By His Majesty's Grace

This was not, after all, the kind of mounting he had envisioned for this hour. Someone had seen to it he was disappointed in his desires. He looked away, his mouth set in a hard line as he considered, yet again, who that might be. Yes, and why.

They rode hard through the night, clattering along the dark lanes with only a fitful moon to show the way, choking on their own dust. No one called out or questioned their passage. They swept through villages and outlying farms where dogs barked and shutters were flung wide as householders leaned out to see who was abroad. Noting the king’s banner at the cavalcade’s head, the suddenly incurious banged their shutters closed again.

Dawn came, and still they kept the hard pace. Rand turned in his saddle to look back, seeking out Lady Isabel’s form near where her serving woman bumped along on her mule. His bride rode with her face set and her cloak rippling along the side of her mount, but her seat in her sidesaddle was not nearly as erect as when they set out. Facing forward again, Rand spurred to join the captain of his guard. He spoke a quiet suggestion.

At the next town, where they stopped to change horses, a narrow-bodied litter slung between mules was procured. Rand thought at first that his lady would decline being carried rather than riding, refuse the luxury of its feather-stuffed cushioning, also its hemp curtains, which shut out the sun’s bright rays. Good sense won out over pride, however, and she finally disappeared inside.

Traveling with the litter slowed them down, but was still better than being held up should the lady fall ill from exhaustion. She had just made this wearisome journey, after all, only to turn around and retrace the route.

It was late afternoon when Rand dropped back to walk his horse alongside the litter. Keeping his voice to a conversational tone, he said, “Lady Isabel, would you care for marzipan?”

She was doubtless either famished or bored to distraction, for she pushed back the side curtains at once. Supporting herself on one elbow, she asked, “Have you any?”

She appeared almost sybaritic among the litter’s cushions, with the lacings of her bodice loosened for ease and her golden hair escaping the confines of her veil. The sudden tightness in his groin was so intense it was an instant before he bethought himself and leaned to pass over the small drawstring bag filled with the confection that he had taken from his saddlebag. Watching with a rueful smile as she instantly drew it open and took out a piece that was dyed pink and green, it was a moment before he could speak again.

“Are you content in there?”

“Exceedingly. If the idea of the litter was yours, I thank you for it.”

“To see to your comfort is little enough. I am to blame for this sudden change of plans, after all.”

She swallowed the piece of marzipan, avoiding his gaze as she looked into the bag for another. “It seems a curious business. You are accused of a terrible act, yet allowed to ride as free as you please. I thought to see you in chains.”

“You might have, except I gave my pledge not to attempt to escape but to abide by the king’s will. William was good enough to accept it.”

“How convenient.”

“You don’t ask if I’m guilty.”

“Would you tell me if you were? If you are only going to protest your innocence, then where is the point?”

It was difficult to fault her logic, though it would have been pleasant if she had appeared to care one way or the other. That was apparently too much to expect. And if he did not look directly at her for any length of time, he discovered, he could attend to what she was saying instead of how she affected him.

“What if I’m not?” he asked after a moment.

“Then it will be shown, and all will be as before, yes?”

His every hope depended on it, and every future plan. “As you say.”

She looked up at that, as if something in his voice had snared her attention. “You doubt the king’s justice?”

It was the king’s motives Rand doubted, though it would be foolhardy to say so. The sentiment could become a weapon in her hands, and he had not the least idea how she would use it. “It will turn out as God wills.”

“Or as the king wills,” she said in tart reply, “which is supposed to be the same thing as he claims divine right. What I should like to know is why I was not told of this charge, was given no hint that you were involved in such a crime.”

His smile was grim. “That’s easily answered. There was no crime.”

“It’s all a mistake, then.”

He inclined his head as he thought of the tender and helpless babe he had helped bring into the world. “I pray it may turn out that way.”

“Who could have accused you? Have you no idea?”

“None whatever.”

“But there was a child?”

Rand made no reply. He had pledged to remain silent. He did not go back on his sworn oath.

