Emma Campion - A Triple Knot (6 page)

A
S
J
OAN NEARED THE NURSERY
,
SHE BOWED HER HEAD SO THAT THE
guard at the door would not ask the cause of her distress. Within, it was blessedly quiet, even the wet nurses fast asleep. Joan woke one of Bella’s maidservants to assist her in undressing.

“Are you ill, my lady? Shall I send for your Mary?”

Joan shook her head. “I just need rest.”

As soon as her hair had been brushed out, she climbed into bed with a loud sigh to persuade the young woman to leave her in peace. Pulling the bedclothes up over her head, Joan drew
the white hart emblem from beneath her pillow and pressed it to her still pounding heart. Her neck tingled where Albret had touched her. Her stomach hurt to think of how he had held her eyes, as if he exerted some power over her.
Watch over me, Father. Keep me safe
. It was the first time she’d been formally introduced to the royal guests at such a gathering. Bella was right. Nothing would ever be the same.

When Ned married Marguerite, would they still be friends? Joan had counted on his companionship for so long. Her watcher, her protector, and sometimes her tormentor, her fellow dreamer. She need never explain why a piece of news held import for her—he knew. He was always in her thoughts, even when away. She and Bella hoarded stories to share with him, saved found treasures to present to him when he returned. Always, he had returned. But now it was Joan who had gone away, and she very likely would not return, would wed someone who would take her far away. Ned would no longer know anything of her life.

Remember your vow
, Ned had said the night before she departed. He believed he could refuse Lady Marguerite. But, seeing how the Duke of Brabant strutted in the hall, sharing the dais with King Edward as if he were his equal, his guards interspersed with the king’s round the hall, Joan doubted that her cousin would have any choice in the matter. His father would not tolerate Brabant’s arrogance unless he was desperate, and Ned would be powerless against him, powerless and too proud to let his father’s mission fail.

Nor would Joan have a choice. Not that she’d ever wanted to marry Ned. He was too changeable, and his parents tolerated her only because she was a Plantagenet—they did not like her. Nor would she ever wish to be a queen. She yearned to escape court. But Gascony was so far, and Albret frightened her. She hoped she was not meant for the son of the Gascon stallion. She shivered and pressed her eyes tight, conjuring her
father, praying that he watch over her. But it was Sir Thomas’s dimples that her mind’s eye summoned, and the cleft in his chin, how warm and safe she’d felt as he watched over her that last night on board ship. There wasn’t a man at court who was immune to Lady Lucienne’s charms. Why did she have to choose Thomas?

B
ELLA WOKE
J
OAN WHEN SHE CAME TO BED
,
KISSING HER ON THE
cheek. “I’m sorry about Ned and Marguerite. I didn’t think. Of course you didn’t know.
He
doesn’t yet know.”

Joan rubbed her eyes and turned to look up at the princess, blinking. “It’s not just Ned. I felt like the poor cousin in the hall compared with you, Lucienne, and Marguerite.”

“The Sire d’Albret did not seem to mind.” Bella propped herself up on one elbow. “What is he like?”

“Frightening.” Joan described how he’d lifted her hair, touched her neck, held her hand as he kissed her palm so that her fingers brushed his face. How he held the mazer to her lips, how funny he made her feel.

Bella sighed. “Fortunate Joan.”

“No! I wish Father were here to tell him to keep his hands off me and not do that with his eyes.”

“I heard my parents arguing about the Gascon stallion and ‘the match’ after the guests left. Father said, ‘You knew his nature when you proposed this.’ ” She imitated perfectly how his voice snapped when he was irritated. “ ‘Better her than our Bella.’ What do you think they meant by ‘his nature’?”

Joan shrugged, though she guessed it had something to do with his effect on her. “Who do you think they meant by ‘her’?”

“I think it’s
you
. What if
you’re
to marry his son?”

“I pray you are wrong.”

“Why? His son might be as handsome. Ned will be so jealous!”

“He may never see him. I’ll be whisked off to Gascony, never to return to England.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Your mother wants Ned and me far apart, doesn’t she?”

