Purebred (Seven Brides for Seven Bastards #3 )

by Georgia Fox

  For a moment longer she sat there, her thoughts finally settling into sensible order again. Then she carefully began to prick each one of her fingers until the bloodstain blossomed.

  * * * *

  The Baron was furious. He tossed the bloodied gown at Alonso.

  "So much for you and your brothers' wondrous capabilities," he sneered. "Her womb remains empty. The maid brought me this today."

  He could not believe it, but the blood was there. Apparent proof of his failure.

  "I might have known better than to trust the word of a d'Anzeray."

  "I know not what—"

  "Get out. You need not expect a fee for doing nothing. And you get no more chances. I've wasted enough time." The Baron fell into his chair, looking twice as old suddenly. "Damn this weather. It eats into a man's bones."

  Alonso left the chamber and went looking for Isobel. She was cutting the last of the roses from the stable wall and placing them carefully in a long woven basket.

  "I heard the news from Louvet," he said.

  She looked at him. "Yes?"

  "I'm...sorry."

  "Why? It is not your fault, to be sure. Perhaps I am infertile and will never bear a child. Certainly," she smiled, "you gave it your best try. He cannot fault you for that."

  "You are not infertile, Isobel."

  "How can you know that? How can anyone?"

  He did not know what to say. Having expected her to be more depressed, he was shocked to find her smiling and cutting roses. Perhaps she put a brave face on it, he thought.

  But he was saddened. Somehow he'd convinced himself that she bore his child already. Had he been stupid to expect it after only a few weeks?

  "In fact, the more I think of it," she added, "the more certain I am that I will never carry a child for Louvet."

  "But he never gave you a chance before. You were a maid until—"

  "Was I?"

  He stared. "I saw the blood, Isobel, when I broke your maidenhead."

  "Did you?" She widened her eyes innocently.

  "Yes, I did."

  "The eye can be deceived."

  Alonso squinted.

  "Blood can come from many places." She lifted one of the cut roses and sniffed it. "Do these not smell wonderful?" She offered it to him, thrusting it in his face.

  He was confused. She was acting oddly. Even more so than usual.

  "Yes, they smell like you do," he said finally. He took the rose from her and swore when he pricked his finger.

  "Oops." Isobel quickly set down her basket and took a kerchief from her sleeve. "Blood! Let me wipe that up for you, before it gets on your clothes. It might stain."

  Alonso frowned at his finger as she tended to it.

  "Sometimes," she muttered airily, picking up her basket again, "I'm surprised horses don't ride men."

  He would have followed her as she walked away, but Alonso was aware then of Louvet emerging from the great hall and crossing the yard toward the stables. He had to let her go.

  "You and your brothers will leave my manor by morning, d'Anzeray. There is no reason for you to stay."

  Annoyed, he glared at the Baron. "If you think your soldiers can handle the rebels that remain, that's up to you."

  "Yes, it is." Louvet flicked a disappointed glance at the vanishing figure of his young wife and then slouched off in the other direction.

  Chapter Nine

  She'd made up her mind. It was the only solution.

  Her single worry was for Jeanne, for she didn't want to leave her beloved maid behind, but she had no idea what she was walking into when she left, no idea what Jeanne would think of her new life.

  Under her roses she had collected some straw from the stables. This she made into the small figure of a man. She wove a wig of her husband's hair and tied it to the doll’s head. Then she took a scrap of cloth from one of his old tunics and wrapped it around the plump torso. It was a reasonable representation, she mused, hiding it under her pillow.

  When the maid came to her room that night, expecting to help her dress for bed, she found Isobel prepared to travel instead, a small trunk packed at the foot of the bed, her fur-lined, hooded mantle laid ready with her riding gloves.

  "My lady? What is...? Where do you go?"

  "I go with Alonso d'Anzeray when he leaves tonight."

  "But, my lady, you can't—"

  "I must, Jeanne. I cannot stay here. I am in love, as you said."

  The maid covered her face with her hands and swayed. "If you go with him what will become of you, my lady? This is terrible. You know what he is — his whole family!"

  "I know what is said of them. Rumor is so easily spread, and we cannot know what is true until we see with our own eyes. Think of all the slander my husband tells of me. That I am a witch!" She laughed. "I do not care what Alonso might be, Jeanne." The words fell easily from her lips now after she had rehearsed them all evening while packing her coffer. "But I do care about you. I want you to come with me. I will need you in that strange place."

  Jeanne's hands dropped away from her red cheeks. "But if you go there you will be shared. With all his brothers. It is the way of it, my lady. He has said that himself. That is not merely rumor."

