The Chevalier (Châteaux and Shadows) (27 page)

The baron dropped Catherine’s arm and hugged his daughter to him. “Of course I saw you there. It doesn’t make you any less persistent in forcing your affections on everyone.”

Catherine felt she was intruding on their love, but the comtesse pulled away and flung her arms around Catherine instead. “We’re to be sisters! I do love having sisters. My brothers have all married well for my purposes. And you will call me Aurore. I’ve told you before, but you never do, do you?”

The baron leaned down, his eyes sparkling. “Manu hasn’t asked her yet.”

“Oh! Well, come along. They’ll get him settled in bed soon, and you can sit by him and tend him until he does.”

“And she says she’s not insidious,” muttered the baron as Aurore took Catherine’s hand.

They waited in the baron’s sitting room. When Monsieur Henri came out of Manu’s room and declared he was going to change, Catherine and Aurore swept in. The baron’s valet tidied away the clothes and bowed himself out, leaving the door open.

The comtesse—Aurore—spoke softly to her brother and dabbed at the sweat on his brow before waving Catherine into the chair by the bed, declaring she had to see her son before he went to sleep.

Emmanuel smiled wanly and set his left hand on her knee. She felt her face heat as he rubbed her leg. She grabbed his hand and held it still.

His words came drunkenly. “Henri gave me brandy. Why don’t you lie down with me?”

She knew her face was scarlet. “There is no room, and it will hurt your arm.”

“There is enough room if you lie very close.” He tried to move over a little but must have moved his arm wrong. He groaned and turned green. He squeezed his eyes shut for a long time as he gripped her hand, but finally took a deep breath and opened them. “If you aren’t going to lie next to me, I don’t want you to see me weak like this.”

“D’Oronte announced I was a light skirt.” She looked at the floor.

“D’Oronte is an evil bastard. He had just lost the duel and tried to kill me, so I don’t think anyone believed him. You were engaged to…that other boy.” His words were slurring again and his eyes crossing, but his frown was fierce as if he was ready to fight d’Oronte again. Or maybe fight her late fiancé. His smile appeared drunken again as he said, “And now we are engaged.”

They weren’t, really. They had talked about property, but it was only his family members who mentioned marriage. She knew it was enough. She kissed him gently on the lips and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

And came to a decision. “I’ll go change out of my riding habit and put on loose clothing and come back. And then, if you can make space without hurting yourself again, I’ll lie down.”

The baron sent one of his footmen with her to the baronesse’s apartments. Courtiers, probably getting ready for dinners and evening entertainments, passed her. Some stared and whispered, but most ignored her as always. She wasn’t as notorious as she feared.

The footman knocked at the baronesse’s door, but no one came. Where was the Swiss guard? The footman eased the door open, careful and alert. He whispered, “Monsieur the Baron set my brother to guard the baronesse, but I do not see him. Stay here.”

She glanced down the hallway, which was deserted. No one to ask for help, no one to see what she did. She decided to go in.

The footman slipped his hand into his form-fitting pale blue livery coat and retrieved a dagger. When he saw her in the room he grimaced. “At least stay out here, oui? It’s possible no one is here, but the door was unlocked, and I’ll look around before you go further.”

She nodded, but he still hesitated.

“I’ve trained as a bodyguard, Mademoiselle.”

She glanced at his dagger, then at his face. She nodded. “Call if you need help.”

He smiled and shook his head but finally turned and tiptoed across the sitting room. He swung her bedroom door open, but was out again in a few seconds. There really wasn’t anywhere to hide in her tiny closet, after all. He scratched at the baronesse’s door, then pressed his ear to it. He scowled at Catherine. “Go for help,” he said, his voice soft, but terse.

She swung the door to the hallway open as he opened the baronesse’s bedchamber door and someone inside—a woman, but not the baronesse—shouted.

She shoved the hall door open and screamed for help, vaguely seeing people at the end of the hall jump in surprise, but she ran back into the room and dodged between chairs to her patroness’s room.

The footman held a flailing Anne from behind by both arms. Catherine glimpsed his dagger on the floor by the door and picked it up. The baronesse sat bolt upright on the chair by the window, her typically harsh expression wreathed with fury.

