Heather Graham

by The Kings Pleasure

  “You have stayed with her all this time?”

  His voice was hoarse, pained, different.

  “With her, with some of the others.”

  “With no help?”

  “So many are stricken. There aren’t many left to help. And I love Joanna. I tried very hard to save her,” Danielle whispered. “I swear to you—”

  She was startled when he suddenly pulled her close, picked her up, and sat on a bedside chair with her in his arms. He held her gently, rocking slightly as he stared at Joanna again, giving comfort, taking comfort.

  “Poor lass, you are quite something,” he murmured. “The servants fled and dying, and you doing it all.”

  She didn’t want his sympathy. She had been fighting too hard to betray any weakness now. “Doctor Coutin never deserted me,” she whispered. “Nor Milady Jeanette.”

  Despite her resolve, tears rose to her eyes. She couldn’t seem to stop them, but it didn’t seem so bad. She had never wanted to cry in front of him, never, but his own cheeks were damp, his grief was so terrible. She was weary, bone weary from head to toe, dazed and numbed still. It felt good to be held, for the moment. It was good to rest, and feel that she passed a burden from her own shoulders to his.

  He held her another moment, then stood, setting her upon her feet. “Things have settled somewhat. I understand you beat a groom upon the head.”

  “I didn’t beat him, I merely gave him one good crack.”

  She was startled when the ghost of a smile touched Adrien’s lips. “Still, milady, there is much to be done here, and I’ll not watch these people lie idle waiting to die. They had no right to let you do so much.”

  He strode from the room angrily and came down the steps. A number of the servants were in the hall, some slumped upon the floor, a few gaming with dice.

  Adrien walked into the midst of them with a fury and energy that seemed to send off sparks of fire. Swen was the first to feel his wrath. The groom was sprawled by the hearth and Adrien clutched him by the shoulders, dragging him to his feet.

  “Tragedy strikes and you lie about as if you were a beaten dog!”

  “Death comes for us, milord! What matter?” Swen demanded.

  Adrien drew his sword and there was a collective inhalation of breath as he touched its lethal tip to Swen’s throat. Others who had been lying about quickly rose.

  “What does it matter? You seem healthy as yet, lad. Be about your business and help with this pathetic siege of fever or else I will hasten you to your own grave this very minute!”

  “Aye, milord, aye!” Swen cried.

  Adrien looked around the hall. “Sweet Jesu, you lie here with your dead! By God, man, get litters!” He strode across to where a few of the men-at-arms had come to lie and wait. They rose, backing away from Adrien’s wrath. “Get litters, now!” he commanded, “You men, dig a pit far outside the gate and see these poor wretches are burned and buried. Any man knows this—the dead must be taken away. They cause more disease by their poor demises! Do it, now. You—!” he cried suddenly, stopping a man called Robin Sentell, a stonemason. “You!” he said again. “You will begin work on a tomb for—for the Lady Joanna. She will lie within the crypt of the chapel, do you hear me?”

  “Aye, milord, I will get to work immediately!” Robin promised.

  “A hundred lashes to the next man to fear the plague with such fervor that he will not aid his fellow. Seek to dance with the Devil again and by God, I swear it, you will stand beside him before dusk!” Adrien’s eyes, glittering with a hellfire promise, swept the room. Men and women stumbled upon one another to hasten to their work.

  Danielle stood on the landing of the stairs, watching as the household guiltily went to order at Adrien’s commands. Lady Jeanette came to stand behind her, setting her hands on Danielle’s shoulders.

  Adrien came up the stairs again, pausing before the two of them. “Sir Thackery?” he asked Lady Jeanette.

  “He lives, milord. Fighting on.”

  Adrien’s gaze flicked down to Danielle. The fury in them was gone. The pain was back. “Monteine?” he asked her.

  “She fights as well.”

  He nodded. “Leave me be then, with my Lady Joanna,” he said, and stepped by into Danielle’s room, where Joanna lay in death. He closed the door, and he was alone with the woman he had loved.

