Gosford's Daughter (43 page)

D’Ailly seemed affronted. He had regained Rosmairi’s
hand but let it go to take a step nearer to Napier. “You know who I
am. My full name is Armand de Gréve, Sieur d’Ailly. I inherited the
title through my late father, Gaston de Gréve.”

Napier’s dark brows drew together; the sudden silence
was broken by a burly monk who did his best to ignore the obvious
tension while he lighted a dozen wall sconces with a flaming torch.
No one moved until he had departed, though Rob wished him a
pleasant evening. The burly monk grunted a monosyllabic
response.

“
You had a brother,” Napier said in
calmer tones after the monk had left. “Raoul, I think.”

D’Ailly’s hands lifted palms upward. “Why, yes, that
is so. He …” D’Ailly paused to take a deep breath, as if
fortifying himself. “He died. As did my parents, in a terrible
fire.”

Napier’s mouth was grim. “Set by his mistress, isn’t
that right?”

D’Ailly looked from Napier to Rosmairi’s questioning
face, then hung his head. “Alas, that is so. She perished
also.”

“
Oh, no!” The words seemed ripped
out of Napier’s lungs. “She lives. I have seen her within the past
hour.” He took three long strides to stand directly in front of
d’Ailly. “I, too, believed she had died. But like the phoenix, she
has risen from the ashes.” Napier’s blazing dark gaze was still
riveted on d’Ailly’s face. “You have reason to hate her, I know.
But my reason is even greater. She is my wife.”

Rosmairi let out a little cry; Rob put one hand over
his face; d’Ailly appeared stunned. Sorcha, her lips working
nervously, made no sound, nor did she move. More than anything, she
wanted to comfort Napier with her arms, but didn’t dare. It was
d’Ailly who broke the spell, suddenly galvanized into a fury almost
as fierce as Napier’s.

“
Mon Dieu
! It is impossible!
You—and that vicious strumpet? But how heartless, how evil she was!
I tried to warn my brother but he refused to heed me.” D’Ailly
began to storm about, hands snatching at his wavy blond hair, boots
resounding loudly on the stone floor of the common room. “I vowed
vengeance years ago. I never rebuilt at d’Ailly because I had not
the heart. Yet there was no way to assuage my pain, no victim to
hunt down.” He whirled, turning to face Napier once more. “Where is
she? I will show no mercy!”

Rob, who had busied himself by pouring wine for the
others, passed around the cups and intervened. Carefully, he
explained to d’Ailly and Rosmairi exactly what had happened under
the walls of Paris that afternoon. This time the young lovers
listened with rapt attention. When he had finished, Napier had
regained control and d’Ailly had simmered down.

“
I would hope,” Rob said in a
reasonable voice, his gaze moving from Napier to d’Ailly, “that
neither of you would insist on revenge. ’Tis a sin, you know.” The
hazel eyes were very solemn.

“
It would be a greater sin to let
such a woman live,” asserted d’Ailly. “Can you not see, even this
very day, she has no doubt murdered a king?”

“
She has also vanished,” Sorcha
pointed out as she drained her cup and picked up an apple from a
wooden fruit bowl on the long trestle table. “Frankly, I don’t see
how she will ever be found. Hasn’t she been able to disappear for
the past eight years?”

“
She has,” d’Ailly responded slowly,
“but she is not safe in France. She will go elsewhere, and I can
guess that destination.”

Napier lifted an eyebrow. “You can? How so?”

D’Ailly gave Napier his little self-effacing smile.
“Perhaps I know more of her … history than you, since I felt
obliged to search it out on my brother’s behalf. Not,” he added
with a rueful shake of the head, “that it did any good. But among
Marie-Louise’s lovers were numbered two of her mother’s people.” He
took another deep breath before uttering their names. “One called
the Master of Gray. The other, Francis, Earl of Bothwell. I suspect
she will flee to their protection.”

Sorcha almost choked on a piece of apple. “Gray! And
Bothwell! Aye,” she declared with vigor, “isn’t it said that
Bothwell dabbles in the black arts, much as it would appear
Athene—that is, Marie-Louise—does?”

