The Wife Test (30 page)

There were four nods and the king glanced at the frantic young nobles being held in check by his guardsmen. His only options were to allow himself to be persuaded of their lineage and worthiness, or to insist the bishop petition Rome and nullify the marriages straightaway. Judging from the outrage in the faces of four smitten young nobles, Edward decided patience and persuasion were the better choice.

“If you are nobly born, then you will know the detail of your lineage,” he said to the brides. It was true. Regardless of king or country, one of the first things a noble child was taught was to recite his or her lineage … that which identified and secured his place in the world. Edward called for the clerks who recorded the details of all of his legal proceedings to come forward. “Each of you will, here and now, recite the details of your lineage. It will be written down and then verified by church records … if such exist. If your claims of noble birth prove true and your husbands have no objection, then your marriages will be allowed to stand.”

And if not?

A palpable wave of relief went through the duke’s daughters, and each turned to glance anxiously over her shoulder at her husband.

All but Chloe.

“We will begin with you.” Edward pointed to Alaina, who stepped forward trembling visibly and began to recite a list of begets that went back seven generations. Her voice quivered at times, and she wrung her hands as she was forced to stop once and start again from the beginning. Heads nodded all over the hall as she fell into a singsong cadence. Lineages were usually learned and recalled by rhythmic rote. Having to go back to the start only lent credence to the fact that she had learned it in the usual manner and probably a long while ago.

When she finished she looked as if she might collapse, and Jax broke free of the guards’ restraint to rush to her side and gather her into his arms. Edward watched the knight pull her against his side and turn a determined face to his king. After a long moment he nodded permission for Jax to stand with her.

Helen was called on next, and her voice rang out clear and true. Two French
comptes
and an English baron were sprinkled through her pedigree, creating a wave of murmuring around the hall. She finished proudly and stood with her head raised and her face composed. Lord Simon strode to her side and showed his support by pulling her arm through his and standing shoulder to shoulder with her. The king nodded thoughtfully, though his eyes were still narrowed with suspicion when they turned on Margarete.

Little Margarete’s voice was constricted and high as she began to relate a rambling and ill-remembered family tree. She had to make five tries, each carrying her a bit further in the list, to get it all out in the proper order. William strode forward to embrace her with exuberance and quipped that he was relieved to learn—considering the nature of her wits—that her pedigree didn’t include a number of cats. Edward looked briefly as if he might be fighting an urge to smile behind his hand.

Then it was Lisette’s turn to recite. Chloe squeezed Lisette’s hand before releasing her to step forward, then she turned to glare at red-faced Sir Graham. How could he be so unfeeling and judgmental toward his obviously devoted bride? His gaze guiltily fled hers and fastened on Lisette.

Several officials and council members collected around the throne as Lisette curtsied and launched into a recounting of her ancestry. The king received a scroll from Lord Bromley, opened it, and perused it as she spoke, nodding intently now and then. When she finished, he sat forward and looked between her and the scroll in his hand.

“Well done. You did not miss a single name.”

She glanced at Chloe in confusion, then turned back to the king. “I learned my lineage when quite young, Your Highness, but have had little cause to recount it in recent years.”

“Not since you were sent to the convent by your widowed mother, I would suppose,” the king mused aloud. “I have in my hand another accounting of your lineage … which, fortunately, matches your own.”

“B-but wh-where did you—” She turned to Graham, who seemed immobilized by some inner turmoil, then looked to Chloe, who rushed to her side and wrapped a protective arm around her.

“You were testing her?” Graham finally demanded, stalking forward.

“Indeed I was,” the king said, meeting his resentment with frankness. “She passed. And in passing, she has helped to authenticate the claim of nobility for them all.”

“How d-did you …” Lisette stammered again.

“Your lineage was provided by a member of your family, who helped to uncover the duke’s scheme for us. Your uncle, I believe. Sir Jean de Mornay.”

“Uncle Jean?” She came to life. “We believed he was dead. Wherever did you find him?” She looked frantically around the hall. “Where is he?”

“He is here, at Windsor,” the king said, looking out over the onlookers without finding him. Edward then turned to Bromley, and after a brief exchange, Bromley ordered a pair of guardsmen to summon Lisette’s uncle.

