Lady Of Fire AKA Pagan Bride

by Tamara Leigh

  What Lucien longed to do was sweep his little sister into his arms. Before he had departed for France, she had often been underfoot, but he had rarely begrudged her his attention.

  During long nights aboard the galley, he had calmed his soul with memories of her guileless giggles and yelps of delight, her innocent remarks and boundless curiosity. She had been a beacon, this miracle child who should not have been conceived, much less survived the arduous birthing by a woman well past childbearing age. But Giselle had, and she had been born to parents who, until then, had only been blessed with boys—five, of whom three had survived to adulthood.

  “When you wish to ride on my shoulders again,” Lucien said, “you will let me know, hmm?”

  Something flickered in her eyes, and for a moment she looked near upon him, then she tossed her head. “Only my brothers get to be my horse.”

  “Well, if ever you wish to see what is up here,” Lucien said, “I suppose you will have to pretend I am your brother.”

  Giselle glanced beyond his head, pressed her lips tight.

  Dorothea nudged her daughter toward the stairs. “Summon Jervais,” she said.

  Giselle raised her eyebrows at Lucien, said, “My brother,” and flounced off.

  “She will be in your lap by nightfall,” Dorothea said, then looped an arm through her son’s and urged him to where Vincent and the others stood silent and watchful.

  Upon the dais, Lucien seated his mother at his side, then dropped into the chair vacated by Vincent. “Leave us,” he ordered the knights and servants.

  They withdrew, and in their absence, a gaping silence grew until Dorothea said, “Tell us, Lucien—”

  “Nay, Mother, when Jervais is here.”

  Dorothea inclined her head, looked to her middle son. “Sit with us, Vincent.”

  He fidgeted before taking a seat distant from Lucien.

  When the youngest De Gautier son came off the stairs, there was an air of annoyance about him, but the moment his eyes beheld Lucien, he halted. And there he stood and stared until a smile broke upon his face. “How dare I not believe Giselle!” he cried and crossed the hall at a run.

  Lucien rose to accept his embrace, and was surprised at the bulk and power his brother’s once slender body had attained. Nicholas had not exaggerated.

  When they drew back, Jervais said, “Tis a blessing beyond blessings that you are returned to us,” and made the table his seat.

  “Much has changed.” Lucien marked Vincent with a glower. “And I would know all of it, but first I seek an answer.”

  Vincent rose. “I know your question, Lucien.” His face was so pale it diluted his good looks.

  For their mother’s sake, Lucien presented a calm face. “Of course you know, but they do not, do they?”

  Vincent looked to his mother and younger brother. “They thought you dead.”

  “We all thought you dead,” Dorothea said. “When you did not return from France, and no word came, it was the only conclusion to be had.”

  “But word did come,” Lucien said. “Aye, Vincent?”

  Throat bobbing, the younger man stepped forward.

  “What speak you of?” Dorothea asked. “Make sense, Lucien.”

  “All will be clear shortly, Mother.”

  Vincent’s advance on the one he had almost mortally wronged was probably the bravest thing he had ever done, Lucien silently scorned.

  Vincent halted before Lucien, and though his gaze wavered, he did not look away. “Lucien is making sense, Mother. I did receive word that he lived. And with it came a ransom demand.”

  Dorothea staggered and dropped into her chair. “You never told. You said naught of it!”

  Vincent turned pleading eyes upon her. “How could I? The coffers were near empty, nowhere near enough coin to bring him home.”

  Lucien jerked. “Not enough coin?”

  “After Father died, and when there was no word from you, I thought I was heir. I…thought it all mine.”

  “All yours!” Lucien strained to keep his fists at his sides. “What did you do with it?”

  Jervais supplied the bitter answer. “He gambled it away. Almost every last bloody coin.”

  “I tried to get it back,” Vincent protested. “I tried everything to make your ransom.”

  “And for that,” Jervais said, “we are now reduced to near poverty.”

