The Virgin's Daughter (35 page)

I
t wasn’t the isolation of the Tower of London that bothered Julien. Or its grimness. He was accustomed to having only himself for company, and though his cell was bare and damply chill even at summer’s height, it was actually bigger than his Paris chambers and only slightly less clean.

No, the problem with being a prisoner was the pesky lack of freedom. The awareness that you were utterly at another’s mercy—hauled out of sleep in the middle of the night to be interrogated, no choice of when or what to eat, always with the threat of sudden, sanctioned, violence hanging over you—those were the things likely to drive prisoners mad. Julien would have dealt with it as he’d always dealt with uncomfortable difficulties in his life (burning inwardly, profanely cheerful outwardly) if he hadn’t carried with him like a talisman the memory of Lucette’s unreadable face upon his arrest.

He had to get out of the Tower and prove his innocence, if only so he could see relief in her eyes. Or at least an acknowledgment
of his honesty with her. She might never love him, but he would make her believe him.

So he bit his tongue and forced himself to answer civilly the barrage of questions he was asked. Unfortunately, civil denials were not what his questioners were looking for. They wanted a detailed confession. Julien was almost sorry to disoblige them.

Until Walsingham himself came to question him.

He was familiar with the intelligencer’s hooded eyes and detached demeanor. Walsingham had looked at him no differently the night Julien had so passionately offered himself as an agent to Protestant England. The memory of that did burn, and made Julien more flippant than was wise.

“Come to beg my forgiveness?” Julien asked. “I’ll think about it.”

“Why would I forgive a man who tried to kill my queen?”

“Because you know I didn’t do it. You
know
me, Walsingham. I have done nothing these last eight years to give you cause to doubt my word.”

“For eight years you have done little but lie to men of your own faith and country. Why should I expect honesty from a man like that?”

“I lied as necessary to save lives, as you no doubt have done a thousand times for your queen’s sake. This is the easy answer, Walsingham, and when have you ever trusted the easy answer? I have been set up. While you keep me here and bend all your time and attention to wresting knowledge out of me that I do not have, the very men you seek are free to wreak havoc on your precious England.”

“That may be true, and certainly I have no wish to waste time. There are ways to question a man that can hasten his answers. We will see how long your outraged innocence lasts on the rack.”

Julien blanched, for he truly had no desire to be set to the rack. “I am a gentleman,” he said, knowing it didn’t matter.

“In France, perhaps. But you are in England now and there is nothing—
nothing
—I will not do to protect my queen and her good
government. I will use the methods at my disposal, and that includes distasteful ones. You would do the same.”

“If I did,” Julien bit off, “at least I would have the decency to do it myself. I don’t suppose you will be dirtying your hands with my torture.”

Was that genuine regret that passed across Walsingham’s face? “Do you think I enjoy living in a world where I can trust no one? But I must live in the world that is, not the one I wish it to be. Answer truthfully, son, and it will go all the better for you.”

“Not when the truth is one you don’t want to hear. Would you rather I lie to you?”

“You know something, Julien, and if you will not share it, I will press until you do.”

Julien closed his eyes and leaned against the wall with feigned indifference. “I shall endeavour to make it worth the interrogator’s time. But I will not lie, not even for my own convenience.”

He kept his eyes closed and heard Walsingham’s soft sigh, as if truly sorrowful, then his footsteps and the heavy door scraping open and closing. Julien shook his head. It seemed his only chance was to figure out whatever useful information Walsingham thought he had and share it before his joints were permanently pulled out of place and he was left crippled.

Though if Julien were crippled, perhaps Nicolas would accept it as proper atonement for his sins and stop torturing them both for what had happened in Paris.

—

They were four days on the road from London, Lucette growing more tense the farther they got from the Tower and Julien. Nicolas’s attention kept her aware of how carefully she had to play her part, not to mention the fact that Richard Laurent hardly left his master’s side. For a man supposed to be a tutor, Laurent seemed comfortable taking menial orders from Nicolas. “He’s a good clerk,” Nicolas told her casually, “and efficient in whatever he’s asked.”

