Suzanne Robinson (3 page)

When she’d spoken, both men had frozen. Neither had spoken as she entered, and now Blade approached her. Oriel held up a hand to stop him, and he hesitated.

“If it please you, my lord, let there be no pretense between us.” Oriel stopped and swallowed, for her voice trembled. “I see that you like not my person and have no time or desire to make yourself familiar with my character. Likewise, I find myself unable to countenance a suitor with so ungentle a manner, be he ever so handsome and endowed with a goodly estate.”

“Mistress, my hot and heady language was the result of being near my lord father.”

“Whatever the cause, I have no wish to deal with you further. Good day to you, my lords.”

Oriel turned her back on Blade and made herself walk slowly out of the great chamber, down the gallery to the staircase. She lifted her skirts and was about to dash upstairs in a race to beat the fall of her tears when she heard Blade’s voice calling to her.

He was at her side before she could retreat. His cloak swirled around her skirts, and his dark form blocked out the light from the gallery windows. She could smell the leather of his riding clothes. He put a hand on her arm, and she sprang away, shaking it off.

“Mistress, stay you a moment.”

“I have work, my lord.” She must gain her chamber before she betrayed herself with tears.

“I swear to you, my words were hastily spoken and
ill-reasoned on account of my anger at my father. A meanness of spirit overcomes me when I’m in his company for long, and this time I struck out at him and hit you instead. I take an oath before God that none of my insults are true.”

“Ofttimes we speak our truest feelings when our words are least guarded, my lord.”

She brushed past him and mounted the stairs with as much dignity as she could summon. Halfway up he was still looking at her from below.

“Lady, I go to France soon, and would not leave this kingdom without your forgiveness.”

Oriel looked down at Blade. Even from this height he appeared as tall as a crusader tower and as beautiful as a thunderstorm in July. In a brief span she had been enthralled and rejected, and if she didn’t get away from him she would throw herself on the floor and weep for what she had lost almost before she knew she wanted it.

“Of course. As a good Christian I can hardly withhold my forgiveness, and you have it. It seems to be the only thing in Richmond Hall you want. Once again, good day to you, my lord.”

France
January 1565

The Loire Valley was the heart of France. A spy who wished to prize secrets from courtiers made himself a familiar of those nobles whose chateaux graced the banks of this azure river. This was why Blade rode alongside the water toward the chateau of Claude de la Marche, mistress of princes, cardinals, and spies. Though he loved the Loire, this time he failed to notice the beauty of the frost-covered countryside. He burrowed his nose into the fur lining of his cloak hood and pondered the unlikely source of his vexation.

He had enough worries to beset him without thinking about that fey creature who couldn’t remember his name, yet the image of her face wouldn’t go away. He’d
loosed his cursed tongue, scimitar fashion, and cut her instead of his father. He’d gained the habit from Christian de Rivers years ago, and found it useful when employed correctly.

The face of a weasel—what drivel. He could see her face now. Small, pointed of chin, and wide of forehead, it more resembled the face of a fairy, and her eyes reminded him of the trees of the Loire Valley in spring. She hadn’t replied to his letter apologizing for his lack of courtesy.

There were matters of great weight straining for his attention. He shouldn’t be thinking of Oriel Richmond. He shouldn’t, at the moment, be thinking of anything English. For he was in France, and the smallest slip in manner or of tongue could mean his death. He muttered to himself in French and glanced back at his servant and bodyguard, René.

René had been with him since he was a boy. He had first been employed by Blade’s mother, and had stayed when she died eight years ago, though many of her servants had gone back to her estate on the Loire. Lady Fitzstephen had asked René to protect her son, and no argument on Blade’s part could dissuade him from his task. Though of middle age, he could still lift his charge over his head and match him at fencing.

“René, venez ici.”

“Oui, mon seigneur.”

“I’m worried, René. Our lady queen takes a great risk with her plan. Mary Stewart may be queen of Scotland, but her life’s ambition is to wrest England from Elizabeth, and her cursed French uncles will help her. The queen has forgotten that Mary Stewart owes more of her character to her Guise relations than to her Stewart ones. Cunning and ruthlessness were reborn in the shapes of the Guise brothers.”

“Oui
, my lord, but one cannot follow every intrigue hatched by the Duc de Guise or the Cardinal of Lorraine.”

“It is the cardinal who presents the greatest threat. If it would gain him control of France or England, he would draw and quarter his own firstborn. With as many mistresses as he has, he’s sure to have a firstborn.”

“So,” René said, “that is why we travel in weather unfit for dogs. The lovely Claude de la Marche has succumbed at last.”

“I received her invitation upon returning from England. I’m surprised you didn’t read it. You read everything else.”

“It was sealed, my lord.”

“And you never read sealed letters?”

“Only those I have time to work upon, my lord.”

“I shall remember.” Blade lifted himself in the saddle as they emerged from a stand of bare trees. “Look. I never tire of the sight of the chateaux, though mine is by far the most beautiful to me.”

Less than half a league distant, a chateau rose from the waters of the Loire. Its high white towers, crenellated and topped with conical roofs, swam before them, a diamond balancing between river and land. The weak January sun set the silver rooftops ablaze. Claude’s chateau was much smaller than those of the king or great princes, yet it contained all the beauty of decoration in the Italian manner—foliated scrollwork, scalloped shells, pilasters, and fluted columns abounded.

