by Anne Stuart
Julianna had risen on unsteady feet, and she was looking at him now. He crossed the clearing, afraid to touch her, afraid of the despair and hatred he would see in her eyes.
She stared at him. “I told you if you left me I would kill you,” she said in a raspy voice. “Where’s a knife?”
He had one. He’d thought he’d have to use it on the priest, but the saint had decreed otherwise. He pulled it from his boot and handed it to her. “Go ahead,” he said, pulling open his shirt.
The scrap of cloth fell to the ground between them, the embroidered roses and the stain of blood unmistakable.
She held the knife loosely, staring down at the scrap of cloth he’d carried next to his heart.
“Why do you have that?” she demanded.
For a moment he was almost embarrassed. “Just a whim, my lady.” He reached down to snatch it back, shoving it in his money pouch, the silver bells musical on the breeze.
Lady Julianna was having none of that. “I can see through you, Fool,” she said sternly, and then she managed a tremulous, hopeful smile. “Do you love me, my beautiful mad man?”
He tried to come up with a lie, or at least an obnoxious rhyme, but all that was left in him was the truth. “I’d be mad not to.”
She took a deep breath. “They say you are mad.”
“But you know that I’m not.” not. was almost embarrassed. He reached out and gently touched her feathery curls. “You look like a shorn lamb.”
“Gilbert’s work.”
“I’ll cut his throat when I see him next. You have only to say the word.” He wanted to pull her into his arms so badly his hands ached with the need.
She shook her head.
“My lord . . . ,” Bogo said, and Julianna jerked her head around in surprise. Nicholas had little doubt that Bogo had addressed him by his title on purpose, and he made a mental promise to break his teeth for it.
He considered ignoring him, but reasoned it would only make things worse. “Yes, Bogo,” he said wearily.
“Brother Barth and I are going to take the abbot’s body back to the abbey for proper burial,” he said.
Nicholas was still staring down at Julianna. “Fine.”
“And we’ll be taking the chalice with us. It belongs to the Saint.”
He didn’t bother arguing. Henry was going to be mad enough at this current mess, and the chalice would be unlikely to appease him for long. If he heard what happened to the abbot, it might put the fear of God into him. King Henry might wisely doubt his own purity as well, and if he had any sense, he’d choose not to court judgment and disaster by laying claim to the chalice.
“Go ahead, Bogo,” he said.
“And I’ll be staying there.”
At that Nicholas pulled his gaze away from Julianna. “What?”
“I’m joining the brothers. I’m an old man, my lord, and a wicked sinner to boot, but Brother Barth says there’s hope for us all.”
“Not for me,” Nicholas said with a raw laugh.
“I wouldn’t say that, my lord. But I’m not thinking you belong in a monastery. Nor you in a convent, my lady, if you’ll pardon my boldness.”
Nicholas could feel her eyes on him. Calm, questioning eyes. “No convents for my lady,” he said. And suddenly he was through fighting the inevitable. “She stays with me.”
Bogo nodded his satisfaction. “Then all will be well.”
Nicholas took leave to doubt that, but he wasn’t about to say as much. “You need any help with the old man?”
Bogo glanced over at the corpse, then shook his head. “I’ve handled heavier loads less gladly.”
“Take care of yourself, old friend,” Nicholas said.
“Take care of your lady, my lord.” There was no missing Bogo’s point, and Nicholas smiled faintly.
“As best I can, Bogo.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
THE ABBOT SEEMED smaller, diminished in death, and Bogo dumped him over his shoulder like a sack of flour. They made a strange procession, Brother Barth leading the way, the sacred relic clasped carefully in his hands, with Bogo taking up the rear, carrying the abbot’s body.
“You really should go with them,” Nicholas said belatedly, turning to Julianna. “They can protect you. I’ll be a hunted man.”
She shook her head. “Didn’t you hear Bogo? I don’t belong in a convent.”
“You surely don’t belong in a monastery—you’d be quite a distraction. I have to let you go, my lady . . .”
“I still have a knife, my lord.”
He flinched, not at the thought of a knife in her deft hands. “It’s an empty title. No lands, no house . . .”
“I like it here. Maybe no one would ever find us.”
He glanced around the windswept top of the tor. “You deserve better than a poor fool.”
“Indeed I do. But I don’t seem to want any better. Shall we be vagabonds and travel from place to place? You could beguile with your rhymes and I could dance . . .”
