The Mistress Of Normandy

by Susan Wiggs

  Turning, she spied a plump leveret some yards distant. The rabbit, heedless of Lianna’s presence, nosed idly among a stand of sweetbriar. A live target. The perfect test for the efficacy of her gun. If Longwood proved difficult, it would behoove her to learn to use it well.

  She made the sign of the cross over a small lead ball and fitted it into the barrel. Remembering Chiang’s instructions, she crumbled a cake of corned powder into the removable breech. The charge seemed too meager, so she added more, then lit a slow match of tow soaked in Peter’s salt. Fitting the smoking match into the end of the lock, she sank down on one knee and laid the shaft over her shoulder.

  Blinking against the acrid smoke, she sighted down the stock at her quarry, her hand tensing. Steady, she told herself. A gun is useless in nervous hands. She closed one eye, drew a deep breath, let exactly half of it escape her, and slowly, steadily, began pressing on the lock.

  “Poachers do favor the crossbow, pucelle, because it has the advantage of silence,” said a whisper-soft voice behind her.

  Surprised beyond caution, Lianna let her hand clutch involuntarily around the lock. The slow match delved into the firing pan.

  The ear-splitting explosion deafened her and seared her nostrils with the smell of overheated sulfur. The shaft of the gun recoiled violently, catapulting her backward against something large, warm...and breathing.

  Furious at her stupidity in overloading the charge, she scrambled away on hands and knees, prepared to vent her rage on the man-at-arms who’d dared follow her from the château.

  She turned.

  He smiled.

  The impact of her gape-mouthed surprise and his devastating smile sapped her will to rise. Bracing her hands behind her, she stared upward, her astonished gaze traveling a seemingly endless length of broad, blond man.

  He picked up the gun, set it aside, and spoke. She couldn’t hear him for the ringing in her ears. Her first thought, if something so absurd could be termed a thought, was that she’d happened upon a mythical Norse deity, a golden forest divinity returned from days of old. For surely a body of such massive power, a face of such sheer beauty, could not possibly be human.

  The vision extended a big, squarish hand. Lianna shrank back, afraid that if she touched him, he’d shimmer away like a will-o’-the-wisp from the marshes. His lips were moving; still she could not hear. He cocked his head to one side, his expression mild, quizzical, and perhaps a little amused.

  This was no vengeful warrior god from the North, but a more forgiving creature. An angel, perhaps...no, an archangel, for surely only one of the very highest rank could be favored with that clean, powerful bone structure, the chaste innocence that imbued his beautiful smiling mouth and eyes with such heavenly character.

  His eyes were not simply green, she noted wildly, but the pure color of a new leaf shot through by sunlight. In their depths she perceived the pain and devotion of the saints in the colored windows of a chapel.

  He spoke again, and this time she heard: “Don’t be afraid of me.” He reached down, grasped her by the waist, and pulled her effortlessly to her feet.

  In that instant she realized her reckless flight of fantasy for what it was. His hold was firm, his voice a rich velvet ripple over her scattered senses. It was a man’s body pressing against hers, a man’s voice caressing her ears.

  Alarmed, she pulled back. “Who are you?”

  He hesitated, just for the upbeat of her heart. “Rand,” he said simply. “And you, pucelle?”

  She, too, hesitated. Pucelle, he called her. A maid. What would this man say if he knew he was speaking to the Demoiselle de Bois-Long? If he were a brigand, he’d consider her a valuable hostage. And if he were an Englishman... She dismissed the notion. The stranger’s French was not corrupted by the broad, flat tones of a foreigner.

  Absently she tapped her chin. The novelty of anonymity intrigued her. The necessity of it, because Lazare had destroyed any trust she might have in a stranger, made her say only, “Lianna.”

  “Your face is completely black, Lianna.”

  Vaguely annoyed at the mixture of humor and censure dancing in his leaf-green eyes, she lifted her hand, touched her cheek, and looked at her fingertips. Black as soot. At least the concealing powder hid the hot blush pouring into her cheeks.

  “I...mismeasured the charge,” she said.

  “So it seems.” He took her hands and drew her down to sit on a bed of dry bracken. “I know little of such things.”

  “Nom de Dieu, but I do,” she said with self-contempt. “I should have trusted the precision of science instead of my own eyes.”

