By His Majesty's Grace

by Jennifer Blake

  “Are your passions overweening, sweet wife?”

  He was rewarded by the lift of her eyes in a fulminating glare. “It was the priest’s description, not mine. Do you wish to hear what I have been about or not?”

  He did, but it was secondary to other wishes that crowded his brain. Lifting a hand in a gesture of accord, he turned away, the better to hide the evidence of what his ruminations on her passions had done to his body.

  From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of his narrow bed and the length of white silk that lay at its head. It was the sleeve from Isabel’s wedding costume given as her favor at the tournament. Running it through his hands, sleeping with it draped over his face, had become habits after he found it packed among the items David brought for his comfort. It still bore the stains of his blood, pale brown against the white silk, but it also held captured in its weave the faint perfume of Isabel, the scent she wore and her innate sweetness. Holding it to his nose calmed the beat of his heart, or so it seemed, and sent him into satyr’s dreams.

  It did not suit him to have her guess how dependent he had become upon its consolation. Moving without haste, he stepped to the bed and pretended to straighten the grimy sheet while sweeping the silk rectangle beneath it. Turning again, he gave her an ironic bow as he offered the low bed as a seat.

  She glanced at the lumpy mattress, then away again, before shaking her head. “I would as soon stand.”

  It was wise of her to avoid that rather obvious step to perdition, he thought. He might easily have joined her there and put an end to all discussion.

  “Did you know,” she asked, bracing her fingertips on the table beside her, “that the man who returned the midwife to her home after Mademoiselle Juliette d’Amboise was delivered of her child was not from Braesford? That he was, in fact, a gentleman?”

  “A gentleman?”

  “So the woman said. He was not known to her, nor did he give her a name. It seems it was he who put the idea of child murder into her head.”

  Rand had not known. Even if he had his ideas of who might have set the business in motion, however, there was little to be done about it. “What would you? I fear the thing has gone too far for causes and stratagems to matter.” He paused, brushed the subject aside with a gesture. “I see the splint is gone from your finger. It’s healed, then?”

  “As you say.” She glanced down at it an instant, then met his gaze, her own unguarded and so soft with remembrance that it wrung his heart. “For which I must thank you yet again.”

  He could think of ways that might be accomplished, but choked back the words as he inclined his head. “Not at all.”

  “No.” She took a swift breath that pressed her breasts higher against her bodice. “Where was I? Lady Margaret’s council and what has been discovered. Allow me to tell you, if you please?”

  She went on to relate a good many things as he faced her in the small chamber, most of them unknown to him. Hope, that bastard emotion that tied men’s souls in knots, awakened inside him as he listened, particularly as he realized the scope of Lady Margaret’s entry into the business.

  Ruthlessly, he choked it off. It would not do, not while he lay behind lock and key, unable to provide the least modicum of protection for his wife.

  “You do realize,” he said with deliberate scorn, “that a woman has died to prevent the knowledge you are seeking from being made public? You can understand, can you not, that you may be killed if you continue?”

  “I am not stupid, however much you might prefer it,” she answered with a lift of her chin. “But I abhor unfairness, cannot abide that whoever has brought this upon you should profit from it.”

  “So it’s the unfairness of it that moves you. You have no concern for my life.”

  “I did not say so. What manner of wife would I be to show myself content that you should die for a crime you did not commit?”

  “One forced to wed against her will,” he drawled in tried reason. “Some pray to be released from such unions. But if you have any respect whatever for the tie that binds us, you will heed my command in this matter. Return to Westminster and keep as still in our chamber as you are able. Forget what took place at Braesford because the truth will not change what is to happen. Preserve yourself and, just possibly, the child we may have created between us. That is the best thing you can do for me.”

  The look she gave him held only scorn. “I had not expected you to be grateful, but did think you might have some appreciation for what I am about.”

  “Oh, I appreciate it, my dear wife, far more than you know. But I object to lying here in terror of your death while I can do nothing to prevent it. I have no wish to discover, when I am hanged, that you are already on the other side to greet me.”

  Her eyes, dark green with concern, searched his face even as color drained from her face. After a long moment, she sighed, lowered her gaze to a point past his shoulder. “You think,” she said in the barest of whispers, “that Henry is really behind this thing. You believe he did away with his mistress, meant to be rid of her baby.”

  “A kingdom is a hard thing to lose.”

  “All because he bedded a woman for some few weeks or months before he took a queen, yes.”

  “Or for the sake of another man’s child,” he answered with a snort of disdain. “Another man’s…?”

  “Did I not tell you before? I have it on good authority that Mademoiselle Juliette had more than one lover. It seems she was also the mistress of the king’s Master of Revels.”

  “That is clearly impossible, as I would have told you before if you had allowed me to know what you were about. Yes, or taken the time to hear what I would say.”

  He remembered the incident, remembered also the crock of raspberries he had brought to their chamber on the night of his interrogation on the matter. That he had been so distracted as to miss the knowledge she held did not aid his temper. “You say so because you know him so well? You feel he was so entranced with you that taking another woman would not occur to him? Few men are so single-minded.”

