Historical Romance – The Best Of The Year. Кэрол Мортимер

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      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?’

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