“
So say his detractors.” Napier’s
brow was deeply furrowed. He set to pacing the length of the
hearth, his hands clasped tightly behind his back. “But what is her
game? Why this intrigue with Brother Jacques and the poor King?” He
halted, lifting his wine cup from the place where he’d set it on
the mantel. “Does she meddle in Huguenot politics? She was raised
Catholic, of course ….” He drank quickly from the cup, which
caught the flame of the nearest sconce and shimmered brightly in
his hand. “Christ,” he muttered, pounding his other fist against
his thigh, “or is it that she is set on destroying all manner of
men, whether royal or commoner?”

“
That she is a destructive force is
without question,” d’Ailly stated flatly. “And I would wager what
is left of my inheritance that even now she seeks passage to
Scotland.”

“
Scotland!” Sorcha all but wailed
the word. “Why must the vile baggage pollute our
homeland!”

Napier snorted and shook his head. “Why not? She has
defiled all else in my world.”

“
And mine.” D’Ailly put an arm
around Rosmairi. “Except for you,
ma belle
. Shall we sail to
Scotland on the morrow?”

Having behaved so impulsively with George Gordon,
Rosmairi felt obligated to show at least some measure of caution.
“Why … we don’t know if it’s possible, Armand. We should go
back to Compiègne and make arrangements ….” She appealed to
Sorcha and Rob for support.

“
I
am going back to
Compiègne,” Rob said stoutly. “I belong there, you may recall.” He
forced a wan smile on his sisters. “What you others choose to do,
is your own affair, of course. But I give thanks to God to be out
of all this horrible mess and to seek the peace of the cloisters
and the company of sane men such as Brother John
Fraser.”

Sorcha tossed the apple core into the empty grate and
turned inquiring eyes to Napier. “I have nowhere else to go but
home,” she said in a surprisingly small voice. “I may as well join
Rosmairi and Armand.”

Napier glanced down at her, but the dark eyes were so
suffused with pain that Sorcha had to look away. “Aye,” he answered
dully, “you may as well.”

The awful finality of his words made Sorcha’s heart
turn over in her breast. With heavy steps, she made her way back to
the trestle table and poured herself another cup of wine. It tasted
bitter and harsh, like gall. Sorcha drank anyway, aware that it
might as well be the dregs of her life that she was consuming as
night came down over Saint-Germain-des-Prés—and all of France.

The cell that Sorcha and Rosmairi shared was tiny and
narrow, containing only two lumpy cots and a crucifix. But darkness
brought cooler air through the ancient slit of a window some six
feet from the faintly dank stone floor. Rob had made the sleeping
arrangements with the burly monk.

After a cold supper for which Sorcha had amazingly
little appetite, the travelers had dispersed to their quarters. Rob
and d’Ailly were a few doors down from Sorcha and Rosmairi; Gavin
Napier seemed to have been swallowed up by the vast abbey,
disappearing into its recesses like a hare gone to ground.

Despite the cooler temperature, Sorcha found it
impossible to sleep. Rosmairi, however, had dropped off almost at
once, and now murmured contentedly from her cot just a scant yard
away from Sorcha.

The intervening hours since the horrifying moments in
the King’s tent had given Sorcha the opportunity to sort out the
day’s tumult. The shock of discovering that Gavin Napier’s wickedly
wayward wife still lived had given way to the quest for a solution
on Sorcha’s part. Surely a woman who had deserted her husband some
eight years earlier could not be viewed, even in the eyes of the
Church, as his lawful spouse. An annulment didn’t seem out of the
question. In fact, for Sorcha, it seemed the only reasonable
answer. She had waited too long, wished too fervently, to be denied
forever marriage with the man she loved.

But the darkness of the night and the lateness of the
hour were no allies to Sorcha’s peace of mind. She was restless,
uncomfortable, and unable to relax on the unyielding pallet which
served as a mattress. Her state of mind was further upset by the
sudden eruption of church bells, distant in the beginning, then
nearer and nearer, until the abbey shook with the ringing of its
own great campanile. Rosmairi was jarred into wakefulness, sitting
up with her hands over her ears.

“
What’s happening? Is it morning?”
She squinted into the blackness of the cell, trying to make out
Sorcha, who was already on her feet. “It’s still the middle of the
night,” Sorcha replied with more impatience than she’d intended.
“I’d guess from that doleful sound that King Henri has passed on to
his royal reward.” Absently, Sorcha crossed herself. “Damnation, I
refuse to stay in this pokey place and twitch away the night.” She
felt for her boots, slipped her feet into them, and banged out of
the narrow cell, ignoring Rosmairi’s plea to wait.