  Yes, she had thought about this too. The fact was she very much enjoyed what Alonso and his brothers did to her. Indeed, she did not want it to stop and if he had more brothers like them...it was entirely possible she would enjoy them the same way. At least they were not jealous men, it seemed, if they were capable of sharing a woman. They were said to be violent, but from what she'd seen they kept that for the battlefield. She had only been treated tenderly by all three of them. And especially by Alonso, who had opened up a new world for Isobel the first time he touched her. She wanted to be a part of his life and his world. With him beside her she could be happy at last. Contented as she never thought possible.

  * * * *

  While he saddled his horse Alonso thought of Isobel alone in her bed. Would she dream of him at all? Her behavior that afternoon had been odd, as if she'd never hoped to be pregnant and was now unperturbed by the failure. When expressing the opinion that she might be infertile her tone had almost been jaunty.

  He could not understand it.

  Alonso wanted to take her away with him. But then what? She was a fine noblewoman from a rich family, unlike his brothers' other wives who were poor, abused women, grateful for the life they now had. What could he offer Isobel that she did not have already? His brothers' wives were happy to be taken into the family, to become wives to seven men, because their lives had improved vastly. But Isobel was different. She had all manner of luxuries and how would she take to the idea of being shared on a permanent basis?

  His brothers had already left an hour ago, and he had no one to discuss his problem with. No one to talk him out of doing something utterly mad and reckless.

  He scratched his chest where his heart ached. Damn. How could he leave her? Yet how could he ask her to change everything in her life for him?

  Suddenly there was a noise behind in the stable doorway, and he swung around.

  There was Isobel in her hooded cloak and beside her the maid, Jeanne. They carried a small coffer between them.

  "I'm coming with you."

  Alonso waited a moment to be sure he had not imagined her there. She walked forward in a drift of rose oil perfume and his horse whinnied to her in greeting. Ah, she was real then and not a mirage.

  Restraining the urge to scoop her up into his arms, he tried to be very mature and practical. "There are things we should discuss. Your husband—"

  "I am infertile and no use to him. I wrote to my father today, explaining it is all my fault. I daresay Louvet will be glad to see the back of me, especially since I take the blame on my own shoulders and leave him as the wounded party."

  "He might come after you."

  She arched an eyebrow. "Louvet? Do we talk of the same man? The man who can barely raise himself out of bed every day? The man who
could not be bothered to fuck his own bride?"

  "Then he could send someone else to fetch you."

  She smirked. "I can promise you he won't. He won't want me back again."

  "Why not?"

  "Because he will find himself...feeling better without me."

  He did not know what she meant. All that mattered was that she would come home with him.

  "Now let us go quickly," she added. "A little powdered corncockle in their ale will only keep the guards in the privy for so long."

  As they passed through the gates on their horses, he looked at the noble lady by his side, grabbed her hand from the reins, and kissed it. "Why do you come with me, throwing your fine life and all your riches away?"

  "Because I love you," she said with a wide smile, her eyes shining in the shadow of her hood. "Because I carry your son."

  He stared at her, astonished. "But I thought your flux—"

  "Thorns, roses, pricks. Blood. Good lord, you men are slow-brained."

  "'Tis lucky they have us, my lady, to knock some sense into them," little Jeanne piped up from the horse she rode behind.

  Still holding Isobel's hand, he laughed abruptly. She was carrying his child. Could any news be sweeter to his ears now?

  He squeezed her hand and she squeezed back.

  "Besides, Alonso, my love, I did not leave all my riches behind."

  It turned out that her mother had secretly given her a purse of coins and a box of jewelry on her wedding day.

  "My lady mother was not an affectionate woman by any means. I suppose it was the best she could do for me. That and a few words of advice for my wedding night." She sighed. "Which turned out to be very far removed from my own experience. I almost feel sorry for her."

  Isobel had kept her mother's gift hidden from Louvet during the months of their marriage, and now she brought it with her to begin a new life.

  "You ought to have some dowry," she added. "And it is all I can offer you."

  Again he raised her hand to his lips. "Isobel, my lady, you are giving me more than any man could want. You are giving me a son."

  He had never been more content and the future never so filled with possibilities.

  "I love you, Isobel."

  "Well, that's just as well, considering."

  * * * *

  The next day, when the Baron went to her chamber, he found the straw doll she'd left laid on her bed, with a row of pins beside it.

  No wonder his knee began to ache less already!

  "I am reprieved," he bellowed, seizing the doll in his trembling hand. "The witch has relinquished her spell. She leaves this here as proof and with her pins removed. I am freed!"

  Thus they were both freed.

  Chapter Ten

  Guillaume d'Anzeray sat up in his bed. "This is news indeed! Finally one of my sons brings home a wealthy bride."

