by Lynn Kurland
But it paled in comparison to the absolute decadence of her current surroundings.
She had never seen walls painted in that fashion, candles everywhere, souls garbed in clothing so fine she wondered how they dared wear it without worrying they would spoil it beyond salvaging. The music was glorious, the food surely straight from a dream, and the souls there beautiful and elegant. What surprised her, though, was how cold everything seemed.
Or perhaps that was just her.
She rubbed her arms and wished desperately that she was back at Monsaert in Gervase’s solar, surrounded by his brothers, sitting in front of a hot fire with Yves on her lap. The only thing that eased her any was that Miles and Joscelin couldn’t have been flanking her any more closely if they’d been sewn into her clothes. She supposed that made her feel safer, but it didn’t make her any happier. All she could do was stand against the wall and watch as every eligible maiden—and a few she was quite sure had to have been wed—tripped over themselves to attract the attention of one Gervase de Seger.
“Are you unwell?” Joscelin asked suddenly.
“Just flushed,” Isabelle managed. “Is it hot?”
Miles laughed. Isabelle elbowed him so hard in the ribs that he gasped, but he only put his arm around her shoulders.
“You are going to be very happily wed,” he predicted.
“How?” she asked plaintively. “Look you at all those women out there!”
“And who is the woman he can’t stop looking at?” Joscelin ventured. “I believe, my lady, that ’tis you.”
She supposed she couldn’t deny that that was true. Whatever else he might have been doing, he was keeping an eye on her.
That didn’t make her feel any better, but the reasons for that were almost too numerous to name. She didn’t care for court, for the intrigues, the heavy gowns, and the ridiculous thing she was wearing on her head. She was hardly going to complain because just the thought of how much gold Gervase had seen spent to garb her properly left her with the overwhelming desire to go lie down. She leaned closer to Joscelin.
“Does he enjoy coming to court?”
Joscelin smiled at her. “He enjoys—or enjoyed, rather—tourneying because it allowed him a reason to strut about and be the braggart he is, but court? Nay, he doesn’t care for it. He’s very good at navigating its shoals, but I daresay he would put his feet up at home in front of his fire and never leave it if he had the choice.”
“Do you think so?” she asked seriously.
Joscelin opened his mouth to speak, then shut it. He sighed. “The truth is, he will be forced to be at court regularly whether he wills it or not. I would imagine that when you two are wed, he will make it so he is either by your side constantly or you are left in the care of those who will protect you from more unsavoury elements.”
“It isn’t nice to call Evelyne of Coucy unsavoury,” Miles said placidly.
“And what would you call her?”
“Damned beautiful,” Miles said. He glanced at Isabelle. “I introduced myself to her. She said I smelled rather strongly of rustic stable lad.”
Isabelle smiled. “You don’t and she’s a fool.”
Miles winked at Joscelin. “This is my sister who loves me.”
“So I see,” Joscelin agreed. He looked out over the company, then froze. “My mother is closing in on Gervase. I wonder what she wants.”
Isabelle had no idea what the woman wanted, but she couldn’t imagine it was anything good. She watched Margaret speak to Gervase, then watched him go very still. Gervase considered for a moment or two, then nodded slowly. Isabelle started forward but found herself caught by both Miles and Joscelin. She glared at them.
“Let me go.”
Joscelin shook his head sharply. “I don’t trust her.”
“So you’ll leave your brother alone with her?” she asked incredulously.
“Robin is there,” Miles said, “and Sir Aubert is lurking in the shadows.”
“But he might need the both of you,” she insisted. “We can’t leave him unprotected.”
They exchanged a look over her head that she didn’t bother to interrupt. She’d been ignoring looks cast over her head for as long as her brothers had been taller than she. They seemed to come to some mutual decision that required no words.
“We’ll have to bring her with us.”
“For the moment, at least.”
