by Jane Feather
It was an eternity before the weight of him crushing her breasts, the soft press of his lips against her neck, brought Magdalen back to recognition of her own identity in the world. Her arms were flung wide on either side of her body as they had fallen in the aftermath of that explosion. Her legs were still spread wide around him, her skin damply melded with his. She brought her hand to his back, running a slow caress down the lean, muscular length. Guy raised his head and kissed her mouth.
“Enchantress,” he said softly. “You took me into a world I have never entered before.”
“I took us both,” she replied, and there was a hint of smugness in her voice that made Guy chuckle weakly.
“I know you did, love.”
“And now we may go ahawking,” she declared, sitting up with a resurgence of energy. “I know it is past prime, but that is not my fault.”
“I thought we just agreed that it was,” he teased, running his hand over her thigh. “If it weren’t for your intemperate desires and consummate skills, we’d be long gone from here.”
Magdalen flung herself upon him with a squawk of outrage, and he laughingly defended himself, catching her wrists in one large hand, throwing a leg across her thighs, holding her still with his weight.
“Peace, or I shall be obliged to take reprisals and then we will never have time to go hawking.”
“But I did not start it,” she protested, wriggling to no good effect. “I said you were a faithless perjurer, and you are.”
“Oh, unjust!” He released her and sat up. “I suggest you remove yourself before such impertinence receives its due.”
“It was not impertinence, sir. I was much afraid that it was true, and I was afeared for your soul.” She tossed him a wicked grin as she leaped off the bed and ran for her robe, hastily wrapping it around her.
“Off with you!” Chuckling, Guy reached for the handbell to summon his attendants. “Make haste with your dressing and be in the mews court in half an hour. I’ve much work to accomplish this day and little time for more sport.”
Magdalen dressed swiftly, aware that Guy was indeed taking precious time out of his day to grant her the indulgence of a morning flying hawks beside the river. He had been absent a week, touring the de Bresse fiefdom, visiting the three other castles belonging to the suzerainty, arbitrating quarrels and disputed claims, dispensing justice and inspecting defenses. In his absence, matters requiring his attention at home had accumulated, and he had a tedious day’s work ahead of him. She had deputed for him as far as she was able, but a chatelaine’s authority was dependent upon the lord’s, and there were many issues in which she could make only temporary adjudication.
She felt no guilt, however, in having insisted upon the sporting expedition. In his absence, she had been confined to the castle enclosure, as was customary when a lady was left without the protection of her lord, and she was sorely in need of a broadening of horizons. Hawking and gentle rides through the countryside were the only physical activities approved by Lord de Gervais in his anxiety for her health, and he became visibly uneasy if she took such exercise in company other than his own. In light of this fact, Magdalen felt entitled to make certain demands of her own.
A wintry sun was offering a suffused pinkening of the horizon when she presented herself in the mews court. Guy was already there, in conversation with the falconer, idly tickling the neck of his peregrine with a blade of grass. Dogs milled on the cobbles, dodging beneath the hooves of the horses, saddled and held by grooms, whose breath coiled whitely in the cold morning air.
Magdalen hurried over to the falconer. “I give you good day, Master Falconer. I trust Aleria is in placid humor.” She laughed, and the falconer smiled grudgingly. Magdalen’s merlin was an ill-tempered bird on occasion, challenging the falconer’s training and trying his patience sorely. He would have given her up as a bad lot if it hadn’t been for her owner’s cheerful insistence that the hawk was entitled to her moods.
“She’s not been flown for three days, my lady, so I trust she’ll be anxious to conduct herself well.”
Magdalen drew on the thick embroidered glove handed to her by her page. “If she misbehaves the first time, I will not fly her again. What of the gerfalcon?”
The gerfalcon was Magdalen’s pride and joy. It had been an unexpected gift from her father just before she left England, a gift symbolic in many ways. The laws of falconry were immutable, certain birds allotted to certain ranks of society. Guy de Gervais flew the peregrine of earls, and while merlins were flown by noble ladies, only those of royal blood could own a gerfalcon.
