by Traci E Hall
“Stop,” Catherine cried. “Mamie was just flirting, Bella, but she promises not to do it anymore with Raoul. Is that not so, Mamie?”
Mamie scrunched her brow, then relented. “Fine. Your Raoul could come to me on bended knee, wearing nothing but the flowers in his hand, and I would turn him away.”
“Truly?” Bella stared at Mamie, searching for any sign of insincerity from her lusty fellow guard.
“I swear by the Virgin Mother.” Mamie held up her palm.
“Well, that seems extreme, considering.” Fay laughed and pushed a lock of light brown hair away from her face.
“How can you be my friends and laugh when I am utterly miserable?” Sarah slowly sat up, then placed both hands on her stomach. “I must have eaten something rotten. By God, I hope it was the chicken and that demon spawn is hurling just as I. Can you believe he took my dagger? As if I’m not a guard of the queen?” She made another pathetic sound, perspiration misting her fine skin. “Someone has to go and explain to the emperor. I cannot have him think me a cock tease. I might not get another chance.”
Bella rubbed Sarah’s back. Raoul was an intimidating man, from his size to his manner to his physical essence. The way he’d practically disrobed Mamie with his eyes after sparring with Sarah should have frightened her. In the past, she would have scurried away to hide rather than stand up to face him as she’d done.
Queen Eleanor had taught her confidence. There was no need to hide behind fear ever again. She’d prove she could do her part, even without Mamie’s curves.
“I’ll go, Sarah. Just to meet with Raoul and explain your absence.”
“Thank you, Bella, thank you a hundred times over. I am so sorry. Find Jonathon.” Sarah put her hand on Bella’s knee.
“Jonathon?” Bella’s heart skipped.
“I asked him to walk with me to the bridge by the leopard cages. I don’t trust Raoul, and Jonathon promised to stay back as we neared since Raoul wanted me to come alone.”
“Jonathon.” When had her knight and her dear friend become close enough to warrant favors asked and granted?
“Please don’t be angry. Jonathon was simply helping me, one friend to another.”
Bella lifted her chin as confusion and doubt assaulted her senses. “I have nothing to be angry about. Jonathon and I are friends. Just friends and nothing more.” She hated the slight tremor in her voice.
“Now you’re being foolish.” Sarah sighed.
Bella perceived hurt in the words. There was no time to uncover the tangled threads of emotion, not if she was to meet Raoul and explain Sarah’s absence.
But tomorrow. Tomorrow she would delve deeper into her friend’s intentions toward Jonathon. “I see.” Perhaps he’d shared his honeyed words with more than one lady fair? “I will tell Jonathon I don’t need him. It might not be wise to anger Raoul further, especially if he said to come alone.”
“It’s not safe to wander outside the palace grounds at night,” Catherine argued, twisting her hands together. “You have to stay with Jonathon.”
“You should meet Raoul as Sarah. I have a blonde wig, and if you borrow her cloak—”
“Fay, I’m not as tall.” Bella didn’t want to be someone else. It was difficult enough to be herself.
”Walk on your toes. Raise your chin. No slumping.” Fay stood and rooted through a trunk at the foot of the bed. “It won’t take much. Deception is easier than you might think, Bella, especially since people tend to see what they expect.”
“Pretending to be Sarah is a bad idea. I want Raoul to trust me. I should meet him as myself.”
“Non,” Catherine said with a sigh. “Fay is right. Raoul believes you are a shy, well-bred lady who wouldn’t go traipsing about at night to meet a possible lover.”
Sarah grunted at the unintended slight but didn’t speak.
What could Sarah say? It was too late to claim chastity, so far as the emperor or Raoul were concerned.
“Once Raoul sees it is I in a wig, he’ll be angry,” Bella said with conviction. “There’s no need for deception.”
“Once caught, cry a bit.” Catherine gnawed her lower lip. “And tell him you’re so worried for your friend you had to protect her from Emperor Manuel’s wrath, but you didn’t want to sully your reputation either, which is why you are in disguise. Oui, be a sacrificial lamb, Bella!”
Sacrifice. “What if Raoul sends me in to sleep with the emperor?” A shiver tickled her nape.