  Lady Jeanette and Danielle stood there for several seconds after the door had closed, then Lady Jeanette sighed softly. “Order is restored, milady. God will fight for the others now. You must sleep.”

  “I’ve nowhere—”

  “Laird MacLachlan’s chamber upstairs will do for now,” Lady Jeanette said briskly. “Sleep, and perhaps when you awaken …”

  The guest chamber was nearly as magnificent as her own. She allowed Jeanette to lead her to the massive bed, pull down the covers, and see her into it. Jeanette gave her wine; she drank the full goblet, relishing the burning that seared her throat and helped to numb her pain. But no matter what the tempest in her heart and soul, sheer exhaustion seized her when her head touched the down pillow. She slept.

  It seemed she slept forever, and she was finally roused by a clinking sound nearby. She blinked, thinking it was night, for there was candlelight near her and a fire burning in the hearth. Her stomach growled, and she realized that she hadn’t eaten. Then all the horror that sleep had erased returned and she remembered that Joanna and many others were dead. She sat up slowly, frowning. Adrien was there, his great length slumped in a chair before a table by the hearth. The clinking sound she had heard had been his wine goblet falling against it time and again. A carafe was by his hand, nearly empty now, and Danielle was quite certain it had been full when Adrien began drinking. A beautifully designed golden circlet for a lady’s hair lay before him as well, and he fingered it as he sat there drinking and staring into the fire.

  She slipped from the bed, watching him, once again feeling that she intruded. She wanted to escape the room, but even as she moved, he looked up and his brooding eyes fell upon her. Then he pointed at her sternly. “You should have been away. You should not have stayed.”

  “I had to stay.”

  “I would have sent you away.”

  “With no need. I survived the plague when my mother died. I don’t believe that I can sicken to it again.”

  “Thank God,” he murmured, but his voice had an emptiness—and a slur—to it.

  He handled the delicate gold piece before him again. “Imagine I had intended to defy the king!” he said softly.

  “She loved you very much,” Danielle heard herself offer.

  “I should have been with her,” he brooded darkly.

  “You were trying to be with her,” Danielle reminded him.

  He suddenly crooked a finger at her. “Come here.”

  She shook her head, afraid of his mood. She had never seen anything quite like it. He seemed to blame himself for Joanna’s death, and his bitterness and pain and self-incrimination were bitter.

  With an impatient oath, he stood and walked to her. She hadn’t the strength at the moment to escape him but he meant her no harm. He merely ran a finger down her cheek and eyed her thoughtfully once again. “You are not quite so wretched a young shrew as I had thought,” he told her.

  “Indeed!” she murmured, amazed that a certain saltiness could come back into her tone then. “Milord, such compliments from your lips will cause me to faint when I have endured so very much.”

  “And managed so very much on your own,” he mused, and paused a moment. “Thank you. For what you did for her.”

  “You needn’t thank me!” she whispered. “I cared for her too.”

  “Then thank you for the words you have said to me. The assurances of her love. How ironic. Coming from you now.”

  “What do you mean?” Nervously, she drew away from him. She hugged her arms around herself, suddenly very aware of his sheer masculine strength and power.

  He shrugged, walking to the fire. His movemen
t was unsteady. She had never seen him over-imbibe before.

  “I would have been back sooner,” he told her. “The king’s messenger waylaid me. Even while death rages, the king manipulates us all! The messenger told me Edward sternly forbade my marriage to Joanna. His mind is set. How strange. It seems that he is obsessed with you, my little pet. He does not want you on your own. He is quick to talk of your beauty and riches, then quick to rage against you.” He turned and stared at her. “You know, I think, perhaps, he was a bit bewitched by your mother. Easy to see why.”

  “You mean the king?”

  “Aye, the king. Lenore was very beautiful. I have never seen a more beautiful woman. Unless …” he broke off, staring at her again, then shrugging once more. He went back for more wine, then drank down the goblet in a swallow. “Anyway, I’ve been informed that you were to be married within the month to an old Dane, Lord Andreson, if we—you and I—were not betrothed as he wished.”