“Not long after Henry Tudor arrived from Bosworth last year,” the lady observed, her gaze resting on his face, “rumor circulated of a Frenchwoman who had landed in Wales with him for the invasion and traveled in his baggage train. She never put in an official appearance at court, possibly because of his immediate betrothal to Elizabeth of York. Henry would have wanted nothing to stand in the way of his being wed to the daughter of Edward IV as it promised to add legitimacy to his claim to the throne….” She stopped, sending him an impatient frown. “Don’t look so hunted, no one can hear us!”

“It isn’t your lovely neck that may be stretched if Henry is displeased,” he said in dry reproof, “though it could be if you continue in this vein. That is, unless you are offered the ax as a noblewoman.”

She ignored that last sally. “What other vein is there? I only speak the truth.”

“The truth is what the king declares it to be.”

“So cynical. I did not know you were at court long enough for it.”

He glanced ahead to where the first riders of their long cavalcade approached the ford for a small stream. In the meadow behind them, a lark sang and a warm wind swept over the wheat awaiting harvest so it waved like a golden sea. The scents of ripening grain wafted around them, along with the dust of their passage and the hint of ripening berries from a distant hedgerow. All was well with their line of march for the moment.

“I was a part of Henry’s court long before he reached England’s shores last year,” he said finally. “It was enough.”

“You left it of your own will, then. Could be that’s why he has ordered you brought back. Those who wear the crown are often suspicious of men who withdraw from their august presence.”

“So it’s dangerous to get too close and dangerous to stay away. What is a peaceable man to do?”

She watched him a long moment before she spoke. “You really don’t care for court life.”

“I prefer Braesford, where my labors make a difference that can be seen, where there is time to watch the sunrise, the rain as it sweeps down the mountainsides and the fat lambs in the fields.”

“A farmer in all truth,” she murmured, almost to herself. An instant later, she frowned up at him. “Braesford is isolated enough to make a fine refuge. Also, the king would be reluctant to have his wife learn that he had a mistress tucked away in some hidden spot. She is with child, you know. The queen, I mean.”

“So I had heard.”

“She is due in a couple of months—fast work as the wedding was only in January. The king is greatly wrought, they say, because Elizabeth has never been robust. He might take pains to prevent her from learning his mistress was also with child. That is, of course, if this particular Frenchwoman was your guest when the incident of child murder came about.”

He might have known a lady familiar with court gossip would be able to work out the sequence of events. He was not inclined to confirm her thought, however. “There was no murder,” he said again.

“Yet someone seems to have done away with the child. It’s not too surprising, I suppose, given the many heirs who have died under mysterious circumstances— Edward IV’s two boys held in the White Tower, the son of Richard III and so many others. If the baby was a boy, even though illegitimate…”

“It was not—”

Rand came an abrupt halt, cursing softly before pressing his lips together.

“A girl child, then, and Henry’s daughter,” she said, leaning back in satisfaction. “It still gives rise to possibilities.”

Rand drew up and stepped down from his destrier, tossing the reins to his squire, who sidled close enough to take them. Catching up with the slow-moving litter in a few long strides, he swung inside and pulled the curtain across the opening, closing himself inside with Lady Isabel.

She dropped the bag of confections and scooted back against the litter’s front panel. Drawing up her legs, she wrapped her skirt around her bare ankles. “What…what are you doing?”

“How can I impress upon you the danger of speaking out of turn?” he demanded, leaning toward her with one arm braced on his raised knee. “You may think you are safe because Henry smiles upon you now and then or because you are a friend of his consort. But Elizabeth is yet uncrowned, and unlikely to be until she has produced an heir to the throne. As a daughter of the house of York, she remains at court on sufferance, so has no power to save you from Henry’s wrath. Indeed, she must keep her tongue between her teeth to protect herself from the watchers set around her by the queen’s mother.”

“Lady Margaret? She would never harm anyone.”