The hawk had been bred in Lancaster’s mews but had been untrained when he presented it to his daughter, and it would still be long before the bird could be flown by her new owner. But Magdalen kept a constant watch on her progress.
“She’s stubborn, my lady,” Master Falconer said with his grudging smile, but they could all hear the pride in his voice.
“But worth your pains,” Guy said.
“Oh, yes, indeed, my lord. Next month, my lady should be able to fly her on a creance. Do you care to see her?”
Magdalen was already halfway to the mews, her fur-trimmed surcote swinging with her impetuous strides.
It was gloomy in the mews, and the ripe smell of bird droppings and the blood of small animals hung in the cold air. The birds sat leashed to their perches, bright eyes, wickedly curved beaks; gripping, ripping talons, all stilled; the malevolent power of the predator harnessed to the will of man.
“Do you have a name for her?” Guy stood beside Magdalen in front of the half-trained gerfalcon.
“Diana,” Magdalen said promptly. “The huntress.”
He nodded, smiling. “A royal name for a royal bird. Let us start out now. It is almost full day.”
They rode from the castle by way of the postern gate and down to the river which circled the base of the hill, meandering through the town before wending its way to join with the Oise on the outskirts of the forest of Compiegne. The ground was frost-hard beneath the horses’ hooves, and there was a bite to the air that brought a pink tinge to Magdalen’s cheeks and reddened the tip of her nose. She lifted her head, tossing back the velvet hood of her chaperon, breathing deeply.
“Ah, it is such pleasure to be outside. ”When I may not leave the castle, it reminds me of being a child at Bellair.”
Guy laughed. “Unfortunately, we have no witch to cast spells for you to make something happen.”
Magdalen glanced sideways at him. “She once said to me that the time would come when I would pray that everything would stay the same, bad though it would be, because it would be better than what is to come.” The memory sent a graveyard chill down her back, and she saw that Guy was frowning, shadowed by the words.
“It was just mad Jennet,” she said, attempting to laugh it off. “I do not believe any of her spells came true.”
But inadvertently she had shattered the mood of the crisp morning, the reminiscence infecting the laughing intimacy with which the day had begun. She sensed the sadness that she dreaded descend upon her companion and could find no words with which to dispel it. She knew he lived this life with her under the shadow of guilt, a guilt she did not feel, because how could such love as they bore each other be in any way associated with wrongdoing?
They flew their hawks along the riverbank where the bullrushes gathered thickly at the edge of sluggish brown water. A flock of geese rose, screeching, necks elongated, from the rushes as the menacing shadow of the peregrine fell across them. But they were too large to be prey for the hawk and settled down again with much chattering and wing flapping.
“We will go back if you are anxious to be at your work,” Magdalen said in subdued tones, all pleasure in the expedition extinguished by the heaviness that had settled over her companion.
He gave her a slightly strained smile. “I own I have much on my mind, pippin, and the morning advances. It must be all of eight of the clock.”
“Yes,” s
he agreed, turning her palfrey. “Then let us return.”
Guy was looking for some way to chase away the bedeviling gloom when Magdalen abruptly kicked her mount’s flanks and set off at a canter along the riverbank, her hood flying. He set his own horse to follow, coming up with her when she drew rein at a clump of trees.
“Don’t be vexed,” she said, reading his expression correctly. “I needed to do that.”
“Did you?” He sounded unconvinced.
“Well, I would rather you were vexed than sad,” she responded a mite defiantly.
“I am not sad.”
“Yes, you are. You are remorseful and sad.”
Guy sighed. “I wish things were other than they are. Surely you can understand that?”
She shrugged. “I suppose I can understand it, but they are as they are. I am grateful for love.”
There was, as always, nothing to be said in the face of this assertion. The issues for Magdalen were as clear-cut as ever. She had asked for nothing, she had warned him long ago of the folly of her marrying Edmund, she had declared her love as an absolute, and beside that nothing else was truly important.
