Written on Silk (45 page)

CHÂTEAU DE SILK

R
ACHELLE
HEARD GALLOPING HORSES APPROACHING.

She turned toward the diamond-shaped windows that formed the wall facing the front of the atelier. She rushed across the floor, pushing aside the crisply frilled white lace curtains. They came thundering up the road toward the Château courtyard, horsemen, an entire retinue on black and brown muscled horses with Spanish leather saddles adorned with heavy silver. The men-at-arms were archers and swordsmen, wearing dark hose, and blue vestments embroidered with gold.

Who are these?
No self-appointed revengers, surely. These men rode under the flag of — Beauvilliers.

The atelier door opened in a rush. It was Nenette. “Mademoiselle Rachelle, horsemen!”

Rachelle, still standing at the window, now recognized the seigneur in charge.
Non, not him!

“Ooh, it is Comte Maurice Beauvilliers,” Nenette whispered, excitement and awe in her voice. “And so many men.”

“And so much trouble, I assure you. Now why is he here?”

“Maybe he brings news from his oncle, Comte Sebastien Dangeau?”

Rachelle narrowed her gaze. Maurice was the last monsieur she wished to see now. The young comte had become Rachelle’s bane ever since their meeting in Paris. He had made several attempts to capture her amour; the more she resisted, the more persistent he became.
Would he
ever give up?

“Why is it always the messire you do not want who shows such determination?”

Nenette giggled. “Maybe he knows Marquis Fabien is far, far from France!”

Rachelle’s gaze skipped over the seasoned faces of the men-at-arms, hoping against all reason she would see Andelot among them, though she had no sane cause to think so.

The men were strangers, though she remembered having seen some loitering about with Maurice at Chambord and Amboise. Her gaze stopped on the sensuous face of Maurice with his saturnine dark looks and almond-shaped, pearl-gray eyes. He wore slashed hose with a coat of purple satin, engraved with the Beauvillier family armorial in rose and silver thread. A light blue velvet cap dipping saucily toward one ear bore a sprig of verdant greenery. A ruby earring encrusted with diamonds swayed from an earlobe and caught the sunlight. He carried a puppy in one arm in a bag of cloth-of-gold; he kissed its floppy ear, speaking to it, then handed it over to a lackey. Maurice slid down from his ornate saddle in a lithe movement as graceful as a panther. He looked toward the Château, a little smile on his lips.

Rachelle, interpreting that smile, narrowed her lashes. She released the curtain to fall into place and turned toward the atelier archway, hands on hips. Had she not troubles enough without this wolf’s arrival?

Nenette was still gazing out the window at him with a dreamy little smile. Rachelle’s mouth turned. She propelled her away from the window toward the door.

“Go, and find Messire Arnaut or Madame Clair. Tell them we have company — unwanted, in my opinion. Hurry.”

“Monsieur Macquinet is down at the weavers’ huts, and Madame Macquinet left to join him in the calèche only ten minutes ago.”

Rachelle released a breath and glanced hopelessly about. She must receive him. Idelette would be of no help. She would not come down, of that she was certain. Idelette had hardly gotten out of her bed this morning to sip warm quinine water to settle her nausea.

“Go anyway.”

“It will take me a long time on foot.”

“Then have Pierre take you on the horse. And don’t linger to watch the comte.” The family kept a gentle horse tethered under a chestnut tree near the back smokehouse to run quick errands about the estate.

“The way he smiles with that little curve of his lip — ” Nenette tried to mimic it, arching one brow — “it is most cute.”

Rachelle took hold of Nenette’s shoulders, turned her around, and marched her toward the door. “Out and away with you, you shameless flirt.”

Rachelle smiled as she watched Nenette fly to the task, her curls bouncing from her cap.

Rachelle turned away, slapping a palm to her forehead.
Such trials as
these — I am surely undeserving of.

