And then she is gone, and I am left standing in an ice-cold room, feeling as if I have stepped back through time, my past determined to follow me, no matter how far I run or how much I change.
Chapter 97
That night, the guards escort me down to the great chamber for supper. It is a large room with a raw-beamed ceiling and a carved wooden screen that separates the kitchen from the chamber itself. The fireplace, which takes up one entire wall, does little to warm the cavernous space. Iron chandeliers fashioned in the shapes of stag antlers hang from the ceiling, thick yellow candles impaled on the points. The effect makes the entire holding feel like one large dungeon.
I am given a seat at the far end of the high table, the only person other than Pierre to be given a place there. I am surprised that he does me this much honor.
I take a sip of wine from the heavy wooden goblet and cast my gaze over the men. Most of these faces are new to me, with only a handful that I recognize. They are not as unruly and belligerent as the men I am used to serving my family. Mayhap they are tired. Or wary.
When the first course is set before us and the men turn their attention to their dinners rather than the high table, I ask Pierre, “How long will we stay here?”
He spears a piece of the fish with the tip of his knife and places it in his mouth. “Until you tell me where our sisters are.”
I hold his gaze a beat longer, then apply my own knife to my meal. “We shall be here a long time, brother.”
He smiles as he spears another chunk of sole. “We’ll see.”
I do not like that smile, not at all, but he is also very good at bluffing and boasting when he has no reason. I change the subject. “Will your other estates be able to manage without your oversight?”
He laughs, and I vow, a good-natured Pierre is far more unnerving than a foul-humored one. “Are you so very eager to get on the road so you may try to escape?” He wags his knife at me. “I would advise against it. My men have orders to shoot if you dare to break out of the riding line.” He takes a drink of wine. “To maim, not kill,” he clarifies. “Sadly, you are too valuable to kill, although it would give me great pleasure.”
“Let the girls remain where they are.” I pitch my voice low so he must lean closer to hear it. “They are too young to marry, nor do you even need them to sign the betrothal contracts.”
“I need them to control you.”
Keeping my eyes on my trencher, I smile, making full use of my dimples. “Ah, but you’re wrong. I came here of my own accord. I could have escaped many times and chose not to.” When he looks at me in disbelief, I quickly name half a dozen places on the road I could have gotten away.
“You lie.” But there is no heat—or conviction—behind the words.
I wag my knife at him, copying his earlier gesture. “You’re hoping I lie, but regardless, the queen has burned her bridge with the king. She will not be able to offer the protection I wanted for the girls. So now, once more, it is down to you and me. My sisters stay where they are, but you get me.” I pop the fish in my mouth and pray I will be able to swallow the greasy lump of revulsion that accompanies it.
“You will have all my many skills at your disposal. You’ve simply to point me in the direction you want, and I will be your diplomat, your spy, or your knife in the dark. As you told me, brother, my skills hold great value for you. But only if they are willfully given. Otherwise, you can never trust that I will do as you command and not betray your own interests.”
“That is why I need your sisters.”
Your sisters, not our sisters. “That is where you are wrong. If you force them to come here, I will be so concerned—and involved—in their safety and upbringing I will be unable to serve you in the manner you wish.”
His eyes glint with both interest and wariness. “We shall see.”
“Yes, we shall.”
When the interminable meal is finally over, we rise from the table. I grab my goblet, still half full of wine, then take a sip. “Can you give me a tour of the holding? I have not been here in over ten years and fear I have forgotten much of it.”
He pauses, considering, then nods once, motioning for my guards to follow at a distance. As we leave the great chamber, I smile again. “Did you think to bring the hawks?”
He glances at me. “Yes, but it will be a while before I trust you enough with such freedom.”
My heart sinks. We are to stay longer than I’d hoped. “I look forward to earning that trust,” I say over the rim of my goblet, then take another sip.
He takes me through the third floor, where his rooms are situated. It is far more richly appointed than the fourth. When I have seen all I need to, I make a point of yawning. “Thank you, dear brother. I find I am growing fatigued.” I turn to the guards then. “Come along, fellows. I’m off to bed. And no use fighting over who will join me tonight, for I am too tired after our long journey.”
* * *
Once back in my room, I begin pacing, tired though I am. The castle layout holds no surprises, but no answers either. There are no visible exits but the ones I passed through on my arrival. No stairway out the back, no private inner courtyard that I can access. It is not much to work with, but it is more than I had three hours ago.
I have also learned the location of Pierre’s strongbox—the one that every lord carries with him from holding to holding that contains all his important legal documents.
And correspondence.
Now I must simply find a way to evade my guards, sneak to his office on the floor below—without being detected—and search the box that is secured with not one, but two locks.
* * *
Unable to sleep, I rise from the bed, slip into my cloak and shoes, and head for the door. The guards come to attention as I emerge from my room. “Are you to prevent me from leaving or merely follow me if I do?” I inquire politely.
