by Karen Harper
“Stop it! Stop it! Do not even speak of him!” Isabella pressed her hands to her ears, then darted to heave another crystal bowl at the wall, inadvertently sprinkling both women with water and glass fragments to add to the chaos. The prince held his ground, quite sure neither of them had seen him yet.
“But—the point is, Your Grace,” Jeannette shouted back apparently undaunted, “a man who could act so cowardly is no true knight. Of course, you could never give your heart to such a one.”
Another vase and a last candlestick shattered, thudded into the corner of the room. “A pox on him! I hope he rides straight to hell! Only hawking! Saints bones, I favored him, Jeannette, you know, and all the while he planned to—he—”
The shrieks dissolved into tear floods as Isabella crumpled to her knees amid the sodden ruins on the Persian carpet. Jeannette knelt by her immediately, and the prince gasped as her blue robe split up a smooth, white thigh. Her arms encircled Isabella’s quaking shoulders while the girl sobbed wretchedly, then gasped for breath in panting hysteria.
He had taken a step closer when Jeannette noted him. Her eyes went wild in surprise, like a reflecting pool under wet lilacs in the rain. The picture she made for him there on the blue Persian carpet with her hair tumbled and her loose robe open made the blood behind his eyes pulse red, then white hot. He realized then both Jeannette and Isabella bore tiny red nicks on their hands and legs from the flying glass.
“You, my lord prince! If you came with the terrible news, it preceded you,” Joan said.
Isabella looked up, pale-faced, her eye cosmetics once carefully applied now a dark blur on her cheeks.
“Did they send you, Edward? Damn them! It is all their fault.”
“The Flemish burghers? Ma chérie, perhaps they just could not hold that hawk in their cage anymore,” he said low. “He is a damned, lily-livered bastard, and he will pay one way or the other, I swear it.”
“No—not the Flemish burghers or his guards—be damned to them all. It is Father’s fault, Mother’s—yours too. His father died in his arms at your wretched, glorious Crécy, you know. Edward, whenever he looked at me, he must have seen his dead father and hated me for it all.”
In four more long strides he stood over the two clinging women. He knelt with them. “Ma Isabella, listen. Your family—we love you more than anyone ever could. Now you are back with us all.”
“Love me, oh aye, so I have been told. Loved me to bind me to that hateful, treacherous Louis de Male! It is all wrong—wrong for him to hate because of what happened to his father. It is not fair!”
Joan started at the words as Isabella dissolved into racked sobs again. Louis de Male had found his way to be revenged on the Plantagenets for the death of his father. In deserting, nearly at the altar, their dear and precious child, he had struck a blow at that same vile pride and power which had trampled her own father down. And here, before her, knelt the prince, their heir and son. If she were to lead him on and then do the same—Her wide eyes locked with his; she swam willingly in the blatant caress of the deep and dangerous blue sea of his gaze.
After a breathless minute, Isabella lifted her head again, and shook Joan’s arms from her shoulders. Her lovely, young face looked twisted, ravaged.
“Leave us now, brother. Jeannette and I have much repair work here to do before they are all upon us whispering, wondering how the deserted bride is taking it. By St. Catherine, the virgin saint who died tortured on the spiked wheel, may I perish in like stead if they ever hear or see one whit of regret from me. Good riddance he is gone! Now Jeannette and I know full well not to trust a man and we shall bloody well do as we please and lead them all a merry dance! Aye, Jeannette? Jeannette!”
“Aye, Your Grace. Let us dress in our finest and outface the whole world by going hawking then!”
Isabella nodded wildly but her stiff, wet cheeks did not lift in a smile. “Aye, just the two of us then, and whatever gallants we can string along. I hope someone rides hellbent after the bastard rogue to tell him Isabella of the Plantagenets is just—just fine!”
Edward rose when they did but at the door he turned back. The room was a shambles and they would be hard-pressed to keep that quiet. Nor did he like Jeannette being a party to these half-hysterical plans to run rampant over any gallants in sight and trust no men. Still, he had no doubt he could handle the distractingly fascinating little tease if he could only get her off to himself.