She cast another look through the window. Maurice was coming up the court toward the veranda steps.
Look at him, moving like a king. Can
there be anyone more conceited than he! It is hardly conceivable that he
does not know of all that has befallen us in recent weeks. Perhaps he is here
to offer his sympathies for the recent death in the family. Could Nenette be
right about him knowing Fabien is away at sea? Or was he still at sea? The
battle of the galleons must surely be over. Where was he now? Had he voyaged
on to resupply Admiral Coligny’s colony
,
Fort Caroline, in Florida?

Rachelle left the atelier and passed through the outer salle. The front door stood open, and she could see the servingman Laurent out on the porch bowing a greeting to the comte.

Rachelle walked briskly through the doorway onto the front porch, dipping a small curtsy of her dark blue cotton weave skirt as Maurice saw her, his eyes lighting up. A jeweled hand went to his frilled bosom as though her appearance made his heart flutter.

“Ah, Mademoiselle Rachelle, we meet again. How long the year has been without seeing your loveliness!”

Laurent cleared his throat.

“Monsieur le Comte,” she said with all the grave formality she could muster to keep him at bay. She must keep her servingmen close at hand as well. The lean-faced Laurent and the hefty Pierre should chill the most presumptuous of men.

Maurice was up the steps like a springing feline and swept up her hand. Not content to merely bend over it, he pressed his lips, mustache tickling — not the least disheartened by the presence of the servingmen.

Maurice’s languid eyes crept over her, a smile on his sensuous lips. She lowered her eyes to hide a glare. She managed to release her hand from his long, intertwining fingers, weighty with rings.

“Mademoiselle Macquinet, I bring you my deepest condolences. So much heartbreak befalls you. I grieve for your losses, I assure you. If there is anything I can do . . .” His tone conveyed his desire to open the door to his treasure house — leaving her to imagine what it might be like to enter.

She bowed her head. “Merci, Monsieur de Beauvilliers.”

His lips turned upward. “Pardon Mademoiselle, if I have failed to permit you to call me Maurice.”

“As you wish, Monsieur Maurice,” she said primly. “You have graciously called upon my family in our sorrows, but how unnecessary and burdensome for you to come this far from Paris.”

Maurice did not appear to notice her intimation, as he rearranged the lace at his wrist. His eyes found her gaze.

“Non, Mademoiselle. And though my sympathies are extended to one and all, what has drawn me so far from the delightful pleasures of Fontainebleau, is you alone.”

She widened her eyes with innocence. “I, Monsieur? But why? I was not injured — as were my sisters and my père’s cousin, Monsieur Bertrand — in le Duc de Guise’s attack on the innocent Huguenots in the barn church. Had it not been for the intervention of God, we should all be dead.”

He bowed his head, hand at heart. “A woe, Mademoiselle, surely.

“Princesse Marguerite sends her greetings, for it is she who is part of my reason for coming to see you.”

Marguerite? She had not officially released her from serving as one of her ladies-in-waiting. Nor were Marguerite’s additional summer gowns and accessories finished. Rachelle also knew both the Queen Mother and Marguerite wanted to have the Macquinets create Marguerite’s wedding trousseau, if that time ever arrived. There had been several princely men from various kingdoms Marguerite was to have married, until they became offended by her notorious flirtations at Court.

As yet, the Queen Mother had not been able to arrange another marriage with Spain, which was her preference. Duchesse Dushane, in her last lettre, wrote that there was again talk of Marguerite’s marriage, and that the Queen Mother was keeping her wayward daughter out of the public eye, hoping the scandals over young Henry de Guise would fade. But Marguerite, as usual, complied in the Queen Mother’s presence, but continued her secret
amoureuse
with Henry de Guise.

Maurice tweaked his fingers at a page who turned over a sealed lettre. Maurice bowed and extended the lettre toward Rachelle.

“This, Mademoiselle,” he announced with triumph, “bespeaks the most stimulating of news for your future. A royal trip to Spain is being planned by the Queen Mother and Marguerite, and you are summoned to Court to design and create the gowns for both to wear.”

His gray eyes did a victory dance. “And I am under royal orders to escort you and your grisettes and equipage to Fontainebleau. I am sure the Queen Mother explains all of this in her correspondence.”

