You are cordially invited to Blythe Gifford’s

ROYAL WEDDINGS

A hint of scandal this way comes!

Anne of Stamford and Lady Cecily serve two of the highest ladies in the land. And with their close proximity to the royal family they are privy to some of the greatest scandals the royal court has ever known!

As Anne and Cecily’s worlds threaten to come crashing down two men enter their lives—dashing, gorgeous, and bringing with them more danger than ever before. Suddenly these two strong women must face a new challenge: resisting the power of seduction!

Follow Anne of Stamford’s story in SECRETS AT COURT March 2014

And look for WHISPERS AT COURT coming soon

AUTHOR NOTE

Royal wedding! Even the words sound magical.

Unlike Cinderella, however, most royal brides enter marriage as an alliance of state, not of the heart. There are exceptions, and two of the most intriguing were those of the children of Edward III, the fourteenth-century English king. His eldest son and his eldest daughter were both allowed to marry for love—unheard of for a royal at that time, and for centuries after.

This book and my next, WHISPERS AT COURT, are set in the world surrounding those weddings, where the real drama happens behind the scenes. For the bride of the Black Prince has secrets to keep—secrets her longtime companion Anne must be certain that Sir Nicholas Lovayne never discovers …

Secrets at Court

Blythe Gifford

www.millsandboon.co.uk

After many years in public relations, advertising and marketing, BLYTHE GIFFORD started writing seriously after a corporate layoff. Ten years and one layoff later, she became an overnight success when she sold her Romance Writers of America Golden Heart finalist manuscript to Harlequin Mills & Boon®. Her books, set in Medieval England or early Tudor Scotland, usually feature a direct connection to historical royalty. The Chicago Tribune has called her work “the perfect balance between history and romance”. She lives and works along Chicago’s lakefront, and juggles writing with a consulting career.

She loves to have visitors at www.blythegifford.com and www.pinterest.com/BlytheGifford, “thumbs-up” at www.facebook.com/BlytheGifford, and “tweets” at www.twitter.com/BlytheGifford

Dedication

To all those struggling to move beyond the past.

Acknowledgements

With thanks for the support of the Hermits and the Hussies, two of my favourite writing tribes.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Afterword

Chapter One

Windsor Castle—late March, 1361

‘Come. Quickly.’ A whisper, urgent. Disturbing her dreams.

Anne felt a hand, squeezing her shoulder. She opened her eyes, blinking, to see the Countess holding a candle and leaning over her in the darkness.

Closing her eyes, Anne rolled onto her side. She only dreamt. Lady Joan would never rise in the dead of night. That was left to Anne.

Slender fingers pinched her cheek. ‘Are you awake, Anne?’

Suddenly, she was. Throwing back her bedclothes. Reaching for something to cover her feet. ‘What is it?’ Had the pestilence found them? Or perhaps the French? ‘What is the hour?’

Lady Joan waved a hand. ‘Dark.’ Then, she gripped Anne’s fingers and tugged. ‘Come. I need you.’

Anne tried to stand. Awkward, more out of balance than usual. She patted the sheets, searching for her walking stick.

‘Here.’ It was thrust into her hand. Then, the Countess, putting her impatience aside, offered a shoulder to help Anne rise.

Kindness from her lady, often when it was least expected. Or wanted.

Walking staff tucked snugly under her left arm, Anne hobbled through Windsor’s corridors, mindful that Lady Joan had put a finger to her lips to signal quiet and gestured for her to hurry. As if Anne had any control over either. Between stick and stairs, she could not hurry unless she wanted to tumble to the bottom and risk her only good leg in the process.

Lady Joan led her toward the royal quarters and into an echoing chapel, dark except for a candle, held by someone standing before the altar. A man, tall and strong.

Edward of Woodstock, eldest son of the King, Prince of England, smiling and looking nothing like the stern warrior she, nay, all England and France knew.

Lady Joan was beaming, too. No longer sparing a glance for Anne, she moved swiftly to join her hand with his. ‘Here. Now. With a witness.’

No. It could not be what she intended. But Lady Joan, of all people, knew what must be done and how important a witness would be.

The Prince took her candle and set them both on the trestle that served as an altar. Wavering flames cast shadows upwards on their faces, throwing the Prince’s nose and cheekbones into sharp relief and softening her lady’s rounded smile. Then they clasped hands, fingers tight, one on top of the other’s.

‘I, Edward, take thee, Joan, to be my wedded wife.’

Anne swallowed, speechless. Surely God must want her to speak, to prevent this sacrilege?

‘Thee to love and keep, as a man ought to love his wife...’

She freed her voice. ‘You mustn’t. You cannot! The King, you are too close...’

The Prince’s scowl stopped her speech. They knew the truth better than she. They shared a royal grandfather, a connection too close for the church to allow this marriage.

‘All will be as it must,’ Lady Joan said. ‘As soon as we have said the vows, we will send a petition to the Pope. He will set aside the impediment and then we will be wed in the church.’

‘But...’ Anne let the objections fade. The Countess believed it would be as easy as that. Logic, reason, all for naught. Lady Joan would do as she pleased and the world would accommodate her.

It had ever been thus.

The Prince withdrew his frown and faced his bride again. ‘...and thereto, I plight thee my troth.’

As if he knew exactly the words to say.

Ah, but her lady knew. Lady Joan knew exactly what must be done to make such a marriage valid.

Now, she heard her lady’s voice, the soft, seductive tone Anne knew too well. ‘I, Joan, take thee, Edward, to be my wedded husband...’

Intentions stated, clearly. Too late to protest now.

The chill of the midnight chapel sank into her bones. She would be the one. She would be the one who held the truth of Lady Joan’s clandestine marriage.

Again.

Within sight of the English coast—four months later

The waters of the channel pitched and rolled less than usual this day, if Nicholas’s stomach was any judge. The tide was with them. He would be ashore by midday and at Windsor Castle before week’s end, his duty discharged.

Free of responsibility.

He was weary of his duty. A moment unheeded and the horses you held in reserve would go lame, victuals would be lost, or hail would fall out of a spring sky, destroying food, armour, men and the decisive victory the King had sought for twenty years.

‘Sir?’

He turned from seeking the shoreline to look at his squire, Eustace. The boy had hardened on this journey.

He was not the only one. ‘Yes?’

‘Your things are packed. All is ready.’

There was a question at the end of the sentence. ‘Except?’

‘Except your horse.’

He sighed. Horses were meant for land, not water.

Without a word, he left the sharp, bracing air of the deck and descended to the cramped, smelly bowels of the ship.

No wonder the horse was ill. If he had been confined to this cesspool, he would be, too.

The horse’s head hung low, nearly touching the floor. Unable to throw out the contents of his belly as a man would do, the poor beast could only stand, miserable, shedding tears and sweat like rain.

Nicholas stroked his neck and the animal, barely able to lift his head, seemed to open his eyes and blink in gratitude.

No. He would not ride this horse today. The final miles of this journey stretched before him, as difficult as all the rest had been.

But the Edwards, both King and Prince, would have no patience for excuses. Princes and popes need only speak a thing for it to happen, expecting mere mortals such as Nicholas Lovayne to create the needed miracles.

And time after time, he did. He made certain there was always an alternate route, always another choice, always one more way the goal might be reached, never exhausting the possibilities until the deed was done.

There was pride in that.

But his other horse had succumbed on this journey, so he would find another way.

Leaving his squire to unload, Nicholas disembarked and was greeted by the warden of the Cinque Ports. He, too, had ridden with the Prince in France, though Nicholas did not know him well. It did not matter. Men who had shared a war all knew each other. A horse would be provided.

‘What news in my absence?’ Nicholas asked. It had taken near six weeks to travel to Avignon and back. Time enough for three intrigues and more to swirl about the court. He must prepare for this as he would prepare for a battle, knowing how the ground lay and where the troops massed.

‘Pestilence still stalks the land.’

More than ten years since the last time. He had thought, they all had, that God’s punishment was behind them.

‘The King. Is he at Windsor?’

The warden shook his head. ‘He’s closed the courts, suspended the business of the exchequer so men do not need to travel and fled to the New Forest.’

The New Forest. A longer ride, then. Pray God he’d find no pestilence along the way.

‘How fares Prince Edward?’

The warden shrugged. ‘He is a Prince, not a King. With the war over, he has little to do but cavort with his friends and with the Virgin of Kent.’

Nicholas shot him a sharp look. Few were brave enough to speak so pointedly about Edward’s intended.

‘And you?’ The warden looked at him with open curiosity. ‘Was your journey successful?’

Did the entire country know why he’d been sent? Well, he would not speak of it to anyone until he had seen the Prince. The besotted Prince who, instead of making an alliance with a bride from Spain or the Low Countries, had thrown it all away for love of a woman forbidden to him by the laws of the church and common sense.