What precisely had he been asked? she wondered. To hire a man to poison the queen? To kill the hired man after and plant evidence against Julien? She wouldn’t put any manner of violence and deceit past Laurent. And the way he watched her on the road to Wynfield Mote warned her that he was not as taken by her charms as Nicolas. She would have to be careful not to spook Laurent. She must have been adequate at impersonating a lovestruck girl, enough that Kit’s frown grew more pronounced as the days passed. He took to separating his sister from Nicolas while they rode, which was a great relief.

When they were still two miles away from Wynfield, she saw the riders approaching and knew them at once: Dominic in the lead, with several men riding behind in the Exeter colours. But it wasn’t all men—there was her mother, riding next to Dominic, and for one moment Lucette was glad that Julien was not there to see how beautiful Minuette still was in her forties. But a moment later she thought passionately that she would gladly suffer the pangs of ridiculous jealousy if only it were Julien riding at her side rather than Nicolas.

But she would not live any longer wishing that things could be different. How many years had she wasted wishing there had never been a king to interfere in her parents’ lives, wishing that she could be certain of her birthright? No more. She had only one life, and she meant to live it as it presented itself. So she smiled at Nicolas and said, “We’ve quite a welcome party.”

“I’m flattered,” he said, his tone carefully balanced between pleasure at being with her and grief at his brother’s betrayal of his English guests. He was very good at hitting the perfect note. If only she wasn’t so cynically certain of his own guilt, she might be deceived. It made her wonder what her family would make of him.

Kit spurred ahead and met the party first. By the time Lucette and Nicolas approached, all the attention was on the two of them: Minuette warm as always, Dominic even more wary than usual.

Being on horseback provided a measure of courteous distance, for which Lucette was grateful. She had been surprised by the swell
of tears in her throat and the sudden, intense urge to throw herself into Dominic’s arms and then demand that her wise mother tell her what to do.

But she did infuse her words with genuine gladness as she said, “I am so glad to see you both.”

She saw the quick startled glance of her mother, and the twitch of a muscle in Dominic’s cheek. “We missed you,” he said. And then, as welcome as a streak of sunlight during a spring shower, he smiled at her as he had not since she was sixteen.

Minuette, ever gracious, welcomed Nicolas with a tact that was unparalleled even by the queen. “We welcome your return to Wynfield Mote, Nicolas. We’d rather your brother was with you.”

“That is very kind of you, Lady Exeter.” Nicolas’s English was so charmingly accented that Lucette could not but suspect guile. She pretty much suspected everything he did these days was guile. Certainly he had motivations she had not yet guessed. That was what the next week or two was about: motivations, evidence, and freeing Julien.

With unsurpassed skill, Minuette managed to match her horse with Nicolas’s, leaving Lucette to ride next to Dominic. He shot her a sideways glance and said with remarkable restraint, “Rumour reaches even here, Lucette. From those rumours, I expected today to meet the man you have set your heart on. But you do not quite have the look of a woman lost to love.”

“Have you generally found rumours to be trustworthy?”

“I have generally found them to possess at least a core of truth.”

She chose her words carefully, not wishing to be a liar directly to his face. “I have brought to Wynfield the man upon whom all my thoughts are focused at present.”

“Your thoughts…not your heart?”

She bit her lip and risked a glance at him. He rode effortlessly, in her lifetime always favouring a string of very large horses. His current mount gleamed a rich brown, and Dominic held the reins in the manner he had fashioned when she was a baby: right hand holding
both, after a loop was passed around the wrist above his missing left hand.

Then she raised her eyes and found him watching her steadily, with those jewel-deep green eyes she had spent years regretting because they were not hers.

“I’m not ready to talk about my heart,” she answered. “Not yet. When I am, I promise you and mother will know it all. Will you trust me until then, Father?”

She thought she would hesitate or stutter over the title she had refused to give him for six years. But it came out so easily, she wondered why she had been so stubbornly resisting for so long.

Dominic blinked, and his body seemed to relax before her eyes. But, true to himself, he did not make a fuss. “I trust you, Lucette.”

