by Betina Krahn
When she called his name softly and ran her fingers through his hair, all she got was a heavy, nasal sigh that sounded like a snore. She realized he’d fallen asleep, and warmth bloomed in her chest. He was exhausted. She smiled and gently stroked his hair. There was always next time.
Somewhere in the middle of the night, “next time” became “now.”
She had fallen asleep beside him, with his head on her shoulder, and awakened in the moonlit chamber to the feel of him nuzzling her shoulder and running his hand over her naked hip.
“You see? Marriage does have its compensations,” she said, stretching languidly.
“You won’t be content until you’ve reformed all of my opinions, will you?” he said, dragging his palm in circular motions over the tip of her breast.
“Oh, I think I could be content with less. Especially if it was more of that. Or this.” She reached up to give him a long, succulent kiss. “Or more of this.” She feathered a hand down his front where it splayed across his pelvis and then curled around his hardening flesh.
“More. Oh, yesss,” he groaned.
In a heartbeat he caught her hands in his and was stretching her arms above her head as he slid his body over hers. His kisses provoked a response more quickly this time, as if her desires had not entirely cooled from their previous loving. Arching above her, he teased her body with the purposeful movement of his own against it. Soon she writhed beneath him, both groaning and laughing at her own impatience, insisting that he end this wicked torture.
As he entered her, she almost heard the steam shooting through her veins, then quickly starting to build again. He concentrated his weight between her thighs and soon found the center of her pleasure. Quivering, she met his thrusts and began to direct them, reveling in the now-familiar tension they built in her loins. As the intensity of their loving deepened, she felt herself beginning to rise on a narrowing spiral of pleasure.
Each breath, each kiss, each stroke propelled her higher, further … and finally sent her hurtling through a bright, brittle barrier that shattered in each of her five senses. It was as if she had broken through the limits of her own body, expanded it, transcended it. And suddenly he was there with her, floating free, suffused with pleasure, and intermingled in both body and soul.
For a few moments she wondered if her head or heart had burst … if she were still alive. Slowly her senses cleared, and she was aware of him all around her and of a delicious heaviness in her body. It was like floating in a sea of rich wine. Just as she was succumbing to that marvelous exhaustion, he shifted to the bed beside her and she looked up at him. He was smiling. His eyes were dark-centered rings of golden bronze, glowing with satisfaction, his mouth was curved into a soft smile, and his handsome features were relaxed. It was the most beautiful face she had ever seen.
“Promise me,” she said, snuggling against his chest, “that you’ll let me see that smile someday outside our bed.”
“If you could try to make me this happy outside our bed, you would most certainly see it. Now, it’s your turn to promise … that you’ll never tease me like that in public again.”
She gave a laugh that he felt like a hum through the wall of his chest.
“If you continue to make me this happy inside our bed, I’ll have no need to resort to such measures.”
His mesmerizing smile broadened.
“Then I promise I shall devote my whole life to it.”
As Chloe drifted into a deep, restorative sleep, Hugh watched her, feeling oddly wakeful despite the fact that his body was replete and utterly at peace. He wanted to absorb her, to savor the wonder of every moment he spent with her. In all his life he couldn’t remember having anything that meant as much to him as she did. She was his wife, his woman, his love … his life. She seemed to understand him better than he understood himself, and—God knew—she was more forgiving of his flaws than he was himself. He thought of the way she arrived at Sennet and didn’t murmur when she was burdened with responsibilities that would have given even the sternest of chatelaines pause. His wretched father had accorded her a respect that was probably unique in his dealings with females. And if loutish Randall of Sennet so honored her, it could only be because the depths of her intellect, character, and spirit were too obvious to miss.
He combed his fingers through her hair and stroked her cheek with the back of his hand, thinking how blind he had been at first, how unwilling to see. In his heart he renewed in earnest that casual vow to devote his life to her happiness. His whole life, all of his earthly days … it was a small price to pay for all she was bringing to his life, to their life together.
His whole life, all of his earthly days.
A cooling draft of remembrance washed over him with that phrase, and behind it came a gripping chill of reality. He had just promised her his heart, his devotion, his life. That rash and ill-considered vow suddenly pierced him to the soul. His heart was already promised. His faithfulness, his constancy, and his love had been dedicated long ago … to a very different kind of life … to a life of piety and scholarship and contemplation …
Daybreak found Hugh standing over Chloe’s sleeping form, trembling as he pulled on his garments. His eyes burned for the comfort of tears and his heart pounded as if he were in a race for his life. And according to the things he had been taught for most of his life, he was.
The whole canon of his long-held beliefs had been turned upside down and inside out in just over a fortnight. A lifetime of study and prayer and certainty had been eclipsed by a few short weeks in the company of one tempting and beguiling female.
How could such a thing have happened? How could he have proved to be so weak and vulnerable against the onslaught of doubt and temptation? In his arrogance and pride he had once declared that greatest of biblical patriarchs, Adam, a fool for placing momentary pleasures and passing desires above his duty to God. Now he saw with frightening clarity how such a thing might have happened. He, himself, had just taken a bite from that same apple.