“I doubt there’d be any snoring, sweet Violet. Have you ever been made love to so thoroughly your toes curl?”
“Mamie, please.” Bella got up and crossed her arms.
Fay continued, “In order to earn Raoul’s trust, you’ll need to make him believe you are innocent, a babe in the woods.”
“Not too innocent, darlings. I told him, when he asked about you at the table, Bella, that Lady Isabella de Lacey was a widow.” Mamie clapped her hands once. “For our purposes, this is better than being pure.”
”I agree,” Fay said, her soft brown brows rising. “He can admire Bella on her pristine pedestal, but he knows the gate’s been breached, so to speak.”
He’d asked about her at the table? Bella felt her confidence lift.
“Makes you approachable to tame the beast,” Sarah grumbled in agreement.
“I don’t think I should go as Sarah, but if you all disagree, then I will bow to your greater expertise.”
“Don’t lie with him, for the Virgin’s sake,” Fay said with a snort. “Just tell Raoul you are protecting your own identity to call off the assignation.” She snapped her nimble fingers. “Easy.”
“He’s the devil,” Sarah announced before shoving her face into the chamber pot.
Bella bowed her head, praying to whoever would listen that Sarah was wrong.
Raoul paced beneath the land bridge. Above was the walled city of Constantinople, where the emperor ruled with an iron fist, having proven time and again he was a fit leader. Although some people thought Manuel’s older brother, Isaac, had the right to power, on his deathbed Emperor John had chosen the younger, mightier son to rule.
With regret, Raoul remembered the weight of leadership on his own shoulders. His entire village was dead, massacred by a power-hungry royal because he’d trusted the wrong person. His sister.
He eyed the moon, hearing singing from inside the palace. Where was this Sarah who wanted the emperor so badly she’d practically thrown herself at his feet, in front of the empress, no less?
Finally he heard footfalls against cobblestone. Light steps, in tandem with another’s. A heavier tread. Buckles, leather. Steel. A knight.
Raoul backed into the shadows beneath the bridge and waited. So the woman could not follow instructions. Maybe he would hire another whore for the emperor’s pleasure and send this one back to her room, along with her knightly companion. Did the French trollop think him a fool?
The moonlight shone on the pair as they clambered awkwardly down the hill from the side of the palace. He spied blonde tresses tucked beneath a hooded cloak and the golden-haired knight from the meal earlier. Raoul thought the knight enamored with the Lady Isabella, but it seemed the man played a variety of fields.
Raoul waited, not making any assumptions until he knew more.
“I wish you would have stayed back in the courtyard, if not returned to your bed. I don’t need an escort.”
“Sarah doesn’t trust this Raoul,” the male said. “I asked around about him today, and he has a terrible reputation. Surly and argumentative. The only one who likes him is the emperor.”
“Gossip. I will meet him and explain Sarah’s illness and return to my room. Please go back. I can handle myself, Jonathon.”
Raoul recognized the woman’s voice before the knight said her name.
”Bella, I’ll not leave you to the temper of this monster. Today he beat an entire ring of men and didn’t receive a scratch.”
Rubbing the gash on his arm, Raoul begged to disagre
e but kept silent.
“A monster? Really, Jonathon, I expected better of you.” Raoul noticed that the short lady no longer walked on her tiptoes and was once again the stature he remembered from when she’d faced him across the table.
When was the last time a woman had come to his defense? He stifled the odd warmth the thought created and spoke from the shadow of the bridge.
“Who goes there? Where is the bitch who desires the emperor?”
Isabella gasped while Jonathon, a knight with more good looks than good sense, dropped his hand to the hilt of his sword.
She turned toward the bridge and his voice, though Raoul was certain she couldn’t see him clearly. “I told my friends you would be angry at the deception.” Bella pulled back her hood and took the wig from her head, baring her mussed, dark hair.
Her eyes brimmed with shimmering moonlit tears that he ruthlessly ignored. “Sarah is ill,” she explained to the dusky shadows surrounding him. “I—Sarah was afraid to make the emperor wait, and I did not want to risk my reputation.”
He stayed silent, watching.
