The Virgin's Daughter (Tudor Legacy #1)(67)

Her mask was not of feathers, as might have been expected, but delicate gold and copper filigree that swirled and swooped across her cheeks, rising to a winged peak at her right eye.

Most of the women here had dressed in either white or rich, deep colours that paired well with jewels. Why the cream and brown combination?

Feathers. Lucette was not some historical maiden fair or literary allusion: she was a bird. A bird with a buff chest and wings and back of soft browns.

A nightingale.

He actually laughed aloud when he realized, and murmured, “Clever girl.” The woman he was dancing with at the time seemed to think the compliment meant for her.

Lucette danced with at least half of the men in attendance and Julien heard her praises sung everywhere he turned. By the men, at least. The women mostly watched her through narrowed eyes, no doubt giving thanks she would not be a permanent fixture in their society.

Renaud danced with her (they seemed to be having a private discussion despite their surroundings), and then Nicolas followed their father. They looked good together, Julien grudgingly conceded. Why shouldn’t they? He and Nicolas had similar hair colour, the same eyes, only the differences in height and build to differentiate. Either of them would set off Lucette’s beauty nicely.

When the musicians finished the pavane, Nicolas spoke to Lucette, heads close together as though confiding secrets. Or intimacies. As Julien headed toward them, he told himself he was interrupting because if he delayed dancing with Lucette for any longer, Charlotte would ascribe it to rudeness.

“May I?” he asked to the air between them. He expected Nicolas to look annoyed, but his brother smiled faintly.

“As the lady wishes,” Nicolas said.

As the opening strains of a galliard sounded, Lucette answered, much too quickly, as though covering her nerves, “Yes, of course.” Julien chose the safest topic of conversation he could think of. “I believe my nephew will never get over the fact that he is not old enough to dance with you tonight.”

“Perhaps Felix will have another chance when he is older.”

“Do you plan to return to France someday, then?”

“Or Felix could come to England.”

Julien quirked a skeptical eyebrow. “The French are generally not welcome in England.”

“Some French are. We have lots of Huguenots,” she said softly. “So says the woman dressed as a nightingale. Trying to get yourself killed, or simply noticed?” he asked.

“If I wanted to be noticed, I’d have chosen a more striking masquerade than a nondescript bird. A swan, perhaps?”

“Lucie mine,” and as he said it, he could almost see the shiver of her response, “you could never, in your life, be nondescript. And I don’t want to talk politics or religion tonight.”

They moved apart to the music, and came back together. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Maybe I don’t want to talk at all.”

He did, though. His hands tightened against her waist and he knew he was venturing onto thin ice. He could not afford to lose his head, no matter if his heart was already in her keeping. No matter if he spent his nights wishing he could turn back the clock and undo everything that kept him from speaking up. Not with this woman who solved puzzles and spied for Walsingham and didn’t trust him. Lucette had come to France for a purpose, and falling in love with him was not that purpose.

He didn’t care. Whatever she felt or didn’t, whatever her purpose, Julien must speak or forever hate himself for his cowardice.

“I wondered,” he began, and had to clear his throat in order to continue. “Might we go riding tomorrow? One last time before you leave. There is something I would like to say to you.”

He would never get over the effect of those blue eyes fixed on him as though daring to read all his secrets. “I don’t know if—”

“Please.”

He added the plea in English and thought her lips trembled. But she managed to smile. “Yes, let’s talk. There is something I’d like to tell you myself, before…”

He did not like that hesitation. “Before what?” he prodded.

“Before someone else can.”

What could she possibly fear him hearing?

That she’d cracked the Nightingale Plot and knew him to be innocent? That she’d had orders from Walsingham to arrest him? (He’d like to see her try.) Maybe she had decided to extend her stay in France.

As the galliard drew to an end, there was the usual chatter of the crowds, and then, unusually, a brief flourish from the musicians that drew everyone’s eyes to the top of the steps.

It was not Charlotte who stood there, nor even Renaud, to thank their guests for coming to Blanclair. It was Nicolas, taking his place as the eldest son, heir to the estate, something Renaud had long wanted Nicolas to do. It should have made Julien happy, to see his brother more engaged in the world. But guilt was a habit with him, and he distrusted happiness.

“Thank you,” Nicolas said. “It has been a great pleasure to have you in our home. But it has been an even greater pleasure to have had for some weeks the company of our guest, Lady Lucette Courtenay. Though, of course, she has always been more than a guest to our family. She has belonged to Blanclair since the day of her birth, and so I have at last moved to make that permanent by asking her to be my wife.”