The Maiden and the Unicorn (25 page)

"I say that purple is what we Nevilles hanker after." Isabella tucked her hand through her father's arm. "Do we not, Father? But when is Master Huddleston allowed back to his bride? You could have at least allowed them a full day to themselves."

"Hush, Bella, you little cat. Well, Margery, he will be back soon enough. Growing impatient, my little witch?"

Isabella waggled a finger in Margery's face. "You are blushing again. I never knew you could until Richard Huddleston arrived in Valognes."

"Please do not mock me, Bella." Margery sidestepped the Duchess so that she could face the Earl. "I am no fool, my lord. Master Huddleston married me merely to become your son-in-law."

Her new father shrugged. "Time will tell. I married the greatest heiress in the land for political ends but I have learned to love her well." He stole an arm round his Countess's thickening waist and turned her round to face him. The older woman's expression was complacent like a cat that had just filled its belly with the choicest fare. The Earl chucked his wife beneath the chin and turned his head to Margery. "Make the best of your situation, my child. Your man has hardly had a chance to prove himself to you."

Nor would he, if she had any say in the matter. If Richard Huddleston had desired her, he hardly would have spent their marriage night discussing his father-in-law. And this news that they were to leave for Amboise was definitely welcome. With luck she would not see Huddleston again for weeks. Even if he did return in time to journey with them, from the little she knew of royal palaces, servants slept in any available corner and he would have a meagre chance of compelling her to share his bed.

And, for the nonce, if Richard Huddleston did come back expecting a wife instead of a warming brick, he would find her, unobtainable, in the bedchamber where the other ladies slept, or else in Isabella's bed. Oh yes, she was quite safe.

* * *

She could not scream, she could not breathe. She was dreaming, dreaming that a fearful monster had swooped down, casting a hood over her head and drawing a cord tight around her throat with its golden talons. Her body thrashed wildly. The common sense half of her mind told her she was remembering Huddleston's abduction of her. The other half wisely woke her. It was actually happening.

A tall, hooded figure as faceless as Death was bending over her. She could not cry out to the sleeping women around her because Death had his gloved hand tight across her mouth. He was pinching her nostrils shut.

"Stop threshing around or you will wake up the whole gaggle," Death whispered. He sounded like George of Clarence. Unable to breathe, she ceased struggling and nodded frantically, conscious of an inexplicable sense of disappointment.

He let go of her. "Be swift, Meg. Just throw a cloak on and come."

"Are you mad?"

He shook his head and laid a hand upon the blanket. Margery swiftly snatched it to her, thinking he was never going to understand her exaggerated gesticulation but at last she heard a soft hiss of laughter and he obeyed.

Her overgown had fallen in a tumble of clothes. She pulled it over her bare skin and flung her cloak about her head and shoulders, drawing it across her gown.

The Duke was waiting to grab her by the forearm. "Quickly!"

She shrugged him off. "Your grace, you may have thought that amusing but you nearly scared me witless."

"Nonsense, Meg," he whispered, "Marriage must be making you boring. We are going up the tower."

She groaned. "Oh no, my lord, can you not think of somewhere less imaginative."

"Where is your sense of occasion? I have not had a secret assignation since I came to France."

"You have an answer for me to send to England?"

"Hush, I shall tell you in good time."

Margery was truly irritable by now as she followed him into the night. The gusty wind was feeling up her skirt and if the inside flagstones had been chilly beneath her feet, the cobblestones were knobbly, gritty and cold as he hurried her around the outside of the logis and then up a stairwell she had not known existed. It was hazardous to climb the spiralling stairs without a taper. She sighed and trudged cautiously after him, her skirt lifted to her knees.

"You are not fit enough, that is the trouble," he smirked as she finally joined him in the turret.

Margery glowered. "I am sure we could have done this in daylight."

"Not with what I want to say to you. Stop grumbling and come and take a look, it is quite tolerable."

The window was no mean split in the wall to guard against arrows but about two spans wide. It had lost its shutters so they had a clear view of the courtyard in front of the logis and the town lapping around the wall. Valognes slumbered without a snore. Only a distant dog's bored bark against the wind and the gurgle of the river reached them. Nor was there a glimmer anywhere save for the chapel and the gatehouse. The door to the latter opened. One of the soldiers stood silhouetted against the torchlit room behind him. He said something to someone inside then moved to relieve himself against one of the hedges that separated the yard from the logis garden. Two other men moved into the doorway before she turned away.

The Duke had shaken back his hood and was kneeling. A flint flamed within his hands. His face, lit from below, turned into a macabre mask as he set the stubby candle between them.

Margery shivered, more with instinctive misapprehension than because of the draught. Frowning, she knelt down and waited for the Duke to speak. It was hard to believe he was trying to make himself king. In the long black gown, he looked like a lanky student.

Persuade him, Ned had said. Persuade him? Oh yes, in a chilly turret at Heaven knows what ghostly hour.

They were kneeling facing each other like two lovers at a betrothal.

"I take it you want to talk about Ned," she began primly.

"Him! Perish the thought! No, I want to talk about Bella and me."

"Bella
, George? You wake me up looking like Death personified to talk about Bella."

"Ankarette says I should just be patient but I am not that kind of man." Boy, she corrected him unspoken. "Bella will not let me into her bed. You saw what she was like to me the first week you were here. She is afraid to conceive again. The old man tells me he had words with her yesterday but she will not listen to reason. Do you not see I have to have an heir. Losing the babe at Calais was the Devil's work." He shifted into a sitting position, clasping his knees.

"You should say prayers that she survived." Margery felt like a pious old dowager as she said it.

