The Virgin's Daughter (Tudor Legacy #1)(102)
Anabel seemed pleased at her mother’s choice of pronoun.
Elizabeth rose early the next morning and dressed for departure in a gown of pale green velvet cut high at the waist to show the patterned damask kirtle of green and gold. When she opened the door, she found Lucette waiting for her in the corridor. Elizabeth raised a quizzical eyebrow. “You could have knocked,” she pointed out.
“I wasn’t sure I wanted to see you.”
“How is your Frenchman?”
“He will live.”
“Good.”
Lucette stared at her as though she’d never seen the queen before.
Impatient, Elizabeth asked, “Well? Do you find you have something to say?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. You are my queen and as such you command my respect and even affection. But no more than that. I know who I am and who my parents are. I hope you will respect my family.”
She sounded so much like Will when laying down the law that Elizabeth had to blink fast to keep her composure. It took a moment to realize Lucette was trying to hand her something.
“This belongs to you.”
It was the necklace of enamel Tudor roses. Elizabeth felt a familiar fury tinged with an unfamiliar sense of shame. She took Lucette’s hand and covered it with her own. “Keep it. As a sign of my affection for your own sake.”
With that, the remote, imperious mask Lucette had assumed cracked. “You are a very great queen, Your Majesty. And yet I like you mostly for your own sake.”
And that was as fine a compliment as Elizabeth had been paid in many a long year.
—
It was three weeks before they let Julien get out of bed. He’d been shocked to realize it was Lucette’s bed they’d put him in, but as the days passed and his strength grew, he found the amusement in it. He thought of many teasing things to say to her, but found himself uncommonly tongue-tied.
Once Julien was out of immediate danger, Lucette spent only a few hours a day with him. He suspected Dominic had forbidden her more than that, and certainly no more nursing. It was one thing when a man was dying; a man halfway to being on his feet again was going to be closely supervised in Lucette’s presence. But Carrie was a lenient supervisor and there were plenty of opportunities for them to hold hands or touch if they cared to.
He didn’t know if Lucette cared to. And he cared so much that he was terrified to be rejected. So they were as chaste as though they were children.
The second week of September, as early autumn rain fell relentlessly against the walls of Wynfield Mote, Julien made it downstairs to the hall for dinner. The family gathered to celebrate his great accomplishment of walking down the stairs, but afterward everyone withdrew swiftly and tactfully. Even Lucette. She did not look back at him, but Kit did. He’d been studying Julien suspiciously throughout the meal, and his glance now seemed eloquent of distrust. There went a boy who would never find anyone good enough for his sisters.
Left alone with the Duke and Duchess of Exeter, Julien prayed fervently that Lucette’s parents would be kinder. Surely Minuette, gentle as she was, would moderate her husband. Not that Julien expected Dominic to hurt him, not truly, but one never knew. After all, Julien had killed his brother in this chamber with Dominic’s daughter caught in the middle. Who knew what the man might do?
What Dominic did first was ask him, “What next, Julien? The physician—and more importantly, both Carrie and my wife—say that you should be well enough to travel by the end of the month. Will you go?”
“I have to. You must know that.”
Dominic nodded in agreement. “So perhaps the pertinent question is—will you come back?”
He looked from Dominic’s stern gaze to Minuette’s more sympathetic one, and back again. “If you don’t mind, sir, I think that is a question Lucette should ask me first. If she cares to.”
He could have sworn a smile passed across Dominic’s face, but it was gone so swiftly he wasn’t sure. “I suppose you’re right. You may talk to her in here—with her mother and me close by, mind you.”
What did Dominic think, that he would ravish Lucette in the same hall where he’d killed Nicolas? Did they think he would take her on the table? Propriety alone would stop him, not to mention the fact that he could hardly breathe deeply without pain. Ravishment was as far from his mind as could be.
Until Lucette entered the hall alone, dark hair left loose against a striped gown of cream, gold, and orange. Like sunset, or autumn leaves. Her skin glowed in the late twilight pouring through the open windows and Julien thought dizzily that the physical pain of ravishment just might be worth it after all. She sat next to him with an expectant gaze. Why was she here again? He’d had a hard time thinking clearly since being stabbed. Not that he’d ever been able to think clearly around Lucette.
“My father says there’s something I’m supposed to ask you,” she ventured.
Ah, right. “At the end of the month, I’ll be leaving Wynfield. Your father said he would help me arrange passage home.”
“You’re going back to France.”
“I have to. I cannot simply write to my father, not to mention Felix—” He broke off. “They deserve to hear what happened from me. You know it.”
She did not deny it, but still argued. “What if the Catholics are waiting for you? Nicolas had been tracking your movements for months, what if he told them that you were a traitor? They could so easily—”