He wondered if it was her youth that gave her this single-minded confidence in the rightness of her beliefs and instincts, but in his heart of hearts he knew it was not that. Magdalen of Lancaster was the child of two supremely dominant personalities, and they had both left their identifying traces on their self-willed daughter.
She was looking at him now with her candid gray eyes, assessing his reaction. “Would you truly wish things were otherwise, my lord?”
Slowly, he shook his head. “Not if it would mean that I had not known the joy of you, love. I will bear the remorse for the greater joy.”
She smiled, her face illuminated with pleasure, her soul touching him through her eyes. “Then we may return in peace?”
“Aye, love, in peace.” Leaning sideways, he stroked the delicate curve of her cheek and jaw with the back of his gloved hand. “I will put sadness from me.”
They rode back to the castle, contented although reflective, and in the mews court parted until midmorning when they would meet in the great hall for dinner.
Magdalen had changed her gown and was discussing with the butler the wines to be served at dinner when the exchange of bugles came from the battlements.
She heard first the alerting cry of an approaching party, followed almost immediately by the heraldic demand for identification.
“It would seem we are to have guests, Master Butler,” she said matter-of-factly. “I must consult with the seneschal and the chamberlain.” But instead of doing so immediately, she went up to the battlements, curious to see the new arrivals for herself.
Guy left his study when he heard the heraldic exchange and hastened to the inner court, waiting for the sergeant-at-arms to tell him who was requesting hospitality. The degree of hospitality offered and his own involvement would depend on the rank of the visitors. He caught sight of Magdalen on the battlements and went up to join her.
They looked down on the party gathered at the far side of the moat. The standard was unfamiliar to Guy. He listened as the herald blew his note and lowered the pennon on the bugle in respect for their potential hosts.
“Here comes the Sieur Charles d’Auriac, who claims kinship with the lady of the Castle de Bresse, requesting the hospitality of his kinswoman.”
Guy drew breath sharply. So it was come, the threat from the south. What form would it take? There was little they could do within the castle walls. He became conscious again of Magdalen beside him, conscious of her rigidity.
“That is the man who accosted me in Calais,” she said. “He would have me go with him to a presbytery garden, but I was afeared—”
“Yes,” Guy said swiftly, knowing he must diffuse her unease until he had some sense of d’Auriac’s purpose. “But he is in truth your kinsman. Olivier discovered that his mother was sister to your mother. And as such you must extend all hospitality.”
Her face was ashen, although she did not know why she should be so afraid, except for some deep, instinctual recognition that she tried to express. “But I do not wish to. There is an evil in him.”
He knew it to be true, but must deny it. Magdalen knew nothing of a de Beauregard threat to herself or her father, or of their implication in Edmund’s death, for to understand such things she would need to know their cause, and he could not bear to inflict upon her the pain of such knowledge … to know of the blood and murderous treachery that had attended her conception and birth. “Do not be fanciful,” he chided sharply. “You cannot turn away your cousin.” He spoke to the sentry beside him, and the man ran to the court below.
The herald blew the note of welcome and the drawbridge was lowered, the portcullis raised. Magdalen, still white-faced but recognizing she had no choice, walked with Guy to the inner court to welcome the new arrivals at the foot of the steps to the great hall.
Charles d’Auriac rode beneath the tower into the place d’armes and through the archway into the inner ward. He saw his cousin standing motionless beside the Lord de Gervais, and a throb of satisfaction pulsed deep in his belly. She was as he remembered.
Why had Guy set Olivier to discover d’Auriac’s identity? And why had he said nothing to her before? The man had never been mentioned, the incident at Calais never referred to since that day. And why did she feel this sick apprehension as he rode into the court? There was nothing about his physical appearance to promote apprehension; indeed, she experienced the same sense of familiarity she had felt before, as if she had known him in some other place and time.