“A woman who can scheme for decades, marrying herself off to lay hands on the money necessary to raise an army strong enough to put her son on the throne, is capable of anything—and you’ll do best to remember it. Lady Margaret has only one thought in her head, and that is to gain whatever may be best for Henry. Cross her, allow her to perceive you as a threat, only at your peril.”

“Why should you care?” she asked so quietly he had to strain to hear. “Why would you warn me?”

“Because I am as devious as they are,” he said in grim despair. “I also have only one thought that has nothing to do with kings or queens.”

“And that would be?”

She should not have asked. It was all the excuse he required.

Reaching for her, he drew her into his arms so quickly he set the litter to jouncing on its straps. “To show you other uses for a lady’s mouth,” he answered in low hunger, “and particularly her small, sharp, pink-and-green-stained tongue.”

She stared up at him from where she rested against his upright knee, her eyes as smoky green as the northern hills, her flat cap and veil fallen away so her hair trailed in silken fire over his knee. Then her lashes fluttered shut as he set his mouth to hers.

She tasted of marzipan and sweet, warm female, a flavor headier than the finest mead. Rand reveled in it, intoxicated, fascinated by the softness of her lips, their moist inner surfaces, the glasslike edges of her teeth. Her breath feathered softly across his face. She was firmly rounded against him, enticing in her stillness. He released her arm, spanned the slender concave of her waist with hard fingers, skimmed upward until his palm cupped the glory of her breast. The nipple was a small, hard berry under the fine wool of her bodice. As it tightened further, he circled it with his thumb again and again in mindless exhilaration.

A low sound—part moan, part protest—left her. He heard but was beyond acknowledging it, deepening the kiss instead. The retreat of her tongue from his enticed him; the taste of her held him in thrall. The need for more, and still more of her, clamored in his head, his chest, his heated groin. Her wet softness was his grail and he searched diligently for it, sliding his hand back down over her hip and underneath the hem of her gown. He brushed upward over her calf, her thigh and higher, to where she lay unprotected, infinitely vulnerable to his marauding fingers.

She writhed, gasping at his touch, his intimate invasion. His overheated brain presented the image of how easy it would be to roll her beneath him and slide into her hot, moist depths, taking her there in the swaying bower of a litter while their guard trotted before and behind them.

He had forgotten the ford.

The litter lurched forward as they descended the near bank. Water splashed against the curtains, coming through as a drenching spray. Rand drew a sharp breath, returning abruptly to his senses. He sat for a rigid instant, fighting for control. Then he smoothed down Lady Isabel’s skirts and set her from him. Not trusting himself to speak, much less look at the woman he had mauled with such fine disregard for their circumstances, he waited until the litter lurched backward as its mules climbed from the ford. He batted aside the curtains then, and stepped down, sweeping them shut again behind him.

Some minutes later, when he had remounted the gray and cantered to the head of the column once more, his half brother fell into place beside him. “Well?” he inquired with a curl to his mouth.

“Well, what?” The words came out with more of a growl to them than Rand intended.

“How was she?”

“Comfortable,” he said, and felt heat burn the back of his neck.

“No doubt. But was she, is she, of an accommodating disposition?”

Rand gave McConnell a hard stare. “I have no idea. She deserves better than to be molested while half the men within two counties hang on every moan.”

“A sad waste of a fine opportunity, then, especially when you have the perfect excuse.”

“Nor does she need to be bedded by a man who may live only as long as it takes to reach the king’s Star Chamber. She will have a much better chance at another husband if there’s no chance she’s breeding.”

That was, to the best of his understanding, the reason he had left Isabel alone in the litter. The decision was sudden and in stark contrast to his previous intentions, so he had not been thinking too clearly.

There were, of course, those who would willingly take a pregnant woman to wife since her condition proved her ability to bear children. Most preferred a virgin, however, or at least a lengthy betrothal that would prove she was not with child. Anyway, the likelihood that Henry VII would now hand over the stepsister of the Earl of Graydon to a man charged with murder was so remote as to be laughable.