  “I say it because it would be incest. I say it because I know well that Mademoiselle Juliette is, or was, his sister.”

  Shock and confusion struck Rand like a double blow. He stared at Isabel, seeking the truth in the clear, gray-green depths of her eyes. It lay there, like a new-minted coin at the bottom of a well. “You know this…how?”

  “He told me months ago, when I first came to court. It was a slip of the tongue, I think, as he spoke of a song he had written about a sweet young girl seduced by a king’s idle desire. He said he could never sing it at Henry’s court, but should earn renown with it later, when he returned to—”

  “To Brittany,” Rand supplied, as that was where Leon had joined Henry’s retinue as a minstrel and, later, the architect of his entertainment.

  “To France,” she corrected.

  To France. Of course, to France. Leon and Juliette no doubt were, or had been, in the pay of the French crown. The French crown that had been trying for centuries to wipe out all trace of English dominion over French soil.

  God, how could he have been so blind? The child was Henry’s, after all. It must have been conceived during Juliette’s liaison with him for the sole purpose of becoming a hostage for his favor toward French policy.

  How very maddening it must have been for Anne, regent for young Charles VIII, and how lethally inconvenient that Henry had so quickly gotten another babe upon his new queen.

  The usefulness of Juliette’s child might be lessened if Elizabeth of York produced a royal heir, though not neutralized entirely. Henry would still have a care for his flesh and blood. Who had spirited the baby away, then, and why? Had it been done to prevent Henry’s small daughter from being used against him? Was it so she could be held by those who would best know how to use such a tender captive?

  Yes, and had Juliette died trying to protect little Madeleine, or had she been killed for another reason altogether? A dead woman coul
d not identify her child, and a child without a mother could be claimed by any female. It would not have been necessary to kill the little one.

  “I had her,” Rand said, the words stark in the quiet room.

  “Had who?” Isabel asked in sudden coolness.

  The fleeting thought struck him that she thought he referred to Juliette. Could she, just possibly, be jealous of his acquaintance with the dead lady? It was laughable on the face of it, since Juliette had been hugely pregnant during her time at Braesford, but he was not amused. “The baby Madeleine, Juliette’s child,” he said in gruff explanation. “I discovered her at the rendezvous on the night I was arrested.”

  His lady wife was not dull-witted; she took no more than an instant to grasp what he was saying. “The baby was with her all along? She truly was removed from Braesford with Mademoiselle Juliette?”

  He heard the gladness in her voice and allowed himself a moment of irony. “Oh, aye, as I’ve said all along.”

  “David told me she was safe, but not how it came about or who had her. What happened? Where were they taken?”

  “A message was delivered asking for my aid, as you may know.”

  She gave a quick nod. “Go on.”

  “I was told where to meet Mademoiselle Juliette, at a ruined keep deep in the country. The idea was that I should be discovered there with her body, and with the baby. By good luck, I was early to the meeting place. I found Juliette newly dead and the baby lying where she had fallen, so it appeared, as Juliette died. She was such a small mite. I tucked her into my doublet and escaped through the postern gate. Once back in town, I—”

  He stopped abruptly, appalled at his near mistake.

  “You what? Where did you take her? What did you do with her?”

  He refused to tell her. Once Isabel learned where the child was, she would not rest until she had the small one in her keeping; it was how she was made. Who could say what might come of that? Murder had been done because of this birth, as he had told her, and might well be again.

  “It isn’t something you need know. Suffice it to say she is well and well hidden.”

  “You are quite sure of it? You know this in spite of being shut away here since Mademoiselle Juliette was killed?”

  “As sure as any man may be.”

  She paced away from him, turned with a swing of linen skirts and retraced her steps to halt in front of him. “Few places are truly safe. Any person may weaken, in spite of everything, if the bribe is large enough.”

  “And some have no need for riches,” he said with certainty.

  “What if you are wrong?”

  If he was wrong, then the child would become the pawn she was intended to be. Those who had possessed her would achieve their ends. Either France would force Henry to stand aside while it annexed former English territories, or the Yorkists would create a scandal that, like the deaths of the princes in the Tower, might doom the Tudor reign before it had well begun.

  It was not impossible, of course, that whoever was behind it intended to accomplish both aims. Or that an extra one could be to see Isabel widowed and a new master installed at Braesford Hall.

  “If I am wrong,” he said deliberately, “it will make little difference. Henry either will or will not acquire new allies, new alliances. He will or will not keep his throne. You will either be the mother of my heir, therefore empowered to hold Braesford in our child’s name, or else a childless widow available to be married again to Henry’s advantage, with or without Braesford as your dowry. Your life will go on and mine…”

  “What?” she demanded, searching his face.

  “Mine will not.”

  “For the love of heaven, Rand, do not be such a martyr!” she cried, clenching her fists as she moved closer to him, raising them toward him while anger flashed like green fire in her eyes. “Does your motto of Undaunted mean nothing?”

  “It means everything.”

  “Why will you not fight? Do you not care to live? Have you nothing worth living for?”

