The Virgin's Daughter (36 page)

He didn’t expect serious difficulty at Wynfield Mote. Lucette’s brother, Kit, clearly didn’t like him at all, but he thought that had more to do with either a general dislike of the French or a specific dislike of any man interested in Kit’s sister. Possibly both. But Kit was merely a boy—what could a spoiled eighteen-year-old guess about his own motivations? Dominic Courtenay was another matter. The Duke of Exeter had learned suspicion from the harsh master of his own betrayal and a king’s fury, and Nicolas could feel the
man’s judgment from the moment they met on the road. Even were Nicolas a whole man, he’d be unlikely to get Exeter’s permission to marry Lucette.

The women were simpler. Although Nicolas had not been as struck by Minuette’s beauty as Julien, she at least would be sympathetic to a tale of desperate true love. Pippa was little more than a girl, and he’d heard stories of her fey disposition. She did not worry him.

And then there was the Princess of Wales. To Anabel, as the Courtenays called her, Nicolas was absolutely pitch-perfect in his manners. She was the same age as Pippa, but he guessed she had never been precisely a girl. She might not have a wide experience of the world yet, but she was royal born and raised by a canny queen who knew how to manipulate the world around her. Nicolas studied Anabel’s proud face and guessed she was well advanced in manipulation herself.

But not as advanced as he was.

He was housed as far from Lucette as they could decently put him without quartering him in the stables. No matter. Lucette would come to him, for she was practically bursting out of her skin with the need to help Julien. Nicolas had amused himself on the journey from London debating how far she would go to seduce him of his secrets. Far enough, he guessed, that she would not be able to look at Julien ever again without guilt.

If there was one thing at which Nicolas was a master, it was inducing guilt.

Sure enough, they had not been at Wynfield for an hour before Lucette appeared at his chamber door, asking if he would like a tour of the grounds.

She had changed into a gown that made her look younger, the bright blue of the kirtle echoing and sharpening her remarkable eyes. Her expression was carefully calculated innocence, such a good simulation that for a moment Nicolas could see his late wife standing before him. Célie had often looked at him with that same sort of
appeal—though her innocence had been purely instinctive—and it had never moved him to anything but contempt.

If only Lucette knew that it was her deception and calculation that truly roused him.

The grounds, like the house, had not changed overmuch in twelve years. Pleasantly English with wildflowers a riotous carpet of colour among the low walls of stone. As English as the house that had been burnt to the ground by the late English king as punishment to the faithless Minuette, who had married against his will. What would it be like, Nicolas wondered, to so desperately love a woman that one would destroy everything in his path to have her? He’d found women to be mostly interchangeable, at least in intimate respects. The only ones that mattered were the ones that could get him something he wanted.

And Lucette had delivered him exactly the thing Nicolas had most wanted for months. As reward, and because it pleased him to think of Julien wanting what he had, he touched her lightly at the waist, and she turned willingly toward him as though she, too, knew the steps of this dance.

He kissed her—not too deeply nor too long, for they were in her very house and he did not especially want Dominic threatening him just yet. There was a moment’s instinctive resistance, then she folded herself into his embrace. It pleased him, how hard she worked to accommodate his supposed expectations. The next few days could be very interesting.

He remembered the rose garden—the Courtenay women seemed to have an unaccountable fondness for roses—and teased her as they passed the stables in the distance.

“Do you remember the day we found you eavesdropping? You claimed you had come to see kittens. But that wasn’t really so, was it?”

He had seen her blush for Julien, but the most he drew from her even now was a slight quirk of her lips. “I was looking for you,” she
answered freely enough. “And I was furious to be treated like the child I was.”

They both danced around the subject of Julien, and Nicolas thought that discretion had gone far enough. “My brother was never very good at giving people what they wanted. It would have cost him little to speak kindly, but instead he riled you into almost spitting at him. It would have served him right if you had.”

“What are you going to do about Julien?” she asked bluntly.

“What do you mean?”

“Are you content to leave him in the Tower? When you leave Wynfield, will you simply sail home and forget about him? Or do you mean to find a way to help?”

He spoke the simple truth, if not quite with all the details. “When I sail for France, Lucette, my brother will be at my side. I promise you that.”

Then he drew her to him again, made more reckless so near to his desired end. “And I expect,” he whispered to her, “that you will be by my side as well, Lucie mine.”

He felt her stiffen at his appropriation of Julien’s term for her, but also her determination not to show it. The triumph of subduing her pride was almost as intoxicating as her promise of abundant warmth.

Just because he couldn’t finish the job didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy every step along the way.

TWENTY-ONE

A
nabel read the note Kit had carried her from her mother with impatient disbelief.

You will leave Wynfield Mote tomorrow and journey to Ashridge. I have sent instructions to Lord Exeter to make it so. I will send for you from Ashridge when I have need of you
.

HRH Elizabeth R
            

She had hardly time for the outrage to sink in before Pippa burst into her chamber and announced, “We are leaving Wynfield.”

Sometimes Pippa was positively eerie. Anabel looked from her mother’s note, still in her hand, to her friend and said, “How did you know that?”

But almost at once, reason asserted itself and Anabel sighed. “Of course, Kit told you. Or perhaps your father. I don’t know what my mother’s about—”

“This is nothing to do with your mother,” Pippa broke in, with a
bluntness that made Anabel blink twice. “It is yourself. We must get you away from Wynfield.”

Unsettled, Anabel tried to make light of it as she tossed her mother’s note on the bed. “Why, what is wrong? Are they afraid I’m going to steal Nicolas LeClerc away from Lucette?”

“I don’t know what’s wrong, not precisely.”

