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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.
“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.
“You wish me to do something to help King Stephen’s cause?” she asked. “And it does not involve marrying to form an alliance?” She was still looking for the trap she was somehow sure was closing around her.
Hardouin inclined his head. “Yes, that is what I am saying. And if you will do this thing, niece, I will settle a manor upon you, and a sum that will enable you to live out your days without a husband, if you so desire. Or you may marry, providing, of course, that it is no one inimical to us.”
She nodded, hardly able to believe what she was hearing. Things that sounded too good to be true usually were. She was careful to keep her face blank, and her voice without inflection, as her uncle’s always was. “What did you mean, you would call upon my talents? What talents were those, my lord?”
Her uncle took a large bite of the cheese and chewed it thoroughly before making his reply.
“I refer, niece, to your fluency in the English tongue, and your affinity for the English peasantry. And your fair color…” He leaned forward, across Neville, and touched the thick plait that fell over Claire’s breast, stroking the blond braid meaningfully for a second or two, while Claire tried not to shrink from his touch. “Don’t you see? With that yellow hair and those blue eyes you could pass for English, Claire.”
“And why,” she asked carefully, “would I want to do that?”
“You’re a clever woman, Claire. You have the ability to appear to be whatever is called for, I have observed—on other occasions, as well as this one.”
“My lord?” she questioned, mystified.
“You entered the room unaware of what I wished of you, wanting only one thing—not to be forced into a distasteful marriage. Yet you did not wish to offend me, fearing that would result in the very thing you wished to avoid. And so you assumed a guise of meekness and mildness, which you are continuing even at this moment. ’Tis a good ploy, Claire, and probably Neville was fooled. But I am not. Being the shrewd judge of character that I am, I have discerned your true nature—but it pleases me that you have the ability to pass as what you are not.”
She darted a glance at her brother, but saw that Neville was as puzzled as she was about what their uncle wanted her to do. And when had Hardouin noticed that she was not the docile woman she had always tried to portray whenever he was around? He could hardly have overheard, from the lord’s chamber over the hall, her spirited defiance of Neville’s wishes while she sat on the greensward with the children, even if the shutters had then been open! But the earl had long enjoyed a reputation for knowing everything about everyone in his life, so perhaps he had a spy or two in this household.
Evidently Hardouin felt he had played with her long enough, for then he said, “I would have you use your ability to pass as English as a means to get close to the baron of Hawkswell.”
Her stomach clenched at the name. Hawkswell, who had once married her cousin, Julia. Aloud she said, “Hawkswell? But isn’t he sworn to Matilda?”
With a snort, the earl threw the rind of the cheese into the rushes at his feet. “Well, I would hardly need anyone’s help to get close to one of Stephen’s supporters, would I? If I am on the same side, I have but to send them a message requesting a meeting, yes?”
His tone was still mild, but Claire felt the sarcasm strike her like the lash of a whip. She could feel her face flame in response.
“No, I suppose not…” she began. “My lord, surely you’re not suggesting anything dishonorable…that I…” She made herself say it. “You don’t mean you want me to act the whore, and obtain Hawkswell’s secrets by sharing his bed?”
Hardouin threw back his massive head and laughed. The sound seemed to echo off the stone walls of the room. “Hardly! From what Neville tells me, you’re a cold fish who has no desire to experience the joys of the marriage bed again, so your trying to become Alain of Hawkswell’s mistress would be an exercise in futility, and ‘twould not achieve our goal, would it?”
Claire felt as if she had been punched in the belly. With tears stinging her eyes, she turned to glare at Neville, but her brother was suddenly preoccupied with examining his fingernails and would not meet her gaze.
She would not rise to the bait, Claire resolved, she would not. She blinked back the tears. “But you said you wished me to get close to Hawkswell. How, and to what end?”
From his startled smile she guessed her uncle was pleased that she was ignoring his jab.
“The baron of Hawkswell controls the Hawkswell Valley, an important piece of land that guards the southern approach to London. He has been a relentless warrior in Matilda’s service, one of her most trusted vassals. He has not bent, no matter how the winds of change have blown in Stephen’s direction, no matter what favors and promises were used to lure him.”
“An honorable man,” Claire murmured. “How unusual.”
Hardouin raised a bushy eyebrow, but he went on. “Stephen wants him.”
“Then he needs to catch him away from his castle, and to have a large enough force with him to subdue Hawkswell. Why are you speaking to me, a mere woman, about this?”
Her uncle ignored her sarcasm. “Nay, I didn’t mean Stephen wanted to capture him, Claire. He could do that, easily enough. But Stephen wants him to be his man.”
Claire shrugged. “And how can I possibly help in that regard? He is a widower, but you said this did not involve marriage for me, is that not so? And since you do not expect me to seduce him and I am not willing to do so anyway, what is it, then, that you wish me to do?”
Hardouin leaned forward, past Neville, and took her hand in his big fleshy one. She tried not to squirm, though she longed to yank her hand away.
“Claire, Claire…you give yourself such a limited role as a woman! There are more places than in bed where you can use your womanly wiles! But never mind. I have developed a masterful scheme based on your talents and your English appearance, niece.”
Claire nodded, unable to guess where this was leading. What he said was true enough. Normans tended to have dark hair and eyes, but she had always been told she resembled her Saxon granddam.