His booted feet crunched over broken glass as he turned away, and the heady aroma of smashed perfume bowls haunted his thoughts for days after whenever he pictured Jeannette kneeling there with the blue camlet opening on her ivory thigh.
CHAPTER NINE
After the disgraceful loss of Isabella’s bridegroom at Bruges, the English royal party, three hundred strong, remained in Flanders only two more days. The final flurry of activities even kept Joan from seeking out the Englishman John de Maltravers who lived so richly and smugly here in his Flemish exile. Yet if she had been able to confront him, she had no clever plan to seek the revenge she craved.
In those last two days, the servants packed hurriedly, their task complicated by the wild shopping binge in which the Plantagenet women indulged themselves. Bolts of the famous Flemish cloth made from imported English wool swelled coffers that staggered packhorses and broke down baggage carts on the return jaunt to Calais. The quality of the material was so excellent, the colors so varied and rich, that tons of it had been exported as far as the Orient, and King Edward remarked, it seemed at least that amount was now destined for London.
The fashionable bounty the Flemish burghers boasted in their own wardrobes was overwhelming, and their shops which Queen Philippa, Princess Isabella, and Joan of Kent plundered as an antidote to the grief and shame of Louis de Male’s great affront bespoke well of that bounty.
Joan and the princess had become especially enamored of the wispy, diaphanous gowns the voluptuous women of the Low Countries wore to their soft feather beds at night. Despite the fact it was whispered that the enemy French women of hostile Paris had made them quite the rage, too, Isabella bought six and Joan four in a rainbow of soft hues. It amused them to try to sway fashion at home despite what the staid, conservative court ladies far older than they thought, and Joan had always preferred to wear something to bed, ignoring the English custom of going stark naked. And in their increasingly wild plans to set all England back on its spurred heels to show that the desertion of Isabella’s groom did not amount to a tinker’s damn, this radical fashion of nearly transparent gowns seemed a fine beginning rabble-rouser.
Back at Calais, they lingered until the ships from Dover would return to take the women back to England, while the increasingly frustrated king and prince waited with their vast army for the siege of Calais to end. Blockade and starvation of those left in the town were the ultimate weapons, and the English played a waiting game: their huge siege engines proved useless in this area of marshes and sand dunes; however, it was that same weak footing that kept the French King Philip and his army of would-be rescuers at bay.
For the rest of the spring and the early part of summer, the court, during their stay here, had gone swiftly silent about this dark situation. Tonight, the prince, Jeannette, and their young friends had left his sister Isabella’s suite over an hour ago after an evening of backgammon, laughing, and singing. Jeannette had played a new beribboned French lute he had given her, and she had sung her seductive songs. Soon, tonight, almost now, she would be his and then her supple, luscious, young body would be the lute which would quiver in his hands at his skill and bidding. If she protested, if the queen found out, or even if a child eventually resulted—St. George, he had waited too long and was full ready to throw caution to these balmy sea winds that blew intoxicatingly over the beaches tonight!
She slept alone as always in a little chamber three doors from Isabella. He grinned in the darkness and nervously stroked the vast black velvet cape he carried. That gift of her own room he had arra
nged for her over two years ago he would now collect on. Her old Scotswoman whom she valued so much had not been brought on this trip, so she was truly alone. Those light jesting kisses they had wagered at backgammon where he almost always won would be nothing to what she would give him tonight, willing or not.
He could hear his own breathing in the silence, feel his blood beat and course through his veins. His informant had told him that the last two nights she had dared to come out into this passage alone to foolishly, belligerently, disobediently stand at the grassy fringe of this sand dune before retiring. By the rood, if she did not come tonight soon, he would be desperate enough to go to her room to take her.