“No. My rhymes tend to drive people to violence, and I want you dancing for no one but me.”
“Then what will we do?”
He looked down at her. And then he touched her; for the first time since he’d left her, he put his hands on her face, cupping her shorn head, his long fingers stroking her cheeks. And without a word he kissed her, full and hard and deep.
It was madness to make love to her, here and now, but then, he was nothing but a poor, mad, lovesick fool.
And she was mad as well, for when he took her hand and led her into the ruins of the old villa, she went willingly, and with her own hands she stripped off his shirt and breeches, with her own hands she touched and stroked and gloried in him, with her own mouth she tasted and took him, and when he pulled her on top of him she shivered, and when he touched her she cried out, and when he filled her with his seed she wept, her body clenching tightly around his.
The floor of the villa was covered with rubble, and he’d spread their clothes beneath them, lay beneath her to protect her from the sharp stone. They lay in peaceful, breathless silence.
“You may have to kill Lord Derwent,” she said sleepily.
Nicholas started in shock. “What are you talking about?”
“Lord Derwent. King Henry sent word to the earl that I was to marry Lord Derwent as soon as it could be arranged. But I won’t. You won’t let me.”
He held very still. She was warm and soft and sweet in his arms, unbelievably so, and if the ground beneath them hadn’t been embedded with tiny tiles, he would have turned her beneath him and entered her again, immediately.
He had no choice but to control himself. “Did you know why you were to marry Lord Derwent?” he asked in a faintly strangled voice.
She shook her head, her close-cropped hair brushing against his chest in a manner that could only be erotic. But then, to him everything about her was erotic. “My mother says he’s some penniless baron who’s done the king some service. Apparently the king’s sister fancies him, so the king’s getting rid of him in the best possible way, by marrying him off to a nobody who lives far away and would never come to court. But I won’t marry him.”
Nicholas threw back his head and laughed weakly. “Yes, you will.”
Julianna pushed herself away, staring down at him with fulminating rage. His shorn lamb looked even more glorious with her shaggy, tousled hair and her eyes full of fury. “You would do this to me?”
“I would.”
“When I have prayed to Saint Hugelina for a miracle? A way out of this mess? I would do anything for you, and you just give up?”
He shook his head, still laughing. “My love, you have your miracle. Though I do assure you, Henry’s sister had absolutely no interest in me beyond the bedroom.”
It was perhaps not the best way to put it. She began to hit and kick him, cursing him, and he had no choice but to pull her back into his arms to control her blows, to pull her beneath him and pin her with the force of his fully aroused body.
“Bastard,” she said in a fury.
“No,” he replied, still laughing. “Nicholas of Derwent.”
Epilogue
JULIANNA DANCED down the hill in the afternoon light. The branches that had torn at her during her climb now seemed to move out of her way on their own accord. Nicholas was close behind her, a tolerant, amused expression on his face, and she’d pause every now and then for the express purpose of having him bump into her. Then she’d have to kiss him, and they’d both become entirely distracted, so that by the time they emerged into the sunshine at the bottom of the path, the day was well advanced, Julianna had twigs in her hair and leaves in her shift, and Nicholas was singing some obscene ditty about her glorious thighs. She had turned to grin at him, feeling saucy and beloved, just as they reached the end of the path, when his voice trailed off and a blank expression crossed his face.
She whirled around in sudden panic, expecting the hounds of hell, or at the very least a reanimated abbot, come to wreak vengeance. A stony-faced stepfather was only a marginal improvement.
“So this is where you were!” he thundered. “Your sweet mother has been half mad with worry, and you’ve been cavorting with that fool—and what in God’s name happened to your hair?”
Nicholas moved in front of her, shielding her swiftly. There were others behind the earl, men on horseback, watching in unabashed fascination. “Your young pet Gilbert hacked off her hair at the behest of the abbot,” he said. “And you’ll not mistreat her. She’s been through enough at the priest’s hands.”
“Mistreat her?” Lord Hugh echoed, astonished. “It’s you I’d be mistreating, you lying, thieving, gallows bait—” Julianna tried to push past Nicholas’s strong back, but he was blocking her way quite sturdily, shielding her from the curious eyes of Lord Hugh’s men.
And then she heard her mother’s voice, strong and clear and anguished. “What have you done with my daughter?”
Some dam broke inside of Julianna, a block of ice that had been encasing her heart. “Maman!” she cried, shoving at Nicholas’s strong back. This time he moved, and she stumbled past him, into the clearing at the bottom of the path.
