The Virgin's Daughter (Tudor Legacy #1)(65)

SIXTEEN




Nicolas held his breath. It was a very calculated risk he was taking—but he did not believe Lucette was the kind of woman to recoil in horror or faint in shock. He rather thought she was a woman who liked being treated as though her mind mattered as much as her body, and so he had at last decided to risk that particular truth.

But for all his calculated risk, he did find himself curiously light-headed. It was the first time he’d ever said the words aloud. Not that words could convey the full damage that had been done to him.

Lucette went perhaps a shade paler. “I am sorry—” She broke off, forehead creased, and said impatiently, “What a ridiculous thing to say! Of course I am sorry and of course those are mostly empty words.”

“Not coming from you.” He paused, and added, “I do apologize. This is not a proper topic for any woman, and I don’t doubt that you will be eager to escape my company now.”

“Why? We cannot choose our injuries.”

“It would be different if you were a married woman, for then you would begin to realize what I lost. But then, if you were married, we would not be having this conversation.”

“Why are we having this conversation?”

“Because for the first time I have met a woman whom I very much want to be my wife. And that is the most selfish desire I have ever had in my life. Which is saying something,” he added wryly.

“Selfish?”

“You realize that the Church would never sanction a new marriage for me. I am not fit for such a state in their eyes.”

“Does the Church know of your state?”

“No. Only Julien, who found me, and my father. My mother knew, of course, for it was she who nursed me personally. Even my wife was kept in the dark, seeing as she was so near her time. Felix was born just weeks later and Célie died without ever knowing how her husband had been ruined.”

Nicolas could hardly bear to recall the months that had followed Paris. The pain had been as nothing to his interior torment. He had screamed at his mother, told her to let him die, refused to listen to her gentle counsel or his father’s more measured practicalities. “You are not the only man to be so injured,” he’d told his son. “Battlefields are messy and not a few have had to live on without all they once had.”

But it was Julien who had, unwittingly, shown his brother how to survive. He had hovered around Nicolas in both Paris and, after he could travel safely, at Blanclair. Nicolas had refused to see him. But at last, three weeks after Felix’s birth, he admitted Julien to his chamber.

And Julien had vowed vengeance on his behalf. He had gone on and on about the viciousness of the Catholics, the wholesale slaughter of Huguenots that seemed to disturb him, the stupidity of France tearing itself to pieces over religion. But Nicolas had focused on one word: vengeance.

He had decided at that moment to live, and seek his own vengeance against the man whose doing this had been. It had been a long time coming, but now he was so very close.

Lucette had been sitting throughout his reverie with a thoughtful expression. Now she said, “So if I were to marry you…” She looked at him quizzically and he almost laughed. He had definitely calculated right. Lucette would be intrigued by the thought of doing something forbidden.

“As I said, the most selfish desire of my life. For it would mean, of course, that you would never have children.”

She nodded, but seemed more thoughtful than repulsed. “Except for Felix.”

“Except for Felix. But it is not just children, Lucette. I could never be what a husband should be for his wife. Of course there would be affection and even—how do I say this delicately?—pleasure. There is more than one way for men and women to experience pleasure. I would like nothing more than to make you happy in every way.”

“I assume your father has no idea of what you’re proposing.”

“No. If it were I alone, he would laugh me to scorn. But if you wanted me, Lucette, if you stood your ground beside me, then who could oppose us?”

Many people, he answered himself. All his father would have to do was tell a priest and then no church official would agree to perform such a marriage. But that was supposing the marriage took place in France. If it were England…surely Lucette would have to go home first.

Taking her betrothed with her. To England.

Exactly where Nicolas needed to be.

She bit her lip in concentration and he didn’t move, afraid to let her see how desperately he needed her to say yes.

“I think…” she ventured, then cleared her throat before continuing in a firmer voice. “I think that, once Charlotte’s party is over, we should speak to your father.”

—

At last Charlotte’s carefully thought-out night was upon them and all Julien could think was thank goodness it would be over by morning. And the day after that, Renaud would set out to escort Dr. Dee and Lucette to Le Havre, and Julien could return to Paris and a normal life.

Except that normal didn’t seem so appealing anymore. There were one or two women from Paris at Blanclair whom he had known rather well, but he felt very little except resignation when encountering them. They were so mannered and brittle and casual—when all he could think of now was Lucette’s stubbornness and passion and clarity of thought. There was nothing studied about her, no matter how sophisticated the quality of her mind.