  It was as Breville had warned. Much had changed at Falstaff, the loss of Dewmoor Pass the least of its troubles. Lucien looked to his youngest brother. “Explain.”

  Where he perched on the table’s edge, Jervais crossed his arms over his chest. “You tell him, Vincent.” He jutted his chin at the one to whom he was no longer subject. “Tell the heir of Falstaff who now holds the greater portion of the De Gautier lands.”

  At that moment, Vincent could not be said to be handsome. The beauty that had forever eclipsed his brothers was reduced to a vague shadow of manliness.

  “Each time I thought I had him,” he bemoaned, “the knave took another piece. I should have stopped, but I thought the next time my luck would run better and all would be restored.”

  Now Lucien understood the scarcity of knights when he had entered the hall. Untold numbers of De Gautier vassals now answered to another lord. Though he knew the name of their new liege, he demanded, “Who holds our lands, Vincent?”

  “Breville,” he said low.

  Lucien’s arms began to shake with the effort to keep them at his sides.

  Accept it and let us continue on in peace, the miscreant had said, knowing full well what awaited Falstaff’s true heir.

  Lucien threw himself on Vincent, making the floor their battleground. He heard his mother’s cry, but it was not enough to pull him back up over the edge he had gone over.

  By the time he realized Vincent made no attempt to defend himself, as if accepting the beating as his due, he had landed at least a dozen blows. Breathing hard, knuckles stained with his and Vincent’s blood, he thrust upright and looked down at his brother who would surely regret he had not thrown up an arm to protect that beautiful face. It was a mess, and it would look worse once the bruises came into their own.

  “Do it!” Vincent demanded, peering up at him through swelling lids. “End it. ’Tis no more than I deserve.”

  “It is far better than you deserve,” Lucien barked and wrenched his tunic off over his head.

  Behind, he heard Dorothea and Jervais gasp.

  “This”—Lucien jabbed the scar on his face—“and this”—he jerked around to present his back to Vincent—“is no more than you deserve.”

  Vincent groaned. “Dear God, I did not know!”

  “Did not know!” Lucien swung back around.

  “I tried not to think about it.”

  “Well now you get to think about it, and I hope you ever shall.”

  Wiping the back of a hand across his bloody mouth, Vincent raised his head. “After what I have done, you would let me live?”

  “You may not have the backbone of a De Gautier,” Lucien rasped, “but you are still my mother’s son.”

  Vincent flinched. “I am also our father’s son—and your brother.”

  “That you will have to prove.”

  Vincent pulled his battered body into a sitting position. “How?”

  Lucien left the question unanswered. “What did Breville promise you for marriage to his daughter?”

  “How do you know of that?”

  “What did he promise you, Vincent? Falstaff?”

  “Nay, Lucien! Falstaff and its immediate environs I—you still hold. He offered lasting peace.”

  “Naught else? No dowry? No return of the property he stole?”

  Slowly, Vincent gained his feet. “It was agreed that with the birth of a child made of Melissant and myself, he would gift all De Gautier properties back to me.”

  “And Dewmoor Pass?”

  “Holy rood, Lucien! Is it not enough that he will restore the lands? Have not both our fa
milies lost too much over that useless pass?”

  “It is ours!” Fearing he might attack Vincent again, Lucien swung away. “I will have the lands and the pass back,” he said, looking from his mother’s distressed face to Jervais’s expectant face. “Be it by blood or guile, I will have them back.”

  “You speak the same nonsense our father spoke,” Vincent protested. “You would rather spill blood than accept peace through marriage to a Breville.”

  Slowly, Lucien came back around. “Certes, it is not the way of one who gambles away his family’s wealth, but it is the way of warriors. That is what I am.”

  Vincent averted his gaze. “I know what it is to be at peace. Do you?”

  Much to their father’s disappointment, Vincent had always been better at words than weapons, and as these had the potential to strike deep, Lucien once more gave him his back.

  “What do you intend?” Jervais asked.

  In the past, making war on the Brevilles had been the only means of retribution. Now, the loss of vassals and household knights hindered such a solution. Or did it?

