The Wife Test

by Betina Krahn

  How could the king think her guilty of anything more than being a pawn in a game of power and dominion? How could the king do this to her? Or to him? This was his marriage, his heart, his love the king was interfering with!

  He looked up to find his father bearing down on him with a fury in his eyes that seemed like a reflection of that which was rising in Hugh. Before he could speak, the earl drew back a thick, leathery fist and laid him out on the floor. By the time the hall stopped spinning and his eyes focused once more, Hugh’s father was standing astride him with that same fist cocked, ready to administer more of the same.

  “Where the hell have you been?” the earl demanded.

  Hugh sat up slowly, holding his head, trying to make “down” stay down and “up” stay up. “On my way here, dammit.” He looked up, examining his throbbing jaw, and managed to focus both his vision and his will. “You’d better never try that again, old man.”

  “I’ll do it a thousand times over if that’s what it takes to knock some sense into that thick head of yours.” The earl grudgingly stepped back to allow Hugh to rise. “I’ve seen some horse’s arses in my day—why the hell didn’t you speak up—say something—defend her? You’ve got to get her back for us. My girls need her. Hell, even you need her. Though, God knows, you don’t deserve her.”

  “I figured that out for myself, thank you,” Hugh snapped, testing his face and rolling his shoulders. He eyed both the door where she had exited and that ominous door on the far side of the hall through which the duke had disappeared.

  “What are you going to do?” the earl demanded.

  “How can we help?” Jax approached with Simon and William.

  Hugh scrambled to decide the best course—whether to gather evidence first or approach the king first to request time and resources to sort it all out.

  “I have to see Lady Marcella and then the duke. We need to find out who was behind informing the king about the maids’ parentage. Whoever was behind those earlier attempts to keep us from fulfilling the duke’s ransom hasn’t stopped trying to cause damage.” Jax nodded and Hugh gave him a thump on the arm. “Find Graham and this ‘uncle’ of Lisette’s, then talk to Bedford and Norfolk. See what you can learn.”

  Chloe sat in her once and current chamber, staring at the empty cots around her. She had never felt so alone or so hopeless in her life. She kept seeing in her mind Hugh’s face as she was being taken from the great hall. The horror, the revulsion in his expression settled on her heart like a stone. She could scarcely draw breath around it.

  She had finagled her way into a duke’s family, hoping to cloak the shame of her origins with his name and rank, and now her straw house of small deceits and sins of omission had come crashing down around her. The white lies she had employed, thinking they could do no harm, had come back tenfold to ruin her. How could such a small amount of bad so overwhelm all the good she had done and tried to do? Was she to blame or was she simply caught up in and overwhelmed by someone else’s wrongdoing?

  What did it matter who was at fault? she thought dismally. Hugh probably hated her. He would undoubtedly repudiate her and annul her and charge right back to his precious monastery to rid himself of the taint of her flesh and infamy. And where would she go? The convent would never have her back after the way she tricked them. She would be homeless and friendless—

  Voices sounded just outside the door, and she had to listen for a moment to be certain she’d heard something. A voice … She rushed to the door and pressed her ear to the heavy ironbound planks. A woman’s voice. A moment later the door opened slightly. Lisette whirled through the opening, and as the door closed behind her, she flashed a smile at the guard, who admitted her to the chamber.

  “Lis-ette?” The name caught on the lump in Chloe’s throat.

  Lisette opened her arms, and Chloe burst into tears and fell into them. Together they made their way to the nearest cot and sat down. Lisette hugged her and stroked her hair as her sobs gradually subsided.

  “I’ve disgraced him, Lisette, in front of king and court. He’ll never forgive me.” Chloe sat back with a shuddering breath, swiping at a last trickle of tears on her cheek. “He could barely stand to be with me when he believed I was a duke’s daughter.”

  “But there is hope,” Lisette said reaching for her hands. “Perhaps they will discover that you truly are the duke’s daughter and all will be well.”

  “The duke’s daughter?” Chloe sniffed and gave her a pained and rueful smile. “Not even I, as desperate as I am, would aspire to such a thing.”

  “But, if it isn’t true, why would the duke try to claim it so?”

  “To pacify the king. He is under a charge of treason. His very life is at stake.”

  “Then, how did he know of that name … what was it? Gilbert?”

  “I told him myself, on our wedding day.” She scowled, recalling the duke’s unsettled response. Could that have been caused by true recognition?

  “Then, how did he know of Lady Marcella’s cousin … her name and the fact that she eloped?” Lisette continued. “And how did she know to call him by his baptismal name?”

  That was not so easily explained. Chloe was silent. The turbulence of emotion was beginning to subside, and her mind began to work. She examined each piece of evidence, turning it over and over in the cooler light of reason.

  “Lady Marcella told me about her cousin. She might have told others.”

  “Would she not have mentioned that she told the duke? And she looked at you and said you were the image of—what was her name?”

  “Clarice.” Chloe’s heart began to pound. “But that was many years ago, and as she said, her eyesight is poor and her mind sometimes plays tricks on her. She may have forgotten what her young cousin looked like.”

  “They were raised together, like sisters,” Lisette countered. “If you had a beloved sister taken away, could you forget her?”

