The Virgin's Daughter (42 page)

Lucette did not care to imagine the details of Nicolas’s accommodations for his desire. She might once have felt sorry for him; that time was long past.

Perhaps Julien was beginning to feel the same, for there was no apology or guilt in his voice when he answered, “I don’t care who you use or how you use them, except for Lucette. She’s not leaving here with you. I’ll kill you first.”

“With no weapons? Come on, Julien, let’s fight as we used to.”

“You have weapons.”

“And you have your manhood whole and entire,” Nicolas snapped. “Seems a fair trade to me.”

“Agreed,” Julien said flatly.

“Julien—” It slipped out of her without warning, but Lucette managed to bite off the instinctive protest. Nothing could keep these brothers from battering one another. All she could do was try and tip the scales toward Julien. Nicolas’s control was tenuous at
best—she might be able to exploit that. And if not, she still had one surprise left to her.

And then, for the first time since entering Wynfield, Julien locked eyes with her and smiled as if it were only the two of them. “Lucie mine,” he said, “you are the cleverest, wittiest, most exasperating woman I have ever, in my lifetime, had the good fortune to meet. Also, you are far more beautiful than your mother.”

She could no more have stopped her answering smile than she could have stopped breathing. “And you are the most charming liar I’ve ever known.”

This doesn’t end here
, she swore silently to herself.
I’m dragging us both out of this if it’s the last thing I do
.

—

When Julien could no longer bear the blinding beauty of Lucette’s smile, he turned deliberately to where Nicolas waited for him, sword in his right hand, Julien’s dagger in his left.

The key would be to take out—or take over—one of those weapons as quickly as possible. Julien wasn’t afraid to fight dirty, and he had the edge of having fought for his life more than once during the years Nicolas had stayed at Blanclair. Practice yards were one thing; fights to the death another.

The key to fighting dirty was the unexpected. Nicolas thought Julien had been left unarmed—because he didn’t take into account that household items can become weapons in the hands of a creative man. When Nicolas paced him, as though they were fighting in the practice yard once more, Julien seized the first thing his hand touched. It was one of the highbacked chairs at the table, too heavy for an accurate disarming blow, but the weight of it made Nicolas stagger to the side. In that moment of unsteadiness on his feet, Julien made a grab for the candlesticks on the table, fortunately unlit, and, with one in each hand, advanced on his brother.

The silver was heavy enough to deflect the sword’s thrust at his ribs, but the blow jarred clear through Julien’s shoulders and he
dropped one of the candlesticks. He used the remaining one to slip through Nicolas’s guard and hit him on the side of the head. His brother grunted and drove the dagger up, catching Julien’s arm in a long scratch that tore through fabric and drew blood.

But that move, by Nicolas’s weaker hand, gave Julien the chance to elbow his brother just below his throat. When Nicolas staggered back, Julien twisted the sword out of his hand. In a continuation of that movement, he pushed the tip against the floor and brought his weight down through his boot onto the slender blade until it broke. He tossed the hilted piece across the hall and kicked away the remaining half. Lucette was already scrambling for them when Nicolas was on him in a flurry, and Julien had to concentrate to keep the dagger away from his face.

The tip caught a glancing blow to the top of an ear, but then he circled his brother’s wrist with both hands and forced the dagger away. With a vicious twist, he wrenched Nicolas’s wrist, but his brother would not drop the dagger.

Then Nicolas yelled, and Julien saw Lucette pulling back the blade she’d shoved into his brother’s calf. Where the hell had she hidden another weapon? Then he recognized the twisted, ornamental ruby pin that had been in her hair and almost laughed. Trust Lucie to have dangerous hair ornaments.

In the chaos, Nicolas slipped out of his grasp. He dropped Julien’s dagger, but only to knock Lucette’s small blade away and wrap his hands around her neck. She wasn’t very big; Nic’s hands completely spanned her neck. His thumbs dug into her throat and Julien could hear her gasping for breath. Already he was moving, fitting his own familiar dagger into his hand.

His first strike was in Nic’s upper arm, which caused a satisfying spurt of blood. Nicolas hissed in pain and, loosening his grip on Lucette’s throat, grasped her loosened hair and shoved her away. She tripped over her skirts and her head hit the floor with a distinct thud.

Nicolas grinned at him with sudden, feral humor. “You’re too honourable to kill me, brother.”

Julien drove his dagger at Nicolas’s throat, but his brother sidestepped just quick enough to avoid it. He elbowed Julien in the temple as he moved; pain blossomed behind Julien’s eyes and he dropped his dagger. Almost the next moment he felt a second pain, lower down, and realized Nicolas had grabbed the falling dagger and plunged it into Julien’s stomach.

The doubled pain threatened blackness, but his instincts were stronger. And so was Lucette. She was on her feet next to him and, without even looking, Julien grasped the hair ornament she held, sticky with Nic’s blood.

“Not so very honourable,” Julien choked, and thrust. He didn’t aim to wound; the blade went straight into Nic’s throat. There was an instant spray of blood, warm and thick across Julien’s hands and face, and then he fell.

What a bloody waste of a life
. As the words flitted across his rapidly darkening mind, Julien didn’t know if he meant Nicolas or himself.

TWENTY-FIVE

14 August 1580

Wynfield Mote

It is over. We are restored to our home, almost…I nearly wrote “almost as though nothing had happened” but that is patently untrue. There is blood in our hall, and two bodies in the icehouse. And in her bedchamber, Lucette sits watch over Julien LeClerc as though her own breath is tied to his
.