  “Lord Andreson!” she gasped. He was at least sixty, gaunt as a twig, stooped, and gout-ridden. He spent most of his time in Denmark, for he was kin to the Danish nobility. He was a horrible person, mean, cantankerous, and lecherous.

  “Denmark is a beautiful country,” Adrien mused. “I have been there for many tournaments. It is wet and cold, though.”

  “What difference would it make whether I was forced to wed a Danish knight or an English one?” she countered brashly. Dear God, even she could see the difference, but there was a point to be made. “I am French, milord.”

  “Milady—I would think the answer quite obvious.”

  “Oh? Because you are a bit younger? You would make a more palatable husband and father?”

  He arched his brow at that, but shook his head. “Andreson is childless, and quite anxious to be a father. To have you, he’d give the king title to lands that have been in Danish hands since the Viking invasions. But he intends to live in Denmark, and is anxious to keep you there as well since you are so very young and so temptingly lovely. You might never see your precious Aville again. And besides—I, at least, don’t drool.”

  She ignored that. “But I am a countess. Aville is mine by right!”

  He didn’t seem to hear her, continuing ruefully, “And I admit, once, I had thought of such a threat with amusement. I would have been well rid of you. Denmark would be a good, safe place for you. Far, far away.”

  “Go to hell, Adrien. I’d be safe and far away if I were back in Aville! The king cannot force me to wed and go to Denmark!” she insisted. But she was afraid. Edward considered himself the law, especially where his children or wards were concerned. She knew that priests could be bribed, and she’d heard stories about noblewomen being brought to their own weddings bound and gagged and thrown over the shoulders of determined, land-hungry knights. If such things happened at the whim of noblemen, what might happen when a king was determined to have his way?

  “We must fight him. I won’t be threatened and I will never agree to the king’s wretched schemes!” she said, trying very hard to convince herself that she could fight Edward. “I have family across the Channel,” she reminded Adrien. “I can escape England and get help from my French cousins.”

  “I’m sure, milady, that those very facts are why the king is so determined you remain strictly beneath his thumb,” he murmured, staring into the fire. “Joanna is gone,” he said, “so it simply doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing matters anymore. Except that you cared for her, so now, I am in your debt.”

  “I cared for her because she was my friend. You don’t owe me anything. If you feel you’re in my debt, tell the king to leave me be and let me go home to Aville!” Danielle told him, her voice rising with desperation.

  He didn’t answer her. He continued to stare into the fire.

  “Adrien?”

  To her amazement, his eyes closed. He stood for a moment, wavered, then suddenly slumped to the floor. She gasped, staring at him in astonishment.

  The wine! she thought. The fool was drunk. He had imbibed the whole of the carafe, sitting there in his grief. He had thought that it would wash away the pain …

  She walked toward him, nudging him with her toe. He didn’t move. She fell to her knees by his side. “Adrien!” she whispered softly, and she placed a hand on his arm.

  He was burning. She wrenched her hand away. He wasn’t drunk; he was sick.

  “Oh, God!” she cried out. She leapt to her feet, fully aware that she could never manage to drag his weight into his bed. She had to have help.

  She ran to the door, threw it open, and tore down the stairs to the great hall. She paused there, looking around.

  The place was immaculate. No bodies littered the floor or table or chairs. The hall had been swept; fresh rushes had been laid. A bright fire burned at the hearth. Daylin sat before the fire, polishing a shield.

  “Daylin, please, I need you.”

  Frowning, he set the shield aside and followed her up the two flights. At the doorway, he paused just briefly, then rushed to his lord. Even Daylin struggled with Adrien’s muscled weight and Danielle hurried forward to assist him. Moments later they had Adrien laid out and half stripped. Danielle asked Daylin for the coldest water he could find, and to bring Doctor Coutin. Daylin paused just a moment, then obeyed her.

  They bathed Adrien together. She was surprised to find herself trembling sometimes when she smoothed the cloth over the hardness of his muscles.

