Claire Delacroix (26 page)

Quinn dropped to one knee before Tulley, whose visit was partly responsible for Quinn leaving Annossy and the heavily expectant Melissande.

A cloaked person accompanied Quinn—a woman, judging by the slender build, though if so, remarkably tall. Yves could not have summoned the interest to care. He watched his brother survey the hall when Tulley dismissed him. Frowning, Quinn murmured something to his companion, then both came to share the board with Yves.

“Where is Gabrielle?” Quinn asked. The cloaked figure slid silently onto the bench, and Yves could feel a searching gaze from within the shadows of the hood.

But the hood remained drawn, and he had no interest in social games on this night.

“Halfway to Perricault, no doubt.” Yves snorted and emptied his chalice once more. He flicked a finger to the pitcher, but Gaston shook his head.

“My lord, I believe you have indulged enough this night.”

“You are impertinent,” Yves charged, though the last word was less easily formed than usual. Still the boy hesitated, and Yves muttered a curse and reached for the pitcher himself.

He was well aware of the glance Quinn and Gaston exchanged,
though neither of them could have guessed the magnitude of the ache within him. This was worse, far worse, than the pain his heart had endured before. The wine splashed on the board, the task seeming more difficult than Yves had recalled.

Quinn sat on the bench opposite, his concerned gaze going from Yves to the wine. “Do you not accompany your lady wife?”

“Not when I have been forbidden to do so.”

Quinn frowned. “By who?”

“By none other than the lady herself!” Yves drank deeply of the wine, then reached for the pitcher once more. It was empty yet again, though he was certain Gaston had just filled it.

Yves sensed that the cloaked figure was following every word of their conversation. To his mind, not acknowledging this individual’s presence was a fitting compensation for such rude eavesdropping.

Gaston, though, kept looking toward the arrival with open curiosity. He even offered refreshment to that individual, though he was declined with a gesture.

“Fetch another here,” Yves bade his squire, treating the boy to a stern glance when he hesitated.

Gaston heaved a sigh, but took the pitcher across the hall.

“Why,” Quinn asked carefully, “would Gabrielle forbid you to ride with her?”

“I am apparently not worthy of Gabrielle’s company, even though the Lord de Tulley saw fit to bring this little token of his affections to me this day.” Yves slapped the parchment responsible for his troubles onto the board, not caring that it landed in the spilled wine.

Quinn plucked the document from the wine and read it, his gaze rising to meet Yves’ with new concern. “Legitimacy?”

Yves shrugged indifferently. “Tulley offered it as bait when he wanted me to retrieve Perricault. I refused, but when he heard the deed was done, he graciously granted it to me.”
Yves grimaced and lifted his goblet to the lord in question before he took another draft of wine. “Directly before the lady.”

“She thinks you took her quest for this prize alone.”

Yves shrugged acquiescence. His chalice seemed to have a hole in it, for it was consistently empty. And Gaston was unreasonably tardy about refilling the pitcher.

Quinn’s hand landed heavily on his own and Yves was forced to look into his brother’s eyes. “Did you not tell her the truth?”

“She would not listen.”

“Then go after her!”

Yves took a deep breath and frowned at his chalice. “She forbade me to return to Perricault.” Yves felt suddenly as though he had not consumed a single sip of wine. He fingered his empty chalice and found the words thick in his throat.

“Because you are drunk?”

“I am not drunk and have not been drunk in twelve years,” Yves retorted angrily.

Quinn looked skeptical. “Twelve years?
Precisely
twelve years?”

“It will be thirteen years on the week before the Yule, if you require precision,” Yves clarified firmly.

Quinn arched a brow. “A date to remember?”

“A date I could hardly forget.” Yves looked sternly at his brother. “And a date that you should also recall, for it was the day our only sister was killed.”

Quinn frowned. “I beg your pardon?”

“It will be thirteen years this Yule that Annelise de Sayerne was killed by wolves in the forests south of Tulley. I fail to see what is difficult to understand about
that.
”

“But—”

“But
nothing!
Our only sister died a savage and cruel death because I forced her hand.” Yves jabbed a finger into his own chest, punctuating his self-recriminations. “
I
demanded she choose between two suitors when she was determined not
to wed at all.
I
refused to back down from our argument when Annelise chose the convent, which I knew she hated.
I
led the party that was lost en route and it was I who found her remains ravaged by wolves.”

