Catherine Coulter (24 page)

“That is Blanche of Howarth.”

The woman looked toward Merry, called to Alice, “And just who is this, Alice? Do not say it is the girl who accompanied Garron here.”

Queen Eleanor called out, “Merry? Is it you, child? Welcome. Come here and meet my newest daughter, little Blanche. She is the image of my dear lord. Would you look at all the golden hair and blue eyes, and a nose that will doubtless become long and thin, just like her father’s?”

As the queen extended her soft white hand, Merry was afraid that hers were rough. “She is the most beautiful babe I have ever seen, my lady.”

Eleanor laughed, released her hand, and patted her cheek. “Of course, she is. All Plantagenet babes are beautiful. She is also hungry, always she is hungry.” As she spoke, the queen looked down at her daughter frantically suckling at her breast, dropped a kiss on the babe’s forehead, and looked back up at Merry. “You have grown taller. Goodness, you are taller than any of my ladies. Take off your wimple and show me your beautiful hair. Ah, such a lovely red and as glorious as ever. I like the plaits, they suit you. Ladies! Come and greet Merry.”

Six ladies dutifully arranged themselves around the queen and greeted Merry courteously. They smiled, noted her too-short, out-of-date gown, the ugly old slippers, and wondered what she was doing here, and with Garron of Kersey.

As suddenly as the queen had called them over and introduced them to Merry, she dismissed them. When the six ladies were out of hearing, the queen cleared her throat, put her babe to her other breast, covered her golden head. “I have heard several of my ladies speak of Garron of Kersey with a great deal of affection. Why are you here with him?”

“I had forgot how quickly news spreads here at court.”

“Gossip flows more quickly than my lord’s fine wine down our barons’ gullets.”

“Still, we only just arrived, and Baron Cotswolt brought us directly here.”

“One of the pages recognized both you and Lord Garron and immediately came to tell Blanche. The pages tell Blanche everything because she gives them sweetmeats.”

So Blanche of the huge breasts passed out bribes. That was smart of her and Merry hated her all the more for it. Merry looked at the queen’s lovely face. There was so much to tell her—
My father died, my mother sold me to Jason of Brennan, and I escaped only to be kidnapped and Garron saved me
—

She felt tears sting her eyes. She slipped to her knees and rested her cheek on the queen’s knee. “So much has happened, my lady.”

Eleanor stroked Merry’s hair, fingered the fat plaits, and saw a grown lady, not a girl. “What is it, Merry?”

She whispered, “I wish to wed him, my lady. We seek the king’s blessing, but he is not here to give it, and I am afraid Garron will insist on searching him out in Cornwall, and the king will not give his permission and instead he will order Garron to have his head cut off because I am an heiress and no longer a maid and it is Garron who is responsible, only it was I who seduced him, I swear it. He is good and honorable.”

Merry looked up when Garron ran into the queen’s solar, Baron Cotswolt on his heels, three guards clanking in their wake. He saw the gaggle of beautifully gowned ladies staring at him, but it didn’t matter, his eyes were on Merry, who was sitting on a huge silk pillow on the floor beside the queen. He stopped dead in his tracks. “Merry! I did not hear what you said, but shut your mouth!”

He suddenly became aware that the queen’s hand was stroking Merry’s hair and she was suckling a babe. “Ah, I bid you good health, my lady.” He gave her a beautiful formal bow even as he gnashed his teeth. “Forgive me for intruding, but—”

Eleanor interrupted him, her voice soft and pleasant, “Baron Cotswolt, do not be alarmed. As you know, Garron of Kersey was the king’s own guard for three years. He is well known to me. You may leave him here without fear for my person,” and she dismissed him with a regal nod.

The baron managed not to stare at the queen as she covered her babe’s head and her white breast with a pale blue silk shawl. He frowned toward Merry, nodded to Garron, and unwillingly took himself out of the solar.

When the thick door finally closed, Garron realized he didn’t know what to do. He saw Blanche and two other ladies he’d bedded, Alice and Mathilda, all three of them staring at him like he was a meaty bone. He would swear in that moment the stones shifted beneath his booted feet, and he knew there was a deep, deep pit beneath those stones, maybe even Hell. Merry was still curled up on the floor next to the queen, not moving, just staring at him. By all the saints’ long-suffering mothers, what had she said to the queen? Had he heard the word “seduce”?
He was a dead man
. He remembered Burnell’s talk of the executioner and his unfortunate eyesight, and swallowed.