She sniffed into a lace-edged handkerchief. “You probably think me silly. I’m a widow barely out of mourning. I understand that people have certain needs. It is just that I, well, I have never had a tryst, and I’m not certain how this is supposed to go.”
Raoul could detect a liar with his eyes closed, and even though he believed she was telling the truth, there was something off. Something he wanted clarified. “You think to trade places with Lady Sarah and pleasure the emperor?” His back teeth ground together as he waited for her answer.
“No!” Her hands came together as if in prayer.
Relieved, he thrust his jaw forward and strode from beneath the bridge.
Isabella raised her gaze to his, her body as still as a rabbit’s before a wolf. He grudgingly admired her courage as she rushed to say, “I was helping a friend. That is all.”
“Hold,” Jonathon said, pushing Isabella behind him as Raoul neared.
She didn’t stay but took her place next to the blond man.
Paying the tall knight no mind—he was a fly to be swatted if necessary—Raoul acknowledged that he wanted this woman to be wary of him, to know he held power in his curled fist. Not to frighten but to impress her.
Raoul stopped a few feet away from her trembling figure, dismissing Jonathon’s drawn sword. While the young man had been attentive to Bella, Raoul could detect no real passion in his defensive stance, as if he was unsure of his part to play this night.
“Cover your head before someone identifies you,” Raoul ordered. He briefly envisioned his sister and her lover. Had she hidden her face in deception? “I will relay the message of Lady Sarah’s illness to the emperor.”
Isabella bowed her head, adjusting the hood of her cloak and sealing her fate as she whispered her quiet thanks.
“For a price.” Raoul shifted his stance, chest out, shoulders back.
She slowly lifted her tear-stained face, and his gut clenched with those needs she had so casually discussed and dismissed. “What could you want from me?”
“You will meet me here tomorrow at midday.”
Jonathon inched closer.
Raoul felt the knight’s loathing but paid it no mind.
“I cannot.” She studied him. “I serve the queen.”
Raoul paused, understanding duties to one’s liege. “Make arrangements. Or I will have your Lady Sarah flogged in the public square. The emperor does not like to be disappointed.” Any woman willing to help a friend and wear a disguise to protect her from disgrace would surely not stop at meeting him in public. He didn’t question why he wanted to be with her but trusted his instincts. “Will you come, or shall I send soldiers to your room?”
Her pretty mouth quivered. “The queen won’t allow you to treat one of her ladies in that manner.” Isabella’s chin tilted upward, and her bright eyes flashed with something intriguing.
He would push a little more to find what the lady was made of. “And does the queen know Sarah is a slut?”
Jonathon tensed, his grip tightening on the hilt of his sword as Isabella gasped, covering her mouth with her fingers. Ah, yes, he thought, recognizing smoldering anger in her orbs. But instead of retaliating, she swallowed. “I will come. Noon?”
“Bella!” Jonathon pulled at her arm.
Ignoring her golden knight, the lady asked, “But for what purpose? I do not engage in trysts.”
“Then you are a rare gem in the queen’s court.” Raoul turned his back and walked beneath the bridge, letting the night envelop him. He told himself he was baiting her for the purpose of finding information he could relay to Emperor Manuel. The lie allowed him to see her again, and for now that was enough.
CHAPTER 5
Bella rose early, impatient to see the queen. She’d done well the night before, piquing Raoul’s interest despite a few obstacles.
What came next? She felt as if she’d captured a tiger—non, a leopard—by the tail and didn’t know what to do with it. She’d watched him with the big, spotted cats last night during the meal, and he’d seemed completely at ease while she waited for one of them to bite his fingers off.
Finally she went to the queen’s chamber, but Larissa told her Eleanor was already away for the day with the empress. Bella left a blank, violet-scented note and returned to her room.
Hearing the high-pitched chatter from the hall, she smiled, remembering a time when she’d been lonely. She opened the door.
“You must not meet that devil spawn,” Sarah cried, throwing herself at Bella’s knees. “I never should have let you go last night all alone.”
Bella righted herself by holding the doorframe. “I was not alone, Sarah. I had Jonathon with me.” Although Jonathon had tried to dissuade her from meeting with Raoul by pressing a desperate kiss to her wrist, Bella had remained determined to do the queen’s bidding: getting information from Raoul.