‘I can only say,’ he spoke carefully, ‘that it will not go well with me if it did not.’

For Prince Edward had expected him to obtain the Pope’s blessing of a folly too foolish to be forgiven.

And Nicholas was a man who did not suffer fools. Even royal ones.

A lodge in the New Forest—a few days later

After all these years, Anne sometimes tried to run, as she did in dreams. Run as other women her age might, happily chasing their children, playing peek and hide.

Instead, her gait was an awkward, rolling thing. Even when she walked, she rose and sank as if she were a drunken sailor on a tottering ship. The walking stick, a third leg to compensate for the useless second one, only made things more difficult. Sometimes, she tripped over her lame foot and could not withhold her curses, and when she fell, she had learned that rolling would soften the blow.

She had stumbled when the King’s ambassador arrived, but fortunately out of his sight and hearing. Tall and straight, he swung off his horse and strode into the keep, his very ease mocking her.

Poor, foolish Anne. Still longing for a body other than the one she had been born with.

She paused before her lady’s chamber, gasping for breath, then pushed open the door without knocking for permission.

Even that rude entry could not disturb Lady Joan’s perpetual smile. Anne’s news, however, would. ‘The emissary. He has returned.’

The smile tightened, as if pulled by a vice. They exchanged a wordless glance. ‘Have him come to me first.’

Anne held back a retort. Did the woman think to change the news if it were not to her liking? ‘But the King—’

‘Yes. Of course. The King will want to see him immediately.’ She rose. ‘I must find Edward.’

Anne sighed. Joan would find her ‘husband’ and, if the news were bad, she would hear it together with him for the last moments she could call him so.

‘And, Anne...’ She raised her eyebrows. Not a question. A warning.

‘As ever, my lady.’

The beautiful face relaxed into its accustomed smile. She took a breath. ‘All will be as it must.’

Anne waited until her lady had turned away before she looked to Heaven for patience. ‘As it must’ meant as her lady wished it.

She trailed her mistress out of the door, but there was no need to search for Prince Edward. He had already come, as if he had known her need. He took her in his arms, kissed her brow, murmured in her ear, as if no one were near to see.

Anne pursed her lips, fighting a wave of pain. Not in her leg, no. That was perpetual, comforting in its faithfulness. This was different. This was the pain of knowing that no one would ever look at her that way.

Forgive my ingratitude. Her perpetual prayer.

She had no reason to complain. Her mother had assured her future at an early age, saving Anne from a certain fate of begging beside the road. Instead, she was a lady-in-waiting to a woman who, if today’s news were good, would one day take her place beside England’s King.

Yet as her mistress and the Prince kissed, Anne looked on them with blatant envy. It was not Edward of Woodstock she coveted. For all his glory, he was not a man who appealed to her. She merely wished that a man might smile, his face aglow, just to see her.

As it was, she was clever and unobtrusive and had a face most men did not care to dwell on, so if her expression ever slipped, which it often did, no one would be watching.

They did not watch now, the Prince and her lady, as they turned toward the King’s chambers.

‘Milady, shall I...?’

Without bothering to turn, Lady Joan shook her head and waved a hand in dismissal. And as the two walked off together to learn their fate, Anne stood in the hall, alone.

Later, then. Later she would discover whether the Pope had been convinced and all was as it must be.

There was a great deal to be made right. And the man who brought the news had not been smiling.

Nicholas, they had called him.

* * *

Sir Nicholas Lovayne had rehearsed his speech during the whole of the ride from the port to the New Forest astride a borrowed horse. Time enough and more to get the words right.

He was grateful he had, for the minute he arrived, they ushered him into the King’s private chambers and he faced the King, the Queen, Prince Edward and Joan, Countess of Kent.

There was no more time to rearrange words.

‘Well?’ King Edward himself spoke, eyes as piercing as a falcon’s. Beside him, the Queen gripped his hand.

Nicholas looked at Prince Edward and Lady Joan, for their lives were the ones at stake. ‘They will not be excommunicated for violating the Church’s marriage laws.’

The Pope had had every right to do so, but Nicholas and some well-placed gold florins had saved their immortal souls. No small feat and more than they deserved.

Thus was the privilege of royalty. To be rewarded for behaviour that would damn any other mortal.

But that was only the first of the miracles Nicholas had accomplished in Avignon. And not even the one the Prince cared most to hear.

‘But we will be allowed to marry?’ The Prince, as eager as a boy waiting for his first bedding, though he and his ‘bride’ had been sharing the sheets for months.

‘Yes.’ In the best of circumstances, the couple would have needed the Pope’s permission to wed, since they were closely related. But they had made the situation much, much worse, by marrying in secret. Then they had dumped their sins in Nicholas’s lap, expecting him to untangle the mess to their satisfaction. ‘His Holiness will overlook your consanguinity and also set aside your clandestine marriage. You will be allowed to wed in a church-sanctioned union.’

Allowed to marry and share their lives. And the throne.

Relief. The hard, silent expressions melted. Eyes, lips, shoulders, tongues let loose. How quickly? How soon?

He raised his voice to answer with a tone of caution. ‘Also,’ he added, ‘His Holiness requires that each of you build and endow a chapel.’

Neither the Prince nor the Lady Joan bothered to respond to what would be a minor inconvenience. Instead, Prince Edward held out his hand. ‘The document.’ A demand. ‘Give it to me.’

‘It will be sent directly to the Archbishop of Canterbury. I expect he will receive it near Michaelmas. Until then, you must live separately.’

The Prince and his lady turned their eyes on him, as if he, instead of the Pope, had forbidden them their bed. As if two months apart were a lifetime.

Well, that was not the worst of it. ‘And there is one more thing,’ he said.

Hard silence fell again. They quieted, knowing he had more news to deliver and that it would not be as pleasant as the last.

‘What?’ The King, of course. He would ever be allowed to speak first. ‘What more?’

‘A private message will accompany the document. His Holiness asked that I tell you what it will contain.’

It took only a glance from the King. The few attendants with them withdrew, leaving him alone with the royal family.

‘Go on,’ the King said.

‘Before they marry,’ Nicholas began, ‘His Holiness requires...’ Now for the words he had rehearsed. ‘The Lady Joan’s marriage to Salisbury was annulled.’

The Prince frowned. ‘Years ago. That is ancient history.’

Nicholas glanced at Joan, amazed to see her half smile unshaken. ‘But it was annulled,’ he continued, ‘when a previous, secret marriage was upheld.’

‘All here are aware of my past,’ the lady said.

The King and Queen exchanged glances. Everyone in England was aware of Joan’s past. It had not made the Prince’s case for marriage any easier.

Nicholas gritted his teeth. There was no easy way to say what he must. ‘Lady Joan, you were once married to two men, one of whom still lives.’ He saw a flush on her cheek. ‘His Holiness asks that before your marriage to the Prince proceeds, an investigation be conducted in the matter of your previous marriage.’

‘Why?’ It was the Prince who asked, blinded by love to the obvious.

‘To be sure,’ Nicholas said, unable to keep the irritation from his voice, ‘that all was in order.’

The Prince stepped toward him, fists raised, and for a moment Nicholas thought the man would, indeed, punish him for the news he brought. ‘You dare imply—’

The King stayed his hand. ‘Sir Nicholas is not the one who asks for the enquiry.’

Spared, Nicholas waited until the Prince folded his fists into his elbows, then continued. ‘I am bringing this news to you ahead of the Pope’s official notice so that you may have time to prepare.’

The Lady Joan’s smile never wavered. Her face was so lovely you did not bother to wonder what lay behind it. ‘So that when the Pope’s official decree arrives, we can wed immediately.’ She turned to the Prince. ‘He does us a kindness. The matter is easily resolved.’

So the Pope expected, Nicholas was certain. His dispensation would arrive in little more than two months, scarcely time to conduct a thorough investigation.

Lady Joan turned her smile on Nicholas. ‘All was done correctly in the nullification of my marriage to Salisbury.’

Most women would never have risked a clandestine marriage. This woman had dared two. Her first, to Thomas Holland, twenty-one years ago, was ultimately validated. As a result, she was allowed to put aside her subsequent union with Salisbury and return to Holland instead.

All enough to confuse even the most learned of church scholars.

‘His Holiness is not only interested in that one,’ Nicholas said, dreading what would come next.

They stared at him as if he had spoken Greek.

‘What do you mean?’ Lady Joan’s voice had an edge he had not heard before.

Obviously, they had not grasped the full meaning of the message. ‘He wants more than the nullification investigated. He wants confirmation of the legitimacy of your secret union with Holland.’

Her eyes widened and narrowed. A woman unaccustomed to being questioned, even to prove something as simple as what had already been blessed by a previous pope. ‘I don’t understand. The Pope, all his people...it took years, but they were satisfied. Surely there could be no question now.’