"I do, Meg, I do, but your father has some secret vow to see his blood wear the crown. I have to have a son. He will lose all interest in making me king if I do not. Well, do not stare at me as though I had two heads, say you will help me."

"Have you tried to talk about this with Bella?"

"She will not listen. You know how she flinched when I tried to put my arm round her last week in the hall."

"You had drunk a firkin dry and your breath was enough to set fire to thatch, your
grace."

"Very well, I accept your rebuke." He smiled, a man's smile not without some charm, but he was a pale reflection of his kingly brother. "What I have always liked about you, my dear cousin—or should I call you sister now?—is that you have no regard for rank. Look, Meg, you are experienced and I want you to help me improve my... well, you know what women like. If you could tell me what Ned did with you—" He broke off, staring at the sleep-tousled hair that still barely touched her shoulders and her attempts to keep her cloak modestly across her unbelted overgown.

Jesu, I must be really looking the wanton, thought Margery. I think I have just made a mistake that would compare with Pharaoh's crossing of the sea in pursuit of Moses.

He was undressing her with his eyes. She drew her cloak demurely about her, scowling at him. "Ned was an exception, your grace, and I spent years doing penance for what amounted to very little practical experience. All I can do is promise you that I will speak to Isabella." Her tone grew brisk. "Now, have you given further thought to your brothers' messages?"

"Ned and Dickon sent you to persuade me, so do so! Or do you only specialise in kingly lovers?"

"I specialise in husbands." Margery felt like giving his ducal milk-white cheek a hefty slap.

"I specialise in husbands
," he mimicked. "Well, I am a husband and you are a cut loaf. What are you scared of? Whelping my brat? Think of the irony of it. A boy half-Plantagent and half-Neville and your father will be powerless to use him because you are born out of wedlock. By St George, the old fellow's face would be worth a king's ransom." He grinned. "That's why I waited for tonight until old Huddleston was back in Valognes to talk to you. If any of those peahens had awoken, they would have thought it was him."

Huddleston was back! If this came to his ears... Margery was tempted to whack the Duke very hard. "My lord, firstly, if you were not a duke and, secondly, stronger than me, I should squeeze you out of that window head first and hope you landed head down in the thorniest rosebush."

"Jesu, you have spirit, Meg. I could not have imagined Bella or Anne saying that to me or having a tumble with Ned like you did." He regarded her with the expression of a hopeful wolfhound. "Let's do it now, can we? I have had to be celibate too plaguey long with her parents in tow. We could lie down on my cloak."

"Let us talk about what I want to talk about and
then
I will clout you."

Instead of letting her brisk cheerfulness run off him like droplets on oiled leather, his eyes narrowed to malevolent slits. "Clout me? I will get you dismissed if you do, dear Meg, even if you are the Kingmaker's love-brat and, what's more, I will certainly have you banished from my wife's service if you do not promise to unbar her door to me tomorrow night." His tone hardened further. "I can, you know. If I let drop to my mother-in-law that you have been making improper suggestions to me." It was outrageous but the Countess would be only too willing to make mischief out of the insinuation.

His eyes leered. "I could
make
you, if I really wanted to." His fingers flickered out jeeringly at her and she jerked her head away from his touch, thankful it was a sober twenty-one year old she was dealing with, not a drunken one. He was not jesting and he scared her. The envy of Ned that she had seen incubating ever since he had come to Warwick's household as a page would make him ruthless in doing anything to anger his brother—taking her by force would be a petty revenge. How could she say no to the Duke of Clarence without rubbing more salt into his offended vanity?

"It is tempting and I am honoured by your request for help from me, but I could not betray Bella's trust. Now," she added cheerfully, rising to her feet and folding her arms in a businesslike manner, "have you thought about your brother's offer? If you were to leave my father, he would be forced to come to terms with Ned and England would not be split by war. As it is, there will be a great number of the common folk summoned to bear arms and many will be killed when they should be home working on their farms and looking after their families."

"What was that? Did you say something?" There was an iciness in his voice now. He rose to loom over her. "Mayhap your luscious naked body straddling my loins might improve my hearing." His laugh was sibilant, a hiss of menace as he reached out a teasing hand to her hair.

She recoiled as if he had stung her. Her eyes were wide. Oh, she had been so deceived by his boyishness. If she could draw her dagger from the scabbard on her calf before he seized her... She shrank back against the cold stone and edged along the wall towards the stairs.

He watched her and then with a swift lunge he gripped her wrist and twisted her hand behind her back. She gave a yelp. "I am going to be King of England, my sweet bastard, and Louis of France is going to help me with arms and money. You will see." Then he laughed and let go of her. "By St George, Meg, I think I have made you afraid of me."

"Yes." She growled, rubbing her wrist where he had bruised her.

"
Yes,
" he echoed. "Oh, breathe out, cousin. You must stop treating me like some rebellious codling."

"Well, you have definitely convinced me." She swallowed her fear but would not look at him.

"By St George, I think I prefer your wit to your humility." He stepped back from her, his arms raised in mock surrender. "There, I shall not torment you further. You want to know what I think about your lover's magnanimous message, Mistress Carrier Pigeon?" His face was cruel in the tiny frantic flame. "If all the fires in Hell were lit under Ned, it would content neither your father nor I."

She crossed herself, "That is a damnable thing to say."

"I mean it, Meg. Ned can go—" His grin was a demon's, his gesture emphatic.

"I see. If that is your final word, your grace—"

"
I
see,
" he mimicked. "Yes, so there's an end to it. Now about the other matter. Tomorrow night."

"Ye—" She froze. They both did. It had sounded like the accidental scrape of metal against the wall.

He put his finger to his lips. They waited. He knelt noiselessly and pinched the candle out. They both heard the distinct sound of someone moving further down the staircase.