  “Alors, pucelle, how does one so fair possess a knowledge so deadly?”

  “My...father was a gunner. He indulged my interest.”

  He frowned at the blackened gun. “Then your father was a fool.”

  She thrust up her chin but resisted the urge to defend her father and sink deeper into untruths.

  “Hold still,” he said. “I’ll clean you off.”

  She was never one to obey orders, but, unrecovered from the shock of the explosion and the surprise of meeting this mesmerizing stranger, she sat unmoving. He reached beneath his mail shirt, pulled out a small cloth bundle, and unwrapped a loaf of bread. With the cloth, he began cleansing her face. His light, gentle strokes felt soothing, but the odd intimacy of the gesture revived her anger.

  “Why did you sneak up on me? You ruined my aim.”

  “That,” he said, brushing her chin, “was my intent. The leveret was a doe, and nursing.”

  She scowled. “How could you tell that?”

  “Her shape. She was not as plump as she looked, only appeared so because her dugs were full.”

  Lianna prayed he’d not yet revealed enough of her face to discern her new blush.

  “You wouldn’t have wished to slay a nursing mother, would you?”

  “Of course not. I just hadn’t thought of it.”

  He held out the loaf to her. “Bread?”

  “Thank you, no. I wasn’t hunting my dinner.”

  “Blood sport, then?” he asked, mildly accusing.

  “Nom de Dieu, I am not a wanton killer. I merely wished to test my gun on a moving target.”

  “I doubt Mistress Rabbit would have appreciated the difference.”

  She shrugged. “I probably would have missed anyway. My aim is imprecise, the weapon passing crude.”

  Like a parent wiping away a child’s tear, he daubed the delicate flesh beneath her left eye. “Your eyes are silver, pucelle.”

  “Gray.”

  “Silver, like the underside of a cloud at dawn.”

  “Gray, like the stone walls of a keep during a siege.”

  “Argue not, pucelle. I’ve a sense about such things. Stone does not capture the light and reflect it, while your eyes—” he cleansed beneath her right one “—most assuredly do.”

  * * *

  Bit by bit, Rand uncovered the face beneath the soot. As he worked, his amazement and fascination grew like a bud warmed by the sun. He’d come to survey the area for brigands and have a glimpse of his barony. Instead he’d found a beautiful girl and a deadly weapon, two surprises and one of them curiously welcome.

  Moving aside a pale lock of hair, he brushed the last of the soot from her cheeks. Black dust clung stubbornly to her brows and lashes, but at last her face was revealed to him. The cloth dropped from his fingers as he stared.

  Sitting in the nest of her blue homespun surcoat, she stared back with huge, unblinking silver eyes. Her face was a delicate, pale oval shaped by fragile bones and small, fine features. Despite a lingering shadow of soot, he could discern that her skin was the ivory of a lily, with the shade of apple blossoms at her cheeks and lips. His body quickened at the sight.

  An unexpected thunderbolt of awareness struck him. He desired this girl; he burned for her with a yearning Jussie had never aroused. Calling up all the strength of his vow of chastity, he resisted the idea that they were alone, unch
aperoned, far from anyone else.

  It was not so much her maidenly beauty that called to him, but the expressiveness in her features. Her eyes held a deep intelligence yet seemed haunted by shadows in their silver depths. Her mouth was full and firm, yet the way she worried her lower lip with her small white teeth hinted at vulnerability.

  Years of celibacy faded beneath the onslaught of vivid desire. Rand laid his big hands on her cheeks, letting his thumbs skim in slow, gentle circles. “I’ve never seen a face like yours before, Lianna,” he said softly. “At least not while I was awake.”

  Alarm flared in her quicksilver eyes. She drew back. “You are not from around here. You speak like a Gascon.”

  He smiled. His father’s legacy. “So I am a Gascon, at least part of me is. And you are from around here. You speak like a Norman.”

  “Are you a brigand? Do you burn, pillage, and rape?”

  He chuckled. “Preferably not in that order. Are you a poacher?”

  She stiffened. “Certainly not. I’ve every right to hunt the lands of Bois-Long.”

  Suspicion shot through Rand. “You hail from Bois-Long?”

  “I do.”

