Princess Of France E-Book

Christy English

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

The long-awaited sequel to The Queen's Pawn.

After becoming the lover of King Henry II, Princess Alais's bid for the throne fails. As Richard the Lionheart, King Henry's son, will not honor their engagement, Alais is sent away to a nunnery to live out the remaining years of her life.

Imprisoned at the hands of her enemies, Princess Alais of France finds a way to escape and returns to her home in Paris. But the life of a princess is a dangerous one, and the road home beset with peril. Once she manages to return to Paris, she finds that her brother, King Philippe-Auguste, has arranged a marriage for her to shore up his political power.

Condemned to yet another prison - this time a passionless marriage - Alais discovers her own path to freedom within the confines of her duty. As she begins to build a new life for herself, will she be able to find the love and joy she has always longed for?

Leseprobe

PRINCESS OF FRANCE

THE QUEEN’S PAWN BOOK 2

CHRISTY ENGLISH

CONTENTS

I. Princess of France

Prologue

1. Eleanor

2. The Count of Valois

3. The Journey

4. Marie Helene

5. Phillippe Auguste

6. A Wedding

7. All That Is Lost

8. In My Husband’s House

9. Jean Pierre

10. Duty

II. My Father’s Daughter

11. A Child

12. My Second Daughter

13. To Court a King

14. The Meeting

15. Home

16. An Idyll

17. A Son

III. Countess of Ponthieu

18. Paris

19. The Tilting Yard

20. My Husband’s House

21. My Second Jean

22. The Valley of the Shadow

23. Freedom

24. The Roses of Summer

Afterword

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About the Author

Copyright (C) 2020 Christy English

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2020 by Next Chapter

Published 2020 by Next Chapter

Edited by Tyler Colins

Cover art by CoverMint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author’s permission.

For Alais

PARTI

PRINCESS OF FRANCE

PROLOGUE

Henry

Henry’s lips were warm on mine. He tasted as he always had, of cloves, of almost forgotten spices, of danger and of longing, of all the things I wanted but could not have.

“Still sweet,” he said as he pulled away.

We were naked under the covers of the great bed of state. We had never slept together in his room at Windsor in all the months that I had been his mistress. I knew that this was a dream.

I lay beneath him, the canopy high above my head. The curtains blocked out all sound and light, save one candle that burned beside the bed.

Yet I could still see him, not as he was now, old and feeble, sick from a long winter of coughing. I saw Henry as he had been when I loved him, still vital, his strength and warmth cocooning me, making me long to forget the world that lay beyond his bed. But even in the dream, I could not forget.

“You are still beautiful, Alais, and taste as sweet as the day I first had you. Tell me why that is.”

I caressed his face. I pushed his long hair back from his cheek, fingering the gray where it shone amidst the red in the light of our one candle.

“Henry,” I said. “I am as beautiful as you want me to be. This is only a dream.”

He kissed me again, his tongue stroking mine until a fire began to burn in me, the old fire that I had never forgotten, though it had been almost twenty years since he had touched me. Henry's hand moved beneath our coverlet, lightly skimming over my body, all his hard-won skill as a lover brought to bear on me.

Henry made love to me in that dream, and it came back to me all at once, how I had hungered for him in the end as much as he had ever hungered for me. Our bodies joined, we spoke words of love, as we never had in the waking world. We lay together afterwards, spent but blessed, safe still from the world beyond the light of that one candle.

“I have always loved you, Alais,” Henry said. “From the moment I saw you holding that dog in my horse stable.” He kissed me so that I did not have to answer. “Richard is a fool,” he said. “I would have had you, no matter what came before or after, had I been free. The rest of them be damned.”

Henry’s mouth came down on mine once more, and I knew it was for the last time. The waking world began to draw me back. The light of our candle could not hold it at bay any longer.

“I love you, Henry,” I said.

I do not know if he heard me. I woke on my slender cot, beneath the narrow window of my cell. Mother Bernard’s hand was on my arm.

“My lady, I bring sad news. You must prepare yourself.”

She watched as I woke, drawing my mind back from my dream. But I felt as if Henry stood beside me, his hand on mine. I could still taste him on my tongue.

“The king is dead.”

Henry’s touch dissolved. I lay alone, looking into the brown eyes of Mother Bernard, the kind woman I had known almost all my life. I did not weep but swallowed my tears. I was a woman grown, with more than thirty years behind me. I would mourn Henry in private.