Anne struggled to free her arms, but the footman pinned her more tightly, jabbing his knee between her legs from behind, throwing her off balance.

“She turned him off! He would have married me, but instead he disappeared into the army. Surely you understand?” Anne turned her head to look at the footman while she wriggled against his arms.

Catherine realized Anne was appealing to the footman, hoping for sympathy.

The man replied, his voice calm, but interspersed with harsh breaths as he clung to Anne. “Was this Pierrot? Who came down to la Brosse with you two years ago?”

“Yes! Pierrot! I had to go to the abortionist, because if she had found I was pregnant, she would have fired me, too. If Pierrot had stayed, we would have been married.” She jabbed an elbow into the footman’s gut.

He grunted but didn’t let go. His voice was sweet and soothing. “Pierrot was an idiot, Anne. He should never have left you behind.”

The baronesse snapped, “I turned him off for gambling, swearing, and disrespect. If I had known he had seduced you, I would have sent you with him.”

Anne, who had stopped struggling, began twisting and punching to free herself again. Catherine shook her head at her patroness and held a finger to her lips. The maid would never calm down if the baronesse kept arguing.

Lucas de Granville appeared in the doorway. Catherine waved him off, but he crossed himself, then remained solidly in the doorway, alert and ready to help.

The baronesse spotted him and announced, “My maid was trying to get me to drink poison, Monsieur Lucas.”

“It was my last chance to kill you!”

Monsieur Lucas shook his head when Catherine looked to him for help. “There are stronger men than I on the way right now.”

Anne struggled harder, but some of the palace footmen shoved into the room. They took Anne’s arms and the baron’s footman stepped back to catch his breath. Catherine held out his dagger between her fingers, and he took it and re-sheathed it with a nod.

Another footman in pale blue livery shoved into the room, face distressed. “She sent me out to find her supper. I locked all the doors.”

The footman who had come with Catherine shook his head. “The maid had a key, idiot.”

The two brothers began arguing, but Catherine sent them into the sitting room, giving them the baronesse’s thanks for having rushed to her aid, which the baronesse was still too upset to do.

After the guards arrived and had led Anne away, two more of the baron’s men barreled in. Catherine was holding the distraught baronesse’s hands by the time the baron and Monsieur Cédric arrived, frantic.

Catherine’s hands shook as she embraced the baronesse and wished her goodnight. Two footmen and Monsieur Lucas accompanied her back to the baron’s apartment. Upon arrival, Lucas held her hand for a moment too long as he bowed over it.

“I am glad you have found a family, Mademoiselle,” he said.

Tears sprang to her eyes and she gripped his hand with both of hers. “Oh, de Granville. I hope you find happiness, too.”

He frowned slightly and stepped away. “Monsieur d’Yquelon has hinted he would hire me as his secretary when his current one retires. Only with a steady income could I marry. I hope to find someone as good as you.”

She felt her face heat and reached for his hand again. “She would have to be a hundred times as good as me to be worthy of you.”

His cheeks went pink too, and he smiled. “Now go take care of your betrothed.”

When she slipped into Emmanuel’s bedchamber, he was asleep, his big body pressed against the wall. She realized she hadn’t changed into more comfortable clothing after all, in the shock and bustle of dealing with Anne, but she was too exhausted to go back to the baronesse’s quarters again. She loosened the ties of her stomacher and skirt so she could breathe more easily, then curled against his side and slept well for the first time in weeks.

****

Three days later, Catherine jerked awake when Emmanuel’s flailing arm crashed into her. He was breathing heavily as he shoved to a sitting position, gasping.

“What’s wrong? Are you ill again?” Catherine scrambled out from under the blanket and stumbled. “I’ll call for help. Where’s the basin?” He had vomited several times two nights before, when the fever burned its hottest.

“Don’t need the basin,” he grunted.

She turned up the lantern by the window and brought it to the bed. He was still breathing heavily, but instead of shivering and burying himself in blankets, he was shoving them down, his face wet with sweat.

She wiped his face with a towel and set the back of her hand against his forehead. “The fever has broken.” She sat on the edge of the bed, weak with relief. “It’s gone.”