They exchange an uncertain glance. “Depends on where you’re going,” one of them says.
“Just down the hall. I wish to pay my respects to my father.”
After a moment’s indecision, they agree and follow me to d’Albret’s chamber.
I scratch at the door lightly, braced for Madame Dinan to launch herself at me, but it is only a somber maidservant, who quickly steps back and lets me in. I pause at the threshold, not sure what is driving my desire to see this man. Mayhap to assure myself that he is still incapacitated.
As I draw near the bed, I search for his heartbeat and feel . . . something. It is not a truly beating heart, but more of a stirring, much as a pebble is stirred by the flow of a stream.
Slowly, half afraid that if I look at him he will miraculously recover and leap from the bed, ready to wreak havoc on my world once more, I draw back the bed curtain.
Shock is my first reaction, for I would not have recognized him if I had not known who he was. D’Albret le Grand has shrunk to naught but loose skin on overlarge bones, his face gaunt and drooling. It is nearly impossible to reconcile this man with the one who made my life a waking nightmare.
He should be dead from the blow I dealt him—would be if not for the promise Mortain made my mother. I wonder at the person she was, a woman who not only invited Death into her bed, but extracted two promises from him as well: that I would live and that her husband would never be allowed near her again, not even in the realm of death.
Chapter 98
Genevieve
Since there is no word from Beast or Sybella waiting for us as we draw near Nantes, Maraud and I decide to approach separately, especially given my history with the king, although I do not share that part of it with him. Unlike most men I have known, he has not brought up the subject of former lovers. Yet another mark in his favor.
As I dismount in the palace’s sprawling stable yard, I find myself surrounded by guards. Although not completely unexpected, it is most unwelcome.
“That was fast,” I say lightly to Captain Stuart, whose face tells me nothing.
�
�We have been told to watch for you.” The captain does not take me to the grand salon, but to the royal apartments, where a fuming king waits for me.
“Your Majesty.” Not knowing how much trouble I am in, I give my deepest curtsy. He leaves me with my nose nearly touching the floor as he slowly circles me, my gaze fixed on the tips of his cordovan leather boots.
“Where have you been?”
“In Brittany, sire. Helping to put down Rohan’s rebellious uprising.”
“You mean the queen’s.”
“No, Your Majesty. The queen was not involved, although Rohan had seen fit to ally with the English. If not for our actions, you would even now have four thousand English troops marching on French soil.”
“Why should I trust what you say? You have not only spurned my favor and aligned yourself with the queen, but taken up arms against me, adding salt to the wound. Of all those who betrayed me, your cut is the deepest.” His mind is more closed to me than it has ever been.
“Did Your Majesty not find the note I left you?”
He stops his circling. “The note that accused me of not being able to protect you? The note that doubted I possessed the wit to best my own sister?”
And there it is—the true source of the pain he is feeling.
“Why, Genevieve?” The harsh words are tinged with despair. “Why is your loyalty to the queen and not me?”
I risk looking up into his face, wanting him to see the truth it holds. “My loyalty is to both of you, sire. I thought that in securing Brittany, I was serving you as well as the queen. The regent made it impossible to continue serving you at court, so I sought to do so in another way.”
“Which meant running away without so much as begging my leave?”
“I did it to protect what was rightfully yours.”
“Get up. I grow tired of your groveling. You did it to serve the queen, not me.”
Once I am on my feet, it is all I can do to keep from giving him a bracing slap to restore his wits. “You loved her enough to turn the tides of war away from her. Why can you not find that love in your heart once more?”
“Because she wishes to take what is mine.”
He is not talking about Brittany, but power. “Sire, you are not a child to have his favorite toy snatched from his hand. You are a king, it is in your blood. No one can take that from you. Not even the queen, if she’d a mind to, but she doesn’t. She has no wish to wear the crown of France. That was only ever your sister’s dream—one she could never have. Bitterness and jealousy clouded her judgment and reason. In her head, she twisted everything the queen did into a power play because that was what she would do.
“The queen never played those games. She has no desire to do anything other than follow through on the promises she made to her people, and serve as your dutiful queen. It is what she was raised from birth to do.”
“Then why does she keep sticking her nose into the crown’s affairs?”
“Only when it is her business as well.” He starts to protest, but I stop him. “Think upon it! Every time she has become involved, it has revolved around Brittany or the safety of those who served her. Would you have your queen be less loyal? Less caring? Less giving of her Christian charity?”
He closes his mouth with a snap.
“She is as different from your mother as you are from your father. She does not have the mind to do nothing but sit and sew with her ladies. She is fiercely intelligent and intensely loyal. She went nose to nose with your sister and held her at bay. She turned a sure defeat into a victory. Why would you not want your children to possess such virtues as she possesses?”
The tightness around his mouth softens.
“My lord, her father is dead. Her mother, too. As well as her younger sister. She has no family but the one you create together. She has so much to give. As do you.”
