Almost Innocent (14 page)

Guy, fortunately, seemed to understand her reluctance, because he fetched the animal himself. “Do you feel able to ride, Magdalen?” His voice was as calm and gentle as if the last blood-sodden half hour had never happened.

Magdalen considered. If she said she did not, then he would take her up before him. But somehow she knew that he did not wish to do that, and it was her fault that he did not wish to. She offered him a shaky smile.

“Yes, I am quite able to ride, my lord.”

It was such a pathetically gallant little smile that for a moment he was tempted to ignore the dictates of caution and scoop her up as he had been used to do so naturally in the old days. But those days were long gone, and Magdalen de Bresse was now the embodiment of dangerous temptation. He didn’t know how or when it had happened, only that it had.

“You have a true Plantagenet’s courage, Magdalen of Lancaster,” he declared with calm approval, and lifted her onto her palfrey.

Magdalen did not find his approval an adequate substitute for the comfort of the physical proximity she craved, but she accepted it as she must.

M
AGDALEN SAT AT
the high table in the great vaulted hall of the Savoy Palace, looking in vain for Guy. He had escorted her to her apartments when they had completed their limping journey earlier and left her with her women and the advice that she take a little wine as restorative. It had been sensible and concerned advice, but she had felt dismissed, her part in the afternoon’s drama discounted. There had been no message from Edmund, either, and his squire, with some anxiety, had told her that his lord had ridden off alone when the final melee had begun.

She had sent one of her pages to the duchess with the request that she be excused attendance at the banquet in the great hall that evening. The request had been denied, not by the duchess but by John of Gaunt, who insisted upon her presence at the high table. She could only assume that the duke wished to emphasize Edmund’s punishment by making his absence all the more noticeable with his wife’s solitary presence.

It had done little to improve her humor. She had said nothing about the attack on the road and wondered if she should have pleaded that as an excuse for her absence. Surely the duke would have been more considerate of her well-being, if he knew of her ordeal. She assumed she was to have been abducted for ransom, a common enough crime since the companies of brigands and mercenaries had begun their reign of terror both in France and England—a direct consequence of the war
that taught armed men to live by plunder in war, and in periods of truce threw them upon the land, unemployed and unpaid.

His grace, however, was well aware of the incident. Guy had wasted no time in telling him of it, and of his suspicions that it was part and parcel of Edmund’s trouble at the tournament. There had been no time before the start of the banquet for extended discussion, and Lancaster now sat in his carved chair, deep in thought, his eyes occasionally flickering sideways to the still figure of his daughter. The chair at her left was empty, and she was making no attempt to converse with anyone else at the table. Despite her stillness and the unmistakable expression of an annoyed Plantagenet on her face, she seemed to exude her mother’s vibrancy. There was a sensuality about face and form, a quivering about her that made a man think of lusty tumbling, of limbs white and naked, twined in passion. But there was something else, too, something Isolde had not had, and John of Gaunt could not fail to recognize and acknowledge it. There was a straightness to her, an honesty that against his will tugged at him.

Magdalen played with a morsel of goose patty, pushing it around her bowl with her trencher of white bread. She responded monosyllabically to attempts to draw her into conversation and was soon left to her own reflections. She knew she was not generally liked by the duchess’s ladies. An isolated childhood, broken only by the few months in the de Gervais household, had left her with a certain shyness, a reluctance for intimacy, an inability to engage in the gossip, frequently malicious, that passed for conversation among the women at court. She also knew that her anomalous position as the clearly disliked, suddenly revealed daughter of the duke left people unsure how to treat her. They did not treat her with the reverence accorded Lancaster’s other children, the ladies Elizabeth and Philippa, and his heir, young Henry Bolingbroke, but
neither dared they offer her the least discourtesy. Nevertheless, her history was a matter for fascinated speculation.

What Magdalen had failed to notice was that the ladies were also aware of the effect she had on the men of the court. One would have to be blind to fail to see the eyes that followed her, to fail to notice how there was always someone at her elbow, eager to help her mount, to pick up a glove, to proffer a new-picked bloom for her hair. Such attentions did not make the ladies any more drawn to her, although the recipient seemed blithely unaware of them. But then, no one else knew that for the Lady Magdalen only one man existed, and that man was not her husband.

Magdalen took another sip of her wine, letting her gaze roam over the hall below. Chamberlains were directing new arrivals to tables appropriate to their rank, and the guests threaded their way between scurrying varlets carrying laden trays of roast meats, boar, venison, swan, all thickly smothered in slightly sweet sauces that disguised any detectable taint, inevitable in the midsummer heat. Jugs of mead and wine, shipped in quantities from the English fief of Aquitaine, were passed down the tables, and voices were rising commensurately, drowning the minstrels in the gallery above.

A herald’s alerting note came from the great double doors. “My Lord Guy de Gervais, Earl of Redeforde, enters here,” the marshal cried, and Guy strode unhurriedly into the hall, followed by a squire and a page. He looked magnificent, his powerful body clad in a tunic of black and gold, the dragon of Gervais embroidered on his shoulder, a massive gold belt at his hip, golden spurs at his heels. Heads turned at his entrance, and servitors scuttled out of his path. He smiled and greeted acquaintances as he came up to the dais, where he knelt briefly before his lord, offering a word of apology for his tardiness.
The duke merely smiled at his favorite and bade him get to his supper.

Guy came immediately to the vacant chair beside Magdalen. “Since I stood proxy for your husband at his betrothal, I trust it will not come amiss if I take his place now, my lady,” he said.