She ignored them both as they walked with her toward a side door. She had anticipated that they might try to lock her into a chamber for her safety and refused to go inside any doors until she saw that Gervase and Margaret were already inside a fairly large chamber that looked as if it might have been a royal solar of some sort. She found herself pulled behind Miles and Joscelin and the ranks closed before she had a good look at the proceedings, but she was accustomed to that as well. She considered who might most easily be eluded and chose Joscelin because he was likely less accustomed to protecting sisters than Miles. She eased around the side of him where she could actually see what was going on.
“Well,” Gervase said flatly, “you have me here. What do you want?”
“What do I want?” Margaret echoed in disbelief. “You stupid boy, what do you think I want?”
Gervase folded his arms over his chest. “Well, what you might want, my lady, is exactly what you cannot have.” He shrugged. “Not my fault you weren’t born a man—”
Margaret slapped him so quickly, he obviously couldn’t avoid it. He stuck his tongue in his cheek, as if he tested the flesh there for undue damage, then looked at his stepmother coolly.
“What would you like me to do about your desires to have my hall?” he asked. “Shall I die this time?”
Margaret drew herself up. “What are you suggesting?”
“Spare me the outrage,” Gervase said curtly. “I saw the missive in my solar warning me this wasn’t over. It took me a bit, but I realized that while at first I thought I didn’t know the hand, I had certainly seen it before.” He looked at her. “Did someone spell the words for you, Margaret, or have you been acquiring a bit of education while you’ve been exiled from Monsaert?”
She flung herself at him but perhaps he was past chivalry where she was concerned for he simply stepped aside and allowed her to stumble forward. She caught herself on a chair, straightened, then spun around and glared at him.
“Aye, I would like you to die this time,” she spat. “Then my son will have the title that should rightly belong to him.”
Gervase’s expression looked as if it had been carved from stone. “If you tell me you slew my mother, I will kill you where you stand.”
Margaret made a noise of disdain. “I wouldn’t have bothered with her. She died in childbirth, which perhaps you’re too stupid to have realized. I will say that I didn’t mourn her passing.” She nodded toward Isabelle. “She was a sickly sweet girl like that one there. Perhaps you’ll lose her in childbirth as well.”
Isabelle thought she should have been alarmed by that, but realized immediately that perhaps she had other things to worry about.
Guy was shutting the door quietly behind himself. He leaned back against the wall and seemed content to observe the conversation—if it could be called that—going on between his stepbrother and his mother. That seemed to only amuse him for so long before he looked about the chamber.
Isabelle caught his eye and flinched at the hate she saw blazing there. Very well, so she had suspected him of foul deeds. She had never said as much to him, so why should he have any reason to look at her that way?
He reached up to brush aside a tassel dangling from a tapestry hanging over his head. Perhaps that wouldn’t have been noteworthy if the sleeve of his tunic hadn’t caught on part of his belt.
He had scratches down his forearm.
She could hardly believe her eyes, but there was no denying what she was seeing. She felt Joscelin pull her behind him, which she supposed she should have expected at some point. She moved to stand mor
e or less between them where she could look over their shoulders that they seemed to be determined to keep pressed together. No matter. She needed time to think, though she supposed she wouldn’t have all that much of it.
She had been taken unawares at Caours in the latrine, of all places. Fortunately her modesty hadn’t yet been compromised, something that had actually been what had concerned her the most initially. Her mind had turned to other things once she’d felt her attacker’s arm come across her throat. She had been too busy trying to breathe to pay attention to the sound of his voice, though she’d understood his words clearly enough.
Here is poison. Kill Gervase de Seger with it or your family dies.
In truth, how much clearer could it have been than that? She would have been happy to have nodded, but the truth was, she’d been finding it increasingly difficult to breathe. She’d half wondered at the time if the man would have let her go if she hadn’t raked her fingernails down his forearm.
It was odd that Guy de Seger should be sporting wounds in approximately the same place on his arm, wasn’t it?