“But she created this rebellion in order to . . .”
“In order to what? For therein lies the true flaw of your argument. She gains nothing by any of this. It was the general’s and your sister’s doing. Whether they engineered it or simply grasped the opportunity once it presented itself, they used her as a scapegoat to hide their own desire to influence you. All they needed to say was that she wished it, and you did the opposite. It was no more difficult to steer your thoughts and inclinations than it was to steer a cart.”
His nostrils flare in irritation.
“A very royal, magnificent cart, Your Majesty.”
“Do not lob empty flattery at me.”
“It was but a jest. I know how hard it can be to look at our mistakes, made with the best of intentions, but mistakes nonetheless. For me, jesting softens the sting of it.”
“Yes, let’s talk of your mistakes,” he says. “Your note.” His lips curl in a sneer. “I could have protected you. The council would not have listened to her.”
“Are you so very certain, Your Majesty? The Bishop of Albi is her creature, bought and paid for. General Cassel wishes to punish everyone—most brutally—at the slightest provocation. And I am still not convinced that he is not working in close concert with your sister. What if they hadn’t listened to you? It was not a risk I was prepared to take.
“I had to go where she could not find me or else be used against you. I could not live with that possibility and did not want you to have to live with that threat.”
“You think me too weak to stand against her.”
I fear a pitched army of ten thousand is too weak to stand against her, but do not share that with him. “No, but she is cunning and devious enough to weave a web that ensured standing up to her cost you dearly. That is what I wished to spare you.”
He stares at me, unmoved.
I take a step toward him. “She threatened to expose you to the council if I could not convince you to hand Sybella over into her brother’s custody. She gave me the choice of betraying you or betraying my sister. I chose neither.”
“Lady Sybella is as important to you as your king?”
“She is my sister.”
“She is a fellow initiate of the convent!”
He does not believe it was a true choice. He thinks we are nothing but friends. “Which means she is my sister,” I say gently. “We are all of us sired by the patron saint of death. That is how we come to his service.”
“Saints do not lie with women!” For a man who has lain with more than his fair share, he sounds scandalized.
“Saints who once walked the earth as gods do. It is how we are made. Why we are trained in his arts.”
He stares at me a moment—belief warring with doubt. “That is precisely why my advisors wish to have you renounce your faith—it is heretical.”
“It is not, sire. Surely the Church keeps detailed records of its decisions and councils. There was exactly such a council that created the Nine. Your Majesty, it is not my intent to argue theology with you, but to show you that Sybella is, for all intents and purposes, my sister, and I could not betray her in such a way.”
His head snaps up. “And how would putting her in her brother’s custody, where she rightfully belongs, betray her?”
No matter how hard I try to extricate myself, I only get caught further in the net. “He does not have her best interests at heart. Where is she now?”
He angles his body away from me, as if disgusted. “She is being detained for her part in the rebellion.”
“She was not rebelling, she was fighting against it.”
“And so we’re back to that.” He averts his head, unwilling or unable to look at me.
“Why are you so convinced the queen was behind it?”
“Viscount Rohan has come forward and told the entire truth.”
I frown. If that were the case, he and I would not be having this conversation. “And what truth was that?”
He rounds on me, eyes glinting. “That she approached him and he pretended to go along with it only to lull her into a false sense of security until he could get word to me.”
I cannot help it, I laugh. The entire story is so twisted and absurd. “Until he could get word to you? Has he never heard of messengers?”
The king’s reply is stiff. “He could not risk it being intercepted.”
“Come now, Your Majesty. You receive messages every day, from far more important dignitaries, and none of them has ever been intercepted.”
He frowns slightly, considering. I press my advantage. “Furthermore, what could the queen possibly hope to gain by such a move against you?”
“Power.”
“What witnesses could I produce that you would believe? Tell me, and I will find them.”
He turns to stare into the fire. “No one,” he says. “I am surrounded by lies.”
I have done my best to plant the seeds of doubt. Now I can only pray I will be given time to coax those seeds into full-blown misgivings.
Chapter 99
Sybella
The next morning, Pierre himself shows up at my door. At first, I fear he has heard of my visit to his father’s chambers, but he is not angry enough for that. Instead he crosses over to the fire and rubs his hands almost gleefully. A gleeful Pierre is one who is about to spring a trap.
“To what do I owe this most unexpected pleasure?” I ask.
“Now that you have settled in, we will be having a formal welcoming dinner in the great chamber tonight.”
“A welcoming dinner,” I repeat warily. “Was that not what we did last night?”
He waves a hand. “That was but a casual supper.” He rises up on his toes. “You have been gone so very long. When was the last time we were all together in one of our own holdings?”
“Two years and eight months, but I did not know that was something to be celebrated.” Not to mention that we will not “all” be together. A number of us are missing: Julian, Charlotte, Louise.
He grows more somber. “Our family is always more powerful when we are together.”
Igniting Darkness Page 42