No, he wasn’t going to have his head chopped off, not if he did this properly. But he had planned all his arguments for the king—practical reasons, sound reasons, all of those reasons to benefit the king’s coffers, and he’d had only minutes to change the nature of his explanations for the queen’s delicate ears. He looked at her and saw softness, a lovely gown, and shining hair, and felt like a mongrel caught digging in a bed of roses.

He could but try.

He gave her another bow. “My lady, pray forgive my intrusion.” He pointed to Merry. “I hope this one here has told you she is in my care.”

“Actually, my lord, she did not tell me that.”

“She is in my care, my lady. Ah, what did she say to you?”

The queen laughed. “It seems you are wanted as a husband, Garron of Kersey. What say you?”

He’d only been a moment behind her, well, maybe several moments, and yet she’d managed to get that out so quickly?
What to say
?
He cleared his throat and plowed forward. “My lady, I know well it is the king’s prerogative to select this one’s husband since her father is dead and she has the gall to be a damned heiress and thus men kidnapped her, and I know that I cannot simply wed her.” He faltered.

“I pray you be seated, Garron. You are so tall my neck is creaking. Vivien, bring my lord a chair.”

The chair weighed more than Vivien did, and so Garron fetched the chair himself. Once he was seated, Blanche of Howarth moved to stand beside him. She placed a proprietary white hand lightly on his shoulder.

Garron was appalled. What was she doing? Didn’t she realize Merry was like as not to stick a knife in her ribs? He saw Merry looking from his face to Blanche’s hand, her eyes narrowing, and he knew she was wishing for that knife. He wanted to tell Blanche to take three steps away from him, for her own safety. He cleared his throat.

“Wine for our visitor, Mathilda,” the queen said.

Mathilda of Matthis poured him a glass of ruby red Aquitaine wine, from Graelam de Moreton. The queen said comfortably as he tasted the wine, “You know Graelam, do you not, my lord?”

“Aye, I know him well. I nearly broke my neck two years ago when I tried to ride his destrier on a wager. I was doing well until Graelam whistled. The brute threw me into a mess of thorn bushes, the destrier, not Graelam. He was laughing too hard to do anything.”

The queen laughed as well. “As Baron Cotswolt told you, my lord, the king is visiting his uncle in Cornwall. A messenger arrived yesterday with a letter from him. He wrote that Graelam and Kassia are in residence, as well as his daughter, Philippa, and her husband, Dienwald de Fortenberry, and their children. The castle is evidently trembling with all the noise. I could tell he wished I was there with our children as well.”

Blanche smiled toward Garron. “I remember picking thorns out of you, Garron. There were thorns everywhere.”

Merry rose slowly to her feet, her eyes never leaving Blanche’s face. “When Garron and I are wed, I will pull all the thorns out of his hide. No one else. You will remove your hand from my betrothed’s shoulder or I will prepare a decoction to turn your face blue. I am very nearly a healer.”

There wasn’t a single breath drawn for a good three seconds.

The queen finally said, “Aye, Blanche, Lord Garron is shortly to belong to another lady. I do not believe your husband would like to have you returned to him with your lovely face blue. Dark blue or light blue, Merry?”

“Well,” Merry said, “mayhap she would become a blue cow. The decoction I’m thinking about isn’t always predictable.”

Blanche’s hand bunched into a fist before she finally lifted it from his shoulder.

The queen said, “Do you know, ladies, I have kept thorns out of my own lord’s perfect self for years upon years now. It is a wife’s duty.”

The ladies laughed politely.

The queen said, “I see no reason for you and Merry not to be wed, Lord Garron. You are no longer the king’s guard, you are an earl. You now have wealth and rank. You will simply add more wealth and another title. My lord will ensure you will govern both Valcourt and Wareham wisely. Merry, I give you and Lord Garron of Kersey permission to wed. Indeed, I will see to it myself. My lord wrote he would be home within a sennight. It will be done then, unless, naturally, you have committed some foul deed, Lord Garron, then I do not know what will happen to you.”

“He is too noble, too kind, to commit any foul deed, my lady.”