“Jonathon told me about the threat to have me flogged.” Sarah stood, her face pale as she tied the sash at her waist to keep her robe closed. “They might have cruel laws here, but certainly they cannot allow such a harsh punishment for a lady. Not without good reason, and leaving the emperor’s cock cold does not seem good enough to me.”
Mamie sat up in bed and snickered, her wild red hair a nest of curls. “Depends on whom you’re asking.”
“My husband beat me for less,” Bella confessed coolly, making the announcement as if she were talking about the weather. “I would save you such punishment if I could.”
Sarah reached out and took Bella’s hand with a quick, reassuring squeeze. “The emperor would not have me flogged, Bella. It is your Raoul playing some sort of game. I will go in your stead today.”
“And how am I supposed to gain Raoul’s trust if I send another woman?” Bella tapped her toe against the floor. What was this rancor Sarah felt toward Raoul? It seemed of a personal nature, rather than mere dislike of an enemy. Maybe the fact he’d taken her eating dagger and challenged her pride?
Fay yawned, stretching from beneath a mound of covers. “Tell me everything that happened last night. I cannot believe I fell asleep before you returned. But the journey has been long, and this bed is so comfortable.” She brought the blanket to her chin.
Catherine freshened up by the window overlooking the water. “Staying in bed does no good, no matter how cozy the sheets. I am off to find the valet to the captain of the guard today to see if he wants to share any of his thoughts regarding Emperor Conrad’s stay. I heard bits and pieces about the German army vandalizing the Philopation.” She dabbed peony-scented oil at her wrists.
“But isn’t that where King Louis is staying?” Fay pushed her hair back from her sleep-flushed cheeks and yawned.
“Oui,” Catherine said with a quick nod. “And the servants were complaining about all the extra work of readying the hunting lodge for the king. See? Befriending the maids. It’s a fountain of information. And, non, Mam
ie. I did not lie with them.”
“If you are being industrious, I shall be too. I’m going to the chapel,” Fay said, sliding from the cozy bed. “The clerks get lonely, which makes them chatty.”
“How do you know what to ask?” Bella glanced at each of her friends and fellow guards.
“It’s not so much about asking as it is about listening.” Catherine tapped at her ear. “Something you are already good at.”
“I wish I had your talent,” Bella replied. “The art of mesmerizing is useful.”
Catherine’s mouth turned downward, as if she wasn’t certain about her God-given gift. “I concentrate on what a person means behind their words, inside their mind, and sometimes I get a little extra insight. I cannot explain it. It just happens.”
“Monster,” Mamie teased, tossing a pillow at Catherine’s head. “I dare you to get inside my mind.”
Catherine shuddered with mock fear. “You’re safe from me, Mamie. I don’t want to know what you know.” She picked up the pillow and threw it back.
Bella worried the tangent would be lost forever in a pillow fight if she did not stand firm. “So the queen doesn’t tell you what she wants to know? You are supposed to listen?” It seemed simple. Which meant it would be hard.
Fay giggled, taking the brush from the top of the chest and attacking her wayward hair. “You are a lovely listener. Was Raoul terribly angry when he found out you were wearing a wig and pretending to be Sarah?”
Bella gulped, remembering his fierce voice demanding she meet him today. “Crying a bit wasn’t as difficult as I feared.”
“He likes you,” Mamie pronounced.
“He doesn’t trust me,” Bella countered with a shrug.
“He’s a beast.” Sarah pulled on Bella’s arm. “Please take me or Jonathon with you.”
“Raoul is not afraid of Jonathon, and Jonathon … He is not the kind of knight to inspire fear in a man like Raoul.”
“What are you saying? You no longer find Jonathon attractive?” Sarah pushed her hair over her shoulder.
“I never said so. Jonathon is kind and witty and honorable.” Bella shook the comparison between Jonathon and Raoul from her mind. “In fact, my legs were shaking so hard at the end of the meeting last night that Jonathon practically held me up on the walk home.” It was true she’d started quaking. Fending off Jonathon’s unwanted aid had taken her mind off Raoul. “Raoul gave his order and then disappeared into the night like a ghost.”
