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My Lady Reluctant
Laurie Grant
THESE WERE DANGEROUS TIMESAnd none knew it better than Brys de Balleroy as he played a deadly game in the service of his queen. 'Twas an honorable but lonely life, until the night the Lady Gisele stood naked and determined by his bedside
!Gisele de L'Aigle would be no man's property, yet she'd brought upon herself the royal decree that would see her wed tot he Baron of Balleroy. And though her spirit rebelled, Brys had saved her from certain death, and roused her passion in a way no man had done before.
“If I could transform myself into a man this instant, I would do so,”
she snapped. “All my life I have been made to feel I had no value because I was a female. But worthless as I am, Brys, I care about you….” Her voice trailed off. Then Gisele almost jumped when she felt his hand touching her shoulder.
“And I for you, though I know you will not believe it, Gisele,” he said, his voice husky. “I have been fighting my desire for you ever since I found you in the Weald. But you didn’t want to become a wife, and I thought you deserved better than me.” He looked away, adding, “Yet I could not resist trying to seduce you in the garden. Damn me for a double-minded rogue.”
“Deserved better than you, my lord?” she asked, honestly puzzled. “Why on earth would you say that…?”
Dear Reader,
Welcome to Harlequin Historicals, Harlequin/Silhouette’s only historical romance line! We offer four unforgettable love stories each month, in a range of time periods, settings and sensuality. And they’re written by some of the best writers in the field!
We’re very excited to bring you My Lady Reluctant, a terrific new medieval novel by Laurie Grant. This book has something for everyone—intrigue, emotion, adventure and plenty of passion! Spurned by her betrothed and forced to find another husband, the heroine travels from Normandy to England to attend court. En route, she is attacked by outlaws but is rescued by a mysterious knight…who protects her by day and invades her dreams by night!
The Outlaw’s Bride by Liz Ireland is a fresh, charming Western about a reputed Texas outlaw and a headstrong “nurse” who fall in love—despite the odds against them. Deborah Simmons returns with a frothy new Regency romance, The Gentleman Thief, about a beautiful bluestocking who stirs up trouble when she investigates a jewel theft and finds herself scrutinizing—and falling for—an irresistible marquis.
And don’t miss Carolyn Davidson’s new Western, The Bachelor Tax. In this darling tale, a least-likely-to-marry “bad boy” rancher tries to avoid a local bachelor tax by proposing to the one woman he’s sure will turn him down—the prim preacher’s daughter….
Enjoy! And come back again next month for four more choices of the best in historical romance.
Sincerely,
Tracy Farrell
Senior Editor
My Lady Reluctant
Laurie Grant
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Available from Harlequin Historicals and LAURIE GRANT
Beloved Deceiver #170
The Raven and the Swan #205
Lord Liar #257
Devil’s Dare #300
My Lady Midnight #340
Lawman #367
The Duchess and the Desperado #421
Maggie and the Maverick #461
My Lady Reluctant #497
To my wonderful agent, Maryanne Colas, for her
guidance (and help with my French!) and friendship,
and always, to Michael, my very own hero
Contents
Prologue (#u31381e07-93a3-5443-9f6e-767f36f19a5d)
Chapter One (#u51a22f52-7296-5b4b-a970-35afa0fc781a)
Chapter Two (#u3ba0a77c-c5b0-5119-a536-4c714b8b2204)
Chapter Three (#udd2d829c-ae3c-56bf-87b7-fbfd40d682e9)
Chapter Four (#uafe06faf-d74a-5fe5-a036-a33e563d5b5a)
Chapter Five (#ue601cddf-570d-5ef4-948a-0b92bb7a131d)
Chapter Six (#u0bde2ab4-1eb0-5c13-bba6-01581054f98a)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Historical Afterword (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
Normandy, 1141
“He rejected me? The Baron of Hawkswell rejected me, Sidonie Gisele de l’Aigle? Is he so rich that he has no interest in wedding an heiress?” Indignation laced Gisele’s voice and sent a rush of heat up her neck to flush her cheeks. By the Virgin, she would never survive the humiliation, the shame!
