by Lynn Kurland
She cleared her throat. “My lord.”
Gervase inclined his head. “My lady.”
She pulled her robe more closely around herself, not for any fears over her modesty but because she was cold. Or too warm. At the moment, she honestly couldn’t tell which it was. She had forgotten, somehow, in that short time she’d been at Beauvois just how appallingly handsome Monsaert’s lord was. Perhaps Nicholas had it aright and the man had ravished every woman he’d ever clapped eyes on. All she could say was she could see how it was possible. She settled for simply leaning against her doorframe and looking at him.
Rogue that he was.
She thought she might have a bit of sympathy for the women he’d been roguish with.
“Did you need something out of your bedchamber?” she asked.
He shook his head.
She waited, but he seemed disinclined to volunteer anything. She frowned. “Then why are you here?”
“I thought you needed to have your door guarded.”
“My door?”
He smiled faintly. “You, Isabelle,” he clarified, “not your door. I thought you needed to have yourself guarded.”
’Twas ridiculous, of course, to be so affected by the sound of her name from a handsome man’s lips, but she found herself profoundly grateful just the same for a doorframe to lean against. Perhaps she should have taken Nicholas’s advice and stayed at Beauvois. She realized at that moment that she wasn’t looking at a callow youth such as the ones who had come, floundering in their fathers’ wakes, to see if there might be a bride available at Artane. She was facing a man who . . . well, she had the feeling he had never been a callow youth.
“You should be abed.”
She shook her head. “I’m not sleepy. And I was cold.”
He looked at her seriously. “We’ve been careful with leaving too much wood lying about, especially in my bedchamber. I should have made certain you had enough.”
“I think it might have been less the chill than too much on my mind.”
“So you thought to roam the passageways looking for a distraction?”
“It seemed reasonable.”
He pushed away from the wall and pulled her gently out into the passageway. “Wait here,” he said. “And do not move.”
She wasn’t sure she could have managed that even if she had wanted to. She leaned against the passageway wall and waited until Gervase came back out of his bedchamber. He pulled the door to, then put a cloak around her shoulders. He looked at her with an expression on his face she couldn’t quite identify.
“Let’s go sit by the fire in my solar,” he said. “Perhaps that will be distraction enough for you without leaving you catching the ague. We’ll play draughts or something equally as undemanding.”
“For money?”
“For money,” he echoed with a snort. “Would your father approve of these mercenary tendencies you display?”
“I’m not sure my father would approve of anything I’m doing at the moment,” she said with a sigh.
“And just what have you done of late that is so terrible?”
“Besides forcing my youngest brother into skirts and the remains of my hair, scampering off to France, then arriving on your doorstep this afternoon uninvited?”
He clasped his hands behind his back. “You’ve had quite a busy spring, haven’t you?”
She managed a smile. “So far, it seems so.”
“I would have invited you here, of course, had I but known you were able to escape your foul brother’s clutches. Or that you might care to.”
She supposed it wasn’t cowardly to avoid meeting his eyes. After all, she’d done it for the whole of the day thus far.
He took her hand and tucked it under his arm, then nodded down the passageway. “Let us repair to my solar where you can confess all your darkest secrets to me. They’ll give me something to distract your father with as he takes me out to the lists and beats me to death with the hilt of his sword for forcing you to be a servant. For all you know, it might save my sorry life.”
“You didn’t know who I was.”
“Isabelle, I thought you were a lad. I deserve to be disemboweled for that spectacular piece of stupidity alone.”
She smiled at him. “Perhaps you were under duress.”
“You can spend all night attempting to excuse me, but the truth is I was just an idiot,” he said. “Though I will say that you were doubtless the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen. My heart went out to you for it.”
She looked up at him in surprise. “Was that a compliment?”
He started to speak, then closed his mouth and shook his head. “It might surprise you,” he said finally, “to learn that I can be polite when the need arises.”
“At least you know my name,” she said. “Most men don’t remember it.”
“Then most men are fools,” he said.
She smiled. “Thank you.”
“A pity you seem to have forgotten my name.”
“I wasn’t sure if you wished me to use it. Considering how you’ve ignored me all day today, it seemed prudent to be, well, prudent.”
He stopped, then turned to look at her. “I couldn’t look at you. I was afraid I would do something I would regret.”
“What?” she asked lightly. “Tell me to go home?”
“Oh, nay,” he said seriously. “I don’t think that would have been it at all.”
She smiled at him, then felt something shift. And that had everything to do with the way he was looking at her. The truth was, the lads who had come seeking her hands were, well, lads. If there was one thing Gervase de Seger was not, it was a lad.
She realized at that moment that he was going to kiss her. And she had the feeling that she wasn’t simply going to allow it, she was going to bloody his nose if he didn’t.
“You’re scowling at me,” he said softly. “Isabelle.”
“You keep saying my name,” she managed.
“’Tis a very lovely name for an exceptionally lovely woman. And ’tis your name.”
She closed her eyes briefly. “My lord—”
“Gervase.”
She sighed. “Gervase, then.”
“See how easy that was?”