‘A formality, no doubt.’ The King, near as adept at government as he was at war. ‘The Archbishop will assemble a panel of bishops. They will review the documents. It will be done.’

‘The Archbishop is in his seventh decade,’ the Prince snapped. ‘I doubt he can even find the documents, let alone read them.’

‘If not,’ Nicholas said, ‘perhaps he could question those involved.’

For the first time, Joan’s lips tightened and he could see the fine lines radiating from them like the rays of the sun. The woman was, after all, beyond thirty. ‘My husband is dead. There is no one to question but me.’

No witnesses, of course. The very definition of a clandestine marriage was that the participants made their vows to each other alone. But there must be other ways. There always were. ‘Perhaps someone remembers the two of you together at that time.’ Perhaps someone witnessed the Lady Joan and Thomas Holland kissing in corners.

He looked to the Queen, trying to assess her thoughts. The young Joan had been part of her household back then, near a daughter. Awkward, but they had been through this before. The Queen, no doubt, could satisfy any questions.

Fortunately, it would not be his concern. He had delivered his message. By next week, he would be on his way to France, with no responsibility other than to stay alive.

‘I don’t understand,’ Lady Joan said, looking at the Prince as if he might save her. ‘What can be the purpose of this?’

Queen Philippa leaned over to pat her hand. ‘There must be no question.’

‘Question about what?’ The Countess, plaintive as a child. And as naïve.

Did love make everyone so? All the better that he refrained.

The Queen looked at her husband, then back. ‘About the children.’

There must be no question that the Prince and his bride were married in the sight of God and that their children would be legitimate, with free and clear rights to the throne of England. If a woman over thirty were still fertile enough for children.

Lady Joan coloured and her lips thinned. ‘I see. Of course.’

The Prince took her other hand and tucked it against his side. Still a mystery, to see this man of war smile like a silly child when he gazed at this woman. ‘Nicholas will conduct the investigation himself.’

No. He was weary of carrying burdens for others.

He had worked his last earthly miracle. He wanted only to be a fighting man whose sole duty was to survive, not to conjure horses or wine or papal dispensations. ‘Your Grace agreed that there would be no more—’

But the King’s expression closed that option. ‘Until they are wed, your task is undone.’

Nicholas swallowed a retort and nodded, curtly, wondering whether the King had wanted him to succeed so completely. There had been other women, other alliances, that would have suited England’s purposes better than this one. ‘Of course, your Grace.’ A few more weeks, then. All because some clerk in the Pope’s retinue wanted an excuse to extract a final florin. ‘I shall leave for Canterbury tomorrow to meet with the Archbishop.’

The Prince looked at Nicholas, all trace of the smile gone. ‘I shall ride with you.’

Chapter Two

Usually, Lady Joan floated into a room and settled on to her seat as lightly as a bird alighting on a branch.

Not today. Had the news not been to her liking?

‘What is wrong, my lady?’ Anne bit her tongue. She should not have spoken so bluntly.

The Countess was rarely irous. When she was, Anne knew how to coax her with warm scented water for her hands and her temples, with a hot fire in winter or an offer to bring out her latest bauble to distract and delight her eye. If that did not work, she would summon Robert the Fool to juggle and tumble about the room. Sometimes, if they were clean and not crying, seeing her children could restore the balance of her humour.

Normally, her mistress buried all beneath a smile and behind eyes that gazed adoringly at the man before her. But today...

Anne put aside her stitching as her lady paced the room like a skittish horse. Then, she remembered the ambassador’s face. The news must not have been all Lady Joan wanted. ‘The decision of the Pope? Will you and the Prince be allowed...?’

‘Yes, yes. But first, they think to investigate my clandestine marriage.’

Relieved, Anne picked up her needle. Well, thus was the reason she had been roused from her bed in the middle of the night. ‘I witnessed it, of course. And will tell them so.’

The large blue eyes turned on her. ‘Not that one.’

Her hands stopped making stitches and she swallowed. ‘What? To what purpose? You have no enemies.’

Lady Joan laughed, that lovely sound that captivated so many. ‘Even our friends find it difficult to countenance the marriage of the Prince to an English widowed mother near past an age to bear. They think we are both mad.’

Mad they were. But then, her lady had always been mad for, or with, love. It was a privilege most women of her birth were not allowed, yet Joan grasped it with both hands. She was the descendant of a King, born to all privilege. Why should this one be denied?

Anne swallowed the thought and kept her fingers moving to create even stitches, as her lady liked them.

‘But we could not wait,’ Joan said, speaking as much to herself as to Anne. ‘You know we could not wait.’

‘No, of course,’ Anne agreed by habit, uncertain which of her weddings Lady Joan was thinking of. For what her lady wanted could never, never wait.

‘The pestilence is all around us. It could fell us at any time. We wanted...’

Ah, yes. She spoke of Edward, then.

This time, the pestilence had struck grown men and small children hardest. Even the King’s oldest friend had been taken. The Prince, any of them, might be dead tomorrow.

The reminder stilled her fingers. Since birth, Anne had needed all her strength just to cling to survival.

‘Do you think we’re mad, Anne?’ The voice, instead of commanding an answer, was wistful, as if she hoped Anne would answer no.

She sounded once again as she had all those years ago. Just for a moment, no longer a woman with royal blood, born to command, but a woman in love, desperate for reassurance that miracles were possible.

Joan had worn the same face then. Blue eyes wide, fair curls about her face, pleading, as if one person were all the difference between Heaven and Earth.

How could she answer now? Joan was mad. Playing with the laws of God and men as if she had the right. And suddenly, Anne wished fiercely she could do the same.

Such choices did not exist for a cripple.

‘It is not for me to say, my lady.’

Joan rose and gathered Anne’s fingers away from her needle, playing with them as she had when they were young. ‘But I want you to celebrate with me. With us.’

Ah, yes. That was Joan. Still able to wind everyone she knew into a ball of yarn she could toss at will. So Anne sighed and hugged her, and said she was happy for her and all would be well, succumbing to Joan’s charm as everyone did. It was her particular gift, to draw love to herself as the sea drew the river.

‘It is settled, then,’ Joan said, all smiles again. ‘All will be as it must.’

‘Of course, my lady.’ Words by rote. A response as thoughtless as her lady’s watchwords.

But her lady was not finished. ‘Have you seen him? The King’s ambassador, Sir Nicholas?’

Anne’s heart sped at the memory. ‘From afar.’

‘So he has not seen you.’

She shook her head, grateful he had been spared the sight of her stumbling as she stared after him.

‘Good. Then here is what you must do for me.’

Anne put down her needlework and listened.

An honour, of course, the life she lived. Many would envy a position at the court, surrounded by luxury. And yet, some days, it felt more like a dungeon, for she would never be allowed to leave her lady’s side.

She knew too much.

* * *

Nicholas stood in an alcove on the edge of the Great Room of the largest of the King’s four lodges, watching Edward and Joan celebrate as if they were already wed in the eyes of God and his priests.

All evening, men had come up to him, slapping him on the shoulder as if the battle were over and he had won a great victory.

He had not. Not yet.

A swig of claret did not help him swallow that truth, though Edward and Joan seemed to have no trouble ignoring it. Still, the Pope’s message had been private, not his to share. Nothing more than a formality. A few more weeks of inconvenience, then he’d find freedom.

He scanned the room, impatient to be gone. The treaty with France was a year old, but Nicholas had spent little of it in England. King Edward now held the French King’s own sons as hostages and Nicholas had been one of those charged with the comings and goings of men and of gold.

Now, instead of meeting the French in battle, King Edward, as chivalrous as Arthur, treated them as honoured guests instead of prisoners of war. He had even brought some of them to this forest hideaway to protect them from the pestilence.

Well, a live hostage was worth gold. A dead one was worth nothing. And Nicholas’s own French hostage, securely held in a gaol in London, would be worth something.

One day.

The King had called for dancing and some of the French hostages had joined in, laughing and flirting with Princess Isabella, who was nearly the age of the Prince and unmarried. Strange, that such a wise ruler as Edward had not yet married off his oldest children. Unused assets, too long accustomed to living as they pleased, both of them were strong willed and open to mischief.

Someone bumped into him, hard enough that his wine sloshed from the cup and splashed his last clean tunic. He turned, frowning, ready to call out to the clumsy knave.

Instead, he saw a woman.

Well, he did not see her exactly. The first thing he saw, he felt as it brushed over his hand, was her hair. Soft and red and smelling vaguely of spices.

A surge of desire caught him off guard. It had been a long time since he had bedded a woman, or even thought of one.

She had fallen and he swallowed the sharp retort he had planned and held out a hand to help her rise. ‘Watch yourself.’

She looked up at him, eyes wide, then quickly looked down. ‘Forgive me.’

Humble words. But not a humble tone.