“I’ll go,” Graham declared, stepping forward to take charge of the guards. He paused just long enough to give Lisette a turbulent look, then stalked out to retrieve the living proof of her identity.

While they awaited Lisette’s reunion with her uncle, the king declared they would hear Lady Chloe’s pedigree.

When Chloe looked up from her own feet, her sisters were staring at her with both compassion and dismay. The whole convent had known about her lack of credentials, though no one ever spoke of it. They had believed it was one of the reasons she was given to the duke as a daughter, to provide her with a family and a future. Now to be called to such a cruel accounting …

As silence stretched out to blanket the hall, there was a faint rustle of movement among the onlookers near the door. But Chloe and, in fact, everyone else was so intent on what she would say that the arrival went unnoticed.

“Any time now, Lady Chloe,” the king commanded. “Begin.”

She looked up, her eyes burning dryly, and glanced to the side of the hall, where the Earl of Sennet sat gripping his knees and nodding in support of her. Seeing the trust in his face—which looked so much like Hugh’s—turn to disgust would be the most devastating thing of all. She braced inside, while knowing she could never truly be prepared for what was to come.

“It will not take long, Highness,” she finally said, her voice small but steady. “I have no lineage to recount. I know nothing of my parentage.”

Commotion broke out in the hall as the impact of that admission registered. The maid who had wedded the self-righteous Sir Hugh of Sennet did not even know who her family was?

“What the devil do you mean, woman,” the king said tautly. “Speak plainly. You must know where you came from.”

“I do know that, Highness. I came from a basket left at the gate of the Convent of the Brides of Virtue. I was … a foundling.”

In a world where the circumstance of one’s birth and the connections of generations of family determined the scope and substance of one’s life, those words struck terror into hearts. Foundling. It meant she was unconnected by ties of kinship, ungrounded as to rank and place in the world. It was as if she had confessed to being a drop of rain … blown on the wind, fallen randomly to earth, and absorbed into humanity without anyone taking notice.

With the shame of her foundling status came the realization that in all likelihood, she was a bastard. Children born into even the lowest and meanest of circumstances had the comfort of knowing where they came from and who to blame. Those who left infants at the gates of convents did so because they had sins to hide. Worse still, those sins left indelible marks on the people those unfortunate babes became.

Foundling. Bastard. She might as well have thrown herself off the ramparts of the round tower. Her life, as she had known it, was over.

As if her sisters’ pitying looks, her father-in-law’s alarm, and the outrage stirred in king and council weren’t enough, she heard footsteps behind her and turned to see Hugh standing some distance away. He was mud-spattered and windblown and his face was drawn with fatigue, as if he’d been riding day and night. His dark-circled eyes were filled with so many emotions that no one feeling seemed to claim the power of expression.

Her knees weakened at the sight of him, and tears began to fill and sting her eyes.

He had heard. Knowing how much he despised his father’s bastards, she could guess what his reaction must be to finding himself wedded to one such as them. Still, hoping against hope, she sought his gaze with hers and, through a blur of tears, sent him a visual plea of apology.

Before he could respond, a rumble of protest came from the Duke of Avalon.

“Just because she has no known pedigree does not mean she was base born. It may yet be found that she has a true and noble father.”

“And where do you propose we begin to look for this ‘father’ ?” the king demanded. The duke straightened and turned his gaze on Chloe.

“Here.”

It took a moment for the duke’s point to register.

“You?” Edward gave a snort of derision. “You offer yourself as her father? Good God, but you French have ballocks! How many times will you try to make soup out of that old bone?”

“It is no ruse, Highness.” The duke stepped forward, and his chains made a dull clanking sound. “I have reason to believe that this young woman may indeed be my natural-born daughter.”

“Natural-born? Now you would have me believe you misplaced one of your offspring?” Edward bolted to his feet. “Take him away!”

“No!” Hugh’s voice rang out as he rushed forward to prevent the duke from being dragged away. “Please, Highness, hear him out. It is my name and family at stake. Do I not have the right—as should Lady Chloe—to hear what he has to say?”