“Don’t the stars tell you?” Anabel teased. “Or no, not stars. Is it other symbols for you, Pippa? Do you read the flowers? The pattern of silver set for a meal?”

Pippa had gone very still and very white. “Is that what you think of me—a fool who jests for your amusement? Do you think it is a play, the things I know? It is a terrible gift, Your Highness, and one I think you could not bear without running mad.”

“Philippa, I am—”

“I do not know the details of what will come, but I know its shadow in my bones. There is danger here, Anabel. We must get you away.”

Her faith in Pippa was greater than her irritation with her mother at being moved about like an inconvenient parcel. “Ask Kit to come with us. I’ll speak to your father.” She looked outside, where the sun was setting low and gold across the fields. “Must we go in the dark?” It was only half a jest.

Pippa was not as comforting as Anabel would have liked her to be. “I suppose it will have to be morning. But I do not like it.”

“If I promise to keep to the chamber tonight and let no one but you in, will that make you easier?”

After a hesitation, Pippa managed to smile. “I suppose I’m unlikely to hurt you now if I haven’t in the last eighteen years.”

“Pippa, is it Nicolas LeClerc?” It seemed the only likely answer. The Frenchman was the anomaly at Wynfield. But what interest would he have in her? “And if so, are you certain it is not Lucette that is shadowed by whatever you see?”

Pippa’s expression both sharpened and faded, as though her focus were on something not in this chamber, nor perhaps even in this
world. “I think,” she whispered, “that Lucie knows exactly what she’s doing.”

It gave Anabel chills. Suddenly she was almost glad at the thought of leaving Wynfield if it would shake Pippa free of whatever haunted her mind.

—

When Pippa serenely announced at dinner that Anabel had retired early preparatory to the two of them leaving for Ashridge the next day, Lucette blinked away surprise. That had not been part of any plan she’d known about. Though to be fair, the only plan she was interested in was her own just now. It was a pity to lose her sister, but probably safer for everyone to stay away while she brought down Nicolas.

After dinner she and Nicolas played chess in the hall. She didn’t go so far as to let him win, but did dampen her normal play—chess was just puzzles and patterns and she’d been beating her mother since she was six—and Nicolas’s flirtation just approached the edge of propriety. Words only, for Dominic and Kit both sat in the hall as well and would have marked any caresses between them.

But words could be just as laden, and Lucette had to bend all her wits to parrying Nicolas’s strokes and casting her own back.

“I am surprised,” he admitted as he moved a bishop. “I did not think you would be able to dismiss Julien’s fate so easily from your mind. You have a tender heart, and I know how charming my brother can be when he wants something.”

“As he wanted to find a way to get to England through me?” She shrugged. “Julien knew what he was about playing games with Walsingham. He should have known better than to put himself within reach of the man.”

“Perhaps the mission was more important to him than the risk.”

“Do you think so?” Lucette’s tone was polite disbelief, her skin crawling with the duplicity of this conversation. She felt like offering a silent apology to the maligned Julien, though surely he had larger worries at the moment in the Tower.

Nicolas lifted a shoulder. “Or perhaps he merely thought he could never be caught. Arrogance rather runs in my family.”

“Felix is not arrogant.”

“Felix is a child still. He will learn it as he grows.”

I hope not, Lucette thought fervently. But then she had to stop thinking, because Felix was a real worry to her, intending as she did to destroy his father.

After three matches that Nicolas conceded gracefully to her superior skill, they bid each other goodnight, Dominic carefully positioned so no liberties would be taken. He had requested a private conversation with Nicolas the next day, and Lucette wondered just how far she would have to go in deceiving her family. She did not especially look forward to explaining Nicolas’s condition to her parents. Some things were simply too awkward to be borne.

But Nicolas managed to kiss her hand in a lingering and intimate manner that made her want to snatch it away. Instead she met his eyes and said softly, “I suppose you must be very tired. Sleep well.”

“I never sleep easily away from Blanclair. I will be awake for some time, I imagine.”

Lucette took it for the invitation it was. Pippa attended Anabel whenever she was in residence and so she was alone. She waited two hours, changing into a slightly less confining dress but not so casually as she would dress for bed. She tried to read but her mind kept jumping. At last she simply sat and pondered. Men talked in bed, didn’t they? Whispered secrets to their paramours? All she needed was a hint, the barest suggestion of what was in Nicolas’s mind. If she could only make an intelligent guess as to his next move, she could warn Walsingham and catch him in the act.

Hopefully.

She tried not to ponder Julien’s fate if she could not deliver, but her imagination was vivid and all the darkness and shadows of her fears wrought too clear a picture of torture and ignominious death.

When she was as sure as she could be that the household was settled, Lucette left her chamber and crossed the hall to the far wing,
where Nicolas and Laurent were quartered. Dominic had wanted to keep Nicolas away from his daughter—he hadn’t anticipated that isolating him would make it easier for her to visit.

She knocked once, barely rapping with her knuckles, and Nicolas called with the same restraint, “Come in.”

The moon was high and shed a watery light on the small but comfortable chamber. Nicolas sat at the desk, a handful of papers before him. He half turned to where she stood in the doorway.

“Lucie mine,” he said. “I knew you’d come.”

“And do you know why?” She meant it to be seductive, but it came out warier than she’d meant.

“Oh, I think so.” Nicolas continued to sit, his body angled away from her. “You want to save my brother. And you will do whatever you think necessary to that end.”

She opened her mouth and stopped, frozen without an idea of what to say next. The impasse lasted only a moment, for Nicolas shoved the chair back and rose. It took him three strides to reach her, just enough time to realize he’d been turned away from her for a reason.