She looked up into his eyes, though she couldn’t quite tell their color. Blue perhaps, or green. She would have to ask him to look at her in the daytime so she might make a note in her diary that she didn’t have at the moment. She wondered if he would come to Artane to see her when she went home. Perhaps she would ask him that as well, after. At the moment, she was too busy being completely overcome by the feel of his taking her face in his hands. He bent his head toward hers—
Or he might have if he hadn’t been frozen in place by a very pointed clearing of a male throat from a few paces away. Isabelle looked at him and wondered if her eyes were as wide as his.
“You could kill him, if you liked.”
“It might grieve your mother.”
Isabelle looked to her left to find her brother standing not five paces away.
“Go away,” she said.
“Are you daft?” Miles asked incredulously. “Iz, you are in the middle of a passageway in the middle of the night, unchaperoned!”
“We’re not unchaperoned,” she said. “Unfortunately.”
“Too much time in trousers has rotted your wits,” Miles said, striding into the light of a torch. He took her by the hand and pulled her away from Gervase. “I don’t think you want to know what Father will do if he finds out that that one has ravished you in his passageway.”
“I wasn’t going to ravish her,” Gervase protested.
Isabelle watched them exchange a look she wasn’t quite sure she knew how to identify. A conversation was definitely going on, but one that seemed to require no words. Gervase conceded the battle first.
“Very well, I was going to kiss her,” he said. “A very brief, very chaste kiss.”
Miles pursed his lips. “Try her hand first.�
��
Gervase started to speak, then sighed and said nothing.
“In plain sight,” Miles added.
“Am I allowed to at least hold her hand in private?”
“I don’t think you need worry about privacy now that I’m here to help you be sensible. Let’s retreat to the lord’s solar, shall we? I’m sure the fire can be built up and my sister warmed by that instead of those scorching looks you were sending her.”
Isabelle would have kicked her brother but he seemed to sense that and moved out of her way before she could. She scowled at him instead. “He wasn’t sending me scorching looks.”
“Iz, you were too busy smoldering to know what he was doing.” He looked over her head at Gervase. “My lord?”
“Very well,” Gervase said heavily, taking Isabelle’s hand and tucking it under his arm. “We’ll play cards and I’ll empty your purse.”
“My purse,” Miles said with a snort. “Rather you should be looking in a different direction for the lightening of your purse.”
“By your sister? Surely not.”
“The quiet ones are always the most trouble.”
Isabelle cleared her throat. “Are you going to spend all night discussing me as if I weren’t here?”
“I thought giving him a fair warning was prudent,” Miles said. “And whether or not we discuss you all night won’t trouble you because you will be having one turn at cards, then returning speedily to your bed. Your lord needs his sleep as well if he’s to face me in the lists on the morrow.”
Isabelle decided she would argue with him later. She was too distracted at the moment by the feeling of Gervase’s hand covering hers that was folded over his arm. She had been escorted many places over the course of her life, to be sure, but never by a man who had fair set her afire not five minutes earlier with looks she had never once had from anyone.
She had to admit she was relieved to soon be sitting in a chair close to a fire he built up for her in his solar. He brought over the small table that served as a chessboard, then sat down across from her. He looked at Miles.
“I suppose you can provide yourself with a chair.”
Miles fetched one, then sat down between them with a pleasant smile. “Isn’t this nice?”
“Lovely,” Gervase grumbled. “Very well, what shall we play?”
“Cards,” Miles said. “Where are yours?”
“A better question is, do I want you to find them?”
“I could escort my sister back to her chamber,” Miles pointed out.
Isabelle watched Gervase sigh, rise, and fetch cards out of his trunk. She looked at Miles to find him watching her with a small smile. She attempted a scowl in return, but found she couldn’t truly put any enthusiasm behind it. So, instead, she returned his smile, because she knew he loved her, and she was grateful that he was kind to someone she thought she just might love.
• • •
An hour later, her brother was sitting across from her and Gervase had moved Miles’s recently relinquished chair closer to hers so she could work on his hand. Miles was making noises of disapproval that she had ignored with varying degrees of success. She finally glared at him.
“It helps him,” she said, exasperated.
“And it’s painful,” Gervase added.
“Well, as long as it hurts,” Miles said, stretching his legs out and yawning, “I’ll allow it. Behave, you two.”
“Go to sleep,” Gervase suggested.
“Hands in plain sight.”
Isabelle took off one of her shoes and threw it at her brother. “Shut up.”
Miles only smiled lazily and tossed the shoe to Gervase. “She is, as you can see, dangerous with a slipper in her hands. And just so you know, there is an unwholesome bond between us. I can always tell when there’s something amiss with her. Or, more particularly, when she’s annoyed with me.”
“Which only proves you aren’t an imbecile,” Gervase said with a snort. “Close your eyes and rest, little lad. I will keep your sister safe.”
“Well,” Miles said with a yawn Isabelle could hear, “you have so far. When she isn’t in your kitchens, that is.”
