The Wife Test (31 page)

Chloe clutched her chest as her heart stopped for an instant, then began to beat wildly. Lady Marcella’s little cousin was Clarice? She looked to the duke in dismay. Could the duke be the foreigner who stole her away from Marcella?

“This is an outrage, Highness!” Bromley rushed to reclaim his aunt. “Trading on an old woman’s sadness … claiming to have married and fathered a child … all without a shred of proof!”

“But there is proof! Send for my brother, the Compte de Sabban. He was there—he can attest to the vows and the child. You must—” The duke suddenly tried to reach Edward’s chair and was rushed and thrown to the floor by his guards. Edward leapt up and shouted an order for the duke to be taken back to the dungeons.

“I am a duke—a prince of France. I have the right to hear the evidence against me!” the duke shouted as he was being hauled away. “Where is this ‘informer’ who told you of my treachery? Send for my brother—”

The courtiers witnessing the proceedings broke from the restraint of the guards and surged forward. As chaos threatened, Edward ordered Chloe held under guard and order restored, then exited with Bedford in a cordon of castle guards.

Chloe turned to Hugh as she was being led away. His gaze was narrowed and fierce, his face ruddy with anger and humiliation. She was desperate to touch him, to plead with him, to beg him not to hate her for bringing such shame down upon him. But he gave no sign that he would even listen, much less accept such a plea.

As the king’s guards pulled her toward the small door where the duke had just disappeared, she brought with her the image of Hugh standing like an embattled colossus, with his pride and his disgust for the venality of her birth both evident in his countenance.

“No! Where are you taking her?” Lisette rushed to put a protective arm around her, dragging them to a halt. “She’s no prisoner—you cannot take her to the dungeon. She is a lady and innocent of any wrongdoing!” She appealed to Lord Bromley and Lady Marcella. “Please, my lord, my lady … you cannot let them treat her like a common prisoner!”

The Lord Treasurer melted under the entreaty of his aunt’s bewildered face and caught the notice of the captain of the guard.

“I believe confinement to her chambers would satisfy the king.”

As the duke and the girl Chloe were being led away,
Capitaine
Henri Valoir had pulled the hood of his tunic closer about his face and slipped out the main doors of the great hall. Rounding his shoulders, he measured his pace to blend in with a number of people headed down the path that led into the town of Windsor. He had much to report … some success, some failure. Dreading his capricious lord’s reaction to the mixed news he bore, he threaded his way through the people and past the carts that clogged the main street. Soon he was again at the little-used stable where the
compte
and his men waited.

“Well?” His
seigneur
now pounced on him the moment he entered and dragged him toward the light coming through the rear door. “What news? What’s happened?”

“The duke was brought before the king and council, along with his false daughters. The English king is furious … feels betrayed … smells deceit everywhere …”

The Compte de Sabban rubbed his hands together with delight.

“Dieu!
If I could only have been there to see it with my own eyes. What next?
Les putaines,
what does he do to them?”

“The English king … he has allowed them to recite their lineages. If the church records can be found … he says … the marriages may stand.”

“What?” The news went through the
compte
like a lightning bolt. “How can he do this?” He pivoted away and smacked a post with his fist. The pain that shot up his arm was small compared to that of watching his plot against the Duke of Avalon unravel. “It is an insult to the families of—has he no sense of obligation to his nobles?”

“The husbands did not seem willing to part with the women,
seigneur.”

“If he places their rut-maddened mewling above his own royal honor, then he is a bigger fool than I thought,” the
compte
spat. “And the one they call Chloe? What of her?”

“She did not have a lineage to recite. The king … he ordered her to be held under guard.”

“What excuse did she give?”

“None,
seigneur.”

Sabban took a long breath and seemed more in control. “What did the English fool say to that? More important, what did Avalon say?” Valoir shrank back a bit, causing Sabban to grab his arm. “What?”

“Le duc
said … he may be her father.”

The
compte
looked as if he’d been impaled.
“Merde!”
He whirled away, holding his middle, then gradually straightened and began to pace the straw-littered floor. “How could he think such a thing? He believed the child!”

“He said that she is the image of her mother … he recognized her. And she seems to have mentioned something to him. The name of Gilbert.”

“Sacrebleu!”
A frisson of bitter recognition went through him as he recalled those events of years ago. “I left the whore’s name with the child so that she might be identified if
I
ever needed her.
Idiot!”
He smacked his forehead with his open palm. “I feared something like this from the moment I learned she was among the ones the convent sent to ransom my pig of a brother.” He ground his teeth. “I should have smothered the little bastard when I had the chance.”

Then suddenly, in the midst of pacing and muttering, he stopped. His shoulders squared and he looked to the door, thinking of the castle beyond and the two confined within its walls.

“Perhaps it’s not too late to rectify that mistake.” He spoke to himself more than Valoir. “The duke is accused of treason, of seeking to foment an uprising against English rule. If he were to escape … along with his bastard daughter … and both were to die on their way back to France … there would be no one to disprove the charges against him. They would be deemed true.” He smiled with cool malevolence, feeling once more in control, once more driving events. “The duke’s estates would fall to his young son … who would, of course, need the guardianship of a dear and attentive uncle.” His chuckle was humorless. “And boys of twelve are so very prone to accidents.”

He turned to Valoir with a new glint in his eyes.

“We will need garments and armor … like that worn by the castle guards.”

Hugh stood speechless with disbelief as Chloe was ushered off under armed guard. The shame and confusion he had felt when he heard her confess that she had no parents and no lineage was even now being dispelled by the sight of her anguished face and the realization that whatever his embarrassment, hers must be many times worse.