She raised her eyes again and he saw in their depths that she was accustomed to serving the rich. He knew that feeling and wondered who she waited on.

‘I am sorry,’ she said, in a tone that implied she had used the words many times. ‘Usually there is no one here and I can catch a moment of quiet.’

‘I spoke too harshly.’ Life at court demanded strength and courtesy in a different mix from the work of war and diplomacy.

He grabbed her hand to help her up, ignoring the fire on his palm, thinking she would let go quickly.

She did not.

Her fingers remained in his, not lightly, as if she were attempting seduction, but heavily as if she would fall without his support.

‘Can you stand now?’ Eager to have his hand returned.

Her eyes met his and did not look away this time. ‘If you hand me my stick.’

Too late, he saw it. A crutch, fallen to the floor.

He looked down at her skirt before he could stop himself, then forced his eyes to meet hers again.

Hers had a weary expression, as if he were not the first curious person who had sought a glimpse of her defect. ‘It is a feeble foot and not much to look on.’

He did not waste breath to deny where his gaze had fallen. ‘Lean against the wall. I’ll get your stick.’

She did and he bent over, feeling strangely unbalanced, as if he might topple, too. The movement brought his hand and his cheek too close to her skirt and he caught himself wondering what lay beneath, not the foot she had spoken of, but the more womanly parts...

Abruptly, he stood and handed the smooth, worn stick to her, straight armed, as if she might catch sight of his thoughts if he got too close.

She reached for the staff, tucked it under her arm, then stretched her free hand to brush the stain on his tunic. ‘I will have this washed.’

He grabbed her fingers and nearly threw her hand away from his chest. ‘No need.’ Ashamed, with his next breath, that he had done so. She would think it was because of her leg.

It was not. It was because her fingers lit a fire within him. ‘Forgive my lack of chivalry.’ He had been too long at war and too little around women.

She laughed then. A laugh devoid of mirth, yet it rolled through her with the deep reverberation of a bell.

A bell calling him not to church, but to something much more earthly.

When her laughter faded, she smiled. ‘I am not a woman accustomed to chivalry.’

He studied her, puzzled. She would not have drawn his eye in a room. Hair the colour of fabric ill—dyed, as if it wanted to be red but had not the strength. An unremarkable face except for her eyes. Large, wide set, bold and stark, taking over her face, yet he could not name their colour. Blue? Grey?

‘What are you accustomed to?’ he asked.

Not a serving woman. She was too well dressed and, despite his first impression, did not have the cowering demeanour of those of that station.

‘I am Anne of Stamford, lady-in-waiting to the Countess of Kent.’

The Countess of Kent. Or, as she would soon be known, the Princess of Wales. The woman whose want of discretion had sent him to Avignon and back.

‘I am Sir Nicholas Lovayne.’ Though she had not shown the courtesy to ask.

‘The King’s emissary to His Holiness,’ she finished. Her eyes, fixed on him. ‘I know.’

He shifted his stance, moving a step away. His mission was no secret, but her tone suggested she knew more of his news than the courtiers who had slapped his back in congratulations.

He wondered what the Lady Joan had told her.

‘Then you know,’ he said, cautiously, ‘what a celebration this is.’

She looked out over the room, without the smile he might have expected. ‘Not until they are wed in truth. Then, we will celebrate.’

We. As if she and her lady were the same person. So they were close, this maiden and her lady.

Why would Lady Joan choose such a woman as a close companion? If one discounted her lameness, this Anne would not draw a second glance. Perhaps, then, that was the reason. Perhaps the Countess wanted someone who would not distract from her own beauty.

If so, she had chosen well.

‘Then let us hope we truly celebrate soon,’ he said. Celebrate and let him leave for the unencumbered life he wanted.

‘That will depend on you, won’t it?’

Close indeed, if she had been told so much.

He threw back the last swallow of claret. An unpleasant reminder of the task still before him. A waste of time, to look for things that had been proven to the satisfaction of God’s representative on earth long ago. ‘It will depend on how quickly the Archbishop can locate a dozen-year-old document.’

‘Is that all that must be done?’

He certainly hoped so. ‘His Holiness can expect no more. Except to prick the King’s ease.’

‘And will it be difficult?’

Full of questions. He glanced at the table at the end of the Hall. His answers, no doubt, would go directly to her mistress. ‘No.’

‘We are all just...’ The pause seemed wistful. ‘Ready for it to be over.’

‘As am I,’ he said. He felt like that Greek fellow. Hercules. One labour ended, another began. Surely he had reached his dozen.

They exchanged smiles, as if they were old friends. ‘A few weeks only,’ he assured her. ‘Less, if I can make it so.’

‘You sound as eager for the conclusion as I. What awaits you, when all this is over?’

Nothing. And that freedom was the appeal. ‘I will head back across the Channel.’

‘Another duty for the Prince?’

He shook his head. He was done with duties and obligations. ‘Not this time. Rather a duty to myself.’ Bald to say it. He looked down at his empty cup. ‘And now, I leave you to the peace you sought here.’

‘Do not leave on my behalf. The Countess will have missed me by now.’ She took a step, steadying herself with her crutch.

‘Do you need help?’ He waved his hand in her direction. How did one assist a cripple?

There was steel in her smile. ‘I do this every day.’

Maybe so, he thought, but as she left, her lips tightened and her brow creased. Every day, every step, then, lived in pain.

We are all waiting... Ah, yes. The Prince and Lady Joan were not the only ones depending on him for a quick resolution. So was her lady-in-waiting, he thought, as he watched her leave, rolling and swaying with her awkward gait.

He wondered why she cared so much.

* * *

Anne made her way back to the dais, then waited until Lady Joan could break off and they could speak unheard.

‘So?’ Beneath the smile, her lady’s whisper was urgent. ‘What did he say?’

Anne shook her head. ‘No suspicions.’ She had become sensitive to such things. Shrugs, tones of voice. It compensated for other weaknesses. ‘He gives little thought to the task except that it be over. He thinks that the Pope only wanted to create one final obstacle in exchange for his blessing.’

‘Yes, of course. That must be it. No other reason.’ Her lady breathed again. ‘All will be as it must. Now that we know, you must avoid Sir Nicholas.’

She knew that. Knew she should for all kinds of reasons. But her stubborn, sinful ingratitude flared again. The resentment that boiled over when Lady Joan, kind as she was, demanded something in the tone she might use to a command her hound or her horse.

No, she must be grateful. She nodded.

Anne looked across the Hall at him. Tall, straight, well favoured, with eyes that seemed to pierce the walls.

And able to move—oh, God, to move wherever he liked. Back to France for no good reason, as if it were as easy as walking into a room.

She had learned to stifle her envy as she watched women dance on their toes, watched men stride without stopping. But when this stranger took her hand, it was not envy she felt.

It was something worse. Attraction.

She turned away. Maybe it was not this man, maybe it was all that surrounded her. The wedding, the minute-by-minute need that Joan and her Edward felt, as if each was the other’s air...

That would never be hers, Anne knew, so she had never let herself want it. Never allowed her eyes to fall on a man and think of him that way. If she were so fortunate as to wed, it would be because some man had taken pity on her and agreed to carry the burden of her in exchange for beautiful stitching and a steady head. And if he did, she would, of course, have no choice but to be abjectly grateful.

Her eyes sought him out again. No, she needed no encouragement to avoid Sir Nicholas Lovayne. She wanted no reminders of things that would never be hers.

Chapter Three

The next day, before dawn, Nicholas was mounted and recalculating the miles between the New Forest and Canterbury. His squire, Eustace, had arrived late in the day with the recovered horse. All was packed and ready, the steed beneath him as impatient as he.

Light seeped through the trees.

Prince Edward did not come.

Instead, he sent a page with the news. The pestilence, that murderous giant, still lumbered in the land. The King forbade the journey, it seemed, until some other hapless soul could travel the route and return to pronounce it safe for his son and heir to traverse.

Biting his tongue, Nicholas swung off the horse and left it for the squire to stable. Strange, the things men feared. Neither Edward the father nor the son had hesitated to face death on the field of battle, but the King had turned timid when he lost the last friend of his youth to The Death. Now, the monarch cowered in a forest, as if death could not find his family here.

Nicholas would not run from death.

It would come for him, as it came for all men. He had survived the war with the French, but there would be other wars to come. In Italy, or even the Holy Land.

Deprived of his journey, Nicholas snapped at all around him like a hungry dog deprived of his bone. Restless, he left the hunting lodge, too small to comfortably hold even a temporary court, to prowl the grounds. He pulled three cloth balls from his pouch, juggling them to keep his hands busy, recalculating the miles to Canterbury and back.

Eyes on his hands, mind on his task, he nearly tripped over Anne sitting on a small bench that caught the morning sun.

Her needlework fell to the ground. She bent over, but he was faster, snatching it from the dirt more quickly than she could.

