The Virgin's Daughter (Tudor Legacy #1)(97)
The final step was her hair. Like the dress, it couldn’t be elaborate. She braided it at both her temples, then managed a single thick plait down her back. It was imperfect and no doubt crooked, but who cared? Once plaited, she wound it at the nape of her neck into a heavy bun and secured it with pins. Then, a single decoration pushed through her hair: a gold-leafed, circular ornament six inches long and with a teardrop-shaped ruby at the top.
The benefit to Nicolas’s tight timeline was that she couldn’t dwell on the many things that could go wrong. All she could do was utter a quick prayer for guidance and safety as she made her way back to the hall.
She was not surprised to hear Nicolas speaking as she approached, for she had become accustomed to his near-constant murmur that had at times seemed only half directed at her. Pausing to make out what she could, she caught only a few snatches: surprisingly, Nicolas seemed to be musing about how Felix was passing his time at Blanclair without his tutor.
Was he really talking about his son at such a time? As though Nicolas expected, as Julien had sarcastically pointed out, everything to go back to normal once he left Wynfield? It was that blitheness that terrified Lucette more than anything else about the last days. Nicolas might be focused and clearheaded on his own concerns, but he seemed to have no realistic grasp of what others might be feeling or planning. Lucette liked logic and mathematics because they made sense. One could not reason with a man who lacked the most basic awareness.
No time for regrets. Lucette stepped forward into the hall, stopping Nicolas’s speech for a moment before he turned his words on her.
“How pretty you look! Very charming in your summer dress. I approve.”
“That was the point,” she said drily. She could not bring herself to flirt with him, but nor did she want to upset him. Nicolas had not let go of his dagger—Julien’s dagger—and Laurent leaned against the front door with dagger in one hand and pistol in the other. The tutor’s eyes never left Julien’s back, and they were filled with an icy rage that scared her. Laurent hated Julien, and there were not even any ties of sibling memory to soften it.
“And now we can talk,” Nicolas said cheerfully. “Anyone care to sit?”
“Talk about what?” Julien demanded. He had looked her over once, swiftly, when he’d come in and again when she’d returned to the hall. Otherwise he seemed to hardly know she was there, so tensely was he fixed on his brother.
“About the future. About how the three of us—sorry, Laurent, four of us—get out of England. About what happens when we reach France.”
“You’re not taking Lucette out of here, Nic. She’s got a father and brothers and a band of very angry Englishmen just waiting for you to stick your head out the door before they take it off.”
“Not if Lucie comes willingly.”
She was getting tired of being talked about and around. “But I won’t, so there’s no need to imagine it.”
“Of course you’ll come willingly, ma petite. Otherwise, I kill Julien. You’ll leave Wynfield to save him. You’ll return to France to save him. And when we reach France, you will marry me…to save him.”
“Not going to happen.” Julien said it firmly, but Lucette noted the edge to his expression, coming in and out of focus through the flickering candlelight. Someone had lit the candles on the sideboard during her brief absence. It would soon be full night outside, and with all the shutters firmly closed the hall was already dark.
“Lucette is not that stupid or desperate,” Julien went on. “She knows I am not worth her life.”
“Such a martyr! Always ready to die for a cause, Julien. Or no, more like always ready to let someone else die for your cause.”
“And that’s the crux of all this, isn’t it? What happened to you because of me. Because you went after Léonore for my sake, and in trying to help me got yourself nearly killed. That’s on me, Nicolas. I know it. Don’t punish this girl because once you tried to help another girl I cared for.”
“You are such an idiot! How in Heaven’s name have you managed all these years not to get yourself killed with your stupidity? I wasn’t trying to help you. I wasn’t trying to save Léonore. She was a Huguenot bitch. Good for a little fun in bed, but that little fun cost me a lot more than my life. I wasn’t trying to help her, you stupid bastard—I was screwing her and got caught in the cross fire.”
Julien had gone so white and so still that Lucette was afraid he would stumble or fall. “Say that again.” His voice was like lead shot, dropped into her heart.
“I was caught in her damn bed when her brothers returned to the house. I imagine the mutilation they inflicted on me was just the beginning, but before they could kill me the Catholics stormed the house and tore them both to pieces.”
When Nicolas smiled, it was the most terrible thing Lucette had ever seen. She wanted him to stop talking because he was going to break Julien, and she didn’t know if anyone would ever be able to put the pieces back together again.
“As for the girl,” Nicolas continued with remorseless pride, “I stayed conscious long enough to cut her throat myself.”
—
For the third time in his life, Julien stood still and recognized in a single moment that his life would never again be the same. They were rare, those moments, when one could see with perfect clarity that at this point everything changed. There would be before, and there would be after.