Almost Innocent (21 page)

Anxious to bring this information to his lord, he had left the province of Roussillon before the grand conference and made all speed into Picardy. His dusty clothing and the lines of fatigue, etched sharp around his mouth, were ample evidence of his haste.

“You have done well,” Guy said, opening the strongbox on the iron-bound cedar chest. He drew forth a heavy pouch and tossed it to the man, who caught it deftly. Guy smiled, despite his concern over the spy’s information. “A good and faithful servant, Olivier. Go to your rest now.”

The man went off with his soft, swift tread, and Guy stood frowning, gazing out of the window toward the south, from whence the threat would come . . .

M
AGDALEN, MEANWHILE, DECIDED
to postpone the vexatious issue of missing loaves of bread and was walking in the orchard. It was hot and sultry, and wasps buzzed busily in and out of the windfalls littering the long grass. The orchard stood close to the outside fortifications of the castle and was surrounded by its own high wall, affording a seclusion hard to come by in the teeming life of a castle that resembled a sizable town in constitution and in its many and varied functions.

She was filled with the wonderful languour of bodily fulfillment, her mind at peace as it gently probed and
explored the tangle of love in which she found herself. She knew her husband was not dead. It was a knowledge she no longer reiterated to Guy because it distressed him and cast a cloud over the joy they took in and of each other.

She had not told him either of her growing certainty that she was again with child. The latter fact was a source of secret happiness, one she would keep to herself for a while longer. Only Erin and Margery knew of the lost pregnancy on the ship, and they would keep still tongues in their heads. This child, Guy’s child, would take the place of the lost one for the rest of the world, any awkwardness in timing easily glossed over behind these walls and at such a distance from England. John of Gaunt’s grandchild would stand heir to the de Bresse fiefdom, and Guy de Gervais’s child would bind him absolutely to the child’s mother. The residual honor-born doubts Magdalen sensed in Guy beneath the force of the love that held them would lose all strength, becoming mere whimpers with no power to rise up and damage their love.

She knew instinctively it was for her to manage the tangle, that Guy at the moment was moving in the magic world of bewitchment, that he was entranced by her and willing to drift, enthralled; but that once circumstances changed, intruded on the magic world, as they were bound to, then so too would his bewitchment wane. Unless she could find a way to salve his conscience, smooth out his doubts, underpin bewitchment with more solid, tangible ties, she would lose this love that was as it had been since childhood, more than life itself to her. There was love and blood in her hand, mad Jennet had said. Much love: the love of men. If such was her destiny, then she had but begun upon it.

Curiously, these reflections did not disturb her contented languour as she strolled beneath the gnarled fruit trees, gnawing around the maggot holes in a windfallen pear. The daughter of John of Gaunt and Isolde de
Beauregard did not doubt her ability to make happen what she wished to happen, what she knew had to happen if her life and that of Guy de Gervais were not to be rendered dross.

T
HERE WERE FIVE
men in the tapestry-hung, window-less inner chamber. There was no fire in the chimney, but torches threw out both light and heat from their wall sconces. One of the men threw off the short cloak he wore over a particolored tunic and reached for the pitcher of mead in the center of the table. He poured the dark, honeyed spirit into a pewter tankard and drank deeply.

“Charles has not convinced me that we gain more by her abduction than by her death.”

He was older than the others, his hair and beard grizzled, but his eyes were as gray and the family resemblance as pronounced.

“She is Isolde’s daughter,” Charles d’Auriac said quietly.

“We know that,” said one of the others, Marc, with a snap of impatience.

“I meant, cousin, that she is truly Isolde’s daughter,” Charles clarified as quietly as before.

There was a short silence in the warm, airless room. “You imply that she could perhaps be . . .” The speaker paused, choosing his words. “She could be used as her mother was?”

“Isolde was never used, Marc,” the older man corrected sharply. “She did only what she wished, and in most cases the seductions were entirely of her own making.”