“Very noble, but will offer little satisfaction while you lie in a prison cell. Besides, if she was with your get, she could well inherit Braesford should you hang.”

“Keeping it from your possession? A strong incentive, I must say,” Rand answered in dry tones, looking away toward where the wooded copse they had traveled through followed the curve of the burn.

“Or I could offer my aid and support so she might persuade Henry that she requires a new husband to replace my bastard brother. Who knows? He could agree in honor of your memory.”

“So he might, but I wouldn’t depend on it. Besides, I don’t intend to be a mere memory.”

Rand kicked the stallion into a fast canter and left McConnell in the dust. If only his doubts and fears could be left behind so easily.

Isabel lay where Braesford had left her. She watched the spots of brightness caused by sunlight striking through the trees onto the hemp top of the litter. She should have been incensed. Instead, she was thoughtful.

Why had he stopped?

It seemed unlikely that a mere dash of water in the face could have had such effect. Had it brought him to his senses, as it seemed, or merely served to remind him of a deeper purpose? Had he really intended an object lesson in the proper use of her tongue or something more? Had he wanted to show her what was to come when they were joined in wedlock, or merely to prove she could be brought to succumb to desire for a nobody?

So this was passion, this languor in the blood and compelling urge toward surrender regardless of the cost. How strange it was, when she resented and half feared the man who caused it. She had heard women sigh after handsome gallants, going into ecstasies over their shoulders, their thighs beneath clinging hose or what lay beneath their extravagant codpieces. She had thought they exaggerated or else were being deliberately silly. All men possessed the same basic equipment, did they not?

Clearly, she had erred. Some men walked in an aura of masculinity far surpassing others. Their bodies were better formed, with muscles that moved like oiled silk under the skin. Their touch could inflame. They were a threat to female peace of mind. Dangerous, too, were their smiles. She would not have believed a man’s face could alter so easily from chill sternness to compelling warmth with the mere shift of facial muscles. It began in his eyes, she thought, the sudden rich amusement that she watched for with too much anticipation.

She must be on her guard every minute until they reached London. The Graydon curse had delivered her from immediate marriage to Braesford, and it would be foolish to succumb to his caresses in spite of it. The last thing she needed was to consummate a union she hoped to see dissolved. More, she could hardly claim to fear a husband who was charged with murder if witnesses could swear she had been intimate with him.

That was, of course, if it came to such a pass. It was possible the hangman would deliver her from the necessity.

It crossed her mind briefly that such could be the aim, that the king might have handed her over to a betrothed of lower rank knowing he would snatch her away again. Still, what could be the purpose of such a cruel game of cat and mouse? She could see none that made any sense.

She knew almost nothing about Randall Braesford, of course. There might be all manner of things in his past to cause hidden enmity. The court was a hotbed of jealous intrigue and petty vendettas. Anyone could have decided to play a vicious joke on this baseborn knight of high pride and stalwart courage.

The jest could also be on her. She had rejected a half-dozen offers for her hand while claiming the protection of the curse, turning a near spinster at three-and-twenty. Perhaps someone wanted to show her she was not immune to the fate of most women, of being married without her consent and for what she could bring to her husband. If Braesford knew of the curse and dared to defy it, then it made him the perfect choice. She was sure to be aghast at being handed over to a commoner whose lands were practically falling into the far North Sea. And if they had to see him hanged so she could be snatched back for the greater enjoyment of the joke, then what of it? He was nothing, a nobody.

Those who thought so had, just possibly, failed to take proper measure of Sir Randall of Braesford. This was a fact which could not be ignored, as much as it pained Isabel to admit it. Noble blood ran in his veins, regardless of his birth. He had not achieved his current position by being either stupid or unwary.

Easing to a sitting position, she retrieved the bag of marzipan and tied it closed before tucking it under a pillow. She shook the excess water from the litter’s curtain, used the hem of her skirt to wipe her arm where she had been splattered and tidied her veil that had somehow parted company with her hair. She was still tucking in stray tendrils when she heard hoofbeats coming closer.