“She does, it’s true, especially since Ned’s letter. He was so angry when he learned you were to come here. She would not let me see it, but her ladies say she almost choked with rage upon reading it and quickly had it destroyed.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Joan whispered, and turned away, burying her head in a pillow.

W
hen the river mists vaulted the abbey walls at dusk, Thomas understood why his fellow guards had lit a brazier. He’d laughed. In late summer? By the time he found the buttery door after his watch, his fingers were so stiff they did not want to bend round the latch. Cursing, he pulled off his gloves to rub his hands.

“Here,” Lucienne whispered in his ear, reaching around him to push open the door. She kissed his neck.

How bold she was, how sure she would not be caught moving about the abbey guesthouse in her chemise, her hair unbound. Even with a cloak, it was daring, and exciting. He drew her into the storeroom, pulling her close, burying his face in her fragrant hair.

“I have missed you so!” she whispered, pushing away to shrug off her cloak, then guiding him down.

By the time they came apart he was naked and slick with sweat. As was she.

He opened a shutter of the lantern so that he might look on her. “How is it you grow more beautiful with each passing year?”

“Sweet Tom, close that and come back to me.” She laid her
head on his chest. “Every day the war is closer. I want to savor what time we have before I am reduced to praying for your safe return.”

“Lovely Lucienne.” He stroked her thick, tangled hair, pushing away the unwelcome thought that she entertained others in the buttery—how else had she known they would be undisturbed? He was accustomed to sharing her; no one man enough to satisfy her. But he wondered whether he was still the one who had her heart.

“Have I a rival?” he asked.

Her laughter tickled the hairs on his chest. “Never so long as
I
have none,” she said. “Have I?” She propped herself up on one elbow to look him in the eye. “I saw how you watched Lady Joan today.”

Had he been so obvious? He’d wanted to knock that mazer from Albret’s hands. How dare he? “She’s young and far from home. Someone should warn her that Albret is called the Gascon stallion for a reason.”

“It was my fault,” said Lucienne. “Her Grace asked me to watch over her, but I had not anticipated his behavior. I will in the future.”

“Good.”

“You
are
interested in the girl. She told me you befriended her on the crossing.”

“I merely offered her food, watched over her so she need not sleep in a fouled cabin. She’s just a child.”

“Not for long. She is at a dangerous age, Thomas, have a care. A man can overreach his place thinking he is helping.” She sighed. “I am sorry I brought it up. Come, kiss me.”

When she had gone, taking the lantern with her, he went to the kitchen for a bowl of ale, and managed not to spill it on the snoring servants as he picked his way among them to the door out into the night garden.

Above him the firmament was alight with stars and the breeze was cool and fresh, inviting him out past the tidy plots of kitchen herbs into the small orchard. He stood there awhile, letting the night sink into him. Climbing to the top of the wall overlooking the Scheldt, he found a perch from which he might stare out at the wide river as he drank. Lucienne was the perfect mistress for a knight bachelor with a long road of campaigns and tournaments ahead before he might have the means to support a household, and a wife. She asked nothing of him but sex and adoration, which he gave willingly. In his itinerant life she was his anchor, his touchstone, and he was grateful to her, and to her skill in making him feel that he was her only lover. Sated, he pulled up his hood and let sleep take him.

A guard woke him just before dawn. “You must leave before my relief comes, Sir Thomas. He makes a bloody fuss when he finds a sleeper on the wall.” He held out a wineskin. “You’ll have a woolly mouth. The brew here will do that.” When Thomas hesitated, the guard assured him that it was watered down. “I carry nothing strong. Wouldn’t want to fall off into the river on my watch.”

After rinsing out his mouth, Thomas climbed down into the orchard, relieving himself against the wall. A bird sang out, just one trilled note, the first of the morning, signaling dawn. It took him back to such mornings at home, he and his brothers having slept out under the stars for no other reason than that they could, and he smiled at the memory as the warbler of dawn was joined by his fellows. Turning toward the abbey kitchen, he saw Lady Joan pacing back and forth beyond the trees. When her back was to him, he slipped past her and headed for the kitchen.

The cook, Piers, a burly lay brother, stood in the doorway watching the dawn as his minions bustled about behind him.

“Might I have some bread and cheese, a jug of ale?”

