The Virgin's Daughter (Tudor Legacy #1)(45)
“And you were in love with her?”
Julien didn’t bother to confirm the obvious. Or was it so obvious? He had certainly thought himself in love with the girl, and perhaps that was all that mattered. “Léonore was a Huguenot, which is why she served in that household. She was not actually at Walsingham’s house itself at the time, though, which might have saved her life. It was the middle of the night, remember? She was at home. Her house, known to be Huguenot, was attacked and Léonore had her throat cut after being raped by the Catholic mob.”
“Where were you?”
How the devil did she know precisely the most painful question to ask? “I was not in her bed, if that’s what you mean. More’s the pity for her. Losing her virtue would certainly have been preferable to losing her life. But she was blamelessly sleeping alone, with only women in the household. Her brothers had been summoned to the fighting. They returned in time to be slaughtered as well.”
He expected another piercing question, another flaying of the sensibilities he kept carefully guarded, used only as motivation. Instead she said simply, “I am sorry for you both.”
That naked compassion shook him; it had been so long since he had traded in any relationship other than those based on mutual lies.
Roughly, he said, “You know, of course, that the massacres did not stop that night, and were not confined to Paris. For weeks whole Huguenot communities were wiped out—men, women, children. All in the name of a vengeful God I found I could not satisfy my conscience with. It was then I offered my aid to Walsingham.”
“What sort of aid?”
“Exactly the sort you would imagine. For eight years I have been embedded in a Catholic network in France that wants to see Queen Elizabeth assassinated and Mary Stuart on England’s throne. Them, I do allow to pay me. I give them just enough fact not to make them suspicious, but most of what I learn goes to Walsingham.”
Lucette was studying him intensely. After what looked like an internal struggle of some kind, she asked abruptly, “Have you heard of Nightingale?”
“The bird or the inn?” he joked. “No. Some sort of plot, I imagine. What is it?”
Another, much longer pause. “I think that if Walsingham wanted you to know, he’d have told you. Or instructed me to tell you. As he did not, I can only assume that he is perhaps suspicious of you. Or of those you are in contact with. I think I shall keep the details to myself.”
“I suppose that is why you were at the inn the night you…fell ill?”
“Perhaps I was merely looking for adventure.”
Her lips curved and the atmosphere turned from tense and suspicious to tense and…playful? Flirtatious? It lightened his heart, though perhaps that was only the relief of sharing a secret that not a soul other than Walsingham had known. “Poor Charlotte. She thought she was bringing you here for romance. How disappointed she will be when you leave Blanclair with your heart intact.”
“Who says my heart is intact?” Those uncanny eyes of hers did not waver, fixing him with a gleam he had last seen faintly when he’d laid her down on her sickbed.
His own eyes narrowed, though his heart stuttered. “There are some things about which a Frenchman never teases. Hearts are one.”
“Julien,” she said softly, so that he had to tip his head closer to hear her. “Do you remember what you said to me the first day you took me riding?”
I have never in my life kissed a woman who has not asked it of me. He remembered. He remembered the gloss of her dark hair, the gleam of her pale skin in sunlight, the organza partlet that covered her throat and shoulders, almost but not quite see-through…
She took a step, and then another, until he could feel it when she breathed out. “I’m asking,” she whispered. “Will you kiss me, Julien?”
He had not kissed a woman like her since Léonore. He’d had a lot of practice since then and thought himself hardened to feminine charms, using them to his advantage and enjoying the process without ever being swept away, but he was lost the moment she touched his cheek with her hand.
With all the skill he could remember to muster, Julien kissed her. And then he completely forgot every skill he possessed and simply let instinct guide him. Instinct—and Lucette’s innocent warmth. If he hadn’t already been certain she was a virgin, he’d have known it from the way she kissed. There was little experience there, and even less deception.
At some point Lucette drew back enough to whisper, “I don’t know if I’m brave enough for this—”
“Then I shall be brave for the both of us.” He cupped her face in his hands, smoothing the skin across her cheeks with his thumbs, and studied those bright blue eyes for a sign to stop.
But then, belying her words, Lucette kissed him once more and Julien’s last clear thought for some time was, Perhaps Charlotte will get her way after all.
—
After two nights at Portsmouth, the royal procession to Hampton Court was stately but not especially leisured. There was no reason to linger along the route, seeing as Philip and the Spanish had never been all that loved in England, and now that he was about to divorce their queen, why would people turn out to cheer? They did come out for Elizabeth, of course, and Anabel was warmed by the response she herself received. She had traveled so rarely in her mother’s company that she never failed to be thrilled by the love that poured out of the English people to their monarch and her daughter.