The Virgin's Daughter (Tudor Legacy #1)(43)
He stilled, watching her beneath hooded eyes, and in that stillness was a promise of crushing strength and violence when necessary. “Merde. Ribault was right. You’re working for Walsingham.”
She kept her countenance blank. “Why would you think that? I am a woman.”
“All the better for deception, Lucie—and very adept you are. The question is, why didn’t I know this before?”
“I may not know much about intelligencers, but surely the first requirement is secrecy. The enemy is hardly likely to let you know you’re under suspicion.”
A blank pause, then, to her astonishment, Julien threw his head back and laughed. “You’re letting me know,” he pointed out, amusement colouring his voice. “As no doubt Walsingham knew you would eventually. Lucie mine, you really aren’t a natural to the shadow world of spies if you just believed everything Francis Walsingham told you without question.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did he set you on me in particular?”
She picked her way through what she could say without revealing too much. “No. It was Blanclair in general he was concerned with.”
“A fishing expedition, damn the man.”
“What are you talking about?”
Julien sobered, and put his hands on her shoulders. She nearly trembled under the weight of them, the width and warmth of his palms, the steadiness that promised here was a man who could keep you grounded.
But his words pulled the ground right out from beneath her. “I have been Walsingham’s man for eight years, Lucie. I work for the English.”
INTERLUDE
August 1572
Paris in August was a mess of muggy skies and tempers that flared in direct proportion to the temperatures. But the weather notwithstanding, everyone who mattered in French society and government was in Paris this August for the wedding of the king’s sister, Margaret, to Henry of Navarre. The Huguenots had come to support their champion, Henry, and the Catholics had come to register their dissent to the Catholic princess lowering herself to this marriage.
The LeClerc family had come because Renaud was still a member of the royal military, though much less used since the death of the previous king, and had distant ties to the throne. Their home was Catholic, but not doctrinaire, and Nicole LeClerc in particular had become something of a well-known friend to the Huguenots.
At twenty-one, Julien LeClerc cared nothing for religious divides, except for the fact that he’d fallen in love with a very pretty Parisian Huguenot, Léonore Martin, who served as a companion in Francis Walsingham’s house. As the English queen’s ambassador to France, Walsingham was naturally a lightning rod for both Huguenot and Catholic—the former in approval, the latter in hostility.
The sense of real trouble began the day Renaud was dispatched out of Paris by the king to settle a report of unrest near the Italian border. Coming just a few hours after the attempted assassination of the well-known Huguenot, Admiral de Coligny, the order made Renaud jumpy.
“I’d tell you to leave for Blanclair,” he told his sons, “but I’m not sure that the roads will be the safest place just now for your mother and sister. Probably better to stay in Paris for a few weeks until things quiet down. Use your best judgment,” he instructed Nicolas, “and Julien, don’t do anything rash. Nothing comes before the safety of your mother and Charlotte.”
Two days later all hell broke loose. Julien had felt it coming for hours, the heat of the day containing violence in its oppression. He’d insisted his mother and Charlotte remain in the house, but Nicolas had left hours earlier for who knew what tavern or woman. Julien kept pacing the house, from top to bottom, until his mother said sharply that he was frightening the servants.
Shortly after the bells rang for Matins, the first sounds of open fighting began to filter through the streets, seeping in through the upper windows opened for a breath of air. That was it; he couldn’t just sit here. If there were clashes between Catholic and Huguenot, then the English ambassador would be a target, and so might those French Protestants who worked in his home.
He explained himself tersely to his mother. Nicole LeClerc might not approve, but she was a naturally kind woman and she loved her children. She must have read his aching need to do something, for she reluctantly agreed that he should try to make his way to Léonore’s home and see if he could get her and her family back to greater safety in the well-defended, royally connected LeClerc house.
Leaving the house and its armed guards under his mother’s command, Julien slipped through back streets in the dark, plain clothing he’d borrowed from one of the men-at-arms.
Léonore’s family lived just a mile away, but it took him nearly an hour to detour around shops being pillaged and burned, homes invaded and destroyed. He heard screams and smelled blood, so thick in the air one could almost taste it. Julien carried both sword and dagger, but he had no wish to add to tonight’s bloodshed if he could help it. Sickened by what he’d already seen, he knew they should have gotten out of Paris when they still could. He would never be able to forget the things he’d seen tonight. Or forgive the fact that it was Frenchman against Frenchman.
Which again led him to wonder uneasily where the hell Nicolas was. His brother should have stayed at Blanclair with his wife, heavily pregnant with their first child, but Nicolas spent as little time as possible with Célie. He preferred the readily available women of Paris.