Dusting her work off, he handed it back to her. ‘It seems that fetching your dropped items has become a habit of mine.’

After the words had left his tongue, he realised how ill chosen they were.

She took it without touching his fingers. No smile sweetened her sharp expression. ‘My thanks.’ Words without feeling.

Now that the embroidery filled her hands again, her fingers flew in a way her feet never would and she bent to her work, ignoring him. A beautiful piece, though he was no judge of such things. Silver on black. Then, he recognised it. The Prince had used such a badge.

He slipped his juggling balls into his pouch. ‘You prepare for their wedding.’ She did not look up from her stitches.

‘Do not tell the Prince. Lady Joan plans a gift to celebrate the wedding.’

‘I can be discreet,’ though he realised he had not been so with her last night.

‘I’m glad of it,’ she said, still bowed over her needle. ‘All will be as it must.’

Strange words. ‘And how must it be?’

Laughter escaped again. So unexpected. As if all the beauty and ease denied her body was lodged in her throat. ‘It must be as God, or my lady, wishes.’

His life, captured in the words. All must be as the Prince, and the King, wanted. Horses to Calais. Wine across the Seine. Documents to Avignon. Always leave a way out. Always have an alternate route.

He would have no more of the wishes of others.

‘And do God’s wishes align with those of the Countess?’

A smile teased her lips. ‘Thanks to the Pope and to Sir Nicholas Lovayne, yes.’

He could not help but smile. Yes, he was ready to be free of such demands, but as long as they were his, he would fulfil each one. Including this last. ‘So is there to be a magnificent wedding ceremony in Canterbury?’

Anne shook her head and looked back at her needlework. ‘She wishes it to be done quickly.’

‘No pomp? No circumstance?’ No huge celebration of all his work? ‘She is of royal blood and marrying the future King. There has been no such wedding since...’ When? Before he was born.

She looked at him sharply. ‘Appropriate to their station, yes, but she is wedding the man she wants.’

‘She wants?’ A much more urgent and earthy word than loves or even needs. One that conveyed a stiff staff and a welcoming hole. One uncomfortably like what he was feeling for the woman before him. ‘I persuaded the Pope to bend the laws of God for what she wants?’

Words he should not have said. Her wide eyes told him so.

‘You were sent,’ she said, as if teaching a child, ‘because you could accomplish the task. You should feel humbly grateful for the trust placed in you.’

‘Grateful?’ No, that was not what he felt. Instead, it was that most serious of the seven deadly sins: pride. ‘I only hope it is worth the cost.’

‘To you?’

A sharp tongue, this one. Sharp enough to puncture his moment of desire for her. Despite her lectures, she seemed no more humbly grateful than he.

He cleared his throat and collected his wits. ‘To me it is, yes.’ Well worth it. Now, he would be free. ‘I meant worth the cost to them.’ The cost of the chapels alone was more than Nicholas would see in his lifetime.

Her needle paused, for the first time, and she gazed beyond him, as if he had disappeared. ‘To be able to look at someone that way...?’

‘As if they cannot wait until darkness?’ His words were more than reckless, but, in just weeks, he would no longer be the Prince’s thrall.

She shook her head. ‘It is more than lust.’

That, he could not argue. It was madness. ‘The Prince is...’ Every word he tried sounded like an insult. The Prince acted like a man bewitched. His own father had looked so, when he married his second wife. Bewitched and blind to the truth of her.

Anne gazed up at him, as if she understood the meaning he could not find words for. ‘Blissful. He is blissful. She is the same.’

He shook his head. Bliss would not last. His father’s had not. ‘I have never seen him so before. But then, he has never been wed.’

Now she looked at him, her eyes—what colour would he name them?—unwavering on his. ‘And she has? Is that your meaning?’

As if she knew thoughts he easily hid from others.

Did the woman speak so bluntly to the Countess? If so, she would not be a comfortable companion. ‘Have you recently come to her service?’ If so, perhaps she would not be there long.

‘No. I have been with her for a long time.’

Perhaps through all the marriages, official and otherwise. Perhaps she could save him a trip to Canterbury. ‘Were you there when she and Thomas Holland wed?’

She pricked her finger and popped it in her mouth. His gaze lingered on her lips longer than it should have. He was thinking of wants, of needs...

‘You are right,’ she said, finally, glancing down at the Prince’s badge, fallen again to the earth. ‘I seem to be ever dropping things at your feet. Could you hand it to me again?’

For a moment, he could not look away from her lips. Thin, yes, but finely drawn, an apology from the Creator for what he had done to her leg.

Nicholas forced his eyes away and picked up the needlework again, glad of the excuse to break his gaze, struggling to remember his thoughts.

‘Are you a juggler, Sir Nicholas?’

He thought she had not noticed. ‘Only to amuse myself.’ He remembered now, as he returned her stitchery to her, his question. Had she wanted him to forget? ‘Her marriage to Holland. Were you there?’

‘Yes, of course. It was a quiet affair.’

‘I meant the first time.’

She looked away. ‘The first time? Her marriage to Salisbury, you mean?’

‘No. Her first marriage to Holland. The secret one.’

She pursed the thin lips. ‘I was but four. They did not have a babbling babe present.’

He thought of her at four and smiled.

She did not. ‘Now, as you have reminded me, I have duties to perform in the here and now.’ She put the needlework in a pouch and reached for her walking stick.

‘Let me...’ He reached to help her, still not knowing why, again resenting her for his discomfort.

She turned a frigid gaze on him. ‘I have lived twenty-five years without your help. I do not need it now.’

He gritted his teeth to hold back sharp words. ‘Then I shall not offer it again.’

He watched her hobble away, anger mixing with guilt for thinking ill of her when he should be filled with pity.

Yet pity was the last thing he felt. She wore her limp as proudly as a knight might wore his scars earned by prowess in war.

No, he was feeling something else even more surprising.

Want.

He shook his head, trying to clear his mind. He had been too long without a woman. On his trip to Canterbury, he’d make a detour to Grape Lane and find a woman with fair hair and lush lips and blue eyes who did not hurl prickly insults at him.

Strange, he puzzled again, watching her stumble back to the lodge, for Lady Joan to keep such a woman with her, and not only because of her tart tongue. Typically, such persons were shunned, or discreetly kept out of sight. This woman, on the other hand, was ever close to her lady. And while she could not agilely leap to perform tasks, she seemed to be in charge of others who did.

Well, he was not here to wonder about a lady-in-waiting. He was here to make sure the Prince could wed his lady love.

After that, he’d be gone.

* * *

‘Come, Anne,’ Lady Joan said, patting the bench beside her as Anne returned to her chambers. ‘Where have you been? We must speak of all that is to be done before the wedding.’

Anne hobbled over to the bench and sank onto it, more tired than usual. Her first thought was to tell her lady that Nicholas had asked dangerous questions.

Her second thought was to keep that secret to herself.

But her lady, speaking of the wedding, did not question further, so Anne pulled out her needle and thread and settled in to listen.

Her lady demanded all her attention and more. She was as jumpy as a cat, Anne thought, prowling the chamber, speaking of one idea, then another, her fabled calm shattered.

Lady Joan was unaccustomed to being without a man. When Thomas Holland had been gone to war, well, that was one thing. But he died late in December, in Normandy, she by his side. It had been a blur, those next weeks. Packing, moving back across the Channel. Anne had expected peace and mourning when they returned.

But her lady was not a woman who could live for long without a husband. How many weeks had it been after they returned before she was looking for her next companion? Barely enough to mourn the man. And Joan was not only the most beautiful woman in England, she was also the most wealthy. She had her pick of men, clustered, pleading their cases.

But she had waited for the best catch of them all. And a man she had known in the nursery.

Anne had no opinion about Edward of Woodstock. She couldn’t afford to. Some tongues had wagged. The lusty widow. But if it had been Anne, the Prince would not have stirred her lust.

Unbidden, she thought of Nicholas. He of the strong brows and the rugged nose and the lips that...

She shook her head. The man’s lips were no longer of any interest to her unless they were speaking of something of interest to her lady.

‘We must craft the celebration carefully,’ the Countess was saying. ‘It must not be so gay that it dishonours those taken by the pestilence, yet it must be grand and appropriate to a future King and Queen.’ A perplexed pout quivered on her lips. ‘And yet, it is a ceremony for two who are already married.’

‘Not in the eyes of the Pope.’ Anne swallowed, wishing she could recall the words. She knew better than to speak so bluntly to her lady. Sparring with Sir Nicholas had made her tongue tart.

Lady Joan blinked, as if her pet monkey had suddenly nipped her. ‘The Pope will get his chapels. All will be as it must.’

‘If Sir Nicholas obtains the proper blessing from the Archbishop.’

Now, the Countess turned her full gaze on her. ‘You assured me there was nothing to fear. Have you spoken to him again? Has something changed?’