He took the stirrup cup of welcome from the page who ran from the hall. Guy stepped forward.
“Sieur d’Auriac, you are most welcome to this hearth.” He waited for Magdalen to offer her own greeting, but she remained silent behind him.
“My Lord de Gervais.” Charles swung from his horse and extended the hand of friendship. “I claim kinship with the Lady Magdalen de Bresse.”
“Your kinship is acknowledged,” Guy said, clasping the hand. Magdalen still did not come forward, and the awkwardness hung, heavy with discourtesy, over the crowd gathered in the court.
“Cousin, I bring you the greetings of your mother’s family.” Charles d’Auriac took the initiative, stepping over to her, his hand extended.
Still she stood, ignoring the outstretched hand, her eyes fixed upon his face, realizing what was familiar. In his eyes, she saw herself. It was the family resemblance. But why did he fill her with such loathing and such terror?
“Magdalen!” Guy spoke her name in sharp rebuke, and she came out of her trance. “You offer our guest and your kinsman discourtesy!”
“I crave pardon, sir.” She spoke quietly and held out her hand, barely brushing her cousin’s flattened palm before withdrawing it and surreptitiously wiping it against her skirts. “My mind was elsewhere.” Still she did not bid him welcome, and it gradually dawned on them all that she was not going to do so without prompting.
“Come within,” Guy said, gesturing to the open door of the hall. “You and your party will accept the hospitality of our guest house, I trust.”
“We should be glad of the courtesy,” d’Auriac said with a pointed glance at his cousin. He and his knights followed Guy into the hall, where the fire burned and the tables were being prepared for the main meal of the day.
Magdalen did not accompany them. She knew she was committing an unforgivable sin against the rules of hospitality and kinship, but somehow she could not help herself. She went to her own apartments and summoned Erin.
“You will go to my Lord de Gervais and you will tell him that I find myself unwell and unable to attend in the hall this day.”
Erin hastened to the great hall where Lord de Gervais and his guests were drinking wine before the fire, the conversation stilted, the absence of the lady of the house conspicuous.
“My lord?” Erin sidled up to him, her voice low and conspiratorial.
Guy regarded her sharply. “Well?”
“It’s my lady, my lord.”
“Where is she?” It was clear to Erin that the Lord de Gervais was very put out, not a usual occurrence.
“She says she is unwell, my lord, and unable to attend in the hall this day.”
Guy’s lips thinned. He could not imagine what game Magdalen thought she was playing, but he could not play his own and discover that of Charles d’Auriac if she continued with this distempered discourtesy. “You may tell your lady that I excuse her until dinner, but I will require her presence then at the high table.”
Erin bustled off, and Charles d’Auriac, who had overheard the conversation, observed, “It would seem I have in some way offended my cousin. I would ask forgiveness for my fault, but I cannot think wherein it lies.”
Guy’s discomfiture increased a hundredfold. “Do not, I pray you, refine too much upon it,” he said stiffly.
“Some whim which requires curbing?” gently inquired d’Auriac. “It is frequently the way with women, I have noticed.”
Something in his voice set the hairs on Guy’s neck prickling. Yet it was hardly an unusual sentiment. He was certain the de Beauregards would not attempt any harm to Magdalen while they were her guests and she was under his protection. Within these walls, he could ensure her safety easily enough with little more than ordinary vigilance. He had but to discover what treacherous intent lay behind this apparent social visit. And he could not do that if Magdalen persisted in behaving in this disgraceful fashion. They must both offer only smiles and courtesy, seeming to accept the visit of a kinsman at face value. But why was Magdalen behaving like this? It was not in the least in character, and a mere aversion to d’Auriac, based on that encounter in Calais, was no excuse.
Erin delivered the Lord de Gervais’s message to Magdalen. “He was most displeased, my lady,” she added, looking in puzzlement at Magdalen, who sat huddled on the window seat. “Should I send for Master Elias to physick you?”