Laurie Grant - My Lady Midnight

Coverly Castle, England

January 1135

“Is he handsome, your betrothed?” Claire asked her best friend, Julia, who was also a distant cousin.

“I suppose so,” the older girl said with a sniff, tossing her silver-gilt curls, “if you care for a swarthy sort of man.” Her expression said that she did not. She examined a minor smudge on her gown of green silk. She reached over and twitched the end of one thick, golden braid at Claire’s nose teasingly.

Claire laughed. “But Julia, he is a baron! Haimo is but a knight, and a second son at that.”

“Bah! I had hoped for an earl,” Julia informed her, her nose wrinkling in a way Claire found unattractive, though she never would have told Julia so. “And Hawkswell Castle looked cold and forbidding when we visited last week for the betrothal. ’Tis nothing like Tinchley. But with King Henry like to die at any moment and leave his daughter the throne, Father says it would be well to have an alliance with a noble known to be loyal to the empress, no matter that Father would prefer to see Stephen on the throne.”

“But you’ll soon make it a warm and welcoming keep, I’m sure of it,” Claire assured her friend. “I hope so, for I’m going to beg Haimo to bring me for a visit just as soon as we are wed.”

“Hummph. I don’t see why your father won’t bring you to the wedding this spring.”

Claire sighed. It was still a sore point with her, too. “He says it falls too close to my betrothal to Haimo d’Audemer, and that there is apt to be unrest in the realm as soon as the old king breathes his last, for there are many who do not want to see his arrogant daughter crowned.”

“Men!” Julia said with a snort. “They don’t give a fig for our wishes, do they? I’ve already heard rumors about my husband to be, and they please me not.”

“Rumors? What rumors?” asked Claire curiously. Julia narrowed her eyes and shrugged. “I heard his servants whispering, that’s all. It seems my future lord was quite the womanizer, when he was newly knighted. They said he’d sired a bastard.”

“What of it? Many young bachelors do so, I believe,” Claire said, trying to keep her tone light, though inwardly she was dismayed for her friend and cousin. She was certain Haimo, whom she was to marry, would never do such a thing.

Julia’s laugh was brittle, her gray eyes wintry. “Indeed! Men may do as they like, and women have naught to say about it, have you not noticed?”

Claire reached out a sympathetic hand. “I’m certain ’twas but a youthful indiscretion, and one he repents of already, now that he’s to wed you, cousin. You’ll see, he’ll love you dearly, and he’ll have no need of a leman with you as his wife. And you’ll give him children—legitimate children, sons who can inherit.”

“Mayhap.” Julia sighed, and tossed her silvery blond curls again.

Coverly Castle

May 1140

“I might have known I’d find you out here with the serf brats, Claire.”

From his peevish tone Lady Claire deduced that her brother Neville was not at all pleased by the discovery, which came as no surprise to her. He had always felt the English folk who served them—and their offspring—were inferior to his hounds or his hawk.

“Excuse me, children, there’s a storm cloud on the horizon,” she said in English to the pair of flaxen-headed children seated on either side of her, and glanced meaningfully at her brother. Bran and Elga giggled, their hands over their mouths.

“And stop talking that English gibberish with them!” ordered her brother, hands on his hips, his expression more ill-humored than before. “If you’re going to waste your time with them, shouldn’t you be teaching them French so that they can communicate with their masters?”

Claire stared up at her brother, whose large body blocked the sun, casting a shadow over her and the children as she sat on the greensward before Coverly Castle. She knew he suspected she had just made a jest about him to the children.

“Actually I was teaching them French, before you approached, Neville,” she told him, switching to that tongue and trying her best to smile so that perhaps by some miracle her brother would, too. Already Elga was shrinking behind Bran’s broader shoulders, frightened by the Norman lord’s stormy countenance. “Before you know it I’ll have them speaking like native Rouennais. Now, what is it you wanted, my lord brother? I assume it cannot wait until the lesson is over, whatever it is?” she added hopefully.

“No, it cannot,” he said, ignoring her hint. “I have to tell you I’m not pleased at your intransigence, Claire, not pleased at all.”

She allowed herself to look mystified for a moment, then, just as Neville was about to explode in exasperation, said brightly, “Oh, you must be talking about the prospect of my marrying again! Well, well! I’m sorry for your displeasure, my lord brother, but I’m going to hold you to the promise you made me when I wed the first time.” Claire kept her grassy seat as she looked up at Neville. “I married once to further the family aims, and at Haimo d’Audemer’s funeral you said it was all you’d ever ask of me. Well, I’m taking you at your word—and you are a man of your word, are you not?”

She could see his jaw tighten, could see a muscle working in her brother’s temple as he strove to master his irritation.

“But how was I to know Haimo would die without even getting you with child, so we gained nothing from your marriage?” Neville asked irritably, as if the freakish accident, a fall from a horse that had broken Haimo’s neck, had somehow been Claire’s fault.

She shrugged. “I held up my end of the bargain, Neville, and I expect you to do likewise. And if you only wished to harp at me about marrying, I would get back to teaching the children, if you don’t mind. You would like them to be able to understand your orders soon, would you not?” She turned back to the children, hoping he would let it go at that, and knowing full well he would not. Neville de Coverly could not bear to be balked.

“As a matter of fact, I do mind, sister. We need to speak of this matter further. Dismiss the little bastards.”

Claire was about to retort that the English children were as legitimately born as he was, but saw from Neville’s set jaw and crossed arms that he would only make a scene if she frustrated him further. She didn’t want timid Elga to have nightmares.

“Run along, children,” she said, switching back to English. “I’ll see you later, and when I do I’ll tell you a story about a fierce Norman dragon and how he met his comeuppance at the hands of a brave Saxon knight.”

The children giggled again as they darted looks at the “dragon” beside her, then scurried off, Bran roaring like a dragon and pretending to belch smoke at Elga’s heels.

She turned back to Neville, her arms crossed until she realized she had unwittingly copied her brother’s pose. “I’m listening, Neville, but I will tell you before you start that I will not give any further consideration to the idea of wedding that beefy oaf Fulk de Trouville. I’ve had one husband who was a bully, and I will not take another, do you hear?”

“It need not be Fulk,” Neville pointed out impatiently, his eyes narrowing so that he looked like a cornered wild boar about to charge. “There are many others whom our uncle would think good alliances—”

“Our uncle!” she shrieked. “By the rood, brother! Do you never think for yourself? Do no thoughts but those of my lord of Tresham enter your brain? You jump whenever he commands it, Neville!” The words, fueled by her own irritation, had rushed out in a torrent of feeling, and only when she had said them did she consider how she might have just made matters worse. She knew Neville hated to have his authority challenged, and foolish pronouncements often assumed the weight of law when that happened.