Yes. He was asking questions, the very questions neither she, nor her lady, wanted to answer. But to say so would be to admit she had whiled away a few minutes in the sunshine with a handsome knight who actually looked at her. To admit that instead of avoiding him, she had spoken to him of wants...

She cleared her throat and shook her head, looking at her stitches instead of at her lady. ‘I only mean that if he is looking into the past, he might become curious. He might ask more questions.’

Reassured, the Countess waved her hand. ‘He will find little.’

That, of course, was what she was afraid of. And what would Nicholas Lovayne do then? No doubt he would be loyal to his Prince, just as she was to her lady.

‘I know!’ The Lady Joan stopped her pacing. ‘After the wedding, we’ll have a celebration. A tournament before all the people to prove that we have triumphed over the death that haunts our land.’

Anne smoothed her fingers over the silver stitches, holding back a pointed reply. Only Jesus Christ triumphed over death.

But her lady was speaking of dresses and colours...

‘Shall he come to the wedding?’

‘Who?’ Her lady returned to the bench and placed cool fingers on Anne’s forehead. ‘Are you ill? You are not like yourself today.’

No, she was not. She was still dizzy with confusion. ‘I meant Sir Nicholas. Since he helped to make it possible.’

A shrug. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Then how am I to avoid him? Until he leaves for Canterbury, I cannot refuse to speak to him without creating questions.’

The smile, always the smile that disguised the workings of her lady’s mind. Anne tried to compose her face so, but she was not good at lies.

‘No, no. I see. You are right. He has done us a great service.’ She patted Anne’s hand. ‘Stay close to him. Treat him as a close friend.’

She had wanted only forgiveness for the sin already committed, not an obligation to seek him out again. ‘I am not a woman to capture a man’s attentions.’

The look of pity on Lady Joan’s face made her wince. No. Her lady had not thought so either. ‘I only meant you should keep him amused. Diverted. Men without war must be kept busy.’

‘Perhaps that would be better left to someone who could dance with him.’ The thought of deliberately getting close to Nicholas Lovayne unsettled her. As if she might, like the moth, singe her wings on the flame.

‘A woman need not dance with a man to keep him entertained.’

Anne knew that as well as anyone. She knew enough how to distract people so they would not notice...other things. She made the final stitch on the Prince’s badge, glad to lay it aside. Black and silver were dreary colours. ‘This one is finished, my lady.’

‘Good. Now, show me how the aumônière is coming. Will it be ready next week?’

Anne put aside the Prince’s badge to show her lady the needlework that would become an alms purse. Because her feet did not work, her fingers worked even harder. How many pouches had she created in her time? Ten? Twenty? Fifty? Each one given away for a man to give to his lady, or for a lady to entice her man.

This one showed two lovers, standing side by side in a garden, the lady fair and smiling.

‘Your stitching is as expert as the guild’s work, Anne. This looks just like Edward and me.’

‘Thank you, my lady.’

And because she pleased the Lady Joan, Anne did not have to beg for alms from men and women with purses such as these.

‘I know! Make one of these for Sir Nicholas to give to his lady as a thank you from me. Find out who she is. That will keep his thoughts away from other things.’

His lady. Of course he must have one. ‘But what if it doesn’t?’ Anne knew enough of him to know he was not a stupid man. ‘What if he asks of things he must not know?’

Lady Joan paused, staring at Anne as if she had not understood the question. ‘Why, then, you will lie,’ she said, as if she had said Anne might sup on beef stew.

Chapter Four

You will lie.

Could she? When she opened her mouth, would the words come out?

She would, because she must.

Because her whole life was a lie.

She reminded herself of that, after the evening meal, when she looked for Nicholas in the Hall. Her lady had asked that she befriend him and befriend him she would, ignoring the fact that the idea appealed to her for reasons her lady must not know.

As before, she saw him standing alone at the edge of the Hall, looking out over the dancers. She joined him, relieved he had not moved in the time it took for her to hobble to his side. He could easily escape her and she could not chase him around the Hall.

‘I hope you do not mind my company,’ she said, as she sank onto the bench and leaned against the stone wall. Her leg ached and she wished she could rub it.

‘I wonder why you seek mine,’ he said, in a sour tone. ‘I seem to do nothing but insult you.’

She felt heat in her cheeks. ‘Forgive me. I must be ever pleasant and positive with the Countess.’ She pulled her needlework out from its pouch and fumbled with the needle and thread. ‘Sometimes, I...’ She bit her tongue.

‘Tire of it?’

‘Do you not? Are there not times you want to say something the Prince would not wish to hear?’

He smiled, sheepishly.

So that had happened. Recently. ‘I can see that you have.’ She wondered what impolitic thing he had wanted to say. And whether it had been about her lady.

‘I’ll keep your secret,’ he said, the smile warmer now, ‘if you’ll keep mine.’

She had to return his grin and, for a moment, she felt as if they were partners instead of adversaries.

‘You have my promise,’ she said.

Relationships, promises, loyalties. In the end, that was all a King had. That was what allowed him to rule. That was what kept the world from falling utterly to dust and what kept Anne from starving alone.

Nicholas was loyal to Edward. He would find what Edward wanted him to find.

All would be as it must.

As she stitched, the noise of the after-supper entertainment rose. Singing, dancing, the tumbling and juggling echoed around the hall.

Old Robert the Fool rolled across the floor in a somersault, then jumped to his feet in front of them, tossing and catching five painted wooden balls. ‘And who is this new arrival come before us?’

‘A juggler like yourself,’ she answered, putting down the alms purse. ‘Sir Nicholas Lovayne.’

He turned to her with a frown.

She ignored him.

‘Ah,’ Old Robert said, both tongue and hands still moving, ‘this is the miracle worker I’ve heard of. The one who can make Eve into the Virgin Mary.’

Shamed, Anne flushed, silent. Fools had licence others did not, but it was a blatant reference to her lady. And not a flattering one. She hoped Joan would never hear of it.

‘Look lively, Sir Miracle Worker.’ The fool tossed a ball to Nicholas.

Astonished, she watched him catch it and throw it back and suddenly, they were juggling the five between them and Nicholas was smiling again.

When, finally, he missed a catch, he picked up the fallen ball and tossed it to Old Robert with ease. ‘I’m not your match, Fool.’

‘Ah, it depends on the game, doesn’t it?’ He winked at them and moved on.

She cleared her throat. ‘He has been with the King for many years. He assumes privileges.’

He shrugged. ‘A fool’s words are not worth repeating.’

Able to breathe again, she turned back to her stitching, watching Nicholas out of the corner of her eye.

Loyal to the Prince, he would spread no tales. And yet he sat alone while Edward the father and Edward the son cast bets on the throw of the die with other knights and nobles.

She met his eyes and nodded toward the laughing group in the corner. ‘You do not join them?’

He turned to follow her glance. ‘Life itself seems a game of chance. I do not actively seek uncertainty.’

‘You have spent years at war. There is no certainty there.’

‘More than you would think. We are certain to ride long days, certain to be hungry, certain to fight. I control all the things I can, but in the end, I am certain to either live or die.’

‘As God wills.’

‘Or the King. Or your lady.’

She must have stared for a moment, shocked at his words. Blasphemy, no doubt, but they reflected her own life, lived at the mercy of someone else.

‘Yet you return to France.’ She must keep him speaking of himself so he would not think of questioning her. ‘Why?’

A wisp of longing washed over his face. ‘To return to war.’

‘But the war is over.’ A truce was signed. French hostages crowded the court.

‘Is it?’ He looked down at her, brow raised, as if she were no wiser than a child, then shrugged. ‘There will be another. Somewhere.’

‘And you care not where you fight? Or why?’

‘Men fight for only one reason. To stay alive.’

‘You don’t want a home?’ A wife? ‘Here in England?’

He shook his head. ‘I would rather keep moving.’

Envy tasted bitter. ‘Will you not wed?’

‘Of course.’ His voice, hearty, but bitter. ‘To a wealthy widow.’

‘Ah.’ She swallowed, ashamed of the direction of her thoughts. Of course he would marry. He was tall and strong. His legs, long and straight, stretched out before him, a deliberate insult to her own. The old King, Longshanks, must have had limbs such as these. ‘Will she be here soon?’

‘She? Who?’

‘Your...’ She had a moment’s jealousy of the woman who would lie in his arms. ‘The widow.’ Someone for whom she could stitch an alms purse.

He shook his head, eyes downcast. ‘There is no widow. But that’s what every poor knight wants, is it not?’

‘I’m sure I don’t know what a poor knight wants.’ She kept her eyes on her work, ashamed that she had asked. There would be no one for her. Ever. And asking embarrassing questions of a handsome knight would change nothing.

‘I answered rudely. Your question was an honest one. What this poor knight wants is the ransom for his French hostage.’

