Susan Wiggs - The Mistress of Normandy

She dipped her head in a submissive nod. “Yes, Your Grace,” she murmured, and fled to her solar.

Exactly four minutes later, clad in her best gown of royal blue, her head capped and veiled in silvery gauze, Lianna careened down the stairs toward the hall. Bonne had doused her with a generous splash of rosewater and had scrubbed the last traces of gunpowder from her face. Lianna glanced down at the heavy velvet swishing around her slippered feet. The anonymous pucelle who had enchanted Rand was no more. She longed to fold his image into her heart, to cherish in private his avowal of love. But her uncle was waiting.

Nearing the hall, she slowed her pace, lifted her chin, and glided in to confront the most powerful man in France.

Styled Jean Sans Peur—the Fearless—by friend and foe alike, he kept a stranglehold grip on the political pulse of the kingdom. A ruthless man, Burgundy possessed stone-cold ambition and a penchant for intrigue and deeds done in secret. Men lived at his sufferance and sometimes died at his command.

Yet when Lianna greeted him, looked into his blue eyes, she saw only affection. Pressing her cheek to his chest, she felt the chain mail he always wore beneath his ducal raiments. But the hand he lifted to stir a lock of her hair was gentle. Burgundy’s cold, suspicious heart housed a small, warm corner for his orphaned niece.

“Better, p’tite,” he said. “Much better. You’re lovely.”

She nodded to acknowledge the compliment, although she would have preferred that he notice the new gun emplacements she and Chiang had worked so hard to build. “Come warm yourself by the fire.” She took his wind-chilled hand.

But Burgundy gestured toward the passage at the back of the hall. “I would speak to you in private, niece.”

She preceded him into the privy apartment, waited until he sat, then perched nervously on the edge of a stool.

His eyes full of dark fires, Burgundy looked at her for a long, measuring moment. He sucked a deep breath through his nostrils. “Your disobedience would not hurt so much,” he said quietly, “did I not love you so, Belliane.”

An unexpected lump rose in her throat. “I had no choice. King Henry would have made an English bastion of Bois-Long.”

“Better an English bastion than a French ruin. Where is this husband of yours?”

“Out riding with the reeve.”

“I know Lazare Mondragon,” Burgundy said, his mouth twisting with distaste. “He came begging favors some years ago. I turned him away.” Stroking a long-fingered hand over his Siberian squirrel collar, he added, “They say Mondragon loved his first wife to distraction, nearly grieved unto death when she died. Think you he will hold you in such esteem?”

“I do not need his esteem, only his name in marriage.”

Burgundy sighed. “You could have had better, p’tite.

“Ah, for certes I did.” Frustration shadowed his face. “By marrying Mondragon, you’ve cheated yourself out of a brilliant alliance.”

Unbidden laughter burst from her. “What mean you, Uncle?”

“I speak in earnest,” he said harshly. “By my faith, Belliane, I was saving you for an English noble.”

Shock rocketed through her, then gave way to harsh understanding. So that was why King Henry had meddled with her life.

Bleakly she realized that she was her uncle’s pawn after all, a minor chess piece in his political game. An alliance with England would bring Burgundy’s power to a zenith, enable him to vanquish his hated enemy, Count Bernard of Armagnac, who now controlled the mad French king.

Recoiling from the idea, she took a gulp of air. “My allegiance begins and ends with Bois-Long and France. The promise of winning a title cannot lure me from it.”

“You should not have acted without my consent, Belliane.”

She could not meet his eyes, because he would see her distrust, her belief that his love for her was less compelling than his affinity for intrigue. “Uncle, your wardship over me ended when I reached my majority December last. I was free to contract for my own marriage, free to flout Henry’s directive.”

“You speak treason, my lady.”

“He is not my sovereign!”

“Yet he has styled himself so, claiming the lands won by his grandsire, Edward the Third. Henry will enforce that claim with military might. An alliance with him would be prudent at this time.” The duke’s face pinched into an expression known to strike terror into the hearts of royal princes. But Lianna didn’t flinch as she raised her head.

They sat facing each other, eyes locked. Then Burgundy’s expression changed to grudging admiration. “Would that more Frenchmen had your attitude,” he mused. “We’d never be under Henry’s thumb in the first place.” He strode to the hearth, stood before the blaze. Firelight carved hollows in his cheeks, and worry pleated his brow. Sudden tenderness touched Lianna. Her uncle held a difficult position. Caught up in the madness and dissension between the princes royal of France, Jean had spoken for the common people in the Royal Council, made enemies of the nobles. Now, banished from Paris and opposed by the Armagnacs, he had apparently thrown in his lot with the English.

“Young Henry means to regain the throne of France,” said Jean. “He’s a man driven, at least in his own mind, by divine inspiration. His ambition knows no scruples. Not a man to defy heedlessly.”

“That may well be, Your Grace. But I will not cede Bois-Long to him. I’d be doing my king and my countrymen a great disservice if I were to relinquish the ford to Henry’s army.”

“Your countrymen!” the duke spat. “Who are they, but a lot of quarreling children switching allegiance as capriciously as the winds over the Narrow Sea? France needs a strong guiding hand. Henry—”

“Is another English pretender,” Lianna snapped.

Burgundy sighed. “You may think you’ve thwarted him. Perhaps you have, for the time being. But Harry of Monmouth is too much like you for my comfort. He’s willful, intelligent, energetic.” Burgundy returned to his chair and sat in pensive silence. At length he asked, “What know you of Longwood?”

“Only what I could read between the lines of his overblown missive. This Longwood is un horzain—an outsider, an upstart bastard,” she stated. “His title is barely a month old. And he is a traitor like his father, Marc de Beaumanoir.”

“Beaumanoir was no traitor, Lianna. He simply hadn’t the means to buy his ransom from Arundel.”

“Traitor or not, his bastard will never have Bois-Long.”

Burgundy shook his head. “Parbleu, but you are an exasperating brat. You constantly meddle in male affairs.”

“Only those that concern me and my people, Uncle.” Seeing his face darken, she crossed to his side and took his hand. A cold tongue of apprehension touched the base of her spine. In the game Burgundy was playing, the stake was nothing less than the control of France. “What will you do?” she asked.

“I shall do as I see fit,” he said simply. His silence made her more nervous than any ruthless plan.

* * *

For the first time in her life, Lianna found herself too preoccupied to supervise the feast with her usual meticulous control. Ordinarily she would have chastised the servitor who brought the venison on a poorly polished plate. Her sharp eye would have noticed that the croustade Lombard, made with fruit and marrow, was placed too far from the high table, and that the pastry subtlety of the lilies of France was overdone.

Instead her mind worried her problems like a persistent itch. Burgundy seemed determined to undermine the steps she’d taken to protect Bois-Long. The Mondragons were intent on flaunting their new status. And all the while, sweet, lingering thoughts of Rand, his stunning declaration, the goodness that emanated from him, kept her heart in a state of high rapture.