The Virgin's Daughter (Tudor Legacy #1)(49)
And that left, as always, Julien. Either he was part of Nightingale, or he wasn’t. If he wasn’t, then there were further options—that Walsingham was being paranoid and checking on him without reason, or someone had been making it look to the English as though Julien were involved. Lucette knew it was impossible to prove a negative. Thus, it would be a waste of time trying to prove that Julien hadn’t done something. The only way was the most straightforward (that being a relative concept in espionage): to uncover evidence of actual guilt in whomever it attached to.
And do it before she went home in two weeks.
She emerged from her chamber to the chateau’s public rooms in the early afternoon, wearing a gown of lightweight silk embroidered with flowers and vines in a riot of bright colours, deliberately chosen to catch a man’s eye and attention. If her body hoped it would be Julien thus drawn to her, her practical mind was pleased enough that it was Nicolas. His face lit up with a genuine smile of warmth and pleasure when he saw her.
“Ma chère mademoiselle,” he said, getting to his feet and coming to greet her. “How very well you are looking! We were all so sorry for your illness. Are you sure you are quite recovered?”
“All I need to complete my cure is fresh summer air. Would you care to join me?” She knew how to pose the question flirtatiously—if she wasn’t quite as naturally charming as Pippa, she could imitate it quite well.
In his gentle way, Nicolas replied, “Nothing would be a greater honour.”
They went around the water garden, enjoying the splash and play of the fountains, then descended to the Garden of Love, where Nicolas pointed out the roses, which he said her mother had loved. “She brought you here nearly every sunny day,” Nicolas remembered. “I think the roses reminded her of England, if not our French sunshine. I am so glad to be able to show it to you.”
“You have all been so kind. Much more than mere family sentiment demands.”
“I confess,” he said hesitantly, “that I did not expect to be more than polite to you this summer. When you were merely theoretical, with my last memories of you as only a child, I could not envision how very much I would…well…”
“How very much you would…?” she prompted.
“How very much I would like you.”
His simplicity was such a contrast to Julien’s demanding convoluted teasing. Lucette felt a stab of shame at her duplicity, but only for a moment. Nicolas might present a more straightforward face than Julien, but she wagered he, too, had his secrets. The maids, the groom, Richard Laurent and his inflammatory religious tracts…many threads traced back to Nicolas. The task was to tease out which had specific bearing on her quest.
Her next question, broached delicately, was the first salvo. “Thank you, Nicolas. It is very kind of you to say. I, too, have been unexpectedly caught by liking here.”
“Julien can be very engaging when he wishes.”
She was quite sure she did not imagine the dark undertone to his words. Did it mean he was jealous? “I was thinking of Felix, actually. I don’t know when a boy has so stolen my heart.”
That pleased Nicolas. “It is mutual, Lucette. I do not know how Felix will be content to let you go. My son has had so little of a woman’s love in his life. Charlotte is busy with her own family, and since my mother’s death, I fear the boy is often lonely.”
He was practically leading her to where she wanted to go. “How sad that his mother could not live to take joy in her son. You both must miss her very much.”
Nicolas was silent, and seemed to be studying the gravel at his feet as they paced sedately through the summer flowers. “It is a great loss to a child not to know his mother, but I confess that, for myself, the loss was…less.”
He met her eyes then, and said almost urgently, as though desperate to make her understand, “Célie was very young, you see, and the match was made by our parents. Pretty and pleasant, but we had little time together to approach anything like my parents’ love for each other. I think I bewildered her, and I confess I was not the wisest of husbands. I should have made more of an effort. But I thought we would have many years to get to know and appreciate each other. And then she was gone.”
“I do wonder why you have not given Felix a mother since,” Lucette ventured, knowing she was on delicate ground. There could be no excuse for this impertinence.
But rather than take offense, Nicolas answered thoughtfully, “Do you? It was not for any great loss of love for Célie. Guilt, perhaps, as much as anything. And also…”
“Also?”
“I was in Paris during the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.”
It was so unexpected, especially coming on the heels of Julien’s revelation, that Lucette could think of nothing to say. She tried to look encouraging, and it must have sufficed, for Nicolas continued. “It was a horrific experience. I was somewhat—”
He broke off. Lucette bit her tongue, sensing that he would stop if she gave him any reason to.
Finally he continued, almost angrily, “I was injured, rather severely, in the violence. A difficult recovery, compounded by Célie’s death and the shock of becoming a father to a motherless son, meant that I had little reason to leave Blanclair at first. And then it became a habit.
“But habits can become crippling.” He stopped walking next to a rosebush that was nearly as tall as she was, starred with creamy buds of ivory and yellow. Lucette was only slightly surprised when he took both her hands in his and fixed her intently with his eyes. “More than anything, Lucette, your presence here has shown me that life goes on. And perhaps even joy.”