“Thank you for telling me.”

Matins that day would include a mass sung for the king’s soul. The first of many such masses that I would pay for with the gold he had given me when I went away.

For I did love him. And never more so than in the moment when I first heard of his death, the taste of his lips still on mine.

I was not surprised. Henry had brought the news himself, before his soul flew away.

1

ELEANOR

THE ABBEY OF ST. AGNES, 1189

“The queen is here.” Mother Bernard’s hand was gentle on mine, her voice soft in my ear.

I sat in the sunshine of the simples garden, painting the lavender which grew there onto the page of the psalter I was illuminating. I lay my brush down, the clean linen beneath it catching the purple paint as it fell.

They had come for me. It had been two months since Henry’s death and I had known that someone would. I felt Mother Bernard’s lips on my hair, warm where the sun hit my curls. I had grown older and used to my own ways, and I no longer wore a veil.

“So, little princess. You have not lost the common touch, I see.”

Eleanor stood in the sunlight of our garden, as if she had appeared there by magic. Her face was shadowed by her veil, but I saw her beauty, still radiant, undimmed by time and pain. Her beauty was in her bones and the magnificence of her soul shone through them. Though the skin of her face was crumpled, like a piece of vellum that could no longer be smoothed out, her eyes burned like beacons of green light. Like all men, I stood in her sight and felt her power. I knelt without thinking and Mother Bernard knelt beside me.

“Rise, little princess. You do me too much honor.”

“My lady queen, that is not possible.”

She stared down at me, her face unreadable, as it always was. I rose, and Mother Bernard left us silently after I touched her once, then let her go.

Without my having to ask, lay sisters came into the garden, bringing the nunnery’s best chair, a small table, and wine. They set these things on the grass in the full light of the sun. Though it was spring, a wind still came from the north to chill us.

Eleanor did not sit in that fine carved chair with its cushions worked in cloth of gold. She stood instead in the full light of the afternoon sun and took in the sight of my face.

“I have missed you, daughter. Though I did not know it until now.”

I crossed our garden to stand before her and took her hand in mine. Eleanor still wore the great ruby that Henry had given her when they wed on the middle finger of her right hand. I bent down and kissed that ring.

We stood together, my lips on her hand, birdsong the only sound. Before long, Eleanor pulled away from me, and sat in the abbey’s best chair.

I sat across from her, for the lay sisters had brought my chair forward into the center of the garden. Neither of us spoke. As I watched, Eleanor cast her mind back over the years we had been apart, all the years of her imprisonment, when Henry had locked her away from the living and the dead, as if she were one of the dead herself.

Eleanor took in the sun under the open sky. She leaned back and breathed in the perfume of the lavender. She had been released immediately after Henry’s death two months before. It was the first thing Richard had done. Even before burying the king and holding his funeral rights, Richard had sent word to set his mother free.

Eleanor looked at me past the folds of her veil and smiled. The wind caressed my hair and moved Eleanor’s veil against her cheek.

I turned my face to the light so that she could see me clearly. I still bathed my face in goats’ milk every day. I had a few lines around my eyes, but little else marred my skin. The passage of time had been kind to me. My skin was as soft and fair as it had always been. No silver marred the dark chestnut of my hair. The auburn highlights perhaps were clearer, for I often sat in the sun when it was warm enough. The sun brought out the light in my dark curls.

“You are as beautiful as when last we met. How can this be so?”

I did not smile or look away but met her gaze so that she could see I was not afraid of her. I had not grown timid during my years locked away in this nunnery.

“I thank you, your grace. Perhaps my mother had good looks and passed them on to me.”

“No doubt.”

I watched Eleanor as she gathered her forces. I did not speak again but poured her a glass of wine. It was the light sweet wine that I had brought up from Anjou, my one indulgence. I had loved that wine since Richard first gave it to me, and I drank it still. Every year at Christ’s Mass, a large cask would arrive from Richard’s vineyards. His steward never sent a note, but I knew it came from him.

I did not speak of this to Eleanor as she took the bronze goblet from my hand. She sipped the wine and sighed. I saw that her back pained her, for she shifted against the cushions. She was nearly seventy now. Her journey had been long, and she was tired, though she would never admit it.

“I am going to meet Richard in Poitiers,” she said.

The name of my old love was a sharp pain. I listened to it and remembered the time when I had thought he would be mine, when I was certain that our union had been blessed by God.