When Dominic and the others had silenced the men Nicolas had surrounding the moat, they had to decide whether to storm the house. They could hear nothing in the hall, so Dominic kept Stephen and the men outside the front door and took Kit with him through the study windows around back. It is a good thing Dominic is not given to second-guessing himself or dithering, because when he reached the hall, it was to find Lucette cradling Julien’s head in her lap. She was covered in his blood, as I saw for myself, for she refused to wash or change or leave Julien until I promised that I would hold his hand while Carrie helped her
.

It is a nasty wound he has—stomach wounds are always dangerous. Carrie and I have treated him as best we can and sent Harrington for the nearest physician. Lucette will not leave him, not even long enough to tell us what happened. Explanations will have to wait until Julien recovers
.

If he recovers
.

—

Lucette had never been a chatterbox, but alone in her chamber with Julien, she could not stop talking. She didn’t even know half of what she said—some of it was family history and some of it chess problems and some of it algebra—but she kept up a flow of words as though if she stopped talking, Julien would stop breathing.

He wasn’t unconscious, the physician said. And the wound had been cleaned and stitched, and as far as anyone could tell Nic’s dagger had missed anything vital. (The “as far as anyone could tell” was the significant part—there were any number of things they couldn’t tell that might yet prove fatal.) Carrie herself did most of the nursing, with Lucette’s stubborn and inexpert assistance.

But Julien remained out of reach. His eyes would open from time to time, and he swallowed the liquids forced upon him, but all with the greatest disinterest, as though his body responded instinctively while his mind remained firmly shut to the outside world.

For two days, Lucette did not leave his side. She slept in the chair, head resting on her arms on her bed.

“Lucie mine.” His voice was rough and soft, as though it hurt to speak.

She jerked awake, afraid for a second that she dreamed, but his eyes were open and he was not just looking at her, but seeing her.

“Julien!”

He blinked once, painfully, then in a single word asked everything he needed to know. “Nicolas?”

She nodded.

“I killed him.” It was not a question.

She didn’t know if she was glad or sorry that he remembered. “He tried to kill you. In more ways than one, and for far longer than just here in England.”

Did that make it any better? She didn’t think so, but she was desperate for him not to slip away from her again. “Julien, I need you. Don’t go away just because it’s easier. I know this world hurts, but I need you in it.”

She had never dreamed he could look so vulnerable. “I don’t know if I’m brave enough to live.”

“Then I shall be brave for the both of us,” she promised firmly.

—

Anne must have been watching for the royal banners, because she met Elizabeth and Walsingham half a mile outside the manor. Elizabeth almost remonstrated, in spite of the fact that Dominic and Kit had her surrounded by a dozen men, but when her daughter flew into her arms, she let herself be nothing more for a few moments than a grateful mother.

It could not last. Dominic had eleven men under arrest—and Elizabeth insisted on seeing Nicolas LeClerc’s body for herself. He and his second-in-command lay in the icehouse, the August heat already working on their remains.

“Put them in the ground,” she said abruptly. “Wherever you want. Unmarked. I don’t want anyone to make martyrs of these criminals.”

She stayed only one night at Wynfield Mote, for she needed to be back in London before the news of Mary Stuart’s escape broke. Burghley would need her to settle the nerves of the populace, and they had to decide how much information to release.

Also, Elizabeth could not but feel she was not entirely welcome. Dominic had an air of wanting to tell her to get out and take her royal daughter with her so his family might not be caught in a dangerous political cross fire again. She respected the emotion, but could not afford to indulge him.

In fact, she spent an hour that evening trying to persuade Minuette to persuade her husband into greater service. “He is needed,” she insisted to her friend. “Dominic is respected on all sides of the religious divide, and there is no man more likely to give me disinterested advice.”

“A man who is honest when he should not be?” Minuette shook her head. “He will not play that role again, Elizabeth. And it is selfish to ask him to.”

“I am queen. I am expected to be selfish.”

Minuette merely fixed her with a look that made Elizabeth feel as though the last twenty-five years had never happened and they were both young and reckless and free.

In a gesture of surrender, Elizabeth shrugged. “I’ll keep trying. In the meantime, your Stephen did good work at Tutbury. He is a natural leader, and good at gaining confidences. Am I forbidden to speak to him as well about future service to the crown?”

“Stephen is old enough to know his own mind. And speaking of children grown old enough, I think it would be a mistake to send Anabel back into seclusion. She is always going to be a target, Elizabeth, and she proved herself every bit your daughter during her ordeal. Use her—and perhaps you will find you enjoy her for her own sake.”

Just because she had four children to Elizabeth’s one didn’t mean Minuette was so much wiser. The sting of it made Elizabeth ask tartly, “And what of Lucette? I should like to speak to her before I leave. She owes me a report.”

And there between them was the last twenty-five years—the secrets that had made Elizabeth queen and Minuette subtle in defiance and conspiracy. “My daughter owes you nothing. I will not have her disturbed for your convenience.”

They left it at that for the evening. Elizabeth spent a little time alone with Anabel before bed, and promised her daughter that she could come to court in September when the news of Mary Stuart had been absorbed. “We will see what she does next, and decide our next move from there,” Elizabeth concluded.

Anabel seemed pleased at her mother’s choice of pronoun.

Elizabeth rose early the next morning and dressed for departure in a gown of pale green velvet cut high at the waist to show the patterned damask kirtle of green and gold. When she opened the door, she found Lucette waiting for her in the corridor. Elizabeth raised a quizzical eyebrow. “You could have knocked,” she pointed out.

“I wasn’t sure I wanted to see you.”

“How is your Frenchman?”

“He will live.”

“Good.”

Lucette stared at her as though she’d never seen the queen before.

Impatient, Elizabeth asked, “Well? Do you find you have something to say?”