Jennifer Blake - By His Majesty's Grace

He cared not at all that she knew, or so it seemed. His appraisal was intent behind the thick screen of his lashes, which seemed to permit her the same right of inspection. His eyes, she saw, carried a gleam in their depths like honed and polished silver, and thick brows made dark slashes above them. Lines radiated from the corners, perhaps from laughter but more likely from staring out over far distances. His jaw was square and his chin centered by a shallow cleft. The firm yet well-molded contours of his mouth hinted at a sensual nature held steadfastly in check.

“Well, Braesford,” her stepbrother said with the rasp of annoyance in his voice.

“Graydon,” the master of the manse said over his shoulder in acknowledgment. “I bid you welcome to Braesford Hall. And would do so with more ceremony if not so impatient to greet my bride.”

The words were pleasant enough, but carried an unmistakable note of irony. Did Braesford refer, most daringly, to his appreciation for her as a woman? Did he mean he was otherwise barely pleased to make her acquaintance, or was it something more between the two men?

This knight and her stepbrother had known each other during the Lancastrian invasion of the previous summer that had ended at Bosworth Field. Braesford had earned his spurs there, becoming Sir Randall Braesford. It was he who had found the golden circlet lost by the usurper, Richard III, and handed it to Lord Stanley so Henry Tudor might be crowned on the battlefield. Graydon, by contrast, had come away from Bosworth with nothing except the new king’s displeasure ringing in his ears for his delay in bringing up his men. Braesford no doubt knew that her stepbrother had waited until he was sure where victory would fall before lending support to Henry’s cause.

Graydon, in keeping with his dead father before him, preferred always to be on the winning side. Right was of little importance.

“A brave man, you are, to lay hands on my sister. I’d think you’d want her shriven first.”

Isabel stiffened at the suggestion. Her future husband did not spare her stepbrother so much as a glance. “Why would I do that?” he asked.

“The curse, Braesford. The curse of the Three Graces of Graydon.”

“I have no fear of curses.” Rand Braesford’s eyes lighted with silvery amusement as he smiled into hers. “It will be done with, betimes, when we are duly wed and bedded.”

“So that’s the way of it, is it?” Graydon gave a coarse laugh. “Tonight, I make no doubt, as soon as you have the contract in hand.”

“The sooner, the better,” Braesford agreed with deliberation. Setting Isabel on her feet, he placed her hand upon his arm and turned to lead her into the manse.

It was a moment before she could force her limbs to move. She walked with her head high and features impassive, leaving behind the winks and quiet guffaws of the Graydon and Braesford men-at-arms with the disdain they merited. Inside, her mind was in shivering chaos. She had thought to have more time, had expected a few days of rest before she need submit to a husband. In a week, or possibly two, reprieve could easily appear. It was years since any man had dared brave the curse of the Three Graces, so long that she had come to depend on its protection. Why should Braesford be the one to defeat it?

He meant to prove it false by a swift home strike. It was possible he would succeed.

Turning to look back, Isabel instinctively sought the familiar face of her serving woman, Gwynne. One of her stepbrother’s men-at-arms had helped her from her mule and she was now directing the unloading of their baggage. That Gwynne had heard the exchange along with everyone else seemed clear from the concern in her wise old eyes that followed her and her future husband. An instant of communication passed between them, not an unusual thing as the woman had been her mother’s body servant and had helped bring her and her sisters into the world. Bolstered by Gwynne’s silent support, Isabel faced forward again.

The curse was a fabrication if Braesford but knew it, a thin defense created from superstition, coincidence and daring. It had been Isabel’s inspiration, begun in hope of some small protection for her two younger sisters that she had helped rear after their mother died. To guard them in all ways had been her most fierce purpose since the three of them had been left with a brutish, uncaring stepfather. She had feared Cate and Marguerite, so lovely and tenderly nubile, would be bedded immediately at fourteen, the age of legal marriage following betrothals made in their cradles. By fate and God’s mercy, the three of them had, between them, escaped from ten or twelve such marital arrangements without being joined in formal wedlock or losing their maidenheads. Disease, accident and the fortunes of internecine warfare had taken the lives of their prospective grooms one by one. A malignant fate surely had them in its keeping—or so Isabel had suggested to all who would listen.

Mere whispers of it had served well enough for three or four years.

Then Leon, King Henry’s handsome Master of Revels, who had traveled with him from France the year before, had taken up the tale out of mischief not unmixed with kindness. Well, and for the challenge of seeing how many credulous English nobles he could persuade to believe it. Dear Gwynne had helped it along among the serving wenches and menservants at Westminster Palace. The supposed curse had become akin to holy writ, a universally believed truth that death or disaster must overcome any man who attempted a loveless union with any one of the Three Graces of Graydon—as Leon had styled them in token of the classical Roman fervor sweeping the court just now.

It had been a most convenient tale, regardless of the notoriety attached to it. As the eldest of the Graces, Isabel had been grateful for its protection. She had enjoyed the freedom it allowed, the endless days of peace with no one to order her except a stepbrother who was seldom at home. To be stripped of it through such an obvious misalliance as the one before her would be near unbearable. Yet how was she to prevent it?

The arm beneath the slashed sleeve of her future husband was as hard as the stone of his keep walls. Her fingers trembled a little on the dark wool that covered it, and she gripped tighter in the effort to still them. Did this man have none of the superstitious fear that ran rampant through those who prayed most mightily before every altar in the kingdom? Or was it only that he, like Henry VII, had known the Master of Revels in France?

Braesford glanced down at her with the lift of an inquiring brow. “You are cold, Lady Isabel?”

“Merely weary,” she said through stiff lips, “though the wind was somewhat chill for summer, especially during the last few leagues.”

“I apologize, but you will grow used to our rough weather in time,” he replied with grave courtesy.

“Possibly.”

“You think, mayhap, to escape it.” He led her into the tower, keeping his back to the curving wall as they mounted the narrow, winding treads so she might retain the support of his arm.

“I would not say that, but neither do I look forward to a long life spent at Braesford.”

“I trust you may change your mind before the night is done.”

She gave him a swift upward glance, searching the dark implacability of his eyes. He really meant to bed her before the evening was over. It was his right under canon law that recognized an official betrothal to be as binding as vows before a priest. Her heart stumbled in her chest before continuing with a more frantic beat. There must be some escape, though she could not think what it might be.

The staircase emerged in the great hall, a cavernous room with dark stone walls hung with banners and studded by stag horns. A dais lay at one end with musicians’ gallery above it, and trestle tables were spaced in a double row down its length. The mellow fragrance of fresh rushes mixed with lavender and cedar hung in the air from the newly laid carpet of them that softened the stone floor. Overlaying these was the wafting scent of wood smoke from the fire that burned low on the hearth of the huge fireplace against one wall, taking the dampness from the air. As they entered, menservants were already laying linen cloths for the company.