Her father, Charles, Count de l’Aigle, smirked. “Nay, he’s but a fool. Not only is Alain of Hawkswell not overwealthy, but he’s spurned you for a lady whose family are adherents of Stephen’s!”
Gisele felt her jaw drop with shock, and for a moment she forgot the affront to her own pride. For one of the Empress Matilda’s lords to refuse her choice of a bride for him, the heiress of a Norman family whose alliance with the empress was bedrock-solid, was beyond foolish, unless…
“Is he changing sides, then? Does he now side with King Stephen?” she mused.
Her father’s brow furrowed, and he rubbed his chin.
“Nay, that’s the mysterious part. The word is he’s as much Matilda’s man as before, yet he’s apparently married the woman with Matilda’s blessing.”
Gisele sighed as the pain of rejection mingled with envy in her soul. It wasn’t so mysterious, not to her. Lord Alain had married for love. He had loved this woman enough to risk the empress’s displeasure and had been rewarded by not losing her favor. Ah, to have a man love her, Gisele de l’Aigle, like that! And the name Alain had had such a kind sound to it. Gisele had thought that here was a man who might understand her, who might value her for what she was, and not merely what she could bring him by marriage. Her heart mourned the passing of that dream.
“There must be more going on there than meets the eye,” her father continued, oblivious of her grief, “but in any case my problem is not solved. Here I am, an old man with no heir for my lands but a mere girl, a girl who’s of marriageable age, and not a husband in sight.”
Being seen as of no value by her father, at least, was an old and familiar hurt. He had always treated her as if being born female were somehow a fault she could have remedied in the womb if she’d only been industrious enough. I may be but a girl, but I’m worth your love, she wanted to cry, but knew it was no use. He could not love her, would never love her as he would have if she’d been the son he’d hoped for. Now she only represented a pawn he could use to obtain a son, at least one by marriage. Well, she’d have no more of it!
“Don’t think you can palm me off on some sprig of nobility on this side of the Channel, then, my lord father! I’ll just stay here at l’Aigle and be your chatelaine,” she announced, stalking over to the open window to look down on the swirling currents of the Risle that flowed just beyond the curtain wall.
“And when I die?” her father interrupted, his face darkening.
“I’ll be the Lady of l’Aigle in my own right.”
“Foolish wench!” Her father’s voice was a lash that cut her heart. “Did you just crawl out from underneath a cabbage leaf? No mere female can hold a castle, l’Aigle or any other!”
“But the empress is her father’s heir to the throne in her own right.”
“Yes, and you have heard what a merry time she’s having trying to hold on to that throne, have you not?” the count retorted. “England is torn apart while she wrangles with her cousin, Stephen of Blois! And you’d be overrun by our nearest neighbor in a se’enight. Nay, Sidonie Gisele—” he always used both her names, both the one she went by, Gisele, as well as her first name, which had been the name of his despised dead wife, when he meant to make an unpleasant point “—a noble female has two choices in this world—the marriage bed or the convent. I cannot even allow you to chose the latter, for I have no heir and I will not give l’Aigle back to the duchy of Normandy when I die!”
His last words, shouted so loudly that they echoed off the stone walls, merely strengthened her resolve to be owned by no man. But before she could voice her resistance, her father spoke again.
“I haven’t given up my dream of having a holding in England, even if only through my daughter,” the count replied in his condescending way, “and actually, the empress has not left me without remedy,” the old man said, joining her at the window. “She bids me send you to wait upon her. As a lady-in-waiting to the empress, you are bound to catch the eye of some powerful and marriageable vassal of hers.”