  Rage, trapped deep inside him for weeks, sprang free to meet hers. He reached for her, grasping her arms and pulling her against him so she was melded to him from breast to knees. “You,” he answered, the word so harsh it scraped his throat. “You are the reason I would live.”

  He kissed her as if he meant to devour her, plundering her sweetness, licking the tender, quilted inner surface of her mouth, the polished edges of her teeth, capturing her tongue. He enclosed her in the circle of his arms and still could not get close enough. Swinging with her, he put her back to the wall next to the door so anyone peering through the iron grille could see nothing. Pressing close, he moved into the soft juncture of her thighs, glorying in the feel of her against him, in the sensation of her breasts flattened upon the hard planes of his chest.

  She did not resist, but met him in a fury of her own, sliding her arms around his neck, clutching his hair in her fingers. He shuddered with the scrape of her nails on his neck and his scalp, groaned aloud as he felt her arch against him and move sinuously in her own need.

  She was temptation and beguilement, comfort and every promise of surcease he had ever known. Half-crazed by the feel and the scent of her when he had feared never to touch her again, he had no thought of restraint. Nothing, nothing mattered except to have her, take her, fill her, become lost in her, never again to be found.

  He framed her breasts with his hands, teasing the nipples while he licked and sucked the fragile skin of her neck, took her earlobe between his teeth until she gave a small cry and turned her mouth to his once more.

  He smoothed one palm downward and around, kneading the fullness of her hips, grinding her slowly against his aching body, lifting her to the tips of her toes for a better fit. Blind, deaf, uncaring of where they were or who was near, he gathered folds of her skirt in his hand, grasping for more, dragging it up until he reached the hem. Burrowing underneath, he skimmed the warm, firm flesh of her thigh, found her softness.

  God, she was wet and hot, so hot, burning tenderly into the palm of his hand as he cupped her. He used the heel of his hand and wrist to stoke her desire, felt the tight bud of it harden against his pulse that throbbed there. She gasped on a tried sound of need, shivering in his hold. He loosened it a fraction, enough to bend his head and tongue the neckline of her gown, find the strutted nipple that pushed up beneath the fabric. And with a sudden thrust, he pressed a long finger home.

  She clenched upon it in abrupt, hot reception, while internal muscles caressed, invited in liquid surrender. He needed nothing more. Raising his doublet, ripping aside points, he pushed down his braies to free himself. Lifting first one of her legs and then the other, he draped them over his arms while bracing her against the wall, and then he drove into her.

  It was perfect entrapment. She surrounded him, absorbed him, took him deeper than he had ever gone, deeper than he had dreamed. Mindless with the delirium of it, he ground against her, plumbing her velvet softness. His skin felt on fire. It was too tight, too full, too sensitive to her every movement, her every contraction.

  She sobbed against his neck, a small sound that carried his name. That was all it took.

  He possessed her with furious strokes, each harder and deeper than the last. He couldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop, wanted to go on forever until they were one flesh once more, one body, one soul. He felt her hands upon him, grasping, holding, while her breath, her small gasps and cries, grew ever louder. He took her mouth again, mocking his movements with his tongue, drinking her sweet desperation, until abruptly she keeled forward, pressing her forehead into his shoulder with a guttural moan.

  He exploded with the force of an overcharged harquebus, shuddering as his life, his hope and every dream pumped into her. He held her, chest heaving, heart thundering against his ribs, head pounding with the sudden return of blood, while tears burned the backs of his eyes.

  “You,” he whispered against her hair, “you are the reason I would live. You are also the r
eason I would die. Undaunted.”

  17

  It was said by those who should know that a woman only conceived if she took pleasure in the act of procreation. Isabel was not convinced. Couplings witnessed in and around the barnyard, swift mountings protested by she-animals, gave little weight to the idea. So it had been as well with an incident at Graydon, where a serving woman had been set upon by drunken louts and left near death but still bore a child to one of her attackers.

  Yet her pleasure had been fierce during the time spent with Rand. She had whisker burns on her face to show for it, also discolored splotches like bruises on her neck and wrinkles across the front of her gown.

  Who could have guessed how much she would miss his touch or how easily he could prove it. His strength, his sure caress, had melted her will like a tallow candle in the sun. The ferocious concentration he brought to what he was doing, the powerful glide of his muscles as he moved against her, were reminders of his terrible prowess on the tournament field. He had taken her against the wall of his Tower chamber with the same determination to prevail.

  And what incredible abandonment she had known at being held there like some servant girl coupling with a randy man-at-arms. Her face burned to think of how open she had been to him, how uncaring of anything except the fierce, hot joining. She had surged against his force, taking all of him she could get, wanting more, needing more still.

  She could not help thinking she might be with child. A part of her viewed the possibility with dread; a woman with child was always at a disadvantage, restricted even more than usual in where she could go and what she could do, forced to have a care in all things for the life growing inside her. Regardless, she hugged the thought to her as tenderly as she might a newborn itself.

  Rand had her wedding sleeve as his token still. He had tried to hide it, but she had seen. He kept it by him, one of a handful of personal items brought to relieve the tedium of imprisonment. It pleased her in some way she could not quite grasp.