The Virgin's Daughter (Tudor Legacy #1)(87)

But Nicolas managed to kiss her hand in a lingering and intimate manner that made her want to snatch it away. Instead she met his eyes and said softly, “I suppose you must be very tired. Sleep well.”

“I never sleep easily away from Blanclair. I will be awake for some time, I imagine.”

Lucette took it for the invitation it was. Pippa attended Anabel whenever she was in residence and so she was alone. She waited two hours, changing into a slightly less confining dress but not so casually as she would dress for bed. She tried to read but her mind kept jumping. At last she simply sat and pondered. Men talked in bed, didn’t they? Whispered secrets to their paramours? All she needed was a hint, the barest suggestion of what was in Nicolas’s mind. If she could only make an intelligent guess as to his next move, she could warn Walsingham and catch him in the act.

Hopefully.

She tried not to ponder Julien’s fate if she could not deliver, but her imagination was vivid and all the darkness and shadows of her fears wrought too clear a picture of torture and ignominious death.

When she was as sure as she could be that the household was settled, Lucette left her chamber and crossed the hall to the far wing, where Nicolas and Laurent were quartered. Dominic had wanted to keep Nicolas away from his daughter—he hadn’t anticipated that isolating him would make it easier for her to visit.

She knocked once, barely rapping with her knuckles, and Nicolas called with the same restraint, “Come in.”

The moon was high and shed a watery light on the small but comfortable chamber. Nicolas sat at the desk, a handful of papers before him. He half turned to where she stood in the doorway.

“Lucie mine,” he said. “I knew you’d come.”

“And do you know why?” She meant it to be seductive, but it came out warier than she’d meant.

“Oh, I think so.” Nicolas continued to sit, his body angled away from her. “You want to save my brother. And you will do whatever you think necessary to that end.”

She opened her mouth and stopped, frozen without an idea of what to say next. The impasse lasted only a moment, for Nicolas shoved the chair back and rose. It took him three strides to reach her, just enough time to realize he’d been turned away from her for a reason.

In his right hand, he held a dagger, long and wicked-looking, stamped on the hilt with a blue cinquefoil. By the time she’d taken it in, the dagger point was at her breast. Julien’s dagger.

Sickeningly, she thought she read lust in his eyes. Without moving the dagger, Nicolas stroked her cheek with his free hand. “So certain that you had me at your mercy,” he purred. “But you have been playing my game for me. And quite appealingly, I might add.”

She would not let the fear rule her. “What do you want?”

“The one thing you could not figure, the motive that has eluded you from the first. All this time spent protecting your queen…and in the end, you have delivered my quarry straight into my hands.”

It took only two heartbeats for comprehension—and horror—to dawn. “Anabel,” she breathed out. “You are here to kill Anabel.”

He smiled broadly and shook his head. “Not at all. Princess Anne is my greatest asset. With her daughter in my hands, your heretic queen will fall over herself to give me what I want.”

“And what is that?”

“Mary Stuart’s freedom.”

—

Lucette refused to cooperate. In the end, Nicolas had Laurent tie her hands behind her back and gag her, then the two men, armed with both daggers and swords, marched her across the hall to the family wing. Even subdued, Lucette was troublesome. He could have knocked her out, but absolute silence wasn’t necessary. Laurent carried her, though she managed to kick at the walls a few times.

But the family wing remained dark and still when they arrived outside the chamber where Pippa Courtenay and Anne Tudor slept. Nicolas tried the door and found it barred.

He would have preferred to have the princess in his hands before everyone knew, but as long as he had Lucette, he was confident of success. So he pounded on the door with the dagger’s hilt and waited for an audience.

The royal girl and her friend were no fools—the door remained barred. He heard Pippa’s suspicious voice ask, “Who is it?”

“I have your sister,” he announced. “With a dagger at her throat. Untie the gag, Laurent, and let them hear her.”

Laurent complied, though Lucette was pulling furiously away. Nicolas rolled his eyes and slapped her twice, hard. “Do that again,” he warned, “and it will be the butt of my sword next time.”

That was the moment Dominic Courtenay flung open his door, sword in hand and his wife just behind him with a dagger. Kit Courtenay was just a moment later.

Nicolas smiled coldly. “There will be no blood shed tonight,” he promised. “As long as Her Royal Highness opens this door and surrenders herself to me.”

“Don’t do it, Anabel!” Lucette shouted.

Everyone else stayed still, though Dominic Courtenay’s eyes glittered dangerously in the hints of moonlight that played through the corridor window. “You’ll never get out of this alive, Nicolas. Give me my daughter, and perhaps I’ll see to it that your father deals with you instead of my queen.”

“You can’t threaten a man who’s willing to lose everything,” Nicolas said. “I have uses for Lucette that require her to be alive, but I will kill her if I must. And you will have no one to blame but yourself and your stubborn princess.”