  “No,” Chloe whispered. “I could never forget someone I loved.” She thought of her four adopted sisters, of Sister Archie, and of Hugh. She would carry their faces in her heart until the day she died.

  But what of Hugh? Could he just renounce and forget her? Her thoughts took another turn. He had known and loved the monastery where he spent his earliest and most impressionable years. And he had obviously never forgotten or abandoned the love of his teachers and brothers.

  An emptiness opened inside her, deepening with each remembered bit of evidence that his heart had been claimed long before she entered his life. The look on his face when she admitted she knew nothing of her parentage made that emptiness feel suddenly cavernous. He had fled her to return to his first love, the monastery … only to be called out of it to face the disgrace of being married to a foundling.

  She felt herself sinking deeper and deeper into despair.

  Then, in an impulsive burst of sympathy Lisette hugged her, and within that spontaneous burst of affection Chloe felt the bloom of unexpected grace. The downward spiral of her spirits was halted by a simple touch that said she wasn’t alone in the world, that someone truly cared for her. In a moment where all connections and attachments seemed broken, that gesture was nothing short of lifesaving. Inside that yawning emptiness appeared a spark of hope.

  “I have to know if it’s true.” She drew back, her face set with determination. “I have to find out for myself if the duke is telling the truth. Will you help me?”

  “Me? Help? Of course, though I cannot imagine what I might do.”

  Chloe pushed to her feet and began to pace, rubbing her palms together.

  “I have to see him, talk to him face to face.”

  “How? The king has ordered you held here. There are guards outside.”

  “How many?” Chloe demanded, grabbing Lisette’s hands.

  “Two. But it may as well be a full garrison. They almost didn’t let me in to see you.”

  “But they did let you in.” Chloe’s eyes narrowed. “And if they let you in, they have to
let you out, right?

  “I suppose, but—”

  “And while they’re letting you out, you can talk to them”—she felt her spirits rising back and dragging with them a plan—“distract them.”

  “Me?” Lisette drew back as if afraid of catching whatever had suddenly infected Chloe. “Not me.”

  “Yes, you.” Chloe pulled Lisette to her feet and set about tidying her hair. “There isn’t a woman alive who can distract men better than you.”

  “Me? I-I cannot— I—”

  “A smile, a toss of your head and they won’t be able to see anything else.” She paused, searching Lisette and seeing how deeply Sir Graham’s rejection had wounded her. “Think about it, Lisette. How can Sir Graham be the only man in the world immune to your charms?” Lisette looked as if she might protest. “Remember the way you got old Mattias to talk to us? And Hugh would talk to you when he wouldn’t even look at the rest of us … especially me. You have a knack with men, Lisette. So there is only one reasonable answer to the question of how Sir Graham can resist you. He can’t. He just wishes he could.” She glanced away, seeing in Graham’s behavior a clearer explanation of Hugh’s. “Saints—are all men such cowards?”

  Lisette bit her lip and shook her head with a wistful expression. Chloe seized her shoulders.

  “Don’t you see? Sir Graham doesn’t despise you, he is simply afraid. He wants you, and he can’t control that wanting. Control is something men believe they’re supposed to have … they seem to think it’s the very measure of their manhood. If he can’t control himself, he’ll have to control you instead … insist you be silent and undemanding and ignorable.”

  Lisette was perfectly still, absorbing every word into her battered heart, but then slid again toward despair.

  “No, I think it is more than that. I think he wanted someone else.” She paused to gather strength to speak the truth. “He wanted to wed Margarete.”

  “Margarete? Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Truly.” Lisette nodded. “I learned that he has been wedded before … to a pure sweet girl who was very young and died before he had a chance to take her to his bed. Margarete seems just like her. I’ve tried being obedient and sweet and demure and helpful and quiet and modest … like Margarete and his precious little Lady Jane.”

  “Ah, but have you tried being Lisette? Lush, lovely, compelling Lisette? Lisette, who collects men’s stares and makes their blood heat with only a smile? Lisette, who knows just what to say to get men to trip over themselves to grant her slightest wish? Lisette, who understands that Sir Graham needs someone to release his passions and teach him what a full-grown woman is?” She gave Lisette a challenging scowl. “Are you going to give him up to the memory of a girl who never had the chance to love or disappoint or even pleasure him?”

  Color flooded into Lisette’s face, and she began to straighten. In what should have been a fleeting moment of uncertainty on their wedding night, she realized she had absorbed his anxiety and allowed it to undermine her determination and confidence. From that moment on, she had questioned her every word and action, damped her enthusiasm, muffled her wit, and abandoned her will in favor of what she thought he wanted. Hurt and bewilderment accumulated with each failure to secure his approval, and in the course of days, she had retreated further and further from her true self. The woman he had rejected in so many ways wasn’t even her!

  Look at her … lamenting losing the battle for her husband’s love and affection when she had yet to raise a single one of her weapons!

  “You can do this,” Chloe said, watching Lisette’s eyes begin to glow with a familiar and reassuring light. “You have to do this, Lisette. To prove it to yourself as much as to help me. Now, go out there and work your womanly magic on those guards!”