Sitting with Eleanor in our cloister garden, I remembered a different garden on a different summer day, when Richard knelt before me and swore that he would love me all his life. I wondered if he remembered that moment, as I did. I wondered if he loved me still.

Eleanor drew a letter from her sleeve, its vellum crisp and new, its seal untouched.

“He sends word to you by me, if you will take it from my hand.”

I felt the first taste of hope since I had laid my daughter in the ground twenty years before. I had lived so long without it, subsisting only on pain and loss, that I almost did not recognize the taste of it. Hope burst on my tongue like a ripe fruit. I savored it – Richard’s letter in my hand.

We had been betrothed before his father touched me. We were betrothed still, though I had not seen his face in years. He had never married. Perhaps this letter was the first sign of him relenting, Richard calling me to his side at last.

I wanted to rise, to turn my back on the queen, so that I might read the words my love had written. He had been unrelenting in his youth. I had thought never to hear from him again.

I did not turn away, and I felt her eyes on me like hands. I broke the seal, and read his words, and knew that she had read those words already.

“Alais, Countess of the Vexin, Countess of Berry, Princess of France. Greetings. We send you word by way of the Queen, our mother, that you will no longer be kept in the Abbey of St. Agnes under our care. You will take ship to France, where your brother, King Phillipe, waits for you. Go with God and live in peace. Richard, by God’s Will, King of England, Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine.”

I wondered if he had even seen the letter. I wondered if he had simply ordered it written, one more task in a list of many, bits of old business to be discarded upon the death of his father, drawn up by a clerk and sealed by his chamberlain.

Then I looked down to the end of the page and saw his name, scrawled in his familiar hand. Richard had never written to me before, but I had seen his writing often when I was a girl at his mother’s court. He composed many songs for the minstrels and wrote them out, that the bards might learn them by heart. Always, under each song and poem, he had scrawled the same word, “Richard,” as if no other man bore that name on earth. And for me, no other man ever would.

Tears rose in my throat to burn my eyes. A sob began in my stomach and made its way to my chest where it lodged and stuck, old pain, a bird that would not take flight. I covered my mouth, his letter clutched in my hand. I gripped it hard as if it were his hand in mine, as if it might give me comfort, as if I might look up and once more see his face.

“Alais. I am sorry.”

Eleanor’s pity was the hardest thing to bear in that long moment of pain. Her pity was like acid on my skin. She had prompted him to write to me, so that I would know there was no hope of going back.

Richard would not forgive me, even now, for all that I had done. For all that Henry had done. He would not forgive, but would send me from his realm, without honoring our betrothal, without seeing me.

I wanted to comfort myself, to believe that he did this out of policy, that he sent me away because he had no choice. That he had to stand strong before his lords, both in England and in France. Though nothing had ever been proved of my relationship with Henry, the whole of Christendom knew me to have been his father’s whore. Though my child lay dead in the cold ground at Winchester, Richard still would send me from him. His pride would allow nothing else. His pride had always been stronger than his love.

“Alais. Forgive me.”

I met Eleanor’s eyes, two tears coursing down my cheeks. Only two, for I had remembered myself. I had remembered that I had sworn never to weep in front of her again. I breathed once, drawing my sorrow back into my heart, where I locked it away.

I met her eyes. I watched as her pity changed to admiration.

“You love him still,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Even death will not change it.”

“No,” I said. “Nor whatever comes after.”

Eleanor did not speak again but took my hand in hers. Her rings were cold against my skin. The north wind came to chill us, moving through my uncovered hair.

Her message delivered, Eleanor still did not leave me, so Mother Bernard gave up her rooms to the queen. Though I offered mine, I knew it was not grand enough. Even the Abbess’ rooms were not suited to the queen of England, but Eleanor accepted them graciously, as if they were very fine. I suppose anything was better than the prison she was coming from. The door to Mother Bernard’s room locked, but only from the inside.

We took a late supper in my room for I knew that Eleanor would not be able to bear the silence of the convent table. I had no musicians to play for her, no troubadours to sing of her beauty. So, as we finished our wine, I sang a song for her, one Richard had written long ago about beauty that never fades and love that lasts forever.

I was no troubadour, but my voice was clear and sweet. Eleanor wept when I was done.

She wiped her eyes with a linen kerchief. We sat in silence then, and I thought perhaps we would part, she to her bed, and I to mine