He backed away from the bed, his hands shaking badly and his blood draining from his head to leave him feeling a little sick. He had to get away … had to find a way to make it right … had to recant his abandonment of his sacred obligations. And there was only one place where he could find refuge from the demands of the world and chart a course that would lead him back to the arms of true faith and duty.
That same night, Bromley entered the king’s lamp-lit privy chamber with the captain of the king’s castle guard. His grave expression befitted the news he brought to the king and his closest advisors.
“Our spies, Highness … they found a Frenchman in London … a man with information to sell.”
“What sort of information?” Edward braced as he watched his loyal treasurer grapple with what could only be bad news.
“The sort that says the Duke of Avalon’s daughters … are not his daughters.”
The words caused a pall of silence to fall over the chamber. Edward leaned forward in his chair. “Is there proof of this?”
“Our informer has with him a man who claims to be one of the maids’ uncles.” Bromley scowled. “He charges that the maids are impostors … orphans and excess females sent to the convent out of penury. Some may have been bastards … but they were certainly not the good duke’s.”
There was a long, anxious moment before the king responded.
“I want to see this man with my own two eyes,” Edward declared.
Bromley nodded. “I thought you might.”
Moments later the king and his councillors were shown down the stairs of the round tower and through a heavily guarded doorway, to a sizable underground chamber lined with shelves, crates, and barrels. The two men waiting inside were forced by guardsmen down onto their knees before the king. In the flickering lamplight Edward approached and stood evaluating the pair. One was an aging knight with battle scars on both his outdated armor and his pain-lined face. The other was a younger, more vigorous man with an ere
ct bearing and a solid, muscular build. Bromley indicated that he was Henri Valoir, the informer. Though he wore no armor, Valoir’s hands bore calluses that spoke of a familiarity with blade weapons.
Their story, as told by Valoir, was just as Bromley had related it: the Duke of Avalon had concocted a plan to hold back much of his fortune from the ransom and strike a blow at the English king in one fell swoop. He ordered the abbess of the renowned convent to provide him with maids to adopt and send to Edward in place of coin and goods. He planned to return to France, secure his hidden fortune, and then rally what was left of the local barons to resist Edward’s occupation of his province.
“He will say that the fool king of the English … has wedded his favorites to French putaines.” He scowled, searching for an English equivalent. “How you say … draggle-tails … trollops.” He averted his eyes from Edward’s fury. “He wants the English to be … the cause of laughter through all of France.”
Pounding his fist into his hand, Edward paced away and struggled visibly with the betrayal of a man he had just spent the better part of a week entertaining as his guest. Had the canny duke been congratulating himself all the while on the success of a scheme to humiliate his one-time captor throughout France? He strode back to the pair and grabbed Valoir by the tunic.
“Who are you? Why should I believe a word of this?” he demanded.
“I was once a knight in the duke’s garrison. I helped guard his castle and defend his borders. Quiz me on his household and I will prove truthful.” Valoir crossed himself and kissed a small wooden cross hanging around his neck. “He proved as treacherous a lord to me as he was a hostage to you. I was falsely accused of disloyalty and dismissed from his service. There are those in your French lands who do not wish to suffer more than they already have. Fearing what will be done when the duke’s treachery is uncovered, they send me”—he gestured to his companion—“with Jean de Mornay as proof.”
“Who are you?” Edward demanded of the older man.
“A knight, once in the service of the House of Burgundy,” the old soldier declared through the translation of the Duke of Bedford. “Brother to a landed vassal of that province, Charles de Mornay by name. My brother died and his family fell on hard times. His wife, she sent her youngest daughter, Lisette, to the Convent of the Brides of Virtue, hoping they could find a future for her. She is no longer at the convent. I believe Lisette was one of the maids you married to your nobles.”
Edward studied the man’s careworn face and—grimly recalling that one of the maids was indeed named Lisette—made his decision. Turning to Bromley, he ordered, “Send for a clerk and set down in writing all the details this man can recall about the Mornay family and lineage.” Then he looked back to the Duke of Bedford. “Where is Avalon now?”
“Probably just making London, Highness,” Bedford said. “He can’t have had time to reach the coast.”
“I want him stopped and brought back to Windsor immediately. He must not be allowed to leave English soil.”
“Depend on it, Highness. I shall see to it myself.” Bedford bowed and withdrew while Edward then turned to the captain of the castle guard.
“Send detachments of men to Ledding, Chester, Louden-Day, Candle, and Sennet. Use Bromley’s and Norwich’s men if you must. The maids who were presented and wedded as the Duke of Avalon’s daughters are to be placed under guard and brought to court as quickly as possible.”
Chloe awakened and stretched luxuriously and gazed at the light coming overhead. Smiling at the sight of the rumpled bed linen and the thought of how it came to be so, she rose and washed and dressed. Forgoing her morning prayers this once, she hurried out of the chamber to find Hugh.
He wasn’t in the hall and his observant little sisters declared that he had not yet appeared to break his fast. Perhaps he took a morning ride, she said, heading out to the stable to find him. Moments later she stood looking at his horse’s empty stall and frowned. An aged stableman, shuffling by, was pressed to reveal that Hugh had come to the stable early, saddled his horse himself, and ridden off at a fast clip.