Yves blinked back unexpected tears and lifted his chalice, pounding it impatiently on the board when he found it empty, and discarding it. Gaston returned, his eyes wide.

“And yes, I was sorely drunk for a good week afterward,” Yves continued. “For I knew that Annelise’s death was my fault as surely as though I had taken the blade to her myself.”

Yves shoved his hands through his hair, then buried his face in them, well aware of the accusation that must haunt Quinn’s eyes. That man’s silence said more than Yves could bear.

“She was our only sister,” Yves confessed quietly, “and the only one within all the length and breadth of Sayerne besides the ostler who treated me with anything other than disdain. I have never forgiven myself for not ensuring her safety better than I did.”

Yves took a ragged breath. “The wound of her loss is one that has never healed. I vowed twelve years ago never to cultivate another wound like it, or even to take the chance that anyone else could deal me such a telling blow.”

Yves felt the weight of Quinn’s hand on his shoulder. “But you have?”

Yves nodded, unable to lie to his brother, whatever that man might be feeling for him now. “But this—this is a thousand times worse.”

“Yves, look at me.” Quinn’s voice was low, but not filled with the condemnation Yves expected.

Reluctantly, he lifted his head and was astonished to find his brother smiling slightly. Before he could protest, Quinn spoke with resolve. “Annelise is not dead.”

“Of course she is! Quinn, I found the remains myself!” Yves saw the bloody sight in his mind’s eye once more, and the bile rose in his throat, but Quinn shook his shoulders.

“Listen to me!”

Yves shook off his brother’s grip, then saw from the corner of his eye that the cloaked figure had lifted a very feminine hand to her hood.

His heart stopped. Yves stared as the hood was drawn back to reveal his sister, Annelise.

Annelise. She was older, but the vivacity he remembered about her burned even brighter in her eyes.

“Annelise!” Yves whispered, the wine forgotten. “I thought…I was certain…”

She laughed. “And I thought
you
had been killed.”

They stared at each other, then smiles dawned on their faces. Yves stumbled to his feet, knocking over the bench in the process, and Annelise bounced up to meet him halfway.

“Annelise!” he roared, and swung her in the air with an abandon he had never expected to feel again.

“I came to help Melissande with her birth,” she said, her words falling with characteristic haste. Yves closed his eyes and savored the sparkling sound of her voice. “For she has done the same for me twice now. Quinn met me on the road, for Rolfe will not let me ride alone, and he told me that you were at Pemcault. Perricault! So close…”

Annelise caught her breath and pulled back to survey Yves. Her hand stretched out to him as though she had to touch his face to know he was real. “He told me, but I never imagined it could be so.”

The pair stared at each other for a long time.

“Look at you,” Annelise whispered finally. Tears misted her eyes and she bit her lip. “You went and grew up, Yves,” she continued unevenly. “You became a knight that I am so proud to call my brother.”

Yves blinked a suspicious blur from his own eyes. “You did not die,” he said, still marveling at this inalienable fact.

“My husband saved me from the wolves that night,” Annelise confided. “My palfry died, though.”

Yves cleared his throat. “Well, what of this husband? Is he good to you?”

Quinn chuckled. “You would like him. Rolfe de Viandin is a man of his word.”

“Rolfe de Viandin?” Yves looked at Annelise with confusion.

She laughed, the sound as merry as tinkling bells. “Yes, exactly the man you wanted me to marry and I refused.” She tapped a finger smartly on the end of Yves’ nose. “Now, do not start telling me how perfectly logical the choice would have been or any of that nonsense.”

Oh yes, Annelise was alive and much the same.

This was almost too much to be believed. For years, Yves had blamed himself for Annelise’s demise, blamed Tulley for summoning Quinn home to Sayerne and forcing them to leave this keep, blamed Quinn for being the very image of their cruel sire.

But Quinn was not cruel and Annelise was not dead. The evidence was smiling up at him with all the impulsive charm he remembered.

