The Virgin's Daughter (Tudor Legacy #1)(84)

“Your thoughts…not your heart?”

She bit her lip and risked a glance at him. He rode effortlessly, in her lifetime always favouring a string of very large horses. His current mount gleamed a rich brown, and Dominic held the reins in the manner he had fashioned when she was a baby: right hand holding both, after a loop was passed around the wrist above his missing left hand.

Then she raised her eyes and found him watching her steadily, with those jewel-deep green eyes she had spent years regretting because they were not hers.

“I’m not ready to talk about my heart,” she answered. “Not yet. When I am, I promise you and mother will know it all. Will you trust me until then, Father?”

She thought she would hesitate or stutter over the title she had refused to give him for six years. But it came out so easily, she wondered why she had been so stubbornly resisting for so long.

Dominic blinked, and his body seemed to relax before her eyes. But, true to himself, he did not make a fuss. “I trust you, Lucette.”

For all the beauty of Wynfield Mote in high summer, Lucette could not but feel it contaminated by the man who entered alongside her. Her father steadied her as she dismounted before the gracious house, square-fronted behind its shallow moat, but almost at once Nicolas was next to her and she smiled up at him and he let her tuck her hand in his arm.

The reception was a curious mix of formal and familiar. Nicolas, as an adult heir to a significant French estate paying court to the eldest daughter of the house, was accorded ritual politeness. But as one who had also previously lived in the household for some weeks as little more than a boy, he behaved with a courtesy and grace extended equally to family and servants.

Asherton, who had been Wynfield Mote’s steward for forty years, was asked several intelligent questions about the crops and weather; Harrington, who came out to take her father’s horse as he always did, managed a few words in reply to Nicolas’s warm greeting; and Carrie Harrington had her hand kissed.

She did not look impressed.

Pippa and Anabel met them in the hall, the high-beamed lofty chamber with a stone fireplace large enough for a woman to stand inside and the long, polished oak table and sideboard set with silver. There were times, coming upon the two side by side, that Lucette thought it might be hard to tell which was the princess and which not. Anabel was regal, but Pippa had a presence hard to match for self-possession. From their childhood they had tended to dress in similar fashion—today they both wore cream silk, Anabel’s embroidered in jewel-bright blues and reds, Pippa’s a more muted palette of green and silver. The princess had the same vibrant red hair of her mother, and Pippa’s was warm gold with that attractive streak of black, but their faces had a similarity that reminded people they shared a degree of both Boleyn and Plantagenet blood.

Nicolas made no difference between them in his greeting, dividing his charm equally in a manner that made Lucette’s skin crawl. Anabel, though polite, seemed only amused. She had men falling over themselves to be charming to her—what need had she for the attentions of one good-looking Frenchman?

It was a relief when the two swept Lucette away with them, leaving Nicolas to be tactfully housed as far from the girls as possible. Lucette wouldn’t put it past her father to set a discreet guard on Nicolas simply to ensure he didn’t take liberties with his daughter.

Which would her father rather know—that Lucette would cheerfully offer her virtue if it would save Julien, or that even if she did, Nicolas was in no condition to take advantage of it?

Despite her royal upbringing, Anabel could be tactful when she chose. After a significant glance between herself and Pippa—in which Lucette recognized the same sort of silent exchange the sisters could share—the princess said, “I want to hear all about France,” hugging Lucette lightly. “But for now Pippa is dying to press you with questions herself. I shall see you at dinner.”

When the sisters were alone in Lucette’s bedchamber, Pippa did not immediately launch into questions. Instead she studied her sister with an expression somewhere between fondness and worry.

Lucette expected to be asked about Nicolas’s amorous intentions or her own, to have Pippa press or even just tease about the likelihood of having a French brother-in-law after all.

She did not expect Pippa to ask with real worry, “Do you know what you’re about, Lucie?”

There were times when her little sister seemed much, much older. Not just older than her eighteen years, or older than Lucette—but the kind of old woman that had lived a long and eventful life and stored away vast wisdom in all that time.

It was actually quite irritating at the moment.

“What do you suspect I’m about that makes you fear I am in over my head?” she replied caustically.

“Nicolas is not your Frenchman, Lucie. Why have you brought him here?”

Is Julien my Frenchman? she nearly asked. But she wasn’t prepared to hear a no, so she refrained from asking. “I have brought him to Wynfield because I need him at Wynfield. Is that enough for you?”

Pippa sighed deeply, and her troubled look did not ease. “No. But it is all you are going to tell me, so I’ll desist. For now.”

—

When younger, Nicolas had never been bothered by what people thought of him. Save for his father, whose good opinion he needed, and his mother, whose good opinion he had actually cared for, he had never extended himself overmuch. That had changed on the bitter night of blood and agony in Paris. When they cut away the core of what made him a man, they’d left him with the need to cloak himself in the opinions of others. Give them what they want or expect to see, and few people will bother to look deeper.