‘So you’ve a prisoner?’ Keep the talk of him. Do not let him ask questions about her or her lady.

He nodded. ‘The reward for all my months of fighting.’

She looked out over the Hall where some of the French hostages were exchanging lingering glances with the ladies. ‘Is he here?’

‘He’s safely locked up in London, dining at my expense.’

‘But you’ll be paid for that, with the ransom.’

‘The French have been slow with ransom payments.’

She nodded. That much she knew. ‘And while we wait for French livres, the hostages entertain themselves with food and wine and gambling.’

‘That we must pay for. I sometimes wonder whether it would be cheaper for the French to pay the ransom than to keep paying their expenses here.’

Something she had never considered. He was a man accustomed to thinking of the cost of things. Her lady never did, even after the bill was presented. ‘Yet you are a fortunate man,’ she said. ‘You have a hostage. He will bring you gold.’

‘Forgive my ingratitude.’ He looked abashed and she was sorry. ‘I must seem rude. I’m just ready to be quit of him and back to France.’

‘No! I like that you do not...hold your tongue.’ So few were so blunt. Fewer still would speak of movement without a downward glance at her poor leg. ‘I envy you your journey. I would love to see...so much.’

‘Have you not been out of England?’

‘Yes, of course. The Lady Joan was in France when her husband, Lord Holland, died.’ They had gone when her lady willed and returned when her lady willed. And all the while, unexplored horizons beckoned.

He looked at her, his glance too perceptive. ‘And when next she returns, you will, too.’

‘They speak of Aquitaine. A kingdom of his own for the Prince.’

He grunted and took a sip of claret.

Again, she waited in vain for him to speak. Finally, she tried again. ‘You do not approve?’

He looked at her, his expression more shock than sneer. ‘My opinion makes no difference.’

A feeling she well knew. ‘But you have been there.’

He nodded.

‘And would you return?’ He, a man who had travelled across France. He would know whether it was a place she would like.

‘There is no need. We subdued it.’

So clear that this man knew no life but war. ‘I mean, should we—I mean, should the Prince and my lady go, will it be a pleasant place to live?’

‘A flat land with rivers. Hard to defend. The bridges need to be rebuilt.’

No mention of whether the rivers were wide and blue or narrow and rushing. No word of green leaves or yellow flowers or whether the sun was warm or the wine sweeter near its own soil. ‘Can you speak of nothing but horses and supplies and fighting?’

His eyes cleared of memory and recognised her once more. ‘That’s why I was there.’

There with eyes focused not on the land, but on how they must move over it and what they must do to subdue it. ‘But I will not be there for war.’

‘The Prince will.’

‘But his wife will not. I hope there will be time to see other things.’

Quiet, but intent, he studied her. ‘What things? What things would you choose to see?’

She looked away, abashed by the perception of the question. If she were as tall and strong as he and free to choose her life, she would walk from here to Compostela to see the shrine of St James and from there to Rome, where the ancient stones of the Romans still stood. And beyond that lay Castile or Jerusalem or even Alexandria...

But those were dreams for someone else, not for a lame girl.

‘I go where my lady chooses.’ And was fortunate to do so. Fool. She had let the man turn questions on her and then been foolish enough to answer them.

She bowed her head over her needlework, grateful that the music and chatter had masked their words. She must turn the talk back to him before she said something else to regret. Dancers gathered before them on the floor as the minstrels lifted pipes and bows.

Turning back to Nicholas, she gave him her broadest smile. ‘Do you dance?’

* * *

Nicholas looked at Anne, uncertain what to say. Anything he said would be an insult to a woman who would never skip gaily through a circle dance.

‘There was little dancing in the midst of battle.’ It was the truth.

She looked up from her stitching and smiled, as if she realised the foolishness of the question. ‘Was there no respite from the fighting?’

‘The King made time for hawking.’ Which meant Nicholas had arranged for the care and feeding of the King’s favourite birds as well as of men.

‘Ah.’ She had a way of looking from her stitching to his face and back in a natural rhythm. ‘I have ridden after the falcons. Once. Or twice.’

She could ride, then. He had wondered.

His surprise must have shown plain on his face, for she answered it. ‘The falconer does most of the work.’

‘I did not think—’

‘I know what you thought.’ Her needle paused.

He, a man who cloaked his feelings from royalty, had allowed this woman to see his very thoughts. Dangerous.

Then, as if she had seen his dismay, she touched his hand with fingers straight and slender, some mad form of amends for her leg.

‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I try to ignore that which is perfectly obvious. You did nothing wrong.’

He wondered whether she had confessed so much to others. ‘You take your...situation...with remarkable calm.’

‘I have no choice. What else can I do?’

No choice. He shuddered. He had lived his life making sure that there were always choices, options, other paths to follow.

‘You could rail against your fate and insist on special treatment.’ He knew able-bodied warriors more peevish with less reason.

‘That would change nothing.’

He had no answer to that and the silence between them grew until, as the music ended, he realised her fingers still rested on the back of his hand. She saw them at the same moment and pulled them away, as if from a fire.

‘Will you join tomorrow’s hunt?’ Thoughtless words to cover the awkward moment. It was a deer hunt, demanding in a way that hawking was not.

And he was looking forward to it. He would ride as long and hard and fast as the running stag they chased. He would outride all the frustration of being stuck here because the King was overcautious.

Her fingers were busy with her needle again, the rhythm restored. ‘They have little patience with me on the hunt.’

‘Women ride.’ Some of them. ‘And there is no shame in lagging behind.’

‘Not as far behind as I do.’

Was her smile as wistful as he imagined? He supposed it would be a kind of death, to be left behind, trapped, while the rest of the court galloped off on a sunny summer day.

‘Come,’ he said, abruptly. He had seen slaughter enough in France. No need to witness the death of every deer. ‘I’ll ride beside you.’

Her needle shook, but her stitches did not pause. ‘Pity for the cripple?’

He grabbed her wrist, stopping her needle and forcing her to look at him. ‘No.’

She met his eyes, questioning, and he wondered what she saw there. In truth, he did not know why he had offered and more words would only make it worse.

Finally, she smiled, a slow, lovely thing. ‘I would like that.’

‘Tomorrow, then.’ He stood abruptly and with a curt bow escaped.

As quickly as that, he had committed himself to spend time with a woman who would do nothing but drag him down.

Chapter Five

The next morning, regretting his impulse of the previous day, Nicholas joined the rest as they gathered outside the lodge, in preparation for the hunt.

He hoped that a page would appear, telling him Anne had changed her mind, leaving him free to ride off his restlessness.

Yet there she was, already on horseback, waiting for him at the edge of the chaos surrounding the assembly. Dogs who would track the deer sniffed the air, wondering which scent they would follow. Dogs ready to chase the deer chased their tails instead, held back by their handlers until the quarry was sighted. In the suit of green he favoured for the hunt, the King conferred with his huntsman, considering their plan.

And Anne, seated atop a bay courser, looked out over the scene as if to memorise it.

If he asked her outright whether she could manage a day on horseback, would she back down? Without opening his mouth, he knew the answer. Still, he might give her the opportunity...

‘He uses the dogs,’ Nicholas said, glancing at the King while laying a comforting palm on the neck of Anne’s horse. Dogs meant a longer hunt. Gruelling and gruesome. He looked up at Anne, hoping for a reprieve.

She nodded. ‘They’ve located a hart of ten.’ A stag with ten points on his antlers. ‘He’ll be a worthy opponent.’

No wonder the King was smiling.

‘It will be a long day, then.’ They would be hunting par force, as the King preferred, chasing the beast into exhaustion. The work had begun the day before for the huntsman and continued with a discussion over a morning meal that Nicholas had decided to miss.

Now, they had to set the dogs along the path and have the scent hound find the beast again. When they did, the hounds would give chase. Finally, it might be hours later, when the beast was at bay, the King would get the honour of making the kill and unmaking the animal, cutting it carefully to pieces and giving the dogs their taste as a reward. All this could keep them on horseback until near dark.

‘So my lady hopes.’ She nodded toward the Prince and his intended, mounted and waiting side by side. Lady Joan raised a hand and waved to Anne. ‘Without war, the men grow restless.’ She looked down at him. ‘Don’t you?’

She said it as if she knew how eager he was to join the chase.

‘Yes.’ The word sounded churlish.

‘Then it is good that we hunt today.’ She spoke with a smile and without any indication that she was ready to get off her horse.

He sighed and mounted the hunting horse he had borrowed from the King’s stable. The day might be longer than even he expected.

King Edward gave the signal and they moved out, slowly at first, as the huntsman and the handlers went ahead to confirm the scent and put the chasers in position.

The New Forest was the King’s private deer park. Here, the animals could roam and breed unhindered by any but royalty. Dappled sunlight came and went through the lush green canopy of leaves, ruffled by a breeze perfect for bringing the scent of the deer to the eager dogs.