Odder still that he should have sent her a look of such loathing. As if perhaps she had done something he hadn’t approved of. It was possible, she supposed, that he disliked her simply because she loved his brother. She couldn’t quite bring herself to believe he would have wanted her for himself and the disappointment of knowing he wouldn’t realize his desire had left him so ill-humored, but it was a possibility. It was a certainty Guy’s mother had no love for her.
Then again, she obviously had no love for her stepson, either.
Isabelle forced herself to listen to the bile Margaret was spewing at Gervase and was slightly shocked at the viciousness.
“Kill your father?” Margaret echoed with a laugh. “Are you mad? Of course I didn’t kill your father.”
“Didn’t you?” Gervase asked calmly. “Then I don’t suppose you know who did.”
“Well,” Margaret said with a small smile, “I do know that.”
“Are you going to enlighten me?”
She shrugged. “Why not?” She gestured expansively to the blond standing against the wall, a man who had ended his fight with his tassel by pulling a small tapestry down off the wall and throwing it across the chamber. “There he is. Your father’s killer. Yours too, if I’m not mistaken.”
Isabelle felt her mouth fall open. Gervase, however, didn’t look particularly surprised.
Margaret cleared her throat. “Guy?”
“What?” Guy said in annoyance. He looked at his mother. “What?”
“I told Gervase what you’ve done, darling. You don’t mind, do you?”
Guy shrugged. “He’ll be dead by the end of the day anyway, so I don’t suppose it matters now.”
“Will I?” Gervase asked politely. “How do you suppose that will happen?”
“I gave the lady Isabelle a bottle of poison and told her to give it to you or I would kill her family.”
“Clever you,” Gervase said, clapping slowly. He folded his arms back over his chest. “And what a remarkable coincidence that you should find her at Caours right when you needed her to be there. Or did you plan that as well?”
“Well, of course I planned that as well,” Guy snarled. “How stupid do you think I am?”
Isabelle supposed she might have an opinion on that, but perhaps ’twas best not to offer it. She had seen a flash of Guy’s mercurial change of mood a handful of moments earlier, but it was somehow quite a bit more alarming to see that flash of anger turned on Gervase. She poked Miles in the back, hoping he would understand her unspoken command that he go stand a bit closer to Gervase but he only elbowed her in return, catching her high up enough in her gut that she abruptly lost her breath.
She would have cursed him, but in her desperation to suck in air and the accompanying bit of looking for a place to sit for use in doing so, she noticed that there was perhaps a very good reason Miles wasn’t as concerned about Gervase’s safety as she would have liked.
She had no idea when he’d slipped inside the chamber, but there Robin was standing to Guy’s right, so still that she might have thought him just another statue. Sir Aubert was standing next to him, still as a statue himself. That was reassuring, to be sure, but apparently those weren’t the only two who had found their way inside Her Majesty’s solar. Isabelle looked over in the corner that surely wasn’t but ten paces behind Lady Margaret and saw none other than her grandfather leaning negligently against the wall. He was partially hidden by a painted screen.
He was also wearing hose and a tunic, not skirts.
“Of course I knew who she was!” Guy shouted without warning. “Who do you think got her to France in the first place?”
Isabelle dragged her attention back to the conversation at hand. Gervase was watching his brother grow increasingly angry as he spewed out details Isabelle supposed he might regret having admitted to.
“You?” Gervase asked, looking for the first slightly surprised. “How did you manage to bring Isabelle to France?”
“Well, I wrote the bloody missive that told her to come,” Guy said, looking down his nose at Gervase. “How did you think I did it? And you can thank your sainted grandfather for that idea. I’d heard a great deal about those damned de Piagets from him as he chatted endlessly with Sir Etienne. And unlike you, I had at least seen her older sister at Beauvois so I knew what she looked like.”
“You were fortunate, then,” Gervase said mildly. “But why not go wed her in England? Why bring her to France?”