“If you’ll share it with Lady Joan. Child’s been out there wearing a path between the onions and the rosemary since before dawn. Been crying a bit as well. And cursing. She’d take naught from me, but if you offered company …”

By the time Thomas returned, laden with more food than he’d planned, she had vanished. He cursed the cook for taking so long.

“Sir Thomas?”

He’d walked right past where she sat on a bench beneath a rose arbor. He held out the bundle he’d brought from the kitchen. “Cheese, a meat pie, and a jug of cider. Will you join me?”

Her sad eyes belied her smile. Cook was right. She’d been crying, and now she just picked at the pie.

“How do you like the abbey?” he asked when the silence became burdensome.

She shrugged.

“You seem unhappy.”

“I want everything back the way it was.”

“Homesick?”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter where I am. Everything’s changed.”

Growing pains.

“I must be going.” She leaned toward him, tilting her head to one side for a brief moment as if noticing something. Was his breath so sour? he wondered. Then she kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you.”

Before he could respond she was away, her long sleeves fluttering in the breeze as she flew down the garden paths and into the kitchen, almost knocking over the cook, who stepped aside just in time.

Thomas stretched out his legs and leaned over, sore from his sleep on the damp wall. But had he found his way back to
his bed he would have missed Lady Joan in the garden, and that would have been a great loss.

“You cheered her, I see,” said Piers as Thomas handed back the jug and the dishes.

“You’re wrong there, but she ate a little, and that is something.”

T
he gowns arrayed on Queen Philippa’s bed would in any other circumstance entice her—bright Italian silks embroidered with gold and silver thread, decorated with pearls and gems—but this day they were the means to an end of more lasting satisfaction than new robes, one or more of them to be remade to fit Lady Joan. “Well?” Philippa turned to the girl whose inadequate and suddenly inappropriate wardrobe was the occasion for this display. “Have you chosen?”

“They are all so beautiful.”

Upon hearing of the conversation with Brabant, Edward had pecked Philippa on the cheek. “Find something that shows my cousin to some advantage. Make her look like a princess. At present, she looks as if we can’t afford to dress her.”

Indeed, they could not. The crown of France was a bankrupting ambition for which Philippa cursed the dowager queen Isabella. “I shall find a way,” she’d promised. And she had.

“Hold the blue dress up to Lady Joan,” Philippa ordered a servant. “What think you?” she demanded of her ladies.

“Perfection!”

“It brings out the blue of her eyes.”

“Red would give her some color. Her hair is so pale, her skin so white.”

“Red is unseemly for such a young woman. We are not hawkers, shouting the virtues of our wares. Lady Lucienne? Which of your gowns do you think will best set off Joan’s beauty?”

“I agree there is no need for a bold display, Your Grace. Were she in russet, with no ornamentation, she would still be a beauty. Of my gowns, the deep blue, I agree.” Lucienne’s silken tone contradicted the resentment in her eyes. Philippa had explained to her that Lady Joan must dazzle Bernardo Ezi, and one of her extravagant gowns was just the thing to show off the girl’s blossoming attributes.

“As you wish, Your Grace. But, if it please you, the Sire d’Albret’s reputation suggests that such encouragement might not lead to the outcome you desire. You want him interested in her for his son, not for himself.”

Philippa valued Lucienne’s opinion, encouraging her to speak freely when they spoke privately, but not when she contradicted Edward. “This is the king’s wish. Our part is to ensure that Bernardo Ezi admires but does not touch.” She held up a hand against Lucienne’s protest. “He was bold on meeting her, but we are now forewarned.” She pressed her stomach. “I would rest now.” She was again with child. Too soon, her physician said. She could keep little down, and sleep eluded her in the long hours of the night.

Now she rubbed her stomach as she considered Lucienne’s gowns. “The blue it is.” Joan would need several, but this was a start. Ordering the servants to proceed, she settled on a high-backed chair beside the bed, motioning to her ladies to be seated near her so they might all watch the seamstresses at work.

Joan protested. “Your Grace, might I retire to my chamber for the fitting?”

“The nursery is already crowded, child. We’re all women here, you’ve nothing we haven’t seen.” She tsked at the girl’s obvious distress. “We’ve no time for tears, either.”