Castle La Roche, his English home, seemed a monstrous cavern when compared to this enchanted place. Mayhap his view of it was distorted by the past. Although there were whole chunks of his childhood shrouded in the blackness of lost memory, what he remembered had been sufficient to send him to France as soon as he’d been able to go. He remembered incessant battles. He remembered always living in fear that some unsuspected offense by his mother or him would ignite his father’s fury. He remembered taking refuge in study, only to find that gradually he himself had fallen prey to a demon rage.

At first he struck out in anger at his tutors when they criticized his work. Then he began to dream. He dreamed of killing someone, a faceless man who evoked such rage in him that he attacked the man with fists and feet, beating him until he lay dead. After such a dream he woke in a sweat, his chest heaving as though he’d ridden fifty leagues. Terrified, he would spend hours begging God to forgive him for his own nightmares. Even more of his time was devoted to controlling his temper. He swore a vow to God that he wouldn’t strike out at others for his own shortcomings, as did his father.

As he grew older, the nightmares changed. The faceless man turned into one of his tutors. Then one day when he was sixteen, he was killing his tutor in the dream, his hands squeezing into the flesh of the man’s neck, when he blinked, and the tutor transformed into his father. He woke screaming. That night he vowed to leave Castle La Roche.

Two years later he succeeded in convincing his father to send him to Oxford, only to be captured by the highwayman Jack Midnight along the way. He’d been struck on the head and had lost his memory During this time, he joined Midnight and his band. When he regained his memory, his greatest concern had been to conceal from those who knew him his father’s monstrous nature, and his own secret rage. His French inheritance had come as a blessing from heaven.

He gripped his reins tighter and shifted in the saddle. He’d allowed himself to drift into memory—a dangerous luxury when he would encounter Claude soon. Putting old unhappiness aside, he stared at the spires of the chateau and recited proverbs in French to keep his thoughts from straying.

It wasn’t long before he rode beneath the chateau gate. Soon he was inside and shaking frost from his hair. A servant murmured that madame awaited him in her chamber, and he followed the man up the spiral staircase
in the east tower. The stair was a graceful curve of white marble with a central support carved with foliage and panels that reached high above his head. As he mounted the steps, he could see the underside of the flight of stairs above, seemingly afloat in the air.

On the second floor he entered a withdrawing chamber. The servant paused before a door and knocked, then opened it and bowed. Blade ducked through the entryway, which was a bit low for his height, and found himself in a chamber hung with great tapestries depicting hunting scenes and scenes from Greek mythology. Claude awaited him, having contrived a pose beside a table laden with food and wine. A gilded and velvet-covered canopy bed rose behind her. The whole effect of woman and chateau was one of luxurious fecundity, warmth and sensuality layered over with an elegance of presentation that concealed a preoccupation with physical pleasure. Claude waited for him to take in the full measure of her beauty before calling him and coming to him with arms outstretched.

“Ah,
mon chèr
Nicholas, you have taken so long to come to me. I have been desolate.”

White, plump arms surrounded him, and Blade kissed her. The scent of lilacs nearly smothered him, and he scraped his hand on a diamond button. Abruptly he was reminded of Oriel Richmond in her simple wool gown, her hair flying about as if mussed by pixies. Claude’s beauty was as full-bodied and rich as her chateau, and her hair was her best feature. Pale gold, silken, and gently curling, it lay in cascades about her shoulders, for she had purposely left it undressed.

“You have ignored me for so long,
mon ami
, that I thought you had forgotten me.”

Blade freed himself from her arms. It wouldn’t serve to show eagerness, for Claude had at least twenty noble French fools capering about her feet.

“Indeed, madame, I had thought myself far too unimportant
to cause you even a moment’s unease. I have been in Italy visiting an old friend.”

Claude waved her hand, then began pouring wine into crystal goblets. “When one is out of France, one is cast from heaven. Did you have company on your journey?”

“Claude, in faith, I think you pry to see if I’ve a mistress.”

“La, I already know that.”

Blade sipped his wine to cover his wariness. He ran his tongue over his upper lip to distract Claude, and once her gaze was fastened on his mouth, he answered.

“Know you my habits so well?”

“The whole court knows your habits. My friends make a great game of tracing the antics of ladies and their lovers. The Vicomte de Tallart wagered that you would fly from Louise St. Michel to Marie de Bourbon within three months. I have confounded him.”

“Then I am a wager.”

Claude set down her goblet and placed her hand on his cheek.
“Non
, my sweet, you are the prize.”

She pulled him to the bed and sank down upon it, drawing him with her. He didn’t leave it until late that night when the chamber was cast in darkness except for the unsteady light from the fireplace. He rose and wrapped himself in a silk cover from the bed. Then he padded across the carpet to crouch before the fire and stare into the yellow flames.

He’d used his body in the service of his queen and country many times before, but never had he experienced this weariness of spirit. Apart from the first year, when he’d been enamored of the pleasure and intrigue, he had grown to view this aspect of his missions as the most draining. Making love where there was no affection wasn’t making love at all. More and more he felt as if his body was a thing apart from himself, an instrument.