  Sweet lamb of God, Rand mused, she’s from Longwood. He had to duck his head to hide a flash of curiosity. A gunner’s daughter, she’d said, yet she’d have to be of noble birth to hunt. Despite her homespun garb, her speech and manners marked her as no one’s servant.

  “Your father was a gunner,” he said slowly. “Was he also a man of rank?”

  “No.” She eyed him warily.

  “You’re well spoken.”

  “I am well schooled.”

  “What position do you hold at Bois-Long?”

  “I am...companion to the chatelaine.”

  He nodded. “I see. It’s common enough for a gentlewoman to surround herself with younger girls, common for those girls to learn polite accomplishments.” One eyebrow lifted. “Gunnery is hardly a polite accomplishment.”

  “But far more useful than spinning and sewing.”

  “And far more dangerous. Does your mistress know of your experiments with guns?”

  A small, tight smile. “Certes.”

  “She approves?”

  A regal nod. “Most heartily.”

  Rand loosed a long, weary sigh. What manner of woman was his bride-to-be that she’d let this girl, clearly little older than a child, dabble in weaponry?

  Lianna was staring hard at him. He sensed his questions had aroused her suspicions and so left off his queries. Instinctively he’d kept his identity from the girl. Now he was glad. Soon enough she’d learn he was Enguerrand Fitzmarc, the English knight come to claim the demoiselle and the château. Until then he merely wanted to be Rand to her.

  “You’re trespassing,” she said matter-of-factly, pointing to a line of blazed poplars in the distance.

  “So I am,” he replied, looking at the boundary of trees. He took her hand and helped her to her feet. Her hand felt small but strong and seemed to fit his own like a warm little bird in a nest.

  “Come,” he said, “I want to be certain your gunshot didn’t frighten my horse all the way to Gascony.” Dropping her hand, he bent to retrieve her cloak and apron. The weight of the apron surprised him. He peered into the pocket, then stared at Lianna. “I don’t know why I expected to find winter stonecrop blossoms in here,” he said. “You’re a walking arsenal.”

  She picked up her gun and stood while he tied the apron at her waist and draped the cloak about her shoulders. He let his hands linger there. “Your mistress is wrong to allow you to venture forth with a gun.” Silently he swore to stop Lianna once he took possession of the castle.

  “My mistress understands the necessity of it.”

  “Necessity?”

  Her little wooden sabots kicked up her hem as she walked by his side. “We’ve had no peace since Edward the Third crossed the leopards of England with the lilies of France.”

  What a curious mixture of innocence and worldliness she was. At once fragile, forceful, and forthright, she awakened powerful desires in him. She looked like a girl immortalized in a troubadour’s lay, yet her behavior contradicted the image. Jussie, he recalled, had never concerned herself with affairs of state.

  “France is more at war with herself than with England,” he said. “King Charles is drooling mad, and the noble houses bicker like fishwives while the peasants starve.”

  “And will subjecting ourselves to Henry’s usurpation improve our lot?”

  “Better a sane Englishman than a mad Frenchman on the throne,” Rand said.

  She stopped walking, whirled to face him. “Under whose banner will you fight? What cause do you champion?”

  He swallowed, then affected a rakish grin. “Widows and orphans, of course.”

  She sniffed. “A convenient reply.”

  Discussing intelligent subjects with a woman, he thought, was not altogether unpleasant. “You speak ably of affairs that most men know nothing of.”

  “I’m not one to hide myself away and pretend ignorance. ’Tis exactly what the English god-dons would like, and I’ll not oblige them.”

  It’s not what every English god-don would like, he thought, watching the sunlight dance in the silvery mantle of her hair.

  They found his horse grazing placidly on salt grass in a glade of water beeches. Nearby stood a weathered stone marker, its four arms of equal length marking it as St. Cuthbert’s cross. The horse looked up, ears pricked. His dappled flanks gleamed in the heatless light of the March sun.

  Lianna stopped walking to stare at the hard-muscled percheron, then at Rand. “I think you should explain who you are,” she said. Her gaze slipped from the top of his blond head to the spurs on his mud-caked boots. “You are simply dressed, yet that horse of yours is no plowman’s rouncy.”