  When Doctor Coutin came, she left him by his new patient, and stood by the window with Daylin, who told her that she had been sleeping two days, and much had happened in that time. Sir Thackery and Monteine were on the way to recovery. Molly had survived as well, though many died.

  Messengers had arrived from Winchester early that morning; the disease was abating.

  “Milady,” Doctor Coutin called.

  She came quickly to his side.

  “It is the same as with the others. I have done what I can. Now we wait. The fever must be fought, as you know.”

  Danielle nodded.

  “I will serve him,” Daylin said. “Milady, you need not.”

  “I have done this often,” Danielle argued, surprised that she did so. “I will tend to him,” she insisted.

  “I will be here as well, to do as you say,” Daylin promised her, and she realized, looking at him, that they were both determined that Adrien MacLachlan would not die. Daylin loved his master. She wondered about her own passionate resolve not to let him perish. Perhaps she simply could not stand the thought of letting the plague best her again.

  This time, she was not alone. As Adrien’s fever soared, Daylin helped her, and Lady Jeanette, freed from some of her own efforts as her other patients began to recover, came and kept the great body of Laird MacLachlan cooled as well.

  Still, Danielle discovered that she could not allow others to care for Adrien. She nursed him diligently, amazed to discover that she prayed for him fiercely as well. She didn’t know why. If he survived, she told herself, he would once again become a thorn in her side.

  Two days passed. He slipped in and out of consciousness. His gold eyes pierced into her when she would lift his head to give him water. “Go away!” he growled to her once. “You could still be in danger.”

  “I’m not in danger. I told you, I’ve had the plague.”

  “I am ordering you—”

  “And what will you do to me now, milord?” she taunted. “You cannot drag me over your knee!”

  “If I live, I will do so!” he promised.

  But his threats, at the moment, were idle, for his eyes closed. He had lost consciousness again.

  On the fifth day, he raved. He talked to someone called Carlin, and swore that he would never surrender, that he would hold the family name sacred. “If I fall, I will stand. I’ll not fail you, sire, in battle or joust. I swear it!” He fell silent again, and still. Then later, the length of him constricted, and he next cried out his dead lady’s name. “Joanna, forgive me. Sweet Jesu, my lady,
forgive me!”

  He began to shake convulsively.

  She all but crawled atop him, trying to still his fierce trembling. “Don’t you dare die on me, you wretched knave!” she told him. His eyes opened, wild, truly a flame against the gray pallor of his face. “Coward!” she charged him, close to tears. “Ah, the brave Laird MacLachlan, the Scots lad to bring down a French castle! The shadows of illness touch him, and he surrenders!”

  She was truly startled when he suddenly gripped her shoulders with an incredible strength, a force that nearly caused her to cry out. He spoke fiercely in a language she didn’t understand, and she thought it must have been his native Gaelic.

  His hold upon her eased; he fell back. His eyes closed. He inhaled and exhaled deeply, and slept again. Shaking herself, Danielle eased down to his side. She heard a soft sound behind her and turned. Daylin had come just inside the doorway and stood there almost as pale as his stricken laird, watching.

  “What did he say? Do you know?” Danielle asked him.

  Daylin nodded. “He said, ‘Never beg mercy, never surrender, not even to death’.”

  That night, Adrien was so still that she thought she had lost him. A strangled sob tore from her throat, then she gasped, for one eye opened upon her and she realized that he was still alive, that he was breathing easily; his fever had broken. He lay in the bed weak and spent, but alive.

  “You!” he whispered, trying to point a finger at her. “I told you to go.”

  Daylin came behind her. “Milord!” he cried happily. “You have beaten it, sir. Sweet Jesu, but I knew that you would!”

  Danielle backed away. “I’ll see about getting you something to eat,” she told Adrien, and hurried out. When she returned, having told the kitchen servants that some broth must be brought to Count MacLachlan, the door was bolted from inside. Daylin opened it a crack and told her that Adrien was bathing. Danielle went back to her own chamber.