“To kill you, of course,” Guy said with a snort. “It was a very simple plan. She would come to the abbey, I would instruct her to kill you, then I would wed her.”
“I see,” Gervase said slowly. “And you assumed that she would want to wed you after you’d forced her to become a murderess?”
Guy shrugged. “It wasn’t as if she would have much choice. When you convince someone to kill for you, that body tends to feel a certain sort of desire for you not to tell everyone what he’s done.” He shot Margaret a dark look. “Wouldn’t you agree, Mother?”
“What would I know of anything?” Margaret said coolly.
Isabelle watched realization dawn on Guy’s face. He gaped at his mother.
“You can’t be serious,” he said incredulously. “It was your idea to start with!”
“Of course it wasn’t—”
Guy’s face turned a mottled shade of red. Isabelle realized with a start that the color reminded her a bit of the sealing wax she and Miles had examined. She supposed she didn’t want to know what Guy had used to turn it that bloodred color, though she supposed there was clay enough somewhere near Monsaert to satisfy anyone with a penchant for red wax. The one thing she was certain of was that she wasn’t going to be asking Guy the details anytime soon. What she wanted was for the men of her family to overpower him, take him to the queen mother, and be done with him.
Unfortunately, Fate seemed to have a far different idea of how things should proceed.
Chapter 26
Gervase realized with a sinking feeling that he didn’t care at all for the way the game was playing out. He didn’t like the feeling of being trapped, but he could see that he was coming perilously close to finding himself in just those straits. He considered the battlefield, then moved back until he had both Margaret and Guy in his sights, hopefully drawing them away from Isabelle and her guardsmen. He couldn’t see her any longer, but he supposed that was because Miles and Joscelin were keeping her behind them.
He could see Aubert and Robin leaning negligently against the back wall of the solar and he wasn’t entirely sure that wasn’t Etienne de Piaget over there in the corner, but what did he know? He had assumed his stepmother was responsible for all his ills. At the same time, he had been trying to convince himself that his next youngest brother was a man of honor and virtue. Obviously, his intuition had failed him, and badly. He could only hope Isabelle didn’t pay the price for that.
“Have we decided yet?” he asked politely. “I’d like to have it out of the way, if you don’t mind. Things to do, you know.”
Guy’s look of loathing was unsurprising but a little startling nonetheless. Gervase supposed that if he had the chance, he would spend a decent amount of time berating himself for his stupidity. If only he’d been a bit more skeptical, he might have spared himself the loss of his father.
Which would have meant the loss of his future with Isabelle, but perhaps that was something he could think about later, as well.
“Feeling poorly, brother?”
Gervase looked at him. “I’m in perfect health, actually. Why do you ask?”
“You look flushed.”
“That comes with knowing that I am master of Monsaert, a vast and fertile holding, and that I will yet live many years to enjoy it all,” Gervase said with a shrug. “’Tis enough to bring a rosy bloom to any lad’s cheeks, wouldn’t you say?”
Guy apparently didn’t have anything else to say. Instead, he moved as quickly as a striking snake. Gervase drew his sword, fully prepared to bloody the floors with his stepbrother’s innards only to realize too late that a sword fight was not what Guy was interested in.
Guy leaped forward and kicked him as hard as possible.
Exactly on the place where his leg had been broken.
His sword clattered to the polished stone under his feet. He was suddenly on his knees without knowing quite how he’d gotten there. The pain was absolutely blinding. He found himself hunched there on all fours, fighting a ferocious battle against a blacknesss that threatened to engulf him.
Guy laughed.
Or perhaps that had been Margaret. Gervase supposed that when listening to voices that belonged with the damned in Hell, perhaps it didn’t matter how closely one identified them. He fumbled for the knife in his boot and managed to get it free in spite of the stars that swirled about his head. He looked up and knew immediately that his knife, no matter how well crafted, was going to be of absolutely no use against the sword he saw coming down toward his witless head.