The moon had moved another inch through the wooden archway when he heard a light tread on the planks of the hall. He held his breath as she walked past him, her hair almost white in the moonlit dusk, her dark robe making her face and neck look transparent alabaster. He stood in awe for a moment at her almost ethereal beauty. A sea sprite, a moon maiden as chaste and cold as the goddess Diana, within his grasp at last for the mere taking!
She was clear to the edge of the sand dune before she sensed someone behind her and whirled around. She gasped in surprise and evidently did not recognize him at first. “There are guards nearby I can call for, sir! Who goes there?”
He strode closer, his eyes seemingly lit from within by reflected moonglow. “It seems you need a personal guard, a body guard, ma femme.”
“Oh! My lord prince, thank heavens, it is you.”
“Aye, Jeannette. Thank heavens. It could have been some bloodthirsty Frenchman eager for a taste of an English maid, you know, or some vile barbarian hoping to—”
“And did you come to act as some vile barbarian, then?” she cut in, her voice suddenly wary. “I am carrying a dagger, you know.”
He laughed deep in his throat and took another step closer until she fancied she could scent the masculine essence of him that always set her head spinning. But no, the sea wind was at her back, all tangy balm of free air and waves. It whipped her loose tresses over her robed shoulders so that his big, dark form seemed to dart and blur.
“Good night then, Your Grace. I must go in now.”
“Too late, my sweet love. Much too late for both of us to ever retreat now.”
He moved forward. Before she could cry out or struggle, a huge, black cape flapped around her like a shadowy, winged embrace. He lifted her and strode up over the powdery sand dune toward the sea where her cries would avail her nothing in the pounding of breakers and persistent roar of wind. They passed a first guard, then another who merely nodded and held their ground. He had brought his own men and she had walked like a dumb rabbit into his waiting trap!
Waves crested creamy white on slick sand almost at his feet. A horse whinnied close as he strode onward unspeaking. Threats, pleas darted through her stunned mind, but she discarded them as weak or foolish. Besides, his firm profile, etched by moonlight, was rock hard and she was suddenly afraid. She had meant for the trap to be hers, on her own territory, and now she would have to fight her own terrifying desires as well as his.
The huge saddle on his massive destrier Wilifred seemed a lofty seat far up into the moonlit sky when he lifted her. “Please, my lord prince. I want to go back,” she said down at him as calmly as she could.
He mounted behind her in the wide saddle made for a man in full armor and held her sideways across his lap as they started off down the beach. Her cloaked shoulder and flushed cheek rubbed against the leather jerkin he wore over a dark tunic; his muscular thigh moved heavily against her in a rhythmic pattern.
“Then I demand to know where you are taking me,” she brazened, her heart pounding in unison with the great beast’s hoofs on the hard packed sand.
“Not far, ma chérie. A little place of our own away from everything where I shall just be your Edward until dawn. And then we shall see. I pray, my sweet, beautiful Jeannette for a very late, late dawn.”
He reined in at a dim sand dune which looked like countless others. Two horses; two men standing about greeted the prince. He dismounted and helped her down. Though she would not have been foolish enough to make a scene before the two guards she did not recognize, he lifted her again and strode up over the dune. The sea below crashed, incredibly loud in her ears, but she welcomed the strength of it as she did the mastery of his unrelenting embrace.
He put her down and unwrapped the constricting cocoon of cape before a low-gabled, rough-shingled cottage. A cresset lamp glowed in its one small curtained window as if to challenge the more blatant overhanging golden moon. The door creaked open at the mere touch of his big hand, and his firm press against the small of her back moved her inward.
Her voice was faint, a mere ghostly echo but she fought to keep it steady. “It is a lovely fisherman’s cottage, Your Grace.”
“Edward, my love. For tonight, and many nights hereafter, saints willing, you will call me Edward.”
“Edward, then—my lord.”
He closed and latched the door noisily while she surveyed the tiny, sea-fragrant room: a fireplace unlighted, for the night was warm; a table and two upholstered chairs on a small Persian rug; a wooden bowl of fruit; two tall vases of heavy, blooming crimson roses and white lilies; a huge decanter and two goblets. And dominating the room, a large carved coffer and one of the biggest canopied beds she had ever seen.