  "Aye, but she happens to be someone else's bride," his eldest son Salvador remarked wryly. "Trust Lon."

  Their father shrugged. "That can be undone. No real man wants to keep a wife who has no taste for him and desires another."

  "The marriage is already undone," said Alonso. "Her husband thinks her infertile and does not want her back. She has written to her father and asked for the marriage to be voided. It was never consummated in any case," he grinned, "except by me."

  Guillaume looked at his son and nodded. "You have done well. She is a fine woman. Elegant, eh? Just needs feeding up a little."

  Alonso laughed. "I'm working on it."

  * * * *

  She met her two new sisters, Princesa and Aelfa, who quickly helped her and Jeanne to settle in. It was a large castle but primitive compared to those in which she'd lived before. Isobel was eager to fit in there and prove to Alonso that she could belong with his family. Jeanne, on the other hand, found almost nothing there to her satisfaction. Anyone would think she, and not her mistress, was the true daughter of the Duc de Bressange, not merely a handmaiden who was once plucked from a poor family to serve a little girl who took a fancy to her.

  Alonso's brothers, all dark and handsome, surprised Isobel by their manners, which were almost gentlemanly — at least around her. For now. She did not know how long it would last. Men generally slipped eventually, so she'd found.

  But she blossomed under Alonso's love and attention. When the time came for his brothers to share her, as was their tradition, they did so gently and with care.

  "If I had not fallen in love with my darling Alonso first," she exclaimed to her maid one morning, "I think I might not be able to choose which of my husbands I adore the most."

  Little Jeanne shook her head in disgust. "I don't know what is to become of us, my lady. We have thrown in our lot with this disreputable band of mercenaries and the good lord cannot help us now."

  "But can it not also be said, Jeanne, that the good lord put us here in the first place? If he did not want me to meet Alonso d'Anzeray, why send him to me?"

  The maid pondered this with her lips pursed and finally announced, "It was a test, my lady. A test of temptation."

  "Oh, dear." Isobel sighed as she stretched languidly in her bath. "Looks as if I failed then, doesn't it."

  Jeanne somberly agreed. "And you'll be going straight to hell come the day of judgment."

  "For now at least I still have you with me, little one," her mistress added with a wry smile. "We'll just have to make sure you do not succumb to the same wicked temptation, won't we?"

  Affronted, Jeanne squared her small shoulders. "I can assure you, my lady, I am quite safe from all that nonsense. I'm a good girl, I am."

  "Indeed. A good girl." Isobel chuckled and put a finger to her lips as a new idea came to her.

  "What's that look for, my lady?" Jeanne began folding clothes, brisk and efficient as always.

  "Oh...nothing."

  "Nothing, my arse! I've seen that look before. Don't you go getting any ideas, my lady."

  Slowly Isobel smiled. She really couldn't bear to part with little Jeanne. So if she was going to hell...

  "I mean it, my lady. Don't you go getting those thoughts in your head. Wipe that smirk off your face."

  ...She'd just have to make sure Jeanne came too. All she needed was a bit of that wicked temptation. And there was plenty of it around in her new family.

  THE END

  Note for the historians - Lady Isobel Bressange (and thus her scribe) took a slight liberty in using the song "Bryd one Brere" for this story, as the lyrics were not written until approximately 1299, more than two hundred years after she met Alonso "Blackheart" d'Anzeray. But perhaps we can allow her this naughty transgression. After all, the words may have been spoken and heard long before they were immortalized in ink for the first time by a monk at the Priory of St. James, near Exeter, England.

  Incidentally, he wrote the secular poem on the back of a papal bull - out of carelessness or mischief. Or perhaps he was the thrifty type.

  Bird on a Briar

  (Bryd One Brere) (Translation from the Middle English)

  Bird on a briar, bird, bird on a briar,

  (Man)kind is come of love, love thus craves.

  Blissful bird, have pity on me,

  Or dig, love, dig thou for me my grave.

  I am so blithe, so bright, bird on briar,

  When I see that handmaid in the hall:

  She is white of limb, lovely, true,

  She is fair and flower of all.

  Might I her at my will have,

  Steadfast of love, lovely, true,

  From my sorrow she may me save

  Joy and bliss would wear me new

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Georgia Fox has lived in many different places, including a canal boat, but sadly never in a windmill or a lighthouse. Maybe that's ne
xt! She loves good company, spicy food, thought-provoking erotica and excellent brandy. She also enjoys pushing the boundaries.

  In her life she’s done a little bit of everything and somehow lived to tell the tales. Except those she's legally bound not to spill - for now.

  She doesn’t believe in fairies, ghosts, flying saucers or conspiracy theories.

  But she still believes in love.

  Twisted Erotica Publishing

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten