By His Majesty's Grace

by Jennifer Blake

  She had not seen her stepbrother since her wedding day. He was better now, or so she had been told. Thinking of him was a reminder that he had an explanation to make for the attack on Rand, and answers that he needed to supply.

  It might as well be this morning.

  Graydon was having his morning bread and wine in his chamber when she arrived. At her request to speak to him, sent in by his manservant, he joined her in the antechamber. He had pulled on a doublet over his shirt and hose, but that was the end of it. It appeared he had not bathed, shaved or combed his hair in days. He walked with a stick and had no boot on his left foot. His groan, as he dropped onto the bench beside her, was followed by a strangled oath.

  “How do you fare?” she asked, running her gaze over the purple-and-yellow splotches that still decorated his face, and the scabbed skin at his forehead. “Are you recovering from the tournament?”

  “Well enough,” he said with heavy sarcasm, “though you’ve taken your time coming to find out.”

  He was right; she had been remiss. It had simply not occurred to her that he might expect more than common courtesy. He had always been older, rougher, with no inclination to linger in the women’s solar with her and her sisters even when residing in the same house. Hunting was his passion, and fighting. As far as she knew, he had no others.

  “Cate and Marguerite visited, I believe, and I sent Gwynne to deliver such comfits as might aid you.”

  “Calf’s feet jelly and chicken broth. What good was such swill to me?”

  “Not a lot, as you threw them at her head.”

  “Bloody-minded old witch. She’s more likely to poison a man than cosset him. You brought better to a sickroom when no more than twelve. I well remember from when I had my head split open by a staff.”

  So did she. Her mother had sent her to him with a spiced-milk-and-wine posset. He had exposed himself to her and laughed when she ran away.

  “I am here now,” she said evenly. “Are you in pain? Do you think your leg permanently injured?”

  “It should be well enough in a day or two, no thanks to Braesford. It’s my belief he wanted to kill me.”

  Isabel did not flinch from his hard stare. “From where I sat, it appeared you and Henley struck the first blows, and those from behind. I don’t believe you would have minded if he had died.”

  “He escaped by the devil’s own luck.”

  “So it was a deliberate attack.”

  “It was a melee,” he countered with a scowl directed at the end of his stick. “Your husband was on the other side. Though I’ll admit to being of a mind to cut him down to size with a well-placed whack or two.”

  Down to whose size? she wondered. In that instant, her husband seemed both a bigger and better man. “And that’s all?”

  “What else should there be?” he asked, his eyes narrowing under bushy brows while uneasiness flitted across his coarse features.

  “According to Rand’s squire, his mail shows that your sword was not blunted.” It was Gwynne who had passed on that information, received as she and David went about their tasks together.

  “These things happen.”

  “Particularly when they are planned.” She hesitated before going on in careful neutrality. “Did you arrange it, Graydon? Or did someone else suggest what a fine comeuppance it would be if Braesford fell during the contest?”

  “Think you I need someone to do my brainwork for me?” he asked in growling disdain.

  “What I think is that you have made your resentment of Braesford too clear. There are those who might find it convenient.”

  “And it bothers you that they should? You’ve gone over to the enemy.” A sneer lifted his upper lip. “Trust a woman to favor the man who gets under her skirts.”

  Hot color rose to her face. She clenched her hands in her lap to control her urge to slap his face. “That is uncalled for, particularly as you forced me to marry.”

  “A bad bargain it was, too, scraping together a dowry for you when I should have had the lot. But I’ll have it back, see if I don’t.”

  “What are you saying?” she demanded while alertness tingled in her veins.

  “’Tis a matter beyond the ken of a female. Best you go back to warming Braesford’s bed for him and leave such things to men.”

  “You meant Braesford will soon be dead, and you able to enjoy my widow’s portion.”

  “I don’t depend on it, though I’ll not deny it would suit me.”

  “What do you hear of the accusation against him? What is the word in the town or among the men-at-arms?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing much. All await the king’s decision.”

  And what was the king waiting upon? First, it had been the wedding, she thought, and mayhap the outcome of the melee. But now?

  Henry could be delaying until after the birth of his promised son. In the celebration over that event, with its promise of security for the realm vested in a child with both York and Lancaster blood in its veins, he might feel the disappearance of a mere country knight would go unnoticed. So it might, she saw with a sinking feeling in her chest.

  She had no special fondness for her marriage, yet this did not seem a fair way to be done with it. That was naturally her only concern, the fairness of it.

  “Hear you anything of the mistress gone missing or…” She paused, trying to think how much she might be giving away. Graydon had been present when the indictment against Rand had been read, however, so knew full well that it was the disappearance of both mother and child that was laid at his door.

  “Or the king’s get? Not a word. I wager the woman knew her days as Henry’s whore were over and has found another to tup her, royal or not.”

  To tup her. What a telling phrase that was, Isabel thought, as a tup was any heavy, swinging object such as a pendulum or battering ram. It was also vulgar in the extreme, an aspect she chose to overlook in her relief. The king’s get, Graydon had said, rather than Leon’s. That possibility, however inaccurate it might be—and she had compelling reason to believe it false—was not yet common coin.

  “But then Braesford could have sent the woman away himself,” her stepbrother went on with sly cunning in his eyes. “He may be sneaking off every day to enjoy the king’s leavings.”

  Her glance held a full measure of scorn. “At the risk of hanging? I somehow doubt it.”

  “But he might think it worth the chance, being so given to pleasing the ladies,” her stepbrother said. “I’ve heard he had a reputation for such plaisance while across the channel.”

  Her chest felt as if a rope constricted it, closing off her breath. She tried not to picture Rand with other women, noble, sophisticated ladies of a foreign court. Yet it would explain his dedication to her pleasure, his slow and careful tending of it.

  Plaisance, a word that meant pleasure…worldly, physical pleasure. It sat ill on Graydon’s tongue—tup was far more his style. Her stepbrother had little French, and scorned to use what he had. English was good enough for him, he said, and if he had need of fancy speech, well, that’s what scribes were for. Someone had put the word in his mouth, just as that person had fed him the gossip of Rand’s activities while in exile with Henry.

  That did not make the informant wrong.

  “Who said that to you?” she asked with an edge in her voice. “Who wants Braesford out of the way?”

  “Don’t distress yourself, my fair stepsister,” he said in rough contempt. “Some things you don’t need to know. Go back to your embroidery and wifely duties. When they are over and another husband found for you, someone will send to tell you.”

  To argue was useless. He would tell her nothing more, possibly had nothing more he could tell her. But he was wrong about what she needed to know, also about what she must do.

  Isabel was weary unto death of being kept in the dark, sick of being ordered against her will, disgusted with having her decisions made for her. She would accept these things no longer. She would not sit embroiderin
g while her fate was decided. She would learn everything there was to know.

  Afterward, she would choose for herself what she would do about it.

  12

  “Blue for keeping faith with thy lady wife,” the courtier said with a lisping accent of some country beyond England’s coast as he paused in front of Rand. “Next you’ll be playing drone to her queen bee, with her stinger in you instead of yours in her.”

  Rand glanced up from where he reclined on a bench in the great hall, making one of a group of six or seven knights and men-at-arms, old comrades who had cleared a place in the rushes to cast the bones. The man seemed familiar, though he could not place him. Had he seen him with Leon last year, or was he merely one of the hangers-on at the court? Whatever his position, the words spoken were sheer provocation, he thought. To rise to it before he discovered its cause would be ill done, though his blood simmered in his veins at the suggestive parlance.

  “If you speak of my doublet,” he drawled, “the color is gray.”

  “It appears blue to me.”

  It was, in fact, the soft gray-blue of a cloudy sky, and chosen for exactly the purpose the courtier proclaimed. The lady for whom its message was meant had not yet seen it, he thought, and was unlikely to recognize it when she did. “Mayhap, but some men have no eye for color,” Rand said with negligent ease.

  One of his fellow players, a grizzled mercenary and veteran of wars in a half-dozen countries, snorted as he cast his one good eye over the newcomer. The man’s costume consisted of a rust-red doublet paired with hose striped in green and black and a yellow wool hat stuck with a purple plume. “Braesford has ye there, milord.”

  The courtier’s face turned mottled red and white. His scowl was fierce and his hand strayed to the hilt of his knife. “I say it’s blue. I say he’s a man-hen bound to become a cuckold.”

  It was too much. Rand sighed, tossed down coins for his debt and pushed to his feet. “Outside in the courtyard,” he said. “Which shall it be, staffs or swords?”

  “Here now,” the man exclaimed, his eyes going wide. “I’ll meet you at dawn, like enough, but not before.”

  The answer came so quickly that suspicion touched Rand. He studied the courtier. He was not of impressive stature but appeared wiry and compact of form. Of mingled Spanish, Moor and Italian blood, he carried himself with the arrogance of one familiar with clashes over matters of honor. Still, he had no stomach, so it seemed, for an impromptu meeting. That was telling in itself.

  Summoning a guileless smile, Rand asked, “You and who else will meet me?”

  “Say you it would not be a fair fight?”

  “Now what gave you that idea?” He slapped the courtier on the shoulder before draping an arm about his neck and walking him away from their audience. “Come, let us have a drink and decide how best to settle the business.”

  His erstwhile challenger tried to pull away, but Rand would not allow it. Behind them the dice players, cheated of what they had expected to be a fine show, went back to their game in disgust. A few others watched, how ever, perhaps having nothing else to relieve their ennui.

  “I won’t drink with you,” the courtier said, half strangling on the words as Rand twisted a hand into the back of his shirt.

  “Nor I am inclined to tipple with you,” Rand said in a hard undertone, “but I can, if necessary, arrange it so wine never flows down your throat again. Who put you up to this masquerade? No, don’t bother to lie. Only go back and tell them it did not serve. And if crude words about my lady wife ever pass your lips again, I will stop them beginning at your miserable neck.”

  They had reached a passage that led from the hall and past various antechambers to fetch up eventually at a rat’s nest of sleeping chambers well away from the king’s apartments. With a hardy whack between the shoulder blades, all boisterous companionship, Rand sent his would-be opponent stumbling into its obscuring shadows. The man caught himself, straightened his doublet with a jerk. With a malevolent look over one shoulder, he turned and walked away.

  It had been a mistake, mayhap, to shame the courtier in front of others. Men were never quite so vicious in retaliation as when they had been made to look the fool. Still, it was hard to see how it could have been helped. The last thing Rand needed just now was to be forced to a meeting he could not win. If he suffered a fatal blow, Isabel would become a widow. If he struck one while a charge of murder hung over his head, he would be twice damned.

  Was that what was intended? Had the courtier been sent as a sacrifice in hope of a hangman’s noose for the master of Braesford? Or was it possible he was seeing complications where there was only an ambuscade in which he was meant to receive a fatal wound?

  “What was that about?” Isabel asked, coming up behind him so quietly that he started like a squire at his first tourney before turning to face her.

  “Nothing,” he said, “only an idiot with more pride than sense.” To prevent further questions, he went on the offensive. “What have you been doing? I looked into the queen’s solar, but did not see you embroidering with your sisters and the other ladies.”

  “I go to join them now. But did you not linger to play them a French air or two as entertainment? I am surprised.”

  She had turned his tactic against him. A smile of appreciation curled one corner of his mouth. “I save my best airs for my wife,” he said lightly. “I wonder if she appreciates it.”

  “I have it on the best authority that she is not unappreciative,” she answered, her gaze resting on the gray-blue damask of his doublet, “just as she has a regard for your declaration of faithfulness. But she would as soon not be the butt of jests because of either.”

  “She prefers staid boredom in her married state.” He waited with a suspended feeling in his chest for her answer.

  Deep rose color suffused her face. “Not…not entirely. But some things are…”

  “Too risqué to be mentioned?”

  “Private,” she finished while giving him a glance from under her lashes that threatened to scorch his soul. “Much too private.”

  “And require solitude for their further discussion,” he said in a deep-voiced hint as he leaned to brush his lips along the curve of her neck, then flick her earlobe with his tongue.

  “I doubt it would be wise.” She placed her hand on his chest to prevent him from moving closer. “Though an intriguing invitation, it excites more interest than need be.”

  It did indeed, he saw with a quick glance from under his brows. Their exchange seemed to fascinate any number of the men and women who lounged about the hall, holding their attention as much or more than had his brief confrontation with the courtier.

  The matter was wiped from his mind on the instant. The minx that was his wife found his flat nipple unerringly through doublet and shirt, squeezing the nub between her fingers with the lightest of pinches. Fire shot to his groin like the blast from a Chinaman’s harquebus. He thought his mouth might have fallen open as she released him and turned swiftly to walk away. Did her hips sway more than usual? He would swear they did, swear, too, that it was for his benefit, because she knew he watched.

  A stunned chuckle vibrated in his chest. He would let her go for now, he decided. The retribution later would be sweeter for the wait. Though having a sheep’s brain himself where his lady wife was concerned, he yearned to have her both now and later.

  It had been torment to leave their chamber this morning. The taste of her mingled with raspberry flavor had lingered long on his tongue. It was maddening, a more powerful aphrodisiac than any unicorn’s horn. He had gathered his scattered clothing and dressed without glancing at the bed, since the sight of her bare shoulder or smooth, white calf thrust from under the sheet might have undone his good intentions. He would certainly have thrown off his clothes and taken her again. He might not have risen from their bed the whole day long.

  He could not afford such distraction. Forces were gathering that boded ill. He could sense their import in the dist
ance Henry had placed between the two of them since the wedding, also in the sly glances of those he passed in the corridors, the watchfulness of the guards as he moved in and out of the palace. It was there, too, in the isolation in which he moved. Nobles who had been his companions in arms in France and at Bosworth Field avoided him as if he was plague-ridden. Few dared chance the taint of friendship with a murderer or the possibility of sharing his fate if he fell so far out of the king’s favor that Henry allowed him to hang.

  Isabel was a part of his fate, regardless of her wishes. He regretted it, but it could not be helped.

  That was a lie. He could have sworn to Bishop Morton, who had heard their vows, that he was unwilling to wed her. That would have ended the matter, for the church did not condone forced marriage, not even at the behest of a king. He had been too intent on his own desires for the sacrifice. More, he would have had to perjure himself and confess the sin later, for he had wanted nothing in this life so much as to take Isabel to wife.

  He had half expected her to speak up at the service, stating her own unwillingness. He had steeled himself for it, had bethought himself of how he would support her should Graydon attempt to force her compliance as he had before. Almost, he wished she had dared it. As it was, he had no idea whether she had married him because she was truly willing or because she feared to refuse.

  And yet, and yet…

  For a short, shining hour at Braesford Hall he had felt complete. It seemed his poor, wandering bastard’s heart had finally gained a place and position where it belonged. He would have a family where he was accepted, welcomed, valued in spite of his birth. He and Isabel, so he had dreamed, would build something together that was strong and lasting.

  Before, when handed Braesford as the king’s gift, he had expected to glory in his possession. He had thought being able to call himself Sir Randall of Braesford, master of lands as far as the eye could see, would satisfy him all his days. The honor had soon worn thin. Something had been missing. He had known what it was when he saw Isabel of Graydon dancing in the great hall at Westminster. He had watched her smile with the light of a thousand joys in her face and had longed for her, suddenly, as a starving man longs for food and drink. He had thought he would pay any price to have her, any price at all.