For all the beauty of Wynfield Mote in high summer, Lucette could not but feel it contaminated by the man who entered alongside her. Her father steadied her as she dismounted before the gracious house, square-fronted behind its shallow moat, but almost at once Nicolas was next to her and she smiled up at him and he let her tuck her hand in his arm.

The reception was a curious mix of formal and familiar. Nicolas, as an adult heir to a significant French estate paying court to the eldest daughter of the house, was accorded ritual politeness. But as one who had also previously lived in the household for some weeks as little more than a boy, he behaved with a courtesy and grace extended equally to family and servants.

Asherton, who had been Wynfield Mote’s steward for forty years, was asked several intelligent questions about the crops and weather; Harrington, who came out to take her father’s horse as he always did, managed a few words in reply to Nicolas’s warm greeting; and Carrie Harrington had her hand kissed.

She did not look impressed.

Pippa and Anabel met them in the hall, the high-beamed lofty chamber with a stone fireplace large enough for a woman to stand inside and the long, polished oak table and sideboard set with silver.
There were times, coming upon the two side by side, that Lucette thought it might be hard to tell which was the princess and which not. Anabel was regal, but Pippa had a presence hard to match for self-possession. From their childhood they had tended to dress in similar fashion—today they both wore cream silk, Anabel’s embroidered in jewel-bright blues and reds, Pippa’s a more muted palette of green and silver. The princess had the same vibrant red hair of her mother, and Pippa’s was warm gold with that attractive streak of black, but their faces had a similarity that reminded people they shared a degree of both Boleyn and Plantagenet blood.

Nicolas made no difference between them in his greeting, dividing his charm equally in a manner that made Lucette’s skin crawl. Anabel, though polite, seemed only amused. She had men falling over themselves to be charming to her—what need had she for the attentions of one good-looking Frenchman?

It was a relief when the two swept Lucette away with them, leaving Nicolas to be tactfully housed as far from the girls as possible. Lucette wouldn’t put it past her father to set a discreet guard on Nicolas simply to ensure he didn’t take liberties with his daughter.

Which would her father rather know—that Lucette would cheerfully offer her virtue if it would save Julien, or that even if she did, Nicolas was in no condition to take advantage of it?

Despite her royal upbringing, Anabel could be tactful when she chose. After a significant glance between herself and Pippa—in which Lucette recognized the same sort of silent exchange the sisters could share—the princess said, “I want to hear all about France,” hugging Lucette lightly. “But for now Pippa is dying to press you with questions herself. I shall see you at dinner.”

When the sisters were alone in Lucette’s bedchamber, Pippa did not immediately launch into questions. Instead she studied her sister with an expression somewhere between fondness and worry.

Lucette expected to be asked about Nicolas’s amorous intentions or her own, to have Pippa press or even just tease about the likelihood of having a French brother-in-law after all.

She did not expect Pippa to ask with real worry, “Do you know what you’re about, Lucie?”

There were times when her little sister seemed much, much older. Not just older than her eighteen years, or older than Lucette—but the kind of old woman that had lived a long and eventful life and stored away vast wisdom in all that time.

It was actually quite irritating at the moment.

“What do you suspect I’m about that makes you fear I am in over my head?” she replied caustically.

“Nicolas is not your Frenchman, Lucie. Why have you brought him here?”

Is Julien my Frenchman?
she nearly asked. But she wasn’t prepared to hear a no, so she refrained from asking. “I have brought him to Wynfield because I need him at Wynfield. Is that enough for you?”

Pippa sighed deeply, and her troubled look did not ease. “No. But it is all you are going to tell me, so I’ll desist. For now.”

—

When younger, Nicolas had never been bothered by what people thought of him. Save for his father, whose good opinion he needed, and his mother, whose good opinion he had actually cared for, he had never extended himself overmuch. That had changed on the bitter night of blood and agony in Paris. When they cut away the core of what made him a man, they’d left him with the need to cloak himself in the opinions of others. Give them what they want or expect to see, and few people will bother to look deeper.