“Where was he bound?” she asked. “Did he say?”
“Somethin’ about some saint … Bernard, I think,” the fellow muttered, moving on.
Disappointed and feeling uneasy at the way Hugh had disappeared without a word to her after the events of the night just past, she returned to the hall and asked the earl if he knew where Hugh might have gone.
“One of the stablemen said he mentioned a saint of some kind. Is there a church of some kind nearby?” She tried not to let her sigh be too obvious. “He is very faithful about making confession.”
The earl went perfectly still and looked at her with unsettling intensity.
“What saint?” the earl demanded.
“I’m not sure. Saint Bertram … or Bernard …”
The earl blanched.
“Saint Barnard’s.” He lowered his tankard, glowering, and uttered words that struck terror into Chloe’s heart. “It’s not a church, it’s a monastery.”
Hugh didn’t return that evening. Or the next morning. Or the next day. By evening everyone in the household was treading quietly around Chloe, even the termagant trio. They stared at her and whispered to each other, as if trying to figure out why anyone would be upset over the absence of their prickly and judgmental older brother. As Chloe’s suffering grew more visible, they abandoned their search for reasons and simply accepted that she had an inexplicable desire for his companionship and was suffering in his absence. Their sympathetic looks only heaped coals of blame on her head.
She knew, in her heart of hearts, that his flight was her fault. If she hadn’t pushed, if she hadn’t demanded, if she hadn’t forced his hand that night, he might still be at Sennet.
But as she stood in their darkened chamber, staring through prisms of tears at the bed where she had made him promise to bed and pleasure her, she realized that he had been withdrawing from a life with her well before her reckless bid for his passions. She had deluded herself into thinking that she had a chance at his heart, that he had grown and broadened his thinking, that the bonds of passion and tenderness developing between them proved that his desire to escape into the religious life had changed. But at best, as he lay in her arms promising her he would devote himself to her, his heart had been divided.
A short while later, he had risen from their bed feeling sullied and unclean, and fled straight to the purifying arms of the righteous and abstemious brothers. No doubt he was lying facedown on the floor of some chapel at that very moment, confessing to the saints and hosts of Heaven the depths of his “sin” with her.
A noise behind her caused her to turn, and she saw the earl standing in the doorway. He looked so much like Hugh that for a moment her heart leapt in her chest. Immediately she chided herself for her stubborn hope.
“He isn’t coming back, is he?” she asked.
The earl wagged his head sadly.
“Who can say what he’ll do? I knew he was stubborn. And I knew he hated both me and the notion that he would have to take up the reins of Sennet someday. But until now I never thought he was a damned fool.”
Chloe cried herself to sleep that night and rose the next morning to go about her duties in something of a haze. She walked into a servant carrying wooden trenchers up to the hall and caused him to drop them. She realized she had forgotten a tally strip on which to do a cellar inventory, and when she retrieved one from the steward’s chamber, she couldn’t recall what she had intended to do with it. She had to ask the cooks three times what they were making for dinner, even though she had planned the menu herself two days before.
Thus it wasn’t surprising that it took a few moments for the words to penetrate, midday, when Lizabeth came running to the newly finished laundry to tell her that someone had arrived and she was needed.
“Hugh? Is he home?” She picked up her skirts and ran before hearing the answer. Her hopes, with their treacherous tenacity, were
quickly dashed.
There were a dozen armed soldiers on horseback arrayed before the doors to the hall, facing the earl, who stood on the steps rod-straight with his fists on his waist and wearing a combative expression.
“What is it? What’s happened?” she asked, trying to catch her breath while praying it wasn’t news that something had happened to Hugh.
“Lady Chloe of Sennet?” the leader of the soldiers demanded, scowling down at her.
“Yes.”
“You’re to come with us.” He produced a rolled parchment and extended it toward her. Seeing the earl’s barely contained anger and sensing the need to proceed slowly, she made no move to accept it.
“Come with you? Where?”
“To Windsor Castle, milady. You are under arrest.”
The thick stone walls of the monastery of Saint Barnard kept out blustery cold in winter and searing sun in summer. But as they did so they also banned bright light and fresh breezes and all sense that there was a world outside that formidable bulwark.
Inside the enclosure it was chilled and damp … musty with the scents of moisture-laden books, woolen robes, and unvented male humors. The cheap tallow lamps that hung in the dark chambers and corridors gave off light and soot equally, and added another familiar but not altogether agreeable smell to the melange. Everything seemed colorless, austere, and self-abnegating … which was as it should be in an atmosphere meant to focus the mind and spirit on contact with and the revelation of God.
The solemn demeanor of the place matched Hugh’s mood perfectly; he had no desire for either comfort or companionship. The call of the bells every three hours was familiar enough to be welcoming and indisposing enough to seem penitential, and the absence of personal interaction relieved him of the humiliation of having to admit to the brothers his lapse of religious devotion.
On the morning after Hugh arrived, the abbot called him into his personal solar and demanded to know the latest news from court before finally getting around to the topic of why he had come.