She stared at the lettre with its gold seal, seeing the unexpected call not as a bane but a boon. Gowns for both Catherine and Marguerite! An opportunity to discover the Queen Mother’s workings with poison.

“The court will be richer to have gained such a fair jewel as you, ma chérie.”

“You must not call me your chérie, Monsieur Maurice. I beg you to remember that I intend to remain unattached.”

“Ah yes, the renowned Marquis Fabien still holds some enchantment for you perhaps, but you will forget him soon. He is in disgrace at Court. Duc de Guise has brought the matter of the marquis’ piracy before the king, and I assure you, Mademoiselle, it is no light matter to be so charged.”

She looked at him in pretended offence. “A pirate? The marquis! But what an outrage. Surely the duc must be mistaken. Why would a marquis, well supplied with gold and rubies of his own, need to plunder Spain’s treasure ships to pay his debts?”

“Not treasure ships, but war galleons — the Duc d’Alva’s galleons — bringing soldiers and supplies to the Spanish Netherlands. Shall we say the marquis’ hatred of Spain compelled him to take such drastic actions on behalf of his fellow Protestant Dutch? He is a secret Huguenot. Surely you know that?”

“The Marquis? Oh non, Monsieur Maurice, I hardly think so. He is most loyal to Rome, I am sure of it.”

“Ah? Then how can one explain the cause for which he devotedly kept one of Lefèvre d’Étaples’ Bibles in French at his estate in Vendôme?”

She could not keep back her genuine surprise. “A Bible? How do you know that?”

His little smile was full of mischievous self-satisfaction. “It was my hap to have come across such a forbidden book when I was at Vendôme, when I so gallantly took you there to safety from Amboise. It was signed by his mère, Duchesse Marie-Louise de Bourbon, an amie of the Huguenot sister of King Francis I. You are surprised?”

Indeed, but she did not want to react under his gaze. What was Maurice up to? Was he a spy for the Queen Mother or the Guises? Her irritation sharpened. “It would not please the marquis, I am certain, to know you were sneaking through his personal belongings!”

He shrugged. “It was fairly by accident, I give you my surety.”

His tongue seemed dipped in oil when it came to giving a pledge to anything concerning the marquis, of whom he was resentful. She was confident he had not merely come upon a French Bible. Fabien was too careful to have left such a forbidden treasure lying about casually. Especially one from his deceased mère.

What happened to Fabien’s family Bible?

She studied Maurice’s smug face for a moment with a fearful suspicion that he may have removed the Book as future evidence against him. Would Maurice have done so? Maurice altered his conduct, and he was once more full of attentiveness. He needed to meet with her parents, he said, and assure them of her safe passage to Fontainebleau, for he would as soon fall upon his sword as ever allow the slightest mishap to befall their belle daughter and her petite grisettes.

Rachelle left Maurice to the nurture of Laurent, assuring Maurice that Monsieur and Madame would be there momentarily. In the meanwhile she told the dour Laurent to take him to a bedchamber where Maurice might refresh himself before the evening dinner, and to presently send up tea, fruits, and wine until he could meet with her parents about his royal mission. Food and drink must be prepared for his retinue, and all the horses and donkeys in his train must be tended for the night, and perhaps even longer, for it would take a day or more to prepare. Rachelle and her family would need to oversee careful preparations for storage of the bolts of silk and lace and the entire equipage for the journey from Lyon to Fontainebleau. She had no doubt but that she would go; for not even Arnaut and Clair, no matter how dismayed they may be, could say no to royalty.

She did not mention to Maurice that her parents were also planning a journey of their own to London and Spitalfields for business with the Monsieurs Hudson, father and son; or that Idelette would be going with them as far as Paris to be taken in by Madeleine and shielded until the birth. Idelette would not show herself in public in the village, and no one except the immediate family and Docteur Lancre knew that she was enceinte.

“Mademoiselle is too kind,” Maurice said after Rachelle had made sure of his comforts, and he bowed his gratitude.