Willing herself to leave her hand quietly in his, she let him go on speaking.
“The baron’s wife gave him a child before she died of a fever last year, a daughter. He already had a bastard son who lives with him. From all I have heard he is a devoted father, so they may well be Lord Alain’s Achilles’ heel.”
Claire rubbed her forehead, feeling the beginning of a headache. “Perhaps I do lack imagination, my lord, but I still don’t see where this is leading.”
Hardouin gave her a wolfish smile. “What I wish you to do, niece, is to go to Hawkswell Castle in the guise of an English wench, and become nursemaid to his children.”
Claire let her jaw drop. Perhaps she had overestimated her powerful uncle. “And spy on him thus? My lord, he is hardly apt to drop state secrets in front of his children and their nurse!”
Hardouin clucked disapprovingly at her. “Of course not, Claire. Nay, what I had in mind for you to do, once you’re in a position of trust with my lord of Hawkswell, is to kidnap his heir and the other whelp and bring them to us. The baron will find it advantageous to switch sides, right enough, if we hold his children hostage.”
Chapter Two (#ulink_7ddbde8b-82fe-5001-ac03-f5724848ac4e)
Claire gasped. “You—you wish me to abduct his children?”
Hardouin smiled broadly. “Just so, niece! Isn’t it a brilliant plan? Who would suspect a young nursemaid? You will go in, gain his trust and that of his whelps, and one day, you will stroll out of his castle with them on the pretext of gathering herbs or some such idea, and voilà! You will bring them right to my waiting arms! He’ll come over to our side, right enough, especially if I hold his heir! Close your mouth, Neville, you look like the village idiot.”
“But my lord, I hardly think—” Claire began, her mind whirling with a hundred reasons why the count’s plan couldn’t possibly work.
“What, Claire, objections? Can it be you do not want to avenge your friend Julia, his dead wife?”
Leave it to Hardouin to ferret out the one reason why she was honor-bound to agree to his plan, Claire thought dully. But in spite of what Alain of Hawkswell had done, the very idea of stealing a man’s children…
“And if I refuse?”
Hardouin looked grim. “Then I think you had better resign yourself to wedding Fulk,” he said.
“But—but you said you had no quarrel with my unwillingness to marry him…that he was a blowhard! You said you supported my choice not to marry at all, if that was what I wanted!” she cried indignantly, feeling her face flush with rage.
Hardouin’s eyes narrowed, and Claire could see a small vein throbbing in his forehead. “I have said you need not marry, Claire, but I have no patience with unproductive leeches. If you refuse to be of any service whatsoever to the head of your family and our cause, then I would at least expect you to marry and remove yourself from our care,” he ground out.
She felt her face flame at being called a leech. “I believe I would rather take the veil after all,” she countered, lifting her chin and looking him right in the eye. Never again, she had promised herself, would she allow herself to be coerced into carrying out a man’s will. She wasn’t sure at all that entering a convent was preferable to agreeing to Hardouin’s plan, but seeing his implacable gaze, she rebelled. There would be opportunity to escape from a convent, surely, once she was safely away from her uncle’s control…
“I think not,” he said. “No convent in the land will take you if I say nay.”
He meant it, she saw. And she had no doubt he had that power. Hardouin would see that she had no dowry to give a religious foundation, and what abbess would take her if a powerful male relative opposed her entry?
Besides, a voice murmured inside her head, was it not true that she owed something to Julia’s memory?
“But what if there already are nursemaids aplenty?” she asked skeptically.
His returning smile told her he knew her question meant she was submitting. “My spy tells me there is but one old beldam caring for Hawkswell’s whelps. She’ll no doubt welcome the help.”
Claire shrugged. “How very convenient. And I will be free once I deliver my lord of Hawkswell’s children to you? You will then give me the manor—in writing?”
Hardouin nodded, chuckling. “So suspicious! So earnest! Yes, you’ll be free as a bird, niece. A woman of property.”
It was an unfortunate comparison, for just inches from Hardouin stood the perch on which the earl kept his falcon, a peregrine. Claire glanced over at the bird, seeing the jewel-studded hood over the falcon’s head, keeping it blind and relatively tranquil, and the jesses with little silver bells at her feet. As if the bird of prey sensed Claire’s scrutiny, she bated on her perch, setting the tiny bells tinkling. Hardouin’s falcon was only free when she had been launched after some prey, and even then the lure of food kept her returning to the earl. Claire did not want to be like that tethered falcon. Having her own manor would be a start.
Alain of Hawkswell’s castle was a day’s journey away. Situated at the entrance to the valley that led straight to London, it was directly in front of the best ford over the Hawkswell River, which cut through the downs. There was forest on the west side, but anyone who attempted to go around the fortress to ford the river was exposed to those who paced the wall walk of Hawkswell Castle. If any would cross the valley, then, they must have the consent of the castle’s lord.
It was a commanding position, thought Claire, studying it from the safety of a copse of oaks. Even now she could see a pair of sentries marching back and forth on the wall walk, their nasalled helmets obliterating their features. The drawbridge was down, the portcullis raised, and with the great wooden planking extending over the moat, Claire was reminded of a huge, hungry mouth.
