Authors: Jennifer Horsman
Philip's strong hands gripped the handle of his sword and he pulled and pulled and pulled. Yet mere human strength could not dislodge his sword from its sheath. The people watched the Duke of Normandy struggle, too amazed, too upset to see the humor in it, let alone the metaphor.
"I will use it against her, Papillion!" Rodez shouted.
"You will try," Papillion said.
"So help me, I will turn it against her!"
A tiny white mouse scrambled up the elaborate brocade of Rodez's jacket. Just as he snatched it he heard, "The ring, Rodez. Never forget the ring. And remember, too, what else I taught you—the simplest tricks are the best . . ." Rodez's eyes narrowed as the voice appeared to come from the tiny mouse and, guessing the trick to it, he looked back to where Papillion stood. Too late. Papillion was gone, vanished, to be seen no more:
No matter. The old man was just desperate, for despite the certainty of Philip's death, he now owned Roshelle. His fingers tightened around the tiny mouse and, thinking of Roshelle, he suddenly laughed.
A memorable evening indeed.
That evening an old man played his most desperate and ambitious trick to save the girl he loved and thus, opened the first pages of her history. Roshelle’s history, Papillion had always promised, would be woven into the rich tapestry of her struggling country, marked by the colorful strands of court intrigues and rebellions, battles waged and forgotten, a whole nation lost before it would ever be gained, and gained only when she finally realized it did not matter. Just as the white streak marked her fate, now a curse would change it forever. For before the night was through, the church bells rang out with the eerily haunting toll that announced a sudden death within the castle walls.
And so it began…
*****
Chapter 1
The tall, dark man leaped out from the shadows in front of her and Roshelle's gasp came in a startled cry as her hands flew to her heart.
"Madonna!" The gaze of Edward de la Eresman, the Lord of Suffolk, lit with pleasure as his long arms came on either side of her to rest against the stone wall behind her. "You are alone!" The hall's torchlight cast his face in darkness, hiding the devilish excitement playing in an amused grin. "Bless my sweet luck!"
Roshelle's eyes widened dramatically to encompass the shape towering over her, cornering her against the wall, before she looked frantically down the long, empty hall. Empty. Curse it! The torches shed light in the hall, but no one moved there. All her women, maids and guards were asleep, and not having wanted to rouse them for such a trifling errand, certain the English, too, would be asleep at the late hour, she had left the safety of the solar alone. Only to be accosted by none other than him, the high-and-mighty himself. "Loose me! Just—"
She stopped with another muted cry as a strong hand snaked tightly around her arm while the other covered her mouth. As if scorched by the heat of his body, the terrifying scent of spiced wine—he was quite drunk!—she pressed her backside hard against the cold stone wall, her eyes wide and furious as she glared up at him.
She had never stood so close to him, having always taken great pains to keep her distance. He stood a half foot taller than most men, able and strong too, a knightly warrior in his prime. Curly light brown hair framed the handsome bearded face, his extremely regular features marred by a wide red scar across his cheek—as if his cheek had been cut by a jagged knife. The moment she saw where his gaze dropped, she tore his hand from her mouth. "Loose me! Loose me or I'll—"
"Or you'll what? Scream? Call a guard?" Humor lit the handsome commander's pale blue eyes. "One of these fearless French knights of yours?"
Roshelle understood the insult only too well. The past tumultuous years had changed the very light in her eyes. For she had lived through the nightmarish sweep of history, a nightmare without end. The French knights were well known for their fearlessness, a fool's courage that had seen them massacred in the infamous battle of Agincourt, where one thousand English soldiers had fought and soundly beaten nearly ten thousand French, virtually wiping French nobility from the face of the earth. Including her second husband, Count Millicent de la Nevers. Of course, she knew Louis's excuses; indeed, she had heard them hundreds of times, but the fact remained—French knights were no match for the English warriors, and the English pigs never for a moment let them forget it.
Like the Lord of Suffolk now. Last year, over half the French kingdom had joined the Burgundians under the duchy of Burgundy in an unholy alliance with the English. Louis had been captured at Agincourt and imprisoned in the Tower of London, leaving Charles without his guidance and strength, alone among the wolves of his court. All of northern France and Brittany had fallen to the English, leaving only the southern part of France under the banner of the duchy of Orleans as the domain of poor Charles.
Reales had been Millicent's land, but because of his death and his fealty to Rodez, the Duke of Burgundy, Roshelle was forced to house the English garrison here, at Castle Reales. Her castle and her prison. This wretched garrison was commanded by him—Lord Edward de la Eresman of Suffolk, younger brother to the famed Vincent de la Eresman, the Duke of Suffolk. His French name owed itself to the time in history when the French and the English aristocracy were fond of marrying each other, but this distant French blood did nothing to mitigate his utterly English tyranny. She could imagine no more brutal a feudal lord than this man before her, and no one had ever accused her of owning a limited vision.
The arrogance of the House of Suffolk shone in Edward's pale, cold eyes as he mocked her apparent helplessness, a potentially fatal mistake, but of course, he knew that. So what was it he wanted?
"What is it you want?"
A soft chuckle sounded briefly before Edward bit his lip as if to restrain his amusement. "What is it I want? Oh, milady, I have waited to find you alone for some two long months now."
"Yes? Why?"
The question came as a demand, impatient at that. She was not daft; in fact, most considered her wise far beyond her ten and seven years. Nor was she in any way ignorant of the effect her beauty—the worst part of her curse—had on men. True, she had the lowest opinion of Englishmen, all of them, convinced the entire people were crude, hopelessly uncivilized, the lowest kind of bloodthirsty barbarians, that like a legion of demons, words could not adequately describe just how horrid they were. She knew every detail of their waves of violence against the poor people of Brittany and she knew the result, a poverty that left the simple folk on the brink of starvation—the slowest and most painful of all deaths.
