Sweet Enchantress (25 page)

Dominique tried to avoid the obvious, the moments when she was at court and would catch Paxton and Martine deep in conversation or sharing an intimate moment of laughter. Then, when Jacotte came to her one afternoon, Dominique was forced to heed the whispers.

Jacotte could not meet her gaze. With a trembling hand, she handed Dominique one of those sc
andalous broadsheets that circulated around Avignon. "My betroth found this.”

Dominique glanced at the broadsheet.
Her eye was caught by the script tucked away in one corner. "Higamous, hogamous, the Lady Dominique is monogamous. Hogamous, higamous, her husband is polygamous.”

She wadded up the broadsheet
. With a shrug, she said, "The work of gossip-mongers.”

Her pain was
more difficult to shrug off. Wherever she went, she felt as if people were talking about her and Paxton. Humiliation became her companion. She wanted to believe in Paxton and refused to discuss the subject with anyone.

Then
Manon approached her. The maid chewed her bottom lip in an effort to find the right words.

"Yes?”
Dominique asked, dreading what she suspected was coming.

"I
. . . er . . . Martine’s maid-in-waiting . . . ah, oh, my Lady Dominique, she says that my Lord Lieutenant has been—ah—that her mistress is his lover.”

Pride, the m
illstone of the ego, lashed Dominique with anguish at this confirmation of his deception. She hardly heard, nor even cared, that a rumor was also circulating concerning his previous wife.

Manon stared down at her pattens,
as her words rushed on, "A French legate here at court knew Paxton's first wife, my Lady Dominique. He says stories abounded for years about Paxton murdering her in a fit of rage.”

Tasting the nausea that welled inside her,
Dominique turned from Manon and hurried to the garderobe to throw up. Trust, respect, honesty . . . these were the cornerstones of a solid marital foundation. Like a priceless Oriental vase, their relationship had been shattered and it would never be put back together in the same, flawless way it had been. The cracks would devalue its one-time perfection.

Day after day her stomach wrenched in knots. A metallic taste coated her tongue. She could not eat. She lost weight. She paced, constantly walking the perimeters of her chamber, unconsci
ous of her surroundings, forgetful of things she had said or done only moments before. Her sleep was restless. Unflattering shadows appeared beneath her eyes. Over the succeeding days, she could not bring herself to go out, even to see Francis, and the trellis work of iron over the hotel's windows became her prison bars.

At last, even a preoccupied Paxton noticed her decline. Late one night, he raised on one elbow to stare down at her. “
What is it,
ma migonne
? What ails you these last few days?”

She
could not meet his heavy-lidded gaze. She turned her head to stare at the darkness above. “Tis nothing. Merely the heat. I am used to the mountain coolness.”

After a long moment, he t
urned on his side and went back to sleep. They were so close physically. She had only to move her hand and she could touch that muscle-striated back, yet so distant emotionally and spiritually.

Was it possible that she was making more of this than was validated by mere rumor? After all, had anyone actually seen Paxton and Martine in b
ed with each other? There was no sin in being attracted to another.

Why did she not just ask him if he were being unfaithful to her?

Because he might confirm her worst nightmare?

Was it better not to know? Was pain the unavoidable price of love?

She was tempted to confront him with the information several times over the next few days. Instead, forcing herself to resume some of her former activities, she sought out the comforting solace of Francis's presence or walked alone to the wind-swept loneliness of the Rocher des Domes where she would scream her agony in an animalistic howl that raised goosebumps on the people who heard the howl carried by the wind.

Why? she cried to herself. I only loved him. I never hurt anyone! Why did I deserve this? Why had I to f
all in love with this man? Where, Divine Force, is the lesson to all this pain?

And she wept, she who rarely wept, felt the hot sting of silent tears stealing down her face at the most unexpected times. She was an empty shell, so empty that if one could ho
ld her to the ear, the sound of the sea would have been heard.

Then one morning, as Paxton was being shaved, he suggested, almost too casually, that they hold a reception at the h
otel for King Philip. “Tis said Martine was once the Frenchman’s favorite. I think it would be interesting to invite her, also.”

She stared back at him, her eyes searching his soul, but she could not get beyond his eyes. Those dispassionate eyes were a wall as thick as the four-foot ones at the pope's palace. “
I shall attend to the reception details,” she said tonelessly.

They both looked at each other across a chasm that would forever be unbridgeable. She lowered her gaze and turned back to Manon, who was lacing her up. How could one
’s heart cease to beat and yet beat so fast and hard that pain swamped the body?

By rote, she oversaw the myriad details of the coming reception, a duty for which life as chatelaine had aptly prepared her. But she moved throug
h the maze of the hotel's corridors like a legendary ghost.

When both a king and a pope were to be one's guests, no expense or effort was to be spared. A host of servants and extra cooks were hired from Avignon and its suburbs. The day before the event, hunters were sent out to comb the
forests for game and fishermen to trawl the ponds for pike. Iolande made several trips to the markets with Baldwyn in attendance, since as a Jewess she was forbidden to touch the produce. All the candles were bought from the city's chandlers. The mansion’s staff scoured the hotel to a pristine cleanness.