“I believe, my sweet Jeannette, we are alone at long, long last. No fluttering Isabella or nervous guardians. No Salisbury to come stumbling upon us.”
“And my betrothed, wounded in loyalty to you, is off on his northern English lands, of course. How convenient for you.”
“And for you, petite vixen. I believe I quote you properly from Isabella’s betrothal banquet, that time we spent so pleasantly together at Bruges, before you became rather indisposed and I had to rush you to your room—ah, aye, I have it now—‘Saints, my lord Prince. You know how it goes at court with betrothals.’”
“You have no right to mock me! It is your court and not mine and I have been full loyal to Lord Holland!”
“Really? Then why does Salisbury think he has a chance, and—why do I?”
“He, my lord prince, is foolish and you are—quite mistaken.”
His laughter rumbled in the room as he threw back his head and hit his chest for effect. “Ah, my Jeannette, so wild and daring. But I came not to argue or hear you sing or talk your way out of anything. Tell me now, under that deep blue camlet robe and those protectively crossed arms, is there one of those lovely invisible Flemish night chemises you and Isabella like to tell us poor bastards about so we can stand around with our tongues hanging out and take crazy risks like this to have a look? Well?”
He took a menacing step forward, his lips curved in an inviting grin. She felt the bare essence of the wispy material against her body even now and knew instantly the full impact it would have on him when he saw it—and then, on them both.
She stood rigid, her hips pressed to the table edge. For one shrieking moment she considered drawing her pitifully small dagger from the deep pocket of her robe; but then, this was the hero of Crécy. She thought of at least heaving a goblet at him for effect as Isabella, no doubt, would have done.
“I would like some wine, please, Edward.”
A smile lit his face at her soft use of his name, but it did not sway his intent. “Later, sweetheart. After.”
His big, warm hands went to her wrists to pull them gently to her side, then to the plush ties of the camlet robe. “The breeze is warm and sweet,” he said gently. “I swear you will not be cold.”
She did shiver with fierce anticipation as the robe left her warm body and slid down her gauze-clad shoulders to fall back on the table behind her. His bent fingers traced down her jaw to the elegant curve of her throat and lower over the upper swell of her high, firm breasts. As if mesmerized, she stood still and bit her lower lip in confusion as her nipples leapt erect beneath the merest brush of his hand.
He swept her high in his arms, and the whole little room tilted. He lay her back in the puffy embrace of the velvet-covered feather bed and was beside her instantly. His free hand roved her body, stroking, pushing away the unresisting, diaphanous silk. Foolishly, she tried to rise, to stay his caress with both hands, but his strength was steel and stone.
“At Bruges,” he rasped, “the day Isabella went so wild and broke things, I was allowed a little glimpse of these bare thighs. It was not much for a starving man to live on, my sweetheart. You comforted Isabella then. Comfort your Edward now.”
Slowly, his hands and mouth went everywhere. She clung to him, kissing him back. She was supposed to hate him, to control him. She wanted to hate him. But nothing happened that way. Nothing happened now that was not wonderful and wanted.
Finally, she felt the bed under her again, felt her own body, separate from his, yet still not her own. Why had she not noticed before that the weight of the man was incredible? He nuzzled her tousled hair along her throat and shifted to lie close beside her. His voice was a raspy whisper.
“Content for now, my sweetheart?”
“Aye. Forever.”
He chuckled silently, but she felt his ribs and flat stomach move against her. “Not forever, ma Jeannette. Only for a few minutes.”
“A truce,” she said. “You promised me some wine.”
He rose, naked, and poured it for her, taking a sip of it himself as he returned to the bed and handed the goblet to her. Before she could drink, his big hand cupped her chin to make her look at him. His eyes were narrowed and glittering. “Jeannette, though you lie with me, never lie to me, ever. I could not bear it. Do you understand?”