Lord Edward was responsible for much of it. Highborn though he be, he was a vile creature indeed: tyrannical, greedy and as full of vice as the desert serpent. Yet as low as this opinion was of Edward, she never suspected he was, well, stupid. Not until he answered her question with the heat of his gaze as he pressed his body against her.
Shocked blue eyes shot to his face. Was he mad? He couldn't mean to, he just couldn't! He would die, to act on the desire her wretched beauty inspired landed a death blow, everyone knew that! Did he imagine he was immune to it?
"Milord! Your thoughts are mercilessly transparent—I, I confess my surprise. Are you not afraid of the curse?"
Edward chuckled with bravado, which wavered ever so briefly as his gaze found the startling white streak woven into the beautiful hair. The crown of hair loosely framed her face before falling in a long, neat pile down her back, past her narrow waist. "Ah, your curse. Well, you see, the other day as my men and I watched you ride out on that wild steed of yours, we got to discussing your 'curse.' Suppose, we wondered, the most beautiful maid in Brittany was unmarried, widowed twice, and suppose this beautiful maid had developed—no doubt by her dead husband's clumsy hands—a distaste for the marriage bed? And suppose this lady dreamed up an amusing charade that not only saved her from another disastrous marriage, but also afforded her absolute protection from every red-blooded male in two kingdoms—"
"You are a fool! A fool—"
"Rodez said the curse was a lie."
Her blue eyes widened. "He wants you dead!"
"He is my friend."
"That beast is friend to no man!"
"You lie to save yourself."
"No, no—" She frantically shook her head. "Rodez tricked my second husband in the same way. He told Millicent my curse was a trick, a ruse, but really all he wanted was Millicent's lands, which he got when Millicent died. I tried to warn Millicent, I did, but it didn't matter. Even though he never forced his matrimonial rights to my bed, he still died one week after our vows. He died of sudden apoplexy on the way to Flanders—"
She stopped with a gasp as Edward's fingers strayed to the long line of her neck and his voice dropped to a whisper. "I do not believe this wild tale of fancy. I have a wager with my men, a wager that says I live to see the light of day after I lie with you, that this whole fabrication is little more than a precious key to an imaginary chastity belt."
"Nay, 'tis not! I have two dead husbands to prove it!"
The humor in Edward's gaze told her he only toyed with her. So! The fool merely found a little fun in frightening her! Like a well-fed cat toying with a mouse, he found great amusement in frightening her with this pretense.
Her fists clenched, indicating the rise of her temper, well known to be at least as menacing as the very curse itself. "Milord," she began in a deceptively angelic voice, "while I am well aware of the rumors that lords of the House of Suffolk are godless whoresons, made of equal parts deprivation and savagery, all the while maintaining pretensions to finer, higher things, until this moment I had not believed it. I had been thinking you simply lacked the common graces given to pigs—"
A strong hand came over her mouth. To say that Lord Edward of Suffolk was unaccustomed to hearing a litany of insults from a woman he meant to seduce was an understatement; he had in fact never heard a disparaging word against his noble family, especially his famous brother. Not even his ill-mannered wife would dare that!
No one had until now. Until Lady Roshelle.
"You are as reckless and wild with your tongue as you are on that horse. My men think its sting, like that of a honeybee, protects a sweet wealth within—"
That did it! Roshelle ripped his hand from her mouth. "Mercy! Spare me your poor metaphors and even worse poetry—I have no wish to hear either. Now let me pass in peace—"
He laughed. "Oh, my lovely lady, I have far more than poor metaphors for you. I have waited long for a chance to win your favor."
"My favor? My favor is a deadly poison!"
Roshelle started forward, but he held her firmly. She still did not quite believe this was happening, that he truly meant to harm her. Nor had she assessed quite how drunk the man was until he said, "Come, come, my lovely lady, confess: you've been waiting for the man bold enough to challenge the lie told about you; you want me as much as I want to—"
"You are mad!"
She pushed with all her strength. Edward laughed and grabbed her hands, suppressing her brief struggle before bringing her hands up sharply behind her back.
"Loose me! Loose—"
"Why should I?" Then, not at all wanting a raping and certain this was but the pretense of a reluctant maid, he changed the tone of his voice, like a shift of a breeze. "Roshelle, Roshelle," he whispered in a lover's voice, and as he kept her hands behind her back, he let his gaze drink in the scope and power of her beauty, a beauty cursed, yet sung across Brittany, he knew. A loosened mass of auburn hair framing the delicately sculpted face, the high color rising on her cheeks, the small, pert nose raised with indignation and the thin dark brows that arched like wings over those lovely blue eyes, eyes sparkling with the light of her fury. Fury he'd melt with but a touch of his mouth.
His pale blue gaze dropped to the ample curves of her breasts. Dear Lord. The combined assault on his senses of her nearness left him dazed and weak with desire, though her breath came hard and fast and he'd have to be blind not to see the wild fear in her eyes. A wild thing for sure; he knew well her impertinence and rebellious nature, the way she took pains to avoid him, indeed all of his men; and with an effort he tried to harness the hot blood coursing through him to show her an easier way. He released her hand, but only to bring her fingertips to his lips for a kiss.
Which merely confused her. She suffered a moment's misunderstanding by his changed tack, grasping the hope that he'd let her pass in peace until he whispered, "Easy, my lovely lady." His curled fingers fell to the long lines of her neck. "I will not hurt you, Roshelle. Never that. Lend me half a chance for your heart. I could give you things."