The Mistress of Normandy. Susan Wiggs

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СКАЧАТЬ “Take them by the balls, my lord. Their hearts and souls will follow.” Wearily he rotated his shoulders. “I worked like a goddamned swineherd today. And yourself, my lord? Any luck?”

      Rand swallowed and stared at the dust dancing in a ray of golden twilight. The rhythmic, sibilant splatter of milk against the sides of Jack’s bucket punctuated the silence. Presently Jack finished his task and straightened. “Well?”

      “I met...a girl.”

      The milk sloshed in Jack’s pail. Too late, Rand realized his voice had betrayed the feelings he’d kept folded into his heart since he’d watched Lianna run off toward the castle.

      Eyes dancing with interest, Jack set down his pail, picked up a stalk of hay, and aimed it at Rand’s chest. “Has Cupid’s arrow found a victim? Welcome to the human race, my lord.”

      “Her name is Lianna,” Rand said in a low voice. “She lives at Bois-Long.”

      “Better still,” Jack exclaimed, rolling the hay between his fingers. “Surely it’s a sign from above. Merry, my lord, perhaps life won’t be so disagreeable with a ready wench at hand.”

      Rand shook his head. “The married state is sacred. And I’d not dishonor Lianna.”

      Jack laughed. “Knight’s prattle, my friend. Your commitment to the demoiselle is one of political convenience. No need to be good as gold on her account.”

      Rand turned away. “If gold rusts, what would iron do?”

      Jack tossed a forkful of hay to the cow and picked up the bucket. They walked out of the paddock. “I for one,” said Jack, “intend to grow right rusty wooing Lajoye’s hired girl. She’s got a pair of—”

      “Jack,” Rand warned, drowning out the bawdy term.

      “—to die for,” Jack finished.

      “I’ve forbidden wenching.”

      “Only with unwilling females,” said Jack. “But never mind. When do we go to Bois-Long?”

      “King Henry insists on proper protocol. A missive must be sent, and the bride-price, and Batsford must read the banns for a few weeks running.”

      “Still in no hurry.” Jack grinned. “That hired girl will be glad of it.” He walked back to the inn.

      Caught in the purple-tinged swirls of the deepening night, Rand left the town and climbed the citadel-like cliffs above the sea. A nightingale called and a curlew answered, the plaintive sounds strumming a painful tune over his nerves.

      Staring out at the breaking waves, he pondered the unexpected meeting and the even less expected turn his heart had taken.

      Lianna. He whispered her name to the sea breezes; it tasted like sweet wine on his tongue. Her image swam into his mind, pale hair framing her face with the diffuse glow of silver, her smile tentative, her eyes wide and deep with a hurt he didn’t understand yet felt in his soul. She inspired a host of feelings so bright and sharp that it was agony to think of her.

      There was only one woman he had any right to think about: the Demoiselle de Bois-Long.

      The nearness would be hardest to bear. To see Lianna’s small figure darting about the château, to hear the chime of her laughter, would be high torture.

      End it now, his common sense urged, and he forced his mind to practical matters. The Duke of Burgundy was at Bois-Long, but his retainers were few. Clearly he did not plan a lengthy visit. Jean Sans Peur could ill afford to tarry with his niece when his domain encompassed the vast sweep of land from the Somme to the Zuyder Zee.

      Aye, thought Rand, Burgundy bears watching.

      But even as he hardened his resolve around that decision, he knew he’d go back to the place of St. Cuthbert’s cross where he’d met Lianna. The guns, he rationalized. He must dissuade her from working with dangerous and unpredictable weapons. Yet beneath the thought lay an immutable truth. Guns or no, he’d seek her out—tomorrow, and every day, until they met again.

      * * *

      “Gone!” said Lianna, running into a little room off the armory. “Lazare is gone!”

      “Did you think your uncle of Burgundy would let him stay?” Chiang asked, his dark eyes trained on a bubbling stew of Peter’s salt that boiled in a crucible over a coal fire.

      A warm spark of relief hid inside her. Ignoring it, she said, “Uncle Jean had no right to order Lazare to Paris.”

      “Not having the right has never stopped Burgundy before.”

      “Why would he send Lazare to swear fealty to King Charles?”

      Chiang shrugged. “Doubtless to keep the man from your bed.”

      She nearly choked on the irony of it. Lazare had taken care of that aspect of the marriage himself. And now that he was gone, she could not place him between herself and the English baron.

      “Burgundy has left also?” asked Chiang.

      “Aye, he claimed he had some private matter to attend to,” said Lianna glumly. “He had no right,” she repeated. She studied Chiang’s face, admiring his implacable concentration, the deep absorption with which he performed his task. His eyes, exotically upturned at the corners, seemed to hold the wisdom of centuries. He had a stark, regal face that put her in mind of emperors in the East, a distance too far to contemplate.

      “You know he has it in his power to do most anything he wishes. Pass me that siphon, my lady.”

      She handed him a copper tube. “That is what worries me about Uncle Jean. He also refused to send reinforcements to repel the English baron. He will not risk King Henry’s displeasure.”

      Carefully Chiang extracted the purified salt from the vat. “Will the Englishman press his claim by force?”

      “I know not. But we should be prepared.” She sat back on her heels and watched Chiang work, his short brown fingers handling scales and calipers with the delicacy of a surgeon. Sympathy, affection, and respect tumbled through her. Chiang had been a fixture at Bois-Long since the days of her youth. Like the man himself, his arrival was a mystery. Fleeing the capture of a mysterious ship from the East, he’d washed up on the Norman shore, the sole survivor of a vessel whose destination and mission Chiang had never revealed.

      Only the Sire de Bois-Long, Lianna’s father, had protected the strange-looking man from a heathen’s death at the hands of superstitious French peasants. With his timeless knowledge of defense and his meticulous skill at gunnery, Chiang had repaid Aimery the Warrior a hundredfold.

      But even now, the castle folk who had known him for years regarded him as an oddity, some gossips falling just short of denouncing him as a sorcerer. The men-at-arms begrudged him this small workroom in a corner of the armory and never failed to sketch the sign of the cross when passing by.

      Chiang peered at her through wide-set, fathomless eyes. “And are you prepared, my lady?”

      She hung her head. During the two days of the duke’s visit, she’d prayed and worried over a difficult decision. “Yes,” СКАЧАТЬ