Dominique
immersed herself in this preparation with a feverish intensity that made the hotel’s inhabitants gape—all except Paxton, who seemed to be engrossed in his own projects. With a collective sigh of relief, the mansion’s staff welcomed the arrival of the evening’s reception and its first guests.

The French king arrived late. Studying him, Dominique had to admit he was Edward's equal in handsomeness. Yet it was an effete handsomeness, with not even a m
odicum of Paxton’s virile masculinity. Throughout the elaborate dinner, the guests talked and joked without once politics entering the discussion. Paxton was affable without being obsequious, and midway through the dinner Philip appeared to relax his stiff manner.

With the commencement of the carols and other danci
ng, the guests more readily mingled. At one point, Dominique found herself conversing with the king, and realized he had actually maneuvered through the press of his sycophants to reach her side. "You are the most lovely and charming of women to have ever graced Avignon, Comtessa.”.

Despite his short beard and mustache, his jaw-long hair made him look surprisingly young for forty-five or so. "Your compliment is appreciated, your Majesty.”
Around them, the guests listened with differential silence as she and Philip discoursed on everything from flying the hawk to the merits of Languedoc wine.

She should have felt highly honored to have been singled out by His Majesty, but the entire time her eye was
searching among the guests for Paxton. She found neither him nor Martine.

Extracting herself from Philip
’s attention, she went in search of her husband. Her hands were sweaty and her heart thudded. Her breathing was shallow and rapid. It was that moment when night meets the raging dawn, when the tides reach their zenith and with a mighty backwash reverse their direction. When one knows her world is about to change irrevocably.

The hotel might have a maze of corridors and numerous antechambers, pantries, and
alcoves but it was as if she were following an invisible cord which linked her to Paxton.

Torchlight silhouetted him at the end of a short hall, his back to her. At first, she thought he was alone and strangely still. Then the noises of two people in the
throes of passion, those raspy murmurings and short-breathed kisses, reached her. They were killing noises for the observer. She did not need to find out the identity of the woman Paxton pressed against the tapestried wall.

She would have backed away, but
from the staircase came the sound of people ascending. Pride would not countenance anyone seeing her with the tears streaming down her face.

She was forced to take refuge in the nearest chamber, Paxton
’s interim office.

Her back pressed against the door, s
he waited for the voices to fade. The footsteps of the guests departed and then, even Paxton's and his mistress’s footsteps wandered off down the corridor. For long moments, Dominique stood there, quaffing deep breaths, feeling the door’s splintery wood piercing her palms.

Moonlight from the trefoil window spilled over Paxton
’s secretarial desk. She crossed to stand before it, and her tears splashed onto the moonlit-covered surface. How she detested the weakness of tears, she who had always thought she was strong. But she was the weakest of humans!

Her fist thudded on the desk once, then again and again and again. “
No . . . no . . . noooo!” The words were but soft, mewling cries of which she was totally unaware making.

Eventually, the pain of injury reached
through her dazed mind, and she realized she had hurt herself. A small slice on the side of her hand. Her gaze found the culprit, a tiny knife used for quill sharpening. Stoically, she watched the droplets of her blood mingle on a parchment with her tears. Something took her over. She seated herself and picked up the quill. Dipping it in her blood, she began to write on the sheet of parchment held in place on the writing board by a deerskin thong.

"I truly believed that in you I would find my counterpart, that lock that would fit my key. As you would in me, the lock that would fit your key.”

She refreshed the quill tip with her blood and continued in a rush of penned words:

"I suppose I should feel
humiliation that I surrendered myself to you. I feel none. The possibility of achieving something so perfect was worth the pain of the humiliation. Worth the chance. Worth your child that I bear. Good-bye ~ Dominique”

Trembling, she folded the missive. She
meant to leave it in the desk drawer where he would not discover it until long after she had fled Avignon, but she found in the drawer a document with a royal seal, that of the king of England. Swiftly and disbelievingly, her eyes perused the broadly stroked words. Among other things, the letter hinted that Paxton was involved in a plot to overthrow Philip.

". . . two kings. Both claim France. As my cat, you must co
rner the French mouse after he scurries to his tower.”

The knowledge of the evidence she hel
d in her hand took her breath away. Because Paxton was a vassal of the French king, this was treason and punishable by death.

The door opened suddenly, shafting candle-light across the desk
—and her. She whirled, and her own letter floated like a feather to the floor behind her. She recognized the massive shadow. Paxton set the candle in its wall sconce and crossed to her in what was almost a leisurely stride. His face chiseled of marble, he stared down at her. "You have been meddling, Dominique?''

A fury ri
pped through her. "I saw the royal missive! Knowing what I do about you and Martine, it would give me great pleasure to expose you as a traitor and watch your execution.”

He listened with a deadly calm as she continued in a furious whisper. "As it is, Paxt
on, I shall repay your kindness you once did me in letting me remain at Montlimoux. I give you forty-eight hours to leave France ahead of Philip's soldiers.”