  Avalon was in a bad way; raging with fury one moment and sunk into a pit of despair the next. He had not one ally in the place, no one to listen to him or believe him. And now he had dragged the girl into it. He should have saved his revelations for a far less public forum. But she had stood there, looking so miserable and devastated, looking so much like his Clarice, that his heart had damned near broken. If he hadn’t tried to defend her, his very blood would have boiled in his veins!

  A rustling sound in the passage outside his cell caused him to still and then lurch up from his straw-littered pallet. He braced in the middle of the cell, staring at the door. The face that appeared in the narrow opening was none of the ones he might have expected. It was Chloe and the sight of her—so like the woman he had loved—sent a pang of longing through him.

  “Your Grace?” Her face was pale and her voice was small as she peered through the thick iron bars stretched across the opening in the wooden planks.

  “Child.” The duke stalked on wooden legs over to the door and stood staring at her in the dim light.

  “I must know. Do you truly believe I am your daughter?” She paused and swallowed with difficulty, hesitant to speak the rest. “Or was that just a ploy to secure your freedom or further some political scheme?”

  “There is no ‘scheme,’ I swear,” he declared thickly. “I do not know what roused Edward’s ire against me, but I have authored no designs or intrigues.” He reached toward the slender fingers that were wrapped around the iron bars. When she didn’t pull away, he settled his hands gently over hers. “You are my daughter. As God Almighty is my witness, I believe that to be true. The uncanny resemblance, the fact that you are called Chloe, the way the name ‘Gilbert’ accompanied you into the convent … I do not know how I may prove it, to you or to anyone else. But somehow, when I look into your face, I know.”

  Chloe searched his anguished eyes and the tenderness with which he touched her. He genuinely believed he was her father. Could it possibly be true? The hope was too sharp, too painful for her heart to hold. Her limbs weakened, and she sagged against the door, unable to summon a single word.

  “I thought perhaps the old woman …” The duke’s voice was hoarse with emotion as he caressed her hands. “I believe she knows, but her memory and her sight grow dim. The only true evidence of the marriage is in the church records in Calais. The marriage is surely recorded there, but I cannot say about the birth. I doubt you were baptized … being supposedly stillborn.”

  “But if I am your daughter, how were we separated?” she finally managed to utter. “How could I have come to the convent with two names, neither of which was yours?”

  The duke’s face aged years in that brief moment.

  “I have thought of little else since the day I first saw you. My half brother was with me in Calais when Clarice was brought to childbed. He had just brought word that the duke threatened to disinherit me. When he said that you both had died, I was so distraught that I couldn’t bring myself even to look at you.” His voice thickened with tears as he saw those tumultuous events through a very different set of eyes. “He said he would take care of the arrangements. All of these years I have felt such gratitude to him for what he did.” His hands tightened on hers as his face reddened.

  “It had to have been him. My helpful brother. Alfonse, now the Compte de Sabban.” Disbelief and pain mingled in his expression. “He took me from Calais to Paris and left me there while he went home to intercede with my father. Later, when I arrived at my home, my father behaved as if nothing had happened and started immediately to search for a bride for me.” He paused and clamped his jaw for a moment against a tide of emotion. “I bent to my father’s will and was wedded a year later. We never spoke of what had happened.

  “Bon Dieu.” He roused as if coming out of a fog. “I cannot be certain he even knew of my marriage to Clarice.” He suddenly saw his whole life in a very different light. “Alfonse told me that he was furious and refused to suffer my English bride under his roof. How much of my life was shaped and altered by my brother’s—” He looked at her with fresh horror. “He was in charge of collecting my ransom. He swore that there was nothing left to send, that my lands and house wer
e picked clean. And I sent him word that my ‘new daughters’ were being taken from the convent to England.”

  “Could it have been his men who attacked us on the road?” she said, feeling her wits reassembling, making connections between events. “Could he have tried to prevent us from marrying and fulfilling your ransom?”

  “Who else?” the duke said furiously, seeing now the full extent of his brother’s treachery. “Damn his lying eyes. If I ever see him again, I will—”

  “There she is,” a graveled voice declared, startling them both.

  Chloe released the bars and whirled to see several castle guardsmen approaching stealthily from the nearby shadows. The one who had spoken remained some feet away, at the edge of the lantern light, while the others continued to advance with an air of coiled readiness.

  “I-I wasn’t trying to escape. I only came to speak with His Grace, and I’ve learned some things that must be put before the king.” She backed down the passage that led toward the great hall. “You must escort me to him right away.”

  “Of course, my ladee,” the leader of the guards declared with a strange lilt. Just as she realized it sounded French, he nodded to his men and they lunged after her.

  Confused and jolted by their aggression, she whirled and tried to run for the passage to the great hall—but too late.

  “What are you doing?” the duke demanded, jamming against the bars and watching helplessly as they seized Chloe. “Release her this instant!”

  “Non, non, mon duc.” With her in hand, the leader strolled forward and planted himself directly in the duke’s line of sight, blocking his view of them subduing her and stifling her screams. “I fear that will not be possible.”

  The duke recoiled from the opening, shocked to recognize his face.