“I? Go to England alone?” How could he send her to a country he had just described as torn apart by civil war? Yet, there were advantages to the idea, not the least of which was the pleasure of leaving behind a father who could not love her or even respect her. The empress was a powerful woman, even though she was having to fight to keep the crown her father, Henry, had bequeathed her. Matilda, a woman unhappy in her own marriage, would surely understand Gisele’s wish to control her own fate, and allow her to remain unwed.
Mayhap, once she was in England, she’d see this Alain, Baron of Hawkswell, and the lady he’d chosen over her.
“Nay, of course you would not be alone,” the old man snapped. “I believe I know what’s due to the heiress of l’Aigle. I would have to send a suitable escort of my knights along—a half dozen should be an impressive enough number, though I can ill spare them, you know—and old Fleurette to attend you. The knights will return as soon as they’ve delivered you to the empress, while Fleurette can remain with you.”
Thus ridding you permanently of two mouths to feed rather than one, eh, Father? The idea of her old nurse, now more of a beloved companion than a servant, coming with her was comforting enough to prevent Gisele from commenting on her father’s begrudging her even the temporary use of six of his knights.
Once she was in England, all would be different.
Chapter One
“I vow, there is nothing more to bring up but my toenails,” moaned Gisele in the sheltered aftcastle of the cog Saint Valery.
“Yes, you’re no sailor, that’s sure,” Fleurette murmured soothingly as she smoothed the damp brown locks away from Gisele’s forehead as her lady lay with her head pillowed in her old nurse’s lap. “The Channel’s been smooth as glass from the moment we left Normandy. I’d hate to see how you’d fare in rough seas.”
“Well, you never shall, for I’m never setting foot on a ship again my entire life,” muttered Gisele, then grabbed the basin at her nurse’s feet as a new round of spasms cramped her belly.
“What, never returning home?” asked the old woman in shocked tones. “Of course you shall return to Normandy, if only to allow your father to meet the fine lord you will marry, and to show him his grandchildren.”
Gisele had yet to confide in her former nurse that her plans were different from those her father had made for her, and she didn’t have the energy to do it now, so she merely played along.
“Of course I shall go to Normandy to show off my husband and the babes he shall give me,” she told Fleurette with a wan attempt at a smile. “I’m sure we shall be so blissful that it will be no effort at all to just float across the waves….”
“Ah, go on with you, then!” Fleurette said, giving her an affectionate pat. “You always did have a ripe imagination!”
“I have an imagination? ’Tis you imagining me with a husband and babe in a triumphal return to l’Aigle, long before we have so much as landed in England, let alone met any of Matilda’s marriageable lords.”
“Eh, well, I don’t know what your lord father can be thinking of, sending you off to a country in the grip of civil war—”
“England lies ahead!” called the lookout in the crow’s nest.
Within an hour of landing, they were on their way to London. Gisele, exhausted from the hours of retching aboard the tossing cog, would have liked to lie overnight in Hastings, and she knew the elderly Fleurette would have been better off with a night of rest. But Sir Hubert LeBec, the senior of the knights, was a hard-bitten old Crusader who clearly saw escorting his lord’s daughter as an onerous chore, to be accomplished as swiftly as possible. He allowed Lady Gisele and her companion just time enough to take some refreshment at an inn, but no more.
Gisele had thought just an hour ago she’d never be able to eat again, but now, revitalized by a full stomach and delighted to be back on firm ground again, did not begrudge her father’s captain his hurry. She was eager to get on with her new life, the life that would begin once she reached London, which was now held by the empress.
Lark, the chestnut palfrey she had brought from l’Aigle, had smooth paces and gentle manners, allowing Gisele to savor the beauty of the coastal area as they left the town behind. The countryside was decorated in the best June could offer. Blue squill garnished grasslands nearest the sea, giving way to white cow parsley banking the roadsides, mixed with reddish-purple foxglove. Some fields were dotted with grazing sheep; others looked like they were carpeted in gold, for the rape grown to feed pigs and sheep was now in flower. In the sky, skylarks and kestrels replaced the gulls that had ruled the air over the harbor.
