The Virgin's Daughter (Tudor Legacy #1)(21)
She was truly on her own now. Time to see what she could do.
They stopped at an inn midday to rest the horses and eat. When they returned to the road afterward, it was Nicolas who maneuvered his horse alongside hers.
Julien called after his brother, “Watch yourself. If Charlotte hears of this, she’ll drag a priest in her wake when she comes to Blanclair.”
Accustomed to her brothers’ (mostly good-natured) bickering, Lucette expected a stinging reply from Nicolas. But Nicolas ignored his brother and turned his attention wholly to her.
And quite heady attention it was. Lucette had certainly had her share of male attention at court, but the Duke of Exeter’s fierce reputation—not to mention Queen Elizabeth’s close interest—kept such attention extraordinarily formal. And since her disastrous encounter with Brandon Dudley five years ago, Lucette had been content with the formality.
Nicolas, however, was French. And already in his thirties. A widower and father, who was less impressed with Lucette’s English network of relationships and comfortable in his own country and his own lands. He was an easy conversationalist, skillfully drawing her out as to her intellectual pursuits.
“I am quite abashed,” he said, after Lucette’s spirited account of the mathematical equations behind Mercator’s cylindrical map. “If that is the level on which your mind operates, I fear you shall quickly grow tired of our quiet life at Blanclair.”
“By no means,” Lucette replied warmly. “My favorite time of each year is that passed at Wynfield Mote. To ride and read and spend our evenings as a family rather than in grand parties?” She shrugged eloquently. “That has always been a time of great peace.”
“I, too, relish peace.” Nicolas stared ahead, brooding. “When I was young, I thought I should never wish to live anywhere but Paris and resented the necessary time spent in the country. But these last years, ever since…” He trailed off.
Since the death of your wife, Lucette finished. Her name had been Célie, she remembered. A sixteen-year-old married to Nicolas only eleven months when she’d died giving birth to their son, Felix.
Nicolas turned and smiled, a much gentler, warming smile than Julien’s challenging one. “To bring such a bright mind from the outside world to the quietness of Blanclair is a great gift. I thank you for it, Lucette.”
For the length of several erratic heartbeats, Lucette let herself pretend that she was here for nothing more than to catch the eye of the Blanclair heir. Here there was no queen to intimidate or authority to disapprove—here there was simply a man looking at her as though he liked what he saw. A man she had idolized as a child.
But, being herself, she did not linger in that pleasure. Her responding smile went from genuine to calculated—this much lift to the corners of her mouth to portray shy interest, this much of an angle to her downcast eyes to suggest demure appeal. This much personal exposure in hopes of reeling in someone in Nicolas’s family and delivering him to Walsingham.
“The gift,” she said, “is entirely your family’s doing. It is I who am grateful, sir.”
“Nicolas,” he insisted.
She tilted her head. “Nicolas.”
31 May 1580
Wynfield Mote
We have come home, Dominic and I, for a few weeks’ respite before returning to court. It is somewhat unsettling being here without any of the children, but also…well, there is a certain headiness to not having to worry who is going to walk around corners and interrupt whatever we may be doing.
I would be happy to remain here all summer, but Elizabeth has requested Dominic’s advice on the council that will oversee the dissolution of her marriage to King Philip. I think he would have said no, if it were not that Kit and Pippa will be at court then with Anabel. Elizabeth has pointedly not asked my opinion, but I imagine I will find a way to express it nonetheless. I think she expects me to always be disappointed, as though I have taken the place of her mother in some respects, but her marriage broke down long ago. Better a conscious and careful dissolution than violent recriminations.
Stephen writes twice a week from Tutbury. I wonder if he says any more to Walsingham than he does to us? And Lucette has written dutifully along the road. Last we heard, they were just about to enter Paris. If all has gone to schedule, she will be on her way to Blanclair now.
I wonder if her childhood infatuation for Nicolas LeClerc will be revived. I should be less troubled by that thought than I am—after all, she must marry someone, and who better than Renaud’s heir?
But I do not want her to leave England. What a pity children cannot be made to do only what will please their parents!
INTERLUDE
September 1568
Lucette never meant to eavesdrop. Exactly. It was just that she knew when something was not right in her home, and it would ring through her almost like pain until she knew what it was. Tension, disagreement, discordance…they called to her like the sirens of ancient Greece, clamouring for her attention.
She fancied she could see those tensions as coloured threads stretched between various people. Today, those troubled threads were noticeably woven through all the adults, but reached their deepest shade—an alarming red—in her parents. Usually they would talk out any troubles in the rose garden, but after the rider from London appeared with royal dispatches, Mother and Father shut themselves up in what had been Grandfather Wyatt’s study before the house was burnt and rebuilt.