And Edward—how dare the king order his Chloe dragged away and held under guard like a criminal? What did it matter that she had no knowledge of her forebears?

She certainly
had
forebears or she wouldn’t even be here. What did it matter that she couldn’t rattle off a list of names? How could a streak of ink on dusty parchment in moldy parish books improve her—or the lack of them diminish her?

She was perfect just as she was … his bright, headstrong, impossibly forthright and loving wife. Chloe, who never ceased to think the best of everyone, even
him,
and to put a good construction on even the worst of situations. Who thought of others first, especially
him,
and never lost faith in the possibility that someday he might lay down his saintly burden of guilt and superiority to become just a man. A good man. A whole man. A
loving
man.

How could the king think her guilty of anything more than being a pawn in a game of power and dominion? How could the king do this to her? Or to
him?
This was
his
marriage,
his
heart,
his
love the king was interfering with!

He looked up to find his father bearing down on him with a fury in his eyes that seemed like a reflection of that which was rising in Hugh. Before he could speak, the earl drew back a thick, leathery fist and laid him out on the floor. By the time the hall stopped spinning and his eyes focused once more, Hugh’s father was standing astride him with that same fist cocked, ready to administer more of the same.

“Where the hell have you been?” the earl demanded.

Hugh sat up slowly, holding his head, trying to make “down” stay down and “up” stay up. “On my way here, dammit.” He looked up, examining his throbbing jaw, and managed to focus both his vision and his will. “You’d better never try that again, old man.”

“I’ll do it a thousand times over if that’s what it takes to knock some sense into that thick head of yours.” The earl grudgingly stepped back to allow Hugh to rise. “I’ve seen some horse’s arses in my day—why the hell didn’t you speak up—say something—defend her? You’ve got to get her back for us. My girls need her. Hell, even
you
need her. Though, God knows, you don’t
deserve
her.”

“I figured that out for myself, thank you,” Hugh snapped, testing his face and rolling his shoulders. He eyed both the door where she had exited and that ominous door on the far side of the hall through which the duke had disappeared.

“What are you going to do?” the earl demanded.

“How can we help?” Jax approached with Simon and William.

Hugh scrambled to decide the best course—whether to gather evidence first or approach the king first to request time and resources to sort it all out.

“I have to see Lady Marcella and then the duke. We need to find out who was behind informing the king about the maids’ parentage. Whoever was behind those earlier attempts to keep us from fulfilling the duke’s ransom hasn’t stopped trying to cause damage.” Jax nodded and Hugh gave him a thump on the arm. “Find Graham and this ‘uncle’ of Lisette’s, then talk to Bedford and Norfolk. See what you can learn.”

Chloe sat in her once and current chamber, staring at the empty cots around her. She had never felt so alone or so hopeless in her life. She kept seeing in her mind Hugh’s face as she was being taken from the great hall. The horror, the revulsion in his expression settled on her heart like a stone. She could scarcely draw breath around it.

She had finagled her way into a duke’s family, hoping to cloak the shame of her origins with his name and rank, and now her straw house of small deceits and sins of omission had come crashing down around her. The white lies she had employed, thinking they could do no harm, had come back tenfold to ruin her. How could such a small amount of bad so overwhelm all the good she had done and tried to do? Was she to blame or was she simply caught up in and overwhelmed by someone else’s wrongdoing?

What did it matter who was at fault? she thought dismally. Hugh probably hated her. He would undoubtedly repudiate her and annul her and charge right back to his precious monastery to rid himself of the taint of her flesh and infamy. And where would she go? The convent would never have her back after the way she tricked them. She would be homeless and friendless—

Voices sounded just outside the door, and she had to listen for a moment to be certain she’d heard something. A voice … She rushed to the door and pressed her ear to the heavy ironbound planks. A woman’s voice. A moment later the door opened slightly. Lisette whirled through the opening, and as the door closed behind her, she flashed a smile at the guard, who admitted her to the chamber.

“Lis-ette?” The name caught on the lump in Chloe’s throat.

Lisette opened her arms, and Chloe burst into tears and fell into them. Together they made their way to the nearest cot and sat down. Lisette hugged her and stroked her hair as her sobs gradually subsided.

“I’ve disgraced him, Lisette, in front of king and court. He’ll never forgive me.” Chloe sat back with a shuddering breath, swiping at a last trickle of tears on her cheek. “He could barely stand to be with me when he believed I was a duke’s daughter.”

“But there is hope,” Lisette said reaching for her hands. “Perhaps they will discover that you truly are the duke’s daughter and all will be well.”

“The duke’s daughter?” Chloe sniffed and gave her a pained and rueful smile. “Not even I, as desperate as I am, would aspire to such a thing.”

“But, if it isn’t true, why would the duke try to claim it so?”

“To pacify the king. He is under a charge of treason. His very life is at stake.”

“Then, how did he know of that name … what was it?
Gilbert?”

“I told him myself, on our wedding day.” She scowled, recalling the duke’s unsettled response. Could that have been caused by true recognition?

“Then, how did he know of Lady Marcella’s cousin … her name and the fact that she eloped?” Lisette continued. “And how did she know to call him by his baptismal name?”

That was not so easily explained. Chloe was silent. The turbulence of emotion was beginning to subside, and her mind began to work. She examined each piece of evidence, turning it over and over in the cooler light of reason.

“Lady Marcella told me about her cousin. She might have told others.”

“Would she not have mentioned that she told the duke? And she looked at you and said you were the image of—what was her name?”