The queen laughed. “I jest, Merry, please do not faint.”

It was too easy, Garron thought, simply too easy. When the king returned, he would look at Garron and denounce him for a worthless upstart. Garron rubbed his neck.

 

 

 

She was going to wed him. She wanted to shout it from every rooftop in London, though there probably weren’t very many of the incredible number of inhabitants in this mud-soaked filthy city who would know or care.

Merry was wearing one of Vivien’s gowns, long in the torso with sleeves that came to a point below her hands and a braided golden belt that fit snugly around her hips. The gown reached the floor, something that made her smile since she’d become used to Lady Anne’s too-short skirts. She knew Eleanor had sent a message to Valcourt to have all her belongings sent here to court. Her maid, Ella, would accompany the belongings. She missed the woman who’d raised her from a babe. From her earliest memories, it was Ella’s face she saw—

“You are daydreaming, Merry. Just look at your stitches.” Vivien of Leicester laughed as she pointed to the four crooked stitches on the soft silk cloth. The queen, seeing that peace reigned, left her ladies to gossip and sew to speak to a courtier, and so Vivien poked Merry lightly in the ribs. “You are seeing your lord naked, are you not? Seeing him come over you and—” Vivien gave a delighted shudder.

The ladies snickered and leaned in close.

Alice of Kent said with great practicality, “She is not a maid, Vivien, so she knows what he will do.”

“He must have done it very well since she dreams away the afternoon,” said Mathilda of Matthis. She paused a moment, frowned into the distance. “Although I cannot recall Garron ever doing such things badly.” She turned to Merry. “I trust you were a virgin?”

Merry blinked.
Mathilda of Matthis? She and Garron?

“How many times did he take you, Merry? I know he has great stamina.”

Goodness, he would do that more than once?
Merry smiled at all of them indiscriminately
.
She’d forgotten that absolutely nothing was left unsaid even amongst the ladies, and it had embarrassed her horribly before. But not now. “I was indeed a virgin,” she said easily. She paused a moment, her head cocked to the side. “I had not expected him to be so very big.”

There was silence, then bursts of laughter.

“Ah, that is the truth.” Alice patted her knee and gave her a sloe-eyed look that put Merry on the alert. “Lord Garron is well fashioned, several of us already know that well, do we not?” She gave a tinkling laugh. “But never mind that. Tell us, Merry, was he careful with you since you were an innocent? Or was he a bull?”

“He was a bull.”
Alice of Kent?
Did the man never sleep?

Blanche said smoothly, “How odd that he did not go easily with you. Mayhap he did not believe you were a virgin, thus his, ah, enthusiasm.”

Merry looked at Blanche’s white throat, wondering if her hands were large enough to squeeze the life out of the cow.

Alice said, her voice matter-of-fact, “You bring him great wealth. It is a good union.” She paused a moment, frowned. “We were told of the Black Demon and how he devastated Wareham and his men raped all the maids. Indeed, we helped the queen make a list of all Lord Garron would need at Wareham.”

“Everything the queen sent was used, thank you all.”

“But how—”

Merry said, “It isn’t important.” She shrugged. “I merely tried to fix everything.”

Blanche laughed. “You, fix everything? How is this possible?”

Before she could answer, Alice added, “Come, tell us how you came to be with Lord Garron. Did he visit Valcourt before your father died? Did you sneak away with him? Tell us why you were with him.”

Merry shook her head, but kept a smile firmly in place. “Garron wishes this to remain our secret.”

“By all the Devil’s cloven hooves, why?”

Merry gazed at Mathilda of Matthis, saw the avid curiosity in her dark eyes, and shook her head again. “Why do we not speak of my new wedding gown?”

Luckily, at that moment, the queen returned, so the ladies were forced to speak of the gown the queen herself was directing made for Merry, her wedding gift to the couple.

When Gilpin fetched Merry an hour later, Blanche insisted upon accompanying her back to her chamber. She walked beside her down the long corridor. Merry heard Gilpin speaking to someone behind her. The corridor was filled with soldiers, guards, ladies, servants, courtiers—all of them talking. Merry shivered. Weren’t they cold? The beautiful line of thick wool tapestries covering the walls didn’t keep the cold from leaching through the stone, even in deep midsummer. “What do you want, Blanche?”