It was a simple pleasantry, designed to lessen her discomfiture at the obvious emptiness of her husband’s seat, but he felt the charge jolt through her as he sat down beside her. He could feel the heat of her body, smell the scent of her skin, and as her head turned toward him, he read again the message in her eyes, clear and determined, saw the eager promise in her parted lips, felt within himself the deep sensual throb of her body. His skin felt as if the blade of a knife had been passed, sharp-edged, across it, lifting the hairs in an assurance of danger and excitement.

But he was accustomed to danger. “You are recovered from your ordeal, I trust, madame,” he said neutrally, turning to wash his hands in the bowl held at his elbow by his page.

“I suffered no hurt,” she said. “I was afraid you had perhaps discovered some injury yourself when you were absent from the table.”

He gestured to his page to fill his goblet. “Nay, madame, not I. But I remained with poor Dick while the apothecary set the bone. The lad had an uncomfortable time of it.”

“Why, what has happened, Lord de Gervais?” Lady Maude asked, and everyone within earshot craned to hear the story.

“We were attacked by brigands,” Guy said with a chuckle that sounded perfectly natural as he helped himself to meat from the platter held by his squire. “It would seem they had it in mind to carry off the Lady Magdalen for ransom.”

There was much clamoring for the story, and he told
it succinctly but with the narrative skills acquired during training in his youth. Magdalen contributed nothing, since no contribution was asked of her. But as she sat in her silence, the certainty came to her that something was being withheld here. Her eyes drifted over the hall again. She had told Edmund’s squire to bring her word as soon as his lord returned, but so far Carl’s blunt, square face had not appeared.

“Your appetite is sadly lacking this even,” Guy observed as Magdalen waved away a basket of boiled raisins and a platter of almond sweetmeats. He knew of old that she had a sweet tooth, and he had often teased the child Magdalen over her passion for nutmeg custards and marchpane.

“I do not know where Edmund is,” she said, speaking her thought with customary directness. “I feel that something has happened, and we must send out men to search for him.”

“Nonsense,” he said, nibbling on a honeyed almond. Yet this concern for her husband relieved him somewhat, enabling him to put aside that disturbing moment earlier—that moment, and the others that had occurred on this troublesome day. “He is sulking, somewhere.” Probably in the city stews, he thought but did not say. It would be the natural recourse for any young man in similar circumstances—one he would have taken himself before Gwendoline had given him a distaste for such coarse dishes.

He glanced at Lady Maude. The duchess had intimated that if he wished for the prize it was his for the asking. The lady had good Flemish blood mixed with the Saxon, and had given birth to a full-term child in her previous marriage, so it was to be assumed she would bear him children. She was well dowered, and the duchess had promised to augment the dowry with an annual pension of five hundred pounds. But there was something about the florid complexion, the certain dullness in the flat green eyes, the broadening of the
hips, the looseness to the flesh beginning to bulge at upper arm and around her midriff, from which he recoiled. His eyes drifted sidways to his neighbor. The comparison did not bear making.

“I do not believe he is sulking,” Magdalen declared, her mouth taking a stubborn turn. Abruptly, she pushed back her chair just as the duke and his lady rose from the table to retire to their own apartments.

As the entire company got to their feet in reverence, Magdalen went quickly along the table, her words hasty, their urgency unmistakable. “My lord . . . my lord duke, may I have speech with you?”

The duke paused, and his eyes sought those of Guy de Gervais, who had taken a step in her wake. Everyone at the table listened unashamedly.

“What is it, Magdalen?” Lancaster said. He used her name rarely, although it was the one he had bestowed upon her himself.

“It is about my husband.” Her eyes, Isolde’s eyes yet not Isolde’s eyes, burned their appeal. “I believe some ill has befallen him.”

John of Gaunt’s frown was fierce enough to send the devil scurrying. “Your husband has been banished from this table for three days, madame. That is all the ill that has befallen him.”

She shook her head. “I am aware of that, my lord. But I believe there is something else.” Her hands moved in an inarticulate gesture, the candlelight sparking off the ruby and emerald rings she wore. She seemed as unaware of the immediate audience at high table as of the distant one below, where a silence had fallen, servitors paused in their duties, all eyes directed toward whatever drama was taking place among the highborn.

“Come with me,” he said shortly. “Guy, would you bear us company?” He strode from the dais and through the hall, his wife beside him, the assembled company remaining on their feet until they had passed. Magdalen was suddenly aware of the stir she had
caused, and her cheeks flew bright flags of color as she walked behind him. She wanted to look at Guy, who was at her shoulder, but she dared not direct her eyes anywhere but ahead.

In the court, the duke bade his wife a brusque goodnight and left her with her ladies-in-waiting, turning himself toward the stair that led to his own bedchamber and the privy room in the wall beneath. Magdalen and Guy followed.

“Well?” In the womblike seclusion of his privy chamber, the duke turned to his daughter. “You have something of considerable moment to impart, I assume. There can be no other excuse for such a public disturbance.”

“Something untoward has happened to my husband,” Magdalen said simply.

The duke signaled to the accompanying page to pour wine, then dismissed him. “What flight of fancy is this? Are you gifted with second sight, madam?” He drank, raising his goblet in salutation to Guy, who drank also.

Magdalen had not been offered wine. “It is necessary to send a party in search of Edmund,” she said, quietly determined. “I know that some ill has befallen him.”

“Your husband is licking his wounds in some congenial haven,” the duke declared harshly. “I have no time for this.”

“No!” Her voice shocked her with its sharpness. “No, my lord duke, he is not. Something has happened, and I insist you send men in search.”

There was a moment of silence. John of Gaunt looked as surprised as he felt, then a gleam appeared in his eye as he examined the intent, vigorously assertive figure in front of him. “Take heed, daughter,” he said, for the first time acknowledging her to her face. “You may have the Plantagenet temper, but remember well that I have it, too, and have been used to exercising it.”