Laurie Grant - My Lady Midnight

“Our uncle, the earl, is a very important man, one of Stephen’s intimates,” Neville told her. “I’ve always found it wise to heed his rule.”

The reply was much milder than the one Claire had been bracing for. Neville seemed to be making an effort to rein in his temper. Wonder of wonders! Hmm…what can he be wanting?

“Claire,” began her brother again, his tone gentled, almost friendly, “If you don’t want marriage, what is it that you do want? Surely you don’t plan to spend your life trying to lesson ignorant serf whelps, never again leaving the keep in which you were born? Though of course I would give you shelter there whenever you needed it—”

“My thanks, brother,” she retorted dryly. “Your charity astounds me. Neville, I happen to love being with the children, teaching them—and they are children, Neville, not bastards or whelps. They’re a good deal more appreciative of me than Haimo ever was—or you ever were, for that matter. You’re always trying to make me into something I’m not—”

“You love children,” Neville put in. “But wouldn’t you like to have children of your own? You’re a young woman still, Claire! If you married you could have a lapful of your own babes…”

She turned so he would not see the longing in her eyes. The desire to have her own children was her vulnerable point. But by all the saints, she would not wed some brutish bully to do it!

“Yes,” she admitted at last. “But if I cannot find a man I can love, I’ll make do with other people’s children. A whole army of children is not worth another Haimo.” She turned around and stole a look at Neville’s set face. He could force her to it. She knew that he could back her into a corner until her only choice was to wed at his behest or take the veil. And she knew that she was ill-suited at best to be a bride of Christ.

“Well, come along. Our uncle d’Evreux would speak to you about another way in which you can serve the family and your king.”

She glanced at him in surprise. “’Another way?’ The king? Whatever do you mean, Neville?”

But her brother’s face was shuttered and remote. “I believe I will leave it to him to tell you,” he murmured, and turned on his heel, indicating with a peremptory gesture that she was to follow.

She smothered an angry retort. Did Neville expect her to come barking at his heels and wagging her tail, like one of his hounds? But it would do no good to argue, and she admitted to herself that she was curious about what Hardouin d’Evreux wanted her to do. He had mentioned nothing of the sort this morning when she had greeted him as he rode into the bailey.

She followed Neville across the drawbridge, under the portcullis and into the bailey, calling a friendly greeting to the armorer and the laundress, who were pausing in the noonday sun to flirt with each other. There’d be a wedding between those two soon, she guessed. The laundress was flushed and beaming, while the armorer’s face could only be described as besotted. They’d be happy, and they’d make many babes together. The armorer was an easygoing man, Claire knew. The woman he flirted with would never bear bruises as an indication of her spouse’s temper. Ah, why couldn’t she find someone who would love her as simply and well as that?

They entered the hall and crossed it to the narrow stairway leading to the lord’s chamber above the hall. Not for Hardouin d’Evreux an apartment in the inner ward. Nothing less than Neville’s own chamber would do when their uncle came to call, but Claire noticed her brother surrendered it without a murmur on those infrequent occasions.

Nor did he indicate by so much as a trace of a grimace that he minded knocking at his own door for entrance.

“Who is it?” a flat, inflectionless voice responded.

“Neville, uncle. I’ve brought Claire.”

“Enter.”

Brother and sister did as they were bidden. Claire’s eyes refused to adjust at once to the gloom of the chamber, but finally she located her uncle behind the gleam of a fat yellow tallow candle, sitting in an ornately carved, padded wooden chair. He beckoned them into backless chairs next to him. She could feel his eyes follow her progress across the chamber.

Claire immediately took the chair farthest from Hardouin, letting Neville serve as a buffer between them. However little she trusted her brother, she trusted Hardouin, count of Evreux and earl of Tresham, even less. His eyes were still fixed on her. He sat upon the high-backed chair like a silent, overstuffed spider, and Claire felt as the fly must feel when it has put its first foot on the edge of the silken web.

“Please excuse my sister’s…ah…informal dress, uncle,” Neville said, as the silence stretched on. “She was…dealing with some of the serfs, and I thought it best not to delay our coming by having her change her clothes. I deplore her contaminating herself by dealing with those pigs, you know—they’re hardly human, after all—”

“Silence, nephew, until you have something useful to say,” droned Hardouin, without taking his eyes off Claire. Then, without preamble, he said in his dry monotone, “Neville tells me you’re unwilling to marry the baron he picked out for you.”

Claire’s fingers tightened convulsively on a fold of her skirt. Was she to have to fight the same battle all over again, and this time with a much more powerful foe? The church and the law might state that a widow had the right to marry as she chose, but a powerful man such as her uncle had much he could do to bend her to his will. Stories filled her brain of girls not even old enough to have their first flux married to vicious graybeards, and aged dames wed to callow wastrels, all to suit the whims of some noble relative. In moments, in this very room, it might well come to a choice between Fulk de Trouville and the convent—and she might not even be allowed to take the veil if Hardouin willed otherwise.

“Please, my lord,” she began in a voice that quivered a little, despite her attempts to keep it sweet and even, “’tis not that I am unwilling to marry at all, ’tis that Fulk de Trouville is not the sort of man I would have as my lord husband. He’s cruel and duplicitous—’tis even rumored he is perverse…” She looked at him through her lashes, knowing her uncle liked a meek woman. She’d be meek as milk, if it kept her from a forced marriage.

“Oh, I have no quarrel with your lack of desire to marry De Trouville,” her uncle said mildly. “He’s a blowhard and would do little to advance the fortunes of the family. In fact, if you do not wish to marry any time in the foreseeable future, I would only support your choice, my niece.”

Claire’s head shot up, and she stared at her uncle’s florid face with its lips the color of bruised grapes. Had she heard him aright? What game was he playing with her? Was he about to offer her a worse choice, thinking she would run to Fulk’s arms, grateful to be spared worse?

“Ah, I see you are suspicious,” commented her uncle, transferring his attention to a wheel of cheese upon the small table next to his chair. He cut a wedge and bit down without offering any to his nephew or niece. “Do not be, Claire. I merely meant to offer you a way to serve your family and King Stephen’s cause without marrying—a way, moreover, that will call upon the very talents your brother, here, has been shortsighted enough to complain about.”

Claire heard her brother’s intake of breath and saw, out of the corner of her eye, Neville’s hand become a fist in his lap.

Hardouin seemed to sense it too, for he raised his hand before Neville could speak. The gesture required no words; Claire saw her brother close his mouth without saying anything. Then Hardouin trained his gaze upon her once again, and Claire found herself staring into narrowed eyes as reflectionless as slate.