Watching the play of his expression, she suddenly reali
zed he could just as easily murder her, dispose of her body in such a way it would appear that she had been set upon by brigands, and resume his place in court. Had he not murdered Elizabeth?

His pulse hammered at
the base of his muscled-striated neck, and his temples were a road map of throbbing veins. A weakness that was relief washed over her when, after a long moment, he bowed curtly. "As you would have it—mistress.”

Mustering the shreds of her dignity, she swept pass him and out of the room
—and out of his life.

Autumn at Montlimoux triggered restless peregrinations in Dominique. Heavy with child as she was, riding had lost some of its pleasure. But then, everything even the sunlight had lost its pleasure for her. Was autumn’s sunlight hazier with that last rendezvous with summer? And was this pain in her chest, was that what was meant by an attack of the heart?

The court at Avignon had adjourned in favor of Paris, and Esclarmonde and Francis had recently taken up residence at a stately home in the village of Montl
imoux. Curiously, Dominique was reluctant to seek out Francis. Like a hermit, she avoided society, wanting only the healing balm of nature.

During her excursions into the countryside, as on this d
ay, she was unfailingly accompanied by Baldwyn and several guards, at his insistence, because the month before, King Edward, Duke of Aquitaine, had formally claimed the French crown and had launched a war against northern France.

Somewhere on French soil was Paxton with his army. Apparently, Martine was not with hi
m but had followed King Philip's court to Paris. Paxton had used her for information just as he had used Dominique herself.

For his part, King Philip had sent troops to southern F
rance to raid the Duchy of Aquitaine. Lighting brands, the soldiers had set fire to every house suspected of English sympathies.

“
Word is even about,'' Baldwyn said, “that the French are disrupting the main lines of transport and communications in and out of the duchy, as well as laying waste to the rich vineyards. Being this close to Aquitaine, I think it wise we ride no further today, my Lady Dominique."

With a sigh, she reined in her palfrey near a salt pan in a
closeby marsh. “’Tis always the innocent people and the land that suffer the consequences of war.”

"The Albigensian Cru
sade all over again. As the peasant says, ‘What cannot be cured must be endu—' ”

He broke off, sawing in on the reins of his mount. On the crest of the next hill was silhouetted a line of horsemen. Immediately, they moved out, with one unmistakably in the
lead. "Christ's thorns!” Baldwyn said, and reached out to haul in Dominique's reins.

"The English?”
she asked.

He shook his head. "I do not know, but 'tis trouble that is coming, that I am certain!”

As a unit, she, Baldwyn, and the three guards pivoted their horses around, flurrying dust. Frantically, she urged her palfrey into a gallop. Their party streaked for Montlimoux’s ramparts. Their pennants waved in the far distance. Too far.

She strove to keep her seat, but her ungainly form made it difficult. She
bounced more than rode as part of the animal. Baldwyn kept a worried eye on her. The jolting was sending small waves of pain through her. The babe. She could not lose this one!

She spared a quick glance behind. Their pursuers we
re gaining on them. Baldwyn saw this also, and saw the wrenching pain reflected in her face. "We shall not outrun them, my Lady Dominique!” he shouted. "We face them and fight?”

Grim-faced, she nodded.

The old Templar chose well their battle-ground, a plateau backed by a dense growth of trees. The heavily armored horsemen would have to scramble up the rocky slope in order to reach them. Baldwyn, with the three guards, formed a wall of blades to protect Dominique.

When their pursuers were close enough to make out, Baldwyn
spit into the dirt, and said, "’Tis the French!” The French were almost as formidable and as destructive an enemy to the people of Languedoc as the English, and he cast Dominique an inquiring glance. His rheumy black eyes were full of his abiding love for her and his intentions, should she accede to his unspoken question.

Knowing what lay in that question, she nodded. She would accept his sword as a death instrument
. The clanging of armor and swords unsheathed recaptured her attention. Sunlight glinted off the French soldiers’ armor and conical helmets, for a moment blinding Dominique. Then a maniacal laughter reached her. Chills crawled up her arms and spine. "Denys Bontemps!” she breathed.

“
Baldwyn Rainbaut!” he shouted. "Surrender my fair maiden Dominique to me.”

"A
Templar never surrenders, Denys. You know that.”

"I know that we shall chop all of you down like withered grapevines to get to her, so stand aside, old man.”

Mayhap, she knew that Baldwyn could not hold out forever; mayhap, she was merely tired of the warring—the warring in the countryside, the warring within herself—but she cried, "Enough!” and slipped between her defenders to confront Denys just below her.

His gaze fa
stened on her extended belly. "’Tis true then, what Esclarmonde says. You carry the English bastard’s child!”

Esclarmonde
? "Since when do you murder for the French, Denys?”

Bitterness had left its ravages on his once- handsome face. His sunlit smile was now little more than a sneer. "I could run that unborn babe through
with my sword, Dominique, but 'tis not you I wish to kill.”

The malice in his tone made her shiver. "Guard your time closely,”
he continued. "I shall return for the life of Paxton's child.”