“But with Lancaster . . .?”

“With Lancaster she met treachery.” Bertrand de Beauregard, brother of Isolde, spoke the plain truth as he saw it. “We would be revenged upon him for that and do the king’s work at the same time. I say she must die.”

Charles d’Auriac looked for words. In the face of the elder’s pronouncement, rules of submission and courtesy demanded that he yield his own point. He had done so once, agreed to put the matter to arbitration, but he could not yield without one further attempt to bring them to his own viewpoint. Ever since he had seen her, sitting outside the inn at Calais, her image had filled his waking thoughts and disturbed his nights. He had arranged the murder attempt, and if it had succeeded he probably would not have thought again of that mouth, those eyes, the unconscious grace and arrogance of the slim body, the haughty voice, some rare and subtle quality emanating from her that filled a man’s head with images of white and tumbling limbs and the hot breath of lust. But she had survived the monkish assault, and now he could not endure the thought of that body laid to waste, that sensual promise crumbled to dust when so much could be made of it and so many could benefit from it.

“My lord,” he began. “Consider Isolde resurrected in the shape of her daughter. Her husband is dead. She must know that, for all that it does not suit her father’s purpose to have it openly acknowledged at present. Once she is removed from Lancaster’s sphere, she will cease to be the glue holding the de Bresse fealty to England. I can think of few more satisfactory revenges against Lancaster than turning his own daughter upon him, remaking her in the shape of the woman he murdered.”

“So you would persist in this.” Bertrand sat back, stroking his beard. A glimmer lurked in the back of his eyes that encouraged Charles. “And having abducted her, then what would you do with her?”

“Why, wed her, my lord,” Charles declared boldly. “Bind her doubly to her mother’s family, and then employ her for our own purposes. I believe she has the power, if she is taught to acknowledge it and to use it, to do all and more that her mother did.”

“It would seem the girl has captured
you
, Charles.” Bertrand smiled slightly. “Do you argue this course because you would bed her yourself?”

“Not just for that,” his nephew said. “Although I’ll admit I’ve a powerful lust for her. But that is secondary to what we could do with her once she is under our control.”

“There is a certain pleasure, I’ll admit, in contemplating such a subtle revenge on Lancaster. To reclaim our own and turn her into the weapon that would foil him.”

“Maybe she could be turned into the weapon that destroys him.” Gerard de Beauregard spoke for the first time.

“Aye, to assume the task her mother failed to perform.” The glimmer in his father’s eye flared into a spark. “How, I do not know at this point, since she cannot use with her father the methods by which her mother caught the prince. Lancaster has few scruples, but I do not think he will succumb to incest.”

They all laughed, and the atmosphere in the room lightened, legs stretching beneath the table, hands reaching for the pitcher of mead. Charles d’Auriac knew his battle was won.

“If the lady should prove recalcitrant . . .” mused Gerard. “How do we compel her cooperation?”

“There are ways and means.” Bertrand shrugged. “I see no difficulty there.”

“Or anywhere,” Charles said. “I would journey into Picardy immediately, to welcome our kinswoman to France. In the truce existing between our two countries, it would be an entirely appropriate move.”

“Indeed.” Bertrand rose from the table. His legs cramped rapidly these days. The blood didn’t flow as it had, and an old wound in his thigh flared when he sat still for extended periods. He paced the room, one hand caressing the curiously shaped hilt of the dagger in his belt. It was the neck of a sea serpent, a bloodred ruby
for the single eye. “And how do you propose dealing with Lord de Gervais? The girl is under his protection, and he is not a man to be easily circumvented, I believe.”

“He knows no ill of me,” Charles said. “He may have suspicions, but he cannot turn away a visiting kinsman on a mission of courtesy in a time of truce. I will do what I can to lull his suspicions and will gain the confidence of the lady. The abduction will wait until he is away from the castle.” His eyes lost their focus for a minute. “There are many things that could call him away . . . a brigand attack on the towns falling under de Bresse suzerainty would not be unusual, or a summons from his own overlord, perhaps, or an invitation from a neighboring fief. That is the least of our difficulties, I believe.”