Edward studied Hugh’s anxiety and then looked to Bromley and Bedford, neither of whom protested. With a growl of irritation, he sat back down in his great chair and leaned on one of the arms.

“Very well. Speak your piece, Avalon. And it had better be good.”

“It is not generally known, but … I was wedded once before my current marriage,” the duke began. “I was young. I had been sent to England to learn the language and help establish ties for the wool trade, and I lost my heart to the daughter of an English baron. Her family had little to offer, and, in any case, my father would never have countenanced my taking an English wife. But I was a fool in the hot grip of love and could see none of that. I carried her off with me to Calais and wedded her there.

“My father refused to recognize the marriage or allow me to bring her into his house, so we were forced to stay in Calais. She was soon with child and died in childbirth. I never saw the child … was told that it was stillborn and never drew breath.” He turned to stare at Chloe as if seeing in her another’s visage. “But I have reason to believe that this young woman may be that child.”

“What reason?” Edward demanded.

“She is the very image of the wife I lost.” The duke’s voice thickened with emotion as he searched Chloe’s face. “Looking at her is like rolling back the years. Eighteen years. How old are you, Lady Chloe?”

“Eighteen years,” she managed to say.

“And what was it you told me on the day you were wedded … the name that accompanied you into the convent?”

“Gilbert.” She swallowed hard, unable to fathom what the duke hoped to gain from this dangerous gambit. “The abbess said that in the basket that bore me into their care was a bit of hide with my name and the word ‘Gilbert.’ ” She lowered her voice. “Please, Your Grace, you only make things worse for me.”

The duke ignored her to turn back to the king.

“The maid I married was Clarice of Gilbert.” A wave of murmuring raced through the hall. “In the short time we had together, Clarice spoke of naming our child ‘Chloe,’ if it was a girl.”

Chloe heard what he said, but it seemed so outlandish, so unbelievable, that the words just echoed meaninglessly in her mind. If the king would only stop him and allow her to escape this horror! But Edward showed no sign of halting the duke’s ranting. The name Gilbert circled in her head.
Gilbert.
Somewhere in her the possibility finally lodged … Clarice of Gilbert. Was it a coincidence? She recalled the duke’s strange reaction to her when they met: the way he stared into her face, the way he had gripped her shoulders. In all innocence she had spoken the name “Gilbert” to him on her wedding day. Now he used it as a wedge to give him room to escape his desperate situation.

“Why are you doing this?” she said in agonized tones that were swallowed up in the king’s demand.

“What proof have you of this marriage? This birth?” the king demanded.

“You have in this castle, somewhere, an old woman,” the duke continued, “who may be able to verify some of what I have said. A lady who, upon meeting me, called me Manfred. That is my given name, used by few in my lifetime. She must have known me when I visited England. She may know of my marriage.”

“You mean my aunt? Lady Marcella?” Bromley recalled the incident, stepping forward.

Edward called for the old lady, who rose from a bench at the side of the hall, then swayed and staggered back onto her seat. Bromley rushed from the dais to her side, and after a worrisome moment, she seemed to recover and insisted on rising to answer the king’s call. With Bromley’s help, she presented herself and stood trembling with her nephew’s arm around her. Her age-lined face was splotched with emotion.

“Lady Marcella”—the king gestured to the duke—“do you recognize this man?”

She squinted and wrung her hands in distress. “I—I cannot see so clearly anymore. And so many years have passed …”

The duke dragged both chains and guards along as he approached her, presenting himself for inspection.

“When we met, you called me Manfred,” he said. “Who was Manfred?”

“The wretch who stole my little cousin … spirited her away. He wedded her and she died … in a strange place, without family or friends.”

“Who was this cousin? Her name, my lady?” the king prodded gently.

Lady Marcella looked over at Chloe and tilted her head, squinting. Then she pushed Bromley’s assistance away and tottered over to Chloe, remembering. But was she remembering the story or the fact that she had told it to Chloe not long ago, or simply Chloe herself? “My little cousin. My little Clarice. We were like sisters.” The old lady’s eyes filled with tears as she reached out to touch Chloe’s cheek. “This cannot be her. She is dead.”