It seemed that most of the abbey’s residents had been
awakened by the mournful tolling of the church bells. Sleepy-eyed
monks, looking like so many aimless ghosts in the unlighted
hallway, milled about, exchanging hushed comments. It only took a
few seconds before someone in authority—the abbot or his
subordinate—led them away, presumably to the chapel to pray for the
King’s soul. And for Brother Jacques as well, Sorcha thought,
knowing that he surely could not have survived the fatal
incident.

Even after the corridor emptied, Sorcha remained. Rob
and d’Ailly would be awake, too, she was positive of that. But so
would Gavin Napier. On silent feet, she moved down the hallway,
peering on tiptoe through the small wrought iron apertures in the
cell doors. The first five were empty; within the sixth, a tall,
broad-shouldered form was outlined against the slit of a window,
staring out at the sliver of moon that rose above the Seine.
Softly, Sorcha called Napier’s name. At first, he didn’t seem to
hear her. Then, slowly, almost reluctantly, he turned toward the
door. “He’s dead,” Napier stated in that same flat voice he’d used
earlier in the evening. “As ever, Marie-Louise has gotten her way
with a man.”

Napier was making no effort to move away from the
window nor to open the cell door. Sorcha pushed at the handle,
which gave with only a slight rusty protest. Boldly, she entered
the cell and went to stand behind Napier but made no attempt to
touch him.

“
I feel sorry for the King. And for
poor demented Brother Jacques. But,” she went on with more fervor,
“I feel even more sorry for us. They are both doubtless beyond
pain. You and I are not. Will we stop living merely because that
ghastly woman has come back into your life?”

Napier remained motionless, still staring at the
moon. “You forget, ‘that ghastly woman,’ as you call her, is my
wife. We are bound together forever in the sight of God and
man.”

“
Rot!” Sorcha exclaimed, not caring
if she roused anyone who had managed to sleep through the din of
the church bells. They were subsiding at last, though the abbey
campanile still reverberated throughout the ancient stone walls.
“Eight years! She wanted you to think she was dead. Don’t be a
fool, Gavin. Go to your bishop, to the Pope if need be, and have
the marriage annulled!”

The muscles under the cambric shirt flexed across the
back of Napier’s shoulders as he clenched and unclenched his hands
at his sides. “Even if it were feasible, I could not do it.” He
paused, then heeled around to confront Sorcha. “Don’t you see,” he
all but bellowed at her, his face suffused with pain, frustration,
and rage, “the very day I resolve to fling off the past,
Marie-Louise rises up to haunt me! It’s like a judgment from
God!”

“
From the Devil, more likely,”
Sorcha declared with a vehemence as great as his own. She grabbed
him by the upper arms, attempting to shake him, but achieving
little more than wrinkling his already dirty, rumpled shirt. “She
is like some dreadful, awful millstone. You don’t deserve to live
out your life in her ominous shadow!”

Napier’s mouth twisted into a grim, mocking parody of
a smile. “But I do, Sorcha. I swore before God that I would!” He
lowered his voice, and his face softened ever so slightly. “It’s a
matter of conscience. Do you think I want it this way?”

Sorcha dropped her hands. “Mayhap you do.” She spoke
accusingly, the green eyes defying him to deny it. “After all, it
spares you the effort of loving and being loved in return.” Sorcha
tossed her head, the long, tangled hair swinging over her
shoulders. “It seems to me, Gavin Napier, that you prefer hate to
love.” Her gaze continued to hold his until, at last, she swept
about and started to march from the little cell.

But Napier came after her and wrapped an arm around
her waist to make her face him. “That’s not so. Not at all.” He
suddenly looked very old, like a man who has fought the battle of
life but knows that even though the struggle isn't over, he has
already been defeated. “I beg you, don’t judge me so severely.”

“
Jesu,” Sorcha cried aware that her
breasts were almost touching his chest, “I will not believe there
is no remedy for this wretched predicament! Will you not at least
return to Scotland with me to see what my sire can do? Or seek the
advice of Brother John Fraser at Compiègne? He is most holy and
very learned.” She put her hands on his chest, kneading the fabric
of his shirt in a pleading gesture.