He took the towel from her and fanned himself with it. He sighed deeply as he unstuck his thin nightshirt from his torso to bring in cool air. “I feel well. But weak.” He frowned.

“Let me fetch a footman to help you. Or your brother, Henri.”

He smiled. “I don’t want you to go.”

She wrinkled her nose at the smell of him. “You need to bathe. We need a maid to bring clean sheets.”

He smoothed his hand over her thinly-clad leg.

She realized her own nightshirt was damp with his sweat and shivered. “We both need to bathe. Can you stand?”

She spread a towel on the floor by the washbasin, set a chair on it, and supported him across the room, where he peeled off his nightshirt, leaving him only in thin drawers. The shadows cast by the tiny lantern brought his muscles and his bandage into stark relief.

He rinsed and toweled himself briskly, then turned to her. “Now your turn.”

She hesitated only a moment, until his smile turned seductive. He lifted her nightshirt over her head, leaving her naked. His smile fell away, and she wanted to cover herself, but he pulled her onto his lap, her breasts rubbing against his cool, damp chest, his arousal pressing against her hip.

His eyes were heavy and intense, seducing her with just a look and his presence. “Let me help,” he whispered in her ear. The cool, wet cloth dragged gently across her back, a few drops of water dripping down and over her buttocks.

He was very thorough when he cleaned her breasts and between her legs.

She was just as thorough when she removed his drawers.

They came together on top of his blankets with soft groans and whispered endearments.

Afterwards, they cleaned each other again and dressed in clean nightshirts. Catherine removed the sweaty sheets and replaced them with clean ones—it was not for nothing that she had learned to care for herself. Exhausted, they slept.

Epilogue

Two Months Later

Emmanuel sent a rider ahead, a warning to his fiancée—and mother and father—that he was approaching with his string of horses. He had left Jacques in Poitou in charge of the rest, the pregnant broodmares and the foals too young to move. He would have to return to Poitou in the spring to bring them up, but the twenty horses he and his men were riding and leading represented the bulk of his breeding stock. The four foals in carts represented next year’s income.

They were going to need the money to fix the house and stables on Catherine’s property in Normandy. She had savings, but Manu was loath to spend it, as it would be years before he turned enough profit to feed them. He sighed. He was bringing himself and some horses into their marriage. Catherine, though her fortune was by no means huge, was bringing both land and gold. His father had joked about providing a dowry and had indicated his old, ugly gelding, the bay that looked all wrong but was the best horse he had for distances. Manu had smiled along, but even after several weeks in his father’s company he was never sure when the baron was joking.

His father also promised financial help, but hadn’t yet settled on how much he could afford to take from Cédric’s inheritance. Since Cédric would now inherit the Poitou land and all the other la Brosse holdings, the waffling bothered Manu. But then he took a deep breath; land so far from Normandy would never suit him or Catherine.

When he left his fiancée in his father’s care at la Brosse, the baronesse had been the happiest he’d ever seen her. She still seemed unused to smiling, but there was a softness to her, a
légèreté
, he had never before witnessed.

Of course, his own lightness had achieved giddy heights. Catherine had slept next to him through the worst of the fever. They had made love on the narrow cot the night his fever broke. She’d sighed afterward that she hadn’t meant to do anything irreversible before they said their vows, but she had climbed into his bed again the next night…and the next.

They had traveled to her Normandy property—staying in inns along the way, him sneaking into her room in the night—to give the noble who rented her land advance warning they would reclaim the property over the winter.

The land was not only ideal for grazing but close to the sea. Catherine cried when she stood on the rocky cliff after so many years. Manu had never seen the sea before and hadn’t wanted to leave either.

But then…three weeks without her.

He had sent warning to his trainers and grooms to ready the horses, and Jean-Louis sent word their father would be assuming control of the Poitou holdings again. The baron sent his land steward with an assistant to check the harvest and discuss what to put on the land after five years of horses. Cédric’s two oldest sons, seventeen-year-old Charles and fifteen-year-old Paul, traveled down with Manu and his men, as the baron wished them to learn the area and the property. It had taken longer than Manu liked to sort through which men wished to go with him, who wanted to stay in Poitou and bring up the remainder of his broodmares and young foals, and who would be left behind permanently.