He glanced at the woman beside him. Slow on her feet, she was less awkward on the horse. The beast’s four legs carried her where her three could not. It was not so much the hunt she enjoyed, he decided. It was the freedom to run where her poor body could not take her.

‘If we do not keep up,’ he began, ‘will you mind missing the kill?’

‘I like being on the horse and in the fresh air. I do not like seeing...’ she faced him and there was truth in her eyes ‘...harm come to weaker creatures.’

Weaker creatures. As she was. A woman, even a man with her lameness might be savaged for such a flaw. He had seen it. Blind men armed with sticks told there was a pig for them to feast on if they could kill it. But there was no pig. There was only another man, as blind as the first, so the two ended up beating each other for the amusement of the sighted.

Suddenly, he was angry on her behalf for all the ignorant people who had, or would ever, hurt her. A strange and unwelcome thought.

He had lived as he wanted for so long, detached, thinking only of how to keep men and horses moving or how to get a pope to bless Prince Edward’s match. Suddenly, he had heard the woman beside him, recognised her pain, and cared. An unfamiliar and uncomfortable feeling.

Feeling led to disappointment. To mourning a mother who was gone and a new mother who did not care.

And this woman needed no sympathy from him. She was well taken care of now and, once her lady married the Prince, she’d have a life most would envy. Few cripples, even a dwarf who served as a jester, could hope for as much.

He glanced to his side to see how she fared on the horse. Pain and joy mixed uneasily on her face. Tight lips a testament to her struggle not to fall off the courser’s back, yet eyes that looked out on the day so eagerly that a smile broke the lock that pain held on her mouth.

Well for the moment, yet she could not ride the day long this way and it would be impossible for her to keep up once the chase began.

A horn sounded. The deer had been found. The men hurried their horses ahead, hooves trampling the grass, leaving the women to come as they pleased, arriving, perhaps, to celebrate the successful kill.

Nicholas’s horse started to trot, as eager as his rider to join the chase. He pulled the reins, holding back the animal, and himself. He could not race off and leave her here, struggling to keep her seat.

Where was Lady Joan? When she dropped back, he could leave Anne with her. But as the Prince dashed ahead, Joan urged her horse to follow.

He looked over at Anne. ‘She rides with him?’

She nodded. ‘They do not leave each other’s sight unless they must.’

The King’s daughter Isabella and a few of her ladies trotted ahead, far enough behind the men that they would not have to breathe their dust and far enough ahead of him that he knew Anne could not keep up.

He was trapped.

He had a fleeting hope that he could take her to the lodge and then race back, fast enough to catch the rest in time for the kill.

One glance at the slump of her shoulders ended that thought.

He had spent years and miles on a horse. His thighs were practised at gripping his mount, his feet at steering the horse with a touch.

But her right foot could not stay in the stirrup. Every shift by her mount threatened to land her in the dirt. Riding for hours would be a constant struggle. Chasing the stag impossible.

And yet, she had tried.

The rest of the riders disappeared, the sound of pounding hooves fading until all he could hear was the rustle of leaves.

He sighed. ‘Come.’ He nodded at a fallen tree. ‘Let’s rest.’

‘There is no need.’ Her stubborn words shook.

He ignored them.

He dismounted and came to help her. She had already been in the saddle when he saw her this morning and he had never thought to wonder how she’d managed it. Could she mount and dismount alone?

He reached for her and she swung her lame, right leg over the saddle and slid down into his arms.

Close. Too close. Her breasts pressed his chest, her breath brushed his cheek, and he caught a scent like the orange fruit from Spain he had tasted, at once sweet and tart.

Her cheek coloured and she seemed to hold her breath.

So did he.

And finally, he did what he had wanted to do ever since she had first bumped against him in the Hall.

He tilted her chin, lifted her lips to his and kissed her.

His first thought—could he even call it that?—was that her lips were softer and warmer than he had expected. His second was that they moved hungrily over his, saying things no other part of her body dared.

And he knew, without knowing how, that no one had ever kissed her before.

Their lips parted slowly. Reluctantly. He let her go and she turned away, reaching for the stick tied to her saddle.

And he waited for a shy maidenly protest. Or a sly, womanly smile, promising hidden delights.

Neither came.

No word. No blush. No smile. No protest. She leaned on her stick and took a step toward the fallen tree as if nothing had happened. As if the kiss were nothing. As if he were nothing.

He gritted his teeth, fighting the unfamiliar feeling roiling his blood. Not rage. Not even lust, though that had stirred, naturally.

No. It was something much less familiar. Possession. Protection. A mad desire to grab her and claim her and call her his.

And she seemed to notice nothing at all.

* * *

Anne turned her back on him, afraid to meet his eyes, and took another step.

A blur, all of it. It should not, could not, have happened. Yet she had kissed him. And wanted, oh, so much more.

Why had she come at all? Distract him, her lady had said, not lead him into temptation, though she would not have put it past Lady Joan to ask. But she did not because they both knew it was as impossible as asking Anne to run.

I am not a woman to capture a man’s attentions.

And yet, he had kissed her. Deliberately.

And she turned away because if she had not, she might have kissed him again and never stopped.

But his lips, ah, lips not full, but precisely sculpted, seemed to bring her very skin to life. All the strength she had amassed to fight the pain was useless against the pleasure that bloomed from the very whisper of his lips.

Now she must act as if nothing had happened, so she could pretend it had not.

She sank down on to the fallen tree with a sigh of relief.

‘You must be tired,’ he said, his words quick and meaningless.

And she, who never admitted weakness, nodded, with a weak smile.

‘Anne. Look at me.’

She wanted to pretend it had not happened. He would not.

So she lifted her chin and met his eyes, daring him to acknowledge it. ‘I forgive you.’ Dismissive words. As if she had been affronted, instead of moved.

‘I did not ask to be forgiven.’

Only his gaze touched her now, but that was enough. The heat in his eyes reignited the desire she would not, must not feel.

‘What do you want, then?’ Unable to hold her voice steady. ‘To take me out of pity?’

‘Pity?’ Was that anger in his voice? ‘Is that what you think?’

What she thought was to push him so far away that he could not recognise her weakness. ‘What I think,’ she began, ‘is that you thought to steal a kiss, or more, from a vulnerable maiden.’

That would explain it. She should have realised there could be no other reason. He must have thought her easy prey for his lust.

‘You are wrong.’

She wanted to be. Oh, she wanted to be.

‘Why else would you have lured me here? You knew I could not keep up with the chase. You knew we would fall behind and be alone.’ All things she had known before she even mounted.

‘Have you met so much unkindness in your life?’

Startled at first. Then, ashamed. She shook her head. ‘No. My lady has been all that is kind when I cannot do...what others can.’

‘I cannot dance well enough to take the floor before the King. It makes me no lesser man.’

Her eyes widened at his words. Could any man, any person, look at her and not see her as a lesser being?

Yet she saw in his eyes things she had never seen in another man’s. Desire, yes, that was remarkable enough. Coupled with anger and a touch of...admiration. Not the pity or disgust she so frequently encountered.

More often though, once they knew who and what she was, they tried not to see her at all. They simply let their eyes slide over her without stopping, as if she were a stone or a tree. Lonely sometimes, yes. But being invisible could be a benefit, as well.

‘I am sorry,’ she began, ‘to attack you when you were only being...kind.’ What other word to use?

Something in his gaze shifted. A decision reached. ‘Your first notion was the right one. It did not happen. Now, we will sit and speak of unimportant things until you are rested enough to return.’

She did not want to speak with him at all, but she must do as her lady asked and stay close to him, even at the risk of—

No. She straightened her back. There was no risk. She had lived her whole life without a man. That would not change because a passing warrior stole a kiss.

* * *

Nicholas settled himself at the other end of the log and sat in silence, relieved when she did not speak, as he struggled to put ground and sky back in their accustomed places.

Fool that he was, he had kissed her. And when he did, the world turned upside down, exposing the weakness he thought safely buried. The same weakness that had blinded his father to the truth about the woman he married.

Yet she thought he wanted only to dally with her and then cast her aside. He should have let her think so. Would that he were so unmoved.

This woman had a way of flinging him from kindness to anger to desire and back before he could understand what had happened. But, it was clear, she wanted an entanglement no more than he did.

Why?

At the other end of the log, she sat, back straight, studying the shaded shelter as if she might be forced to describe it later. Deprived of her accustomed needle, she tapped her restless fingers together without looking at them. He wondered whether she even knew she did so.

What was she thinking now?

He was a man of action, yet he had learned that understanding another man’s reasons and impulses was the key to gaining his co-operation. The man who sold wine strictly for money could be persuaded to sell for the right price. The man who was more concerned about his castle’s protection might be persuaded to trade in exchange for his loyalty.

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