hour, and visit the astrologer the next, was not uncommon. Henry could easily believe, at one and the same time, that he ruled by God’s might and that the gender of his child could be foretold. If he thought the unborn heir to the throne was in danger, there was little he would not do to protect him.

If that were the case, however, what did it mean that he had hauled Braesford to court to answer a charge of murder? Was it mere lip service to the rule of law, a show to quiet the whispers of murder? Or did Henry really intend to execute him for carrying out an order he himself had given? Isabel could not be sanguine either way, not if it meant she was betrothed to a man who could have killed a newborn child.

At that moment, a quiet knock fell on the door. Gwynne moved stiffly to draw it open.

Braesford stood on the other side. He bowed as Isabel moved forward to stand beside Gwynne.

“Your pardon, Lady Isabel,” he said in deep, measured tones. “I would not disturb your rest, but we are summoned before the king, you and I. He awaits us in his Star Chamber.”

Rand was more than a little conscious that he and Isabel had been given no time to eat before the audience with Henry. He felt lucky that time had been allowed for bathing and a change of raiment. The concession had been made for Isabel’s sake, he was almost certain. Had he been alone, he would have been ordered into the king’s presence while tired, hungry, stinking of sweat and horse, and filthy from days of travel. Henry was not a patient man.