“Lady Isabel? Are you all right in there?”

The voice belonged to Viscount Henley. It would be like him to make a commotion if she failed to answer. She shoved the curtain aside to gaze up at him with bland inquiry. “As you see, sir. Why should I not be?”

“No reason. I just thought…” He stopped, his broad, scarred face turning an unbecoming shade of purple. “I mean, you were so quiet in there.”

“I was attempting a nap, if you must know.” She crossed her fingers as she voiced that small lie. It was better than explaining her preoccupation.

“Your pardon, milady. Is there aught I can get you, aught you need?”

The man was a champion on the jousting field and arrogant with it at times. Eldest son of an earl, he had lost everything some three years before when his father was attainted for treason by Richard III, after rising in support of Edward IV’s heir, the very young Edward V, who had disappeared into the Tower. His title was complimentary now. What income he had came from sojourns on the continent where he participated in the tournaments held by kings and nobles, gaining ransom from hostages taken after victory on the field. Though lacking the estates which would have made him an acceptable husband, he was persistent in his addresses, with a habit of lying in wait for her in dim corners. Graydon, though standing as Henley’s friend, had always discouraged his suit, being unwilling to give up her fortune to a husband. For once, she had been grateful, as it saved her from having to put him off herself. It also meant she could afford to be gracious.

That had been before Henry had decided she should be wed.

“Not at the moment,” she answered as pleasantly as she was able. “Mayhap later.”

“Aye, milady. I’ll listen for your call.”

No doubt he would, she thought with a sigh as she dropped the curtain. She would not be making a request of him, however, not if she could help it. She would ask nothing of any man.

So they traveled southward toward London and beyond, down the old north road of the Romans through towns and villages large and small, until they clattered onto King’s Street. This thoroughfare, thronged with horses and carts, hawkers and beggars and strolling gentry, brought them finally to the ancient gates of Westminster. Winding through its narrow, fetid streets, they reached the myriad buildings and courtyards of soot-streaked stone known as Westminster Palace.

4

I sabel barely had time to remove her cap and veil before the door of her chamber, one of many allotted to less important personages housed at court, was flung open. A flurry of skirts and flying veils signaled the arrivals of her two sisters with whom she had shared the tiny space before leaving for her wedding journey, and would again for the time being. First inside was Catherine, three years younger at twenty and known to all as Cate, with Marguerite, the youngest at sixteen, following closely on her heels. Laughing, exclaiming, they welcomed her back with fierce hugs and a spate of anxious questions.

“Why have you returned so soon, dearest of sisters? Not that we are not glad of it, you may be sure, but we thought you gone for months, even years.”

“What occurred? Did Henry’s most loyal henchman reject you? Did you prevail upon Graydon to turn back?”

“Did our curse, perchance, overcome Henry’s decree? Tell us at once, before we run mad with curiosity!”

“No, no and yes,” Isabel answered, swallowing on tears as she returned her sisters’ welcoming embraces. How dear they were, and how she had missed them, their chatter, their smiles and unquestioning acceptance.

“Provoking jade! Is that all you have to say?” Cate rallied her. “Come, tell all. You know you must, for you shall have no peace otherwise.”

Isabel obliged as best she could while her sisters settled themselves on two of the three narrow beds that took up most of the room in the nunlike cell. While she talked, Isabel threw off her travel-soiled clothing and bathed quickly in cold water from a basin.

“I knew it!” Cate exclaimed when she was done. “You consider the curse mere foolishness, I know, but you are wrong. How else to explain the arrival of the king’s men at the very last instant? Admit it. You believe we walk in its shadow.”

Isabel gave her sister a wry smile. Cate was ever ready to see the best of any situation. Yes, and of people, as well. “Even though I concocted it from thin air?”

“Even so!”

“It’s difficult to disagree, I will admit.”

“Miracles are possible,” Marguerite said, “so the priests tell us. We have only to believe. You are protected, dear Isabel, until a husband is chosen who can love you with all his heart.”