Isabelle worked on Gervase’s hand, ignoring the continued banter between her brother and her . . . victim was, she supposed, the only word that seemed appropriate. She didn’t dare look at him. He hadn’t looked at her earlier in the day, so perhaps turnabout was what he deserved. Well, he had looked at her out in the passageway earlier in the evening, that was true, but even thinking about that left her feeling unaccountably warm. Better that she concentrate on his hand and leave admiring his face for another time.
Only her willpower wasn’t what it should have been. She finished, held his hand in both hers, then relented and looked at him. He was watching her with a grave expression on his face. Then he smiled, an equally grave smile that left her wondering when it had suddenly grown so bloody hot in his solar.
“Oh, my,” Miles drawled. “I sense something afoot.”
“Aye, my foot booting your sorry arse out of my solar,” Gervase said, not looking at him.
“Do not kiss her,” Miles warned.
“Miles!” Isabelle exclaimed. “Be silent.”
Miles held up his hands. “I’m saving him a skewering. You may fall upon my neck, weep, and thank me later.”
Gervase rose, fetched a blanket from off the back of a chair, then put it over her and tucked it around her feet. He sat down and reached for her hand, ignoring her brother’s sounds of horror. Isabelle would have thrown another shoe at that brother, but she didn’t want to draw any more attention to herself than was already there. It wasn’t that she was nervous about holding hands with Gervase, it was, well, it was that she had never had a man take her hand and hold it between both of his in a way that indicated he might want to hold her hand.
“So,” Gervase said, stroking the back of her hand with his fingers, “perhaps now would be a good time to apologize for not knowing who you were right away.” He met her eyes. “You know when.”
She shrugged lightly. “No one does.”
“Oh, I should have,” he said quickly, “because I knew of you. I just hadn’t expected to find you wandering on the side of the road with your hair shorn, puking into the weeds.”
“Charming,” Miles said pleasantly.
Gervase shot Miles a glare, then looked back at her. “I should have known.”
“I should have told you,” she said with a smile. “The thing is, you have a rather unsettling reputation amongst those with weak stomachs. Though I’ll admit I never believed the rumors about you.”
“I don’t seem to remember you cowering,” he agreed. “Ever,” he added almost under his breath.
“Yet you had her scrubbing your floors anyway,” Miles said.
“I would blame Guy for suggesting it—because he did—but I was stupid enough to pursue the course,” Gervase said. He shrugged lightly. “I’ll pay for it in the end, I’m sure.”
“You don’t have to face my father in the lists,” Isabelle said.
A silence fell. She wasn’t unused to silences, certainly. It was what happened when fathers were informed that Amanda was indeed wed with a child already in her arms. But this wasn’t that same sort of silence. It was a sort of silence that Gervase seemed to be filling with chewing on his words and Miles seemed to be filling simply with his obvious waiting for something. She sent her brother a warning look because that seemed like a reasonable thing to do, then looked back at Gervase.
“Well,” she said, “you don’t.”
“Oh, I think I do.”
“Why?” she whispered.
He looked at her hand in his for a moment or two, then brought her hand up and kissed the back of it.
It was slightly more powerful than a scorching look, she had to admit.
“Warm in here, isn’t it?” Miles drawled.
“Shut up, Miles,” Gervase said absently.
“Aye,” Isabelle managed, “be si
lent, Miles.”
“Why does everyone tell me to be quiet?” Miles asked. “I’m baffled.”
Isabelle looked at Gervase. Green, perhaps. His eyes, that was. She would have to look at them in the daytime to be sure, but they were surely a pale color. She thought, though, if she looked in them too long, she might do something she regretted.
“Time for bed,” Miles announced loudly. “Iz, you look overcome by weariness.”
Well, weariness wasn’t exactly what she suspected she was being overcome by, but she couldn’t exactly tell her brother the impulse she was fighting was to lean over and scandalize all of France by kissing Gervase de Seger herself.
Gervase had been smiling at her, but his smile deepened, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. She pursed her lips at him, retrieved her shoe from where it currently resided on the other side of him, then handed him her blanket. She put her shoe on, then rose.
“I’m tired,” she announced imperiously.
Miles laughed and rose. “I’m sure you are. Let’s see her to your bedchamber, my lord Gervase, then seek out our own rest. A busy day awaits us on the morrow, I daresay.”
Isabelle ignored them as they escorted her from the solar and back to Gervase’s bedchamber. She paused in front of the doorway and looked at Monsaert’s lord.
“Thank you for the fire,” she said quietly.
“And the gold,” he added with a sigh.
She smiled. “I believe I earned that fairly.”
“I told you so,” Miles remarked. “If you’re going to indulge in amusements with her, never involve your purse. The only one of us who hasn’t learned that lesson thoroughly is Robin. He’s convinced that Isabelle is a delicate, innocent thing of approximately ten-and-two. I’m a little surprised he hasn’t made a more concerted effort to find her a husband before she rids him of all his funds, but with Robin you never know what he’s thinking.”
Isabelle found her hand taken by Gervase. He smiled, kissed the back of it, then opened his door for her.
“Go to bed, you ruthless wench,” he said gravely. “We’ll have a rematch tomorrow.”
“You’ll regret it,” Miles said.