Her mother leapt off her horse, running across the field, and a moment later they were in each other’s arms, laughing and weeping. “I thought I’d lost you, my sweet,” Isabeau was saying. “I thought that this time I wouldn’t get you back.”
“Never, Maman. I am so sorry. It wasn’t your fault . . .”
“Oh, my love . . .”
“I should cut your throat,” Lord Hugh said calmly, glaring at a singularly unrepentant Nicholas.
“No!” Julianna cried, trying to pull herself out of her mother’s arms.
“Let them deal with it, daughter,” her mother said urgently.
“The king would be most displeased,” Nicholas drawled.
Lord Hugh’s response was short and obscene. “He’s taken the chalice—what else would Henry want? His fool as well?”
“The chalice has gone to the Abbey of Saint Hugelina the Dragon, where it rightfully belongs,” Nicholas corrected him.
“That damned priest has it?” Hugh’s voice shook with fury.
Nicholas shook his head. “I regret to inform you that the good abbot has gone to his everlasting reward.”
“Everlasting fires of hell, you mean,” Julianna muttered.
“He’s dead?” Hugh said.
“Most definitely,” Nicholas said.
“Then there’s some good come of this day,” the earl said grimly. “Now if we just knew how to deal with you.”
“You’ll bless my wedding to your stepdaughter.”
“Ridiculous. She’s to marry Lord Derwent. The king has commanded it,” Hugh snapped.
“And the king’s commands should always be obeyed. I’m Nicholas of Derwent.”
There was a long, deadened silence. “Holy Christ,” Hugh said finally. “You mean we have to put up with you?”
Nicholas’s grin was wide and devoid of mockery. “I’ll be your son, my lord. What more could you ask?”
“An early death,” Hugh muttered. “Did you hear this, my lady?”
Isabeau lifted her head. “I heard.”
“And what think you?”
“Does my daughter want him? He’s a pretty fellow, but a bit maddening.”
Julianna threw back her shorn head and laughed. “Then I’m mad, too. Yes, I want him. With all my heart.”
“Then who are we to deny the king’s commands?” Isabeau said.
Hugh sighed. “I suppose there’s nothing I can do about it then,” he said gloomily, surveying them all. “But there’ll be two stipulations. One, you can’t rhyme. Do it again and I’ll cut out your tongue.”
“It seems reasonable,” Nicholas allowed.
“And you won’t share a roof with us. You can have your own place. I’ve more than enough to spare—my lands reach for another day toward the east. You may take your pick.”
“We’ll take Hugelina’s Tor,” Nicholas said promptly.
“You are mad,” Hugh said, shaking his head. “Done! Close enough for the lady’s mother, far enough for me.”
“Father!” Nicholas cried with a mocking affection.
“Changeling,” Hugh muttered.
Julianna smiled at her mother, then glanced up at her beloved fool. “I do believe Saint Hugelina has blessed us after all,” she said, and added with a wicked laugh:
“The fool has lost, the maiden’s won
By this day’s work, good deeds be done.”
“Oh, merciful God,” Nicholas said faintly. “No rhyming!”
She sauntered up to him, a saucy grin on her face.
“Though please I must a fool’s dark heart,
I’ll rhyme and use his wicked art.”
“Not under my roof,” Hugh thundered. “Or I’ll cut out both your tongues.”
But by then Julianna was being soundly kissed, and there were no more rhymes to be heard.
THEY SAY YOU can sometimes see the ghosts of the court jester and his lady in the stately halls of Derwent House atop Hugelina’s Tor in West Somerset. They are laughing, the two of them, and sometimes at night you can hear the faint sound of silver bells on the wind.
Others have claimed to see any number of their countless offspring, while some insist that a ghostly legion of black-and-white cats still haunt the place, though in truth, the many descendants of Hugelina the Cat still roam the grounds, looking for mutton pie and feckless mice.
But one thing is known for sure—the Martyred Saint Hugelina the Dragon looks down from her spot in heaven and smiles upon the countryside, as the ghosts of Hugelina’s Tor dance in the moonlight to the sound of silver bells.
(Please continue reading for more information)
About the Author
Anne Stuart is currently celebrating forty years as a published novelist. She has won every major award in the romance field and appeared on the bestseller lists of the New York Times, Publisher’s Weekly, and USA Today. Anne Stuart currently lives in northern Vermont.
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