“Then we will leave the matter in your hands, Charles.” Bertrand went to the door. “Draw on the support of your cousins as you see the need. And bring Magdalen of Lancaster to the fortress at Carcassonne as expeditiously as you may. This family has waited over-long for its revenge.”

The door closed on the patriarch, and the four younger men relaxed visibly. “He will not rest easy in his grave if the wrong done the de Beauregards by Lancaster is not redressed,” Marc said. “But you are drawn to the woman, cousin. Is it bedsport she promises?” A laugh ran around the table, but it was not one in which their cousin participated.

“Something more than that,” he said, considering his words. “Something that promises a man fleshly dissolution. Unless I much mistake, she has
le diable au corps
, and I would sample it, my friends.”

“Dangerous sport,” muttered Philippe de Beauregard. “It was said her mother had that mark of the devil upon her, and those who fell into temptation burned with the taint as if it were acid.”

“Her mother was a dangerous woman.” Charles
d’Auriac rose from the table. “Dangerous because she bore no man’s yoke. I intend that Magdalen of Lancaster shall bear my yoke and that of her maternal family. We will harness the power and the devil’s mark to our own mills.” He went to the door. “We will talk again when I return from Picardy. I will know more then how to proceed in this affair.”

M
AGDALEN WAS BORED
. She nibbled on an almond cake and wished her neighbor at the high table would divert some of his attention to her. Guy de Gervais was playing host to a large party of traveling knights who had sought lodging beneath his roof, and the feast prepared for them had been going on for an eternity, it seemed. Her head ached a little from the wine and the heat of bodies and the clamor of voices from the crowded hall. Immediately below the dais on which she sat in the center of the table beside the man who stood proxy for the lord of the castle, the lesser knights of this household and of the traveling party were gathered, squires and pages beyond them until at the rear of the hall were the jostling noisy groups of the humbler members of the household.

There were no highborn women among the travelers, so Magdalen’s was the only female presence on the dais. This relieved her of the burden of entertaining but consequently left her with little amusement. She could barely hear the minstrels from the gallery, so loud was the noise from the hall, and the conversation around her was all of the expedition that united their guests. They were on their way to Italy in support of the Duke of Anjou’s claim to the throne of Naples. The level of excitement was growing as the level of wine in the pitchers sank. War was the only work understood by knights, and in the absence of the fighting between England and France, some other righteous cause had to
employ their swords and lances. Guy was being encouraged to join them, and it was fairly clear to Magdalen that his present occupation as protector and counselor for a lone and rather youthful chatelaine was considered a poor substitute and an unconvincing excuse.

Her armless chair was so close to Guy’s that the tiniest movement would bring her thigh against his. The realization brought the devil’s gleam to her eyes. She slipped one hand beneath the concealing folds of the heavy damask tablecloth. Her fingers trailed over his thigh, and she felt the hard muscles clench involuntarily. Mischievously, she explored further, smiling innocently around the table as his body came to life.

Guy was in something of a quandary. He wanted to laugh as much as he wanted to luxuriate in the wickedly skilled caress, but neither response struck him as appropriate in the present circumstances. He reached under the table, firmly grasped the wandering wrist, and placed her hand in her own lap.

Magdalen sipped her wine, contemplating her next move. This little game would certainly enliven an otherwise tedious suppertime. She moved her foot in its gold embroidered velvet slipper sideways, brushing up against his leg, curling her toes against one iron-hard calf. There was no immediate response, so she increased the pressure, her toes dancing, sliding up into the hollow behind his knee. Her smile broadened as he drew a quick breath and moved his leg away. Her foot followed. She forgot about their table companions, the scurrying varlets, the attentive squires and pages behind every chair in her concentration on this delicious play.