The Virgin's Daughter (Tudor Legacy #1)(100)
She could no more have stopped her answering smile than she could have stopped breathing. “And you are the most charming liar I’ve ever known.”
This doesn’t end here, she swore silently to herself. I’m dragging us both out of this if it’s the last thing I do.
—
When Julien could no longer bear the blinding beauty of Lucette’s smile, he turned deliberately to where Nicolas waited for him, sword in his right hand, Julien’s dagger in his left.
The key would be to take out—or take over—one of those weapons as quickly as possible. Julien wasn’t afraid to fight dirty, and he had the edge of having fought for his life more than once during the years Nicolas had stayed at Blanclair. Practice yards were one thing; fights to the death another.
The key to fighting dirty was the unexpected. Nicolas thought Julien had been left unarmed—because he didn’t take into account that household items can become weapons in the hands of a creative man. When Nicolas paced him, as though they were fighting in the practice yard once more, Julien seized the first thing his hand touched. It was one of the highbacked chairs at the table, too heavy for an accurate disarming blow, but the weight of it made Nicolas stagger to the side. In that moment of unsteadiness on his feet, Julien made a grab for the candlesticks on the table, fortunately unlit, and, with one in each hand, advanced on his brother.
The silver was heavy enough to deflect the sword’s thrust at his ribs, but the blow jarred clear through Julien’s shoulders and he dropped one of the candlesticks. He used the remaining one to slip through Nicolas’s guard and hit him on the side of the head. His brother grunted and drove the dagger up, catching Julien’s arm in a long scratch that tore through fabric and drew blood.
But that move, by Nicolas’s weaker hand, gave Julien the chance to elbow his brother just below his throat. When Nicolas staggered back, Julien twisted the sword out of his hand. In a continuation of that movement, he pushed the tip against the floor and brought his weight down through his boot onto the slender blade until it broke. He tossed the hilted piece across the hall and kicked away the remaining half. Lucette was already scrambling for them when Nicolas was on him in a flurry, and Julien had to concentrate to keep the dagger away from his face.
The tip caught a glancing blow to the top of an ear, but then he circled his brother’s wrist with both hands and forced the dagger away. With a vicious twist, he wrenched Nicolas’s wrist, but his brother would not drop the dagger.
Then Nicolas yelled, and Julien saw Lucette pulling back the blade she’d shoved into his brother’s calf. Where the hell had she hidden another weapon? Then he recognized the twisted, ornamental ruby pin that had been in her hair and almost laughed. Trust Lucie to have dangerous hair ornaments.
In the chaos, Nicolas slipped out of his grasp. He dropped Julien’s dagger, but only to knock Lucette’s small blade away and wrap his hands around her neck. She wasn’t very big; Nic’s hands completely spanned her neck. His thumbs dug into her throat and Julien could hear her gasping for breath. Already he was moving, fitting his own familiar dagger into his hand.
His first strike was in Nic’s upper arm, which caused a satisfying spurt of blood. Nicolas hissed in pain and, loosening his grip on Lucette’s throat, grasped her loosened hair and shoved her away. She tripped over her skirts and her head hit the floor with a distinct thud.
Nicolas grinned at him with sudden, feral humor. “You’re too honourable to kill me, brother.”
Julien drove his dagger at Nicolas’s throat, but his brother sidestepped just quick enough to avoid it. He elbowed Julien in the temple as he moved; pain blossomed behind Julien’s eyes and he dropped his dagger. Almost the next moment he felt a second pain, lower down, and realized Nicolas had grabbed the falling dagger and plunged it into Julien’s stomach.
The doubled pain threatened blackness, but his instincts were stronger. And so was Lucette. She was on her feet next to him and, without even looking, Julien grasped the hair ornament she held, sticky with Nic’s blood.
“Not so very honourable,” Julien choked, and thrust. He didn’t aim to wound; the blade went straight into Nic’s throat. There was an instant spray of blood, warm and thick across Julien’s hands and face, and then he fell.
What a bloody waste of a life. As the words flitted across his rapidly darkening mind, Julien didn’t know if he meant Nicolas or himself.
TWENTY-FIVE
14 August 1580
Wynfield Mote
It is over. We are restored to our home, almost…I nearly wrote “almost as though nothing had happened” but that is patently untrue. There is blood in our hall, and two bodies in the icehouse. And in her bedchamber, Lucette sits watch over Julien LeClerc as though her own breath is tied to his.
When Dominic and the others had silenced the men Nicolas had surrounding the moat, they had to decide whether to storm the house. They could hear nothing in the hall, so Dominic kept Stephen and the men outside the front door and took Kit with him through the study windows around back. It is a good thing Dominic is not given to second-guessing himself or dithering, because when he reached the hall, it was to find Lucette cradling Julien’s head in her lap. She was covered in his blood, as I saw for myself, for she refused to wash or change or leave Julien until I promised that I would hold his hand while Carrie helped her.