Annelise tapped an impatient finger in the middle of Yves’ chest. “Now, what is this? You said you cared for another. Is it your Gabrielle?”

His
Gabrielle. Yves frowned. “She lied to me.”

Annelise leaned closer. “But do you love her?”

“I am not smitten,” Yves retorted, and backed away. He folded his arms across his chest. “But it is most frustrating that she will not listen to reason. The lady’s good sense is one of many traits I admire.”

Quinn folded his arms across his chest in turn, the glint in his eye promising little good to Yves’ mind. He winked at Annelise, who smirked. “So, you
admire
the lady?”

Yves slanted a glance at his siblings, not trusting this cajoling tone. “Yes.”

“But no more than that?”

Yves fidgeted, not in the least bit comfortable with the
direction of this conversation. “It does not matter what I think.”

Quinn wagged a finger at him. “I think it does. And I think what you feel is what is making you drink for the first time in twelve years.”

Yves’ heart nearly stopped that Quinn could read his thoughts so easily, and he instinctively dreaded what his brother would say next.

But it was Annelise who chimed in with the conclusion. “I think that you are in love with your wife.” She nodded. “And I think you should tell her so.”

Yves stared at his long-lost sister. As soon as he heard the words, he recognized the truth in them.

He loved Gabrielle. It was so simple and clear.

“It does not matter what I feel for the lady,” he argued hastily. “She lied to me and barred me from her home.”

Quinn shrugged. “Lies can be set aright.”

“Not this one!” Yves wagged a finger at his brother in turn, only now understanding why Gabrielle’s he had burned so deeply. “She and I pledged to have honesty between us in our match, and on this day, she deliberately lied!”

“What did she say?” Annelise demanded.

Yves took a fortifying breath. “She said that she loved me, but that this document dismissed all of that.”

His sister shrugged. “And where do you find the lie?”

“She does not love me!” Yves argued. “She never did and never could! Her heart is firmly claimed by Michel de Perricault and always will be!” Yves plucked the pitcher of wine from Gaston’s grip, since the boy showed no inclination to refill his chalice, and poured wine with a vengeance.

“She does
not
love Michel de Perricault!” Gaston protested. “She never did!”

Yves gave the boy a skeptical glance. “And what would you know about the state of the lady’s affections?”

“Only what she told me,” Gaston insisted proudly.

Yves blinked. “
Told
you?”
“She told me, when Philip held us captive, that she had never loved her husband.”

“I do not understand,” Yves said slowly, not daring to hope.

“She said there was trust between them and that that was more than she had expected from an arranged match,” Gaston asserted.

Yves gaped at the boy, his interest in the wine completely gone.

Gabrielle had told him only that she had trusted Michel. Yves had assumed she loved that man as well, but the lady had never said so.

Could Yves have drawn a false conclusion?

Could Gabrielle have told him the truth?

And if Gabrielle had loved him, was there any way that he could win her love anew?

“Go!” Annelise urged, but Yves needed no such encouragement. Already he knew there was but one way to find out the truth. He stumbled to his feet, not caring how his brother grinned, and scowled at Gaston.

“And what is keeping you from your tasks?” Yves demanded of his squire. “We must ride to Perricault with all haste—do you not have Merlin saddled yet?”

Gaston laughed aloud and fairly danced on the spot. “Just like a
chanson!
” he declared with undisguised delight. “We ride in the middle of the night to win the damsel’s reluctant heart.”

“You are impertinent,” Yves chided, though his smile took the bite out of his words. “Hasten yourself, or you will be the one to scale the high gates of Perricault.”

Perricault was cold, to Gabrielle’s mind, despite the heat of the summer sun. They had been home for but a half a day and already she missed Yves with a vengeance.

Thomas had little to say once he learned that his friend was not returning anytime soon to Perricault. He took his puppies
and went in search of Xavier, leaving Gabrielle to her own resources Everyone within these walls seemed less optimistic than just days past, and Gabrielle escaped the hall’s brooding atmosphere by retiring to the garden.

The sun shone brightly on this June afternoon. Butterflies and bees were busy amid the plentiful flowers. The sound of rushing water carried to her ears, and Gabrielle attempted to stroll as though she were at peace.