The Virgin's Daughter (Tudor Legacy #1)(85)

He didn’t expect serious difficulty at Wynfield Mote. Lucette’s brother, Kit, clearly didn’t like him at all, but he thought that had more to do with either a general dislike of the French or a specific dislike of any man interested in Kit’s sister. Possibly both. But Kit was merely a boy—what could a spoiled eighteen-year-old guess about his own motivations? Dominic Courtenay was another matter. The Duke of Exeter had learned suspicion from the harsh master of his own betrayal and a king’s fury, and Nicolas could feel the man’s judgment from the moment they met on the road. Even were Nicolas a whole man, he’d be unlikely to get Exeter’s permission to marry Lucette.

The women were simpler. Although Nicolas had not been as struck by Minuette’s beauty as Julien, she at least would be sympathetic to a tale of desperate true love. Pippa was little more than a girl, and he’d heard stories of her fey disposition. She did not worry him.

And then there was the Princess of Wales. To Anabel, as the Courtenays called her, Nicolas was absolutely pitch-perfect in his manners. She was the same age as Pippa, but he guessed she had never been precisely a girl. She might not have a wide experience of the world yet, but she was royal born and raised by a canny queen who knew how to manipulate the world around her. Nicolas studied Anabel’s proud face and guessed she was well advanced in manipulation herself.

But not as advanced as he was.

He was housed as far from Lucette as they could decently put him without quartering him in the stables. No matter. Lucette would come to him, for she was practically bursting out of her skin with the need to help Julien. Nicolas had amused himself on the journey from London debating how far she would go to seduce him of his secrets. Far enough, he guessed, that she would not be able to look at Julien ever again without guilt.

If there was one thing at which Nicolas was a master, it was inducing guilt.

Sure enough, they had not been at Wynfield for an hour before Lucette appeared at his chamber door, asking if he would like a tour of the grounds.

She had changed into a gown that made her look younger, the bright blue of the kirtle echoing and sharpening her remarkable eyes. Her expression was carefully calculated innocence, such a good simulation that for a moment Nicolas could see his late wife standing before him. Célie had often looked at him with that same sort of appeal—though her innocence had been purely instinctive—and it had never moved him to anything but contempt.

If only Lucette knew that it was her deception and calculation that truly roused him.

The grounds, like the house, had not changed overmuch in twelve years. Pleasantly English with wildflowers a riotous carpet of colour among the low walls of stone. As English as the house that had been burnt to the ground by the late English king as punishment to the faithless Minuette, who had married against his will. What would it be like, Nicolas wondered, to so desperately love a woman that one would destroy everything in his path to have her? He’d found women to be mostly interchangeable, at least in intimate respects. The only ones that mattered were the ones that could get him something he wanted.

And Lucette had delivered him exactly the thing Nicolas had most wanted for months. As reward, and because it pleased him to think of Julien wanting what he had, he touched her lightly at the waist, and she turned willingly toward him as though she, too, knew the steps of this dance.

He kissed her—not too deeply nor too long, for they were in her very house and he did not especially want Dominic threatening him just yet. There was a moment’s instinctive resistance, then she folded herself into his embrace. It pleased him, how hard she worked to accommodate his supposed expectations. The next few days could be very interesting.

He remembered the rose garden—the Courtenay women seemed to have an unaccountable fondness for roses—and teased her as they passed the stables in the distance.

“Do you remember the day we found you eavesdropping? You claimed you had come to see kittens. But that wasn’t really so, was it?”

He had seen her blush for Julien, but the most he drew from her even now was a slight quirk of her lips. “I was looking for you,” she answered freely enough. “And I was furious to be treated like the child I was.”

They both danced around the subject of Julien, and Nicolas thought that discretion had gone far enough. “My brother was never very good at giving people what they wanted. It would have cost him little to speak kindly, but instead he riled you into almost spitting at him. It would have served him right if you had.”

“What are you going to do about Julien?” she asked bluntly.

“What do you mean?”

“Are you content to leave him in the Tower? When you leave Wynfield, will you simply sail home and forget about him? Or do you mean to find a way to help?”

He spoke the simple truth, if not quite with all the details. “When I sail for France, Lucette, my brother will be at my side. I promise you that.”

Then he drew her to him again, made more reckless so near to his desired end. “And I expect,” he whispered to her, “that you will be by my side as well, Lucie mine.”

He felt her stiffen at his appropriation of Julien’s term for her, but also her determination not to show it. The triumph of subduing her pride was almost as intoxicating as her promise of abundant warmth.

Just because he couldn’t finish the job didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy every step along the way.