  Inwardly he winced at the distrust in her tone. She was too straightforward to be easily deceived. “Charbu was a gift.” His hand strayed to the lump created by the amulet beneath his mail shirt. Henry had given him Charbu as one of many gifts and another thread in the web of obligation he’d woven around Rand.

  Lianna set down her gun and approached the horse. “Charbu,” she said softly, stroking the handsome blazed face. “A fine, strong name. Tell me, Charbu, about your master. Does he hail from Gascony, as he claims? Does he ride you on raids with a band of écorcheurs?”

  The horse whickered gently and tossed its head. Momentarily captivated by the sight of the small girl with her cheek pressed against the horse’s neck, Rand stood speechless. At length he found his voice and strode forward. “If you think me a brigand, why aren’t you fainting or screaming?”

  “I never faint,” she replied smugly. “And rarely scream. And you’ve not answered me.”

  “I am a...traveling knight, Lianna. I swear to you I do not ride with brigands. But I would like to ride with you. Let me take you to Bois-Long.”

  “No,” she said quickly. “I think it best you stay clear of the château.”

  Why? he wondered. Did the chatelaine treat trespassers harshly? God, did she mistreat Lianna? He touched a strand of her hair; it felt like spun silk. “Is Bois-Long such an inhospitable place?”

  “I fear it has become so,” she replied, her eyes brimming with unspoken regret.

  Rand felt a great urge to fold her against him then, to surround her with the tenderness that had been blossoming in his heart since he’d first laid eyes on her. “At least let me take you partway,” he suggested.

  She balked; he persisted and, finally, prevailed. Her gun across the saddlebow, her arms clasped around his waist, she rode behind him and they talked. He learned that she often saved crumbs from her breakfast to feed a family of swallows that nested in the castle battlements. He told her that he invented songs to play on his harp. She confessed to a passion for comfits, and he admitted to holding frequent, absurd discourses with his horse.

  Then she was silent for a long time. Glancing over his shoulder, Rand asked, �
��What are you thinking, Lianna?”

  Softly, so softly he could barely hear, she said, “I’m thinking that you’ve come too late.”

  The soft throb of sadness in her voice made something inside him ache. His hand stole to hers, cradling it. “Too late for what?”

  She withdrew her hand. “For...nothing. It matters not.”

  Although curious about her melancholy, he asked no more of her. If she yearned for a suitor, he could not be the one to court her.

  Presently they came to a coppice of elm trees, and Lianna asked to dismount. Rand leapt to the ground and, grasping her at the waist, helped her down.

  “Lianna?” he murmured, his voice deep and husky. He placed his fingers under her chin and raised her face to his. “Have a care for yourself, pucelle.”

  “I will. And you, too, in your travels.”

  Their eyes met and held for a breathless moment. Rand lifted a wisp of pale hair from her cheek and set it aside. She smiled, and her smile made everything inside him clamor with joy and fear. God, he thought, will she look at me so when she learns who I am, why I’m here?

  His hands came up to frame her face, thumbs tracing the lyrical lines of her cheekbones. Slowly, like a man moving through a dream, he leaned down, drawn by a force that resisted every harsh rule that had been schooled into him. Their lips touched lightly at first, searching, tasting, and then their mouths fused into a kiss of desperate abandon. High, shattering waves of yearning crested within Rand, lifting his soul. He wanted to fill himself with this brave, winsome creature who smelled of soap and sulfur and who tasted of springtime.

  His vows began to waver, but guilt bored a hole in his passion. Like it or not, he was betrothed to another woman. In kissing Lianna, he was betraying his obligation to the demoiselle and belittling his years of devotion to Jussie.

  Slowly, unwillingly, he released her and drew his fingers from the shining white-blond hair that cloaked her shoulders. She wore a look of bewildered wonderment.

  * * *

  “I’d...best...go,” Lianna said unsteadily, feeling her every nerve vibrate with exultation. She put her fingers to her lips, to hold the taste of him there, to brand his touch on her memory. Her captivated heart wanted to beg him to come with her, but her cautious mind warned her off. Although a victim of Lazare’s treachery, she was a married woman. Trysting with this stranger was the act of an adulteress. One day, she thought hopelessly. Had I met him one day before, my life would have been different. This Gascon knight would not stray from her chamber, would not deny her an heir, a child. Quelling a surge of sorrow, she said, “I suppose you ought to get back to your travels.”