Catherine Coulter

Table of Contents

 

 

 

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Copyright © 2010 by Catherine Coulter

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

Coulter, Catherine.

The Valcourt heiress / Catherine Coulter.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-44414-6

1. Knights and knighthood—Fiction. 2. Great Britain—History—13th century—Fiction. 3. Crusades—Eighth, 1270—Fiction. I. Title. PS3553.O843V’.54—dc22

 

 

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

TO TOM POTWIN,

 

 

C.C.

 

 

 

S
he knew she had to do something. If she did nothing, her mother would force her to wed Jason of Brennan.

Her mother, Abbess Helen of Meizerling Abbey, had swooped in before nightfall, surrounded by her own contingent of soldiers, imperious and arrogant, recent widow of the Earl of Valcourt, and taken charge. Men stared at her beautiful face, at her white skin and golden hair untouched by gray, heard her velvety voice carry to every corner in the great hall, and quickly obeyed every command that flowed from her lovely mouth. As for her grief-stricken daughter, Helen informed her that she would wed in two days.

She’d stared at the woman who was her mother, a woman she didn’t know, but knew what she was—a witch with unimagined powers, people said. They spoke of her behind their hands, their voices low, their fear pulsing in the air.

She’d never seen her mother do anything magick the three times she’d been in her presence. Ah, but the stories—the neighbor’s wife choking to death because Lady Helen had wanted to buy her mare and had been refused; the plague striking down a village where Lady Helen had been insulted by the local monk; and now her own father, lying dead, no reason for it that their healer could see, hale and hearty but two days before. Now he lay stretched out on his bed, his hands folded over his chest, dressed in his finest tunic and hose, his beautiful sword strapped to his waist, his men below in the great hall drinking themselves insensible. What would happen now? There was no heir, only a daughter who had no power, and her newly arrived mother, a witch who could smite them all with but a wave of her hand, and the soldiers who surrounded her.

She had to do something or she would be sold to Jason of Brennan, a man she’d seen only once, just an hour before, well-made and young, but something deep inside her had recoiled when he’d turned his dark eyes on her. There were black secrets in those eyes of his. Her mother’s eyes were the light gray of storm clouds, and she feared her more than the Devil.

She slipped out of Valcourt’s great hall, pulling her cloak about her, for rain-bloated clouds hung low in the sky, obscuring the few stars, and the chill night wind howled. It occurred to her only after she’d crept across the inner bailey to the stables that she had no idea where she’d go. It didn’t matter, she would think of something. She usually did. When she heard a man’s voice, she nearly screamed. It was coming closer. What to do?

 

 

 

T
hey rode single file on the narrow rutted path through the Clandor Forest, a place of ancient magick, it was said, and wicked magick. Thick pines, oaks, and maples crowded in on them, canopying overhead. The leaves would tangle together in another month. Warm afternoon sunlight speared through the rustling leaves.

Garron lifted his face to the sunlight, felt the soft breeze against his skin. It was a day a man was pleased to be alive, a day that gave optimism to the days to come. And God had also wrought a miracle—no rain for three straight days. Aye, a holy miracle, Aleric said to all the men, and told them how his grandsire had once bragged about a two-day trek with no rain. But three days without the heavens pouring buckets of rain down your neck? It was unheard of. They were blessed, surely it was a good omen. Everyone was quiet, thinking his own thoughts. Garron thought of his brother Arthur, and wondered how he’d died; he’d been a young man, only thirty years of age. The king hadn’t known. As for his men, Garron imagined most were probably wondering what their lives would become now that he was Lord Garron, Earl of Wareham, a nobleman with land and a castle, and income from farms, two small towns, and two keeps. And mayhap they were thinking of their visit to Lord Severin and Lady Hastings, wondering if Wareham would be as impressive as Oxborough.

“It will not delay you overmuch, Garron,” King Edward had told him. Then those famous Plantagenet blue eyes had sparkled cajolery and a bit of humor to leaven the effect. “Before you travel to Wareham, you can deliver this request to Severin from his king.” He nodded toward his secretary and the Chancellor of England, Robert Burnell, who handed Garron a tightly rolled parchment tied with a thin black cord. Even at the most inconvenient of times, which this most assuredly was, a man never turned down his king’s request, and so the king’s parchment, carefully wrapped in oilskin, rested safe against Garron’s chest all the way from London to East Anglia, to Oxborough, the seat of the Earl of Oxborough, Lord Severin of Langthorne-Trent.

He didn’t have the slightest wish to read the king’s missive, and only sighed, thinking of the three days added to his journey to his new home. On the other hand, Garron hadn’t seen Severin since the king had sent him to Oxborough nearly a year and a half before, to become the dying Fawke of Trent’s heir and son-in-law. He’d become a husband and the Earl of Oxborough in a span of three hours. And now Severin had an infant son.

Garron smiled to himself as he remembered the look of utter contentment on his friend’s hard face when he’d held his babe, Fawke, named after the former earl, and remarked in the most foolish way that he was surely the handsomest babe in all Christendom. And Lady Hastings watched, smiling, sitting in her countess’s chair, humming as she sewed clothes for the future earl.

Near midnight, when all had retired, Garron and Severin sat alone in Oxborough’s great hall, in front of the massive fireplace, a chess board between them. Severin moved his king’s knight, sat back in his chair, laced his fingers over his hard belly, and sighed. “Do you know I find myself missing de Lucy, the madman who poisoned his own wife so he could have Hastings?” He studied Garron’s pawn move, quickly slid his queen’s bishop to a safe square, and again sat back in his chair. “There are no more unruly neighbors, no French mercenaries to harass my fishing boats, no smugglers of any account at all. Well, there are always malcontents, an occasional villain, but they are nothing, really.”