  Lucien raked a hand through his hair, fervently wished he had brought Alessandra to Falstaff first as she had pleaded. Judging by James’s reaction, she might have played a powerful role in restoring De Gautier lands—a useful pawn, the same as Sabine had made him.

  “I must think on it,” he said, and felt fatigue settle deeper into his bones.

  Jervais laid a hand on his shoulder. “I stand with you. Together, we will restore the De Gautier name.”

  Lucien looked to his other brother. “Have you the stomach for it?” At Vincent’s hesitation, he muttered, “I thought not.”

  Vincent opened his mouth, closed it on whatever he had been tempted to say, and strode from the hall and out into the last of day.

  Lucien crossed to his mother. “I have need of a bath.”

  “Of course. I shall have water delivered to the solar.”

  That place where his mother and father had slept and made their children. Where Dorothea had birthed her babes. Where, when young, he and his brothers had gathered around their father to hear tales of the cowardly Brevilles and the fearless De Gautiers.

  “’Tis yours now,” Dorothea said.

  Hastened from his memories, Lucien acknowledged it was, indeed, his. And one day he would share it with a wife as his father and generations before him had done.

  Visions of Alessandra arose. Alessandra in the great bed, red hair spread upon their pillows. Alessandra in the chair before the fire, a babe in her arms.

  He dragged a hand across his stubbled jaw. “I must needs shave.”

  “I shall do it,” Dorothea said, and hurried across the hall.

  “What is up there?” a petulant voice asked.

  Having not seen Giselle’s return to the hall, Lucien was surprised to find her staring up at him.

  Despite fatigue and the ominous emotions beneath his skin, he summoned a smile for her. “Magic.” He lifted a hand, stirred the air above his head. “Up here, one can fly.”

  She tapped her pursed mouth. “But only birds can fly, Lucien.”

  With her naming of him, the ache in his heart eased. “And little girls who have big brothers with broad shoulders.”

  She raised a sharp little eyebrow that he did not doubt would one day set many men aback. “I have not said you are my brother.”

  “True, but mayhap you are ready to pretend I am.”

  She looked as if she might once more denounce him, but she raised her arms. “I think that would be all right.”

  Trying not to smile too wide lest she pridefully changed her mind, he plucked her up, told her to hold back her skirts, and settled her on his shoulders.

  “Ooh,” she crooned, “’tis magic, as you said.”

  “Would you like to try to fly?”

  Her whole body shrugged. “I do not know how.”

  “Hold your arms out to the sides.”

  “But I might fall.”

  “I will hold you steady.” He clasped her legs more tightly.

  “Very well, but if I fall, ’twill prove you are not my brother.”

  “I am prepared to accept the consequences.”

  She laughed and raised her arms out to her sides. “I am ready, Lucien.”

  His troubles and fatigue much lightened, he carried her about the hall amid giggles and gleeful cries and the silent refrain, I am home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  As Jabbar had wept upon Sabine’s deathbed, so did James when Alessandra finished translating her mother’s letter—or nearly so. He was too English to allow any to witness his tears, though the back he turned to her quaked with silent sobs.

  The letter had been addressed to Catherine’s aunt and uncle, but its message was clearly meant for James. It recorded her abduction from Corburry, her first months in the harem, the birth of Alessandra, the intervening years, the sickness thieving her body, and Lucien’s role in delivering Alessandra to England.

  Only one detail was missing, Alessandra had realized when she came to the last, beseeching line of the letter. Her mother had not mentioned her great love for Jabbar. She had been wise not to, for there was no doubt James had loved her deeply. No good would come of him learning of Catherine’s feelings for another man.

  For hours, Alessandra and James sat alone in the great hall, even now forgoing the evening meal as they attempted to bridge the lost years.

  Though there were some facets to James’s personality that might take years to understand, Alessandra was soon assured of one thing. As her mother had said, he was kind, his one failing the same as Lucien’s—the legacy of hate between their families.

  Still, he spoke often of the new peace, reveled in the word each time he uttered it, and expressed concern over whether it would last now that Lucien was home.

  Tentatively, Alessandra posed the question uppermost in her mind—what would Lucien find upon his arrival at Falstaff?

  Though James attempted to turn the conversation, he eventually yielded the truth.

  “You won the land from his brother?” she repeated.

  “Fairly, I vow, and with good intentions.”

  “What was that?”

  He smiled. “Surely you can guess.”

  “Peace?”

  “Aye. Had it been Lucien, I might never have attempted such a thing, but it was simple with Vincent. The idea was to gain what the De Gautiers treasured most and offer it back to them at a price.”

  “The price being peace.”

  He inclined his head. “And a grandchild that would forever join our families.”

  “Vincent was agreeable?”

  “As agreeable as a De Gautier can be.”

  Alessandra looked past him to a tapestry that depicted men engaged in battle. “Lucien will return,” she said, “but I do not think it will be in peace.”

  James also considered the tapestry. “The battle at Cresting Ridge in the year 1342,” he said. “The De Gautiers lost six men, the Brevilles five. Breville victory by the death of a lad too young to heft the sword he carried.”

  A shiver stole up Alessandra’s spine for what the tapestry represented—a repulsive gloating over death.

  James sighed. “I fear you may be right. Still, I pray Lucien will put aside his pride and reconsider marriage to Melissant.”

  Alessandra’s silence was her undoing.

  Her father gave her a searching stare. “What happened between you and De Gautier?”

  She felt herself blush. “I…” She clenched her hands in the blanket James had earlier sent for when she had begun shivering. “Lucien was kind to me.”

  Her father chuckled. “Not likely. Tolerant, perhaps. Never kind.”

  She shook her head. “You are wrong about him.”

  “I pray I am. But you have not answered my question.”

  Though he was her father, it was not easy what he asked. “I am chaste,” she said.

  James covered her hands wit
h one of his. “As hoped, but what of your feelings for him?”

  Should she tell him of her love for his enemy?

  The appearance of James’s wife saved Alessandra from responding. Stepping from the stairs, the woman crossed the hall with a young woman and boy on her heels.

  Frowning, James stood. “I had thought you would await my summons.”

  Agnes halted before him. “And I had thought you would summon me sooner.” Her gaze flickered over Alessandra, dismissed her. “With darkness upon us and no meal laid, it has fallen to me to interrupt your conversation.”

  James’s jaw worked. “Which you have succeeded in doing.”

  The young woman stepped forward, smiled sweetly. “Is it true, Father”—she nodded at Alessandra—“she is also your daughter?”

  James put a hand beneath Alessandra’s elbow and urged her to stand.

  Reluctantly, Alessandra gave up the warmth of the blanket, feeling anew the draft of cool air that crept in through every crack in the hall. Even on the deck of the ship, with the night wind blowing through her clothes, she had been warmer. But then, Lucien had been at her back, arms encircling her. Would they ever again?

  She sighed, wished her father would call for a fire to be set in the hearth.

  “Aye, Melissant,” James said. “She is my daughter and your half sister.”

  “Is she also mine, Father?” the boy asked.

  What seemed pride leapt off James’s face as he looked upon the lad who appeared ten or so years aged. “Aye, Ethan, she is.”

  Alessandra wondered if she ought to embrace this brother and sister as she had done her father. But uncertain as to how such affection would be received, she linked her hands before her.

  A frown aged Ethan’s young face as he considered Alessandra’s mouth. “Mother says she speaks strange. That she has the sound of the infidel.”

  A look passed between Agnes and James, his fit with displeasure, hers with defiance.

  Turning aside her mother’s warnings about her cousin, Alessandra silently sympathized with Agnes. It could not be easy to live in the shadow of one whom James had so loved, especially her childhood rival.

  James set a hand upon Ethan’s shoulder. “’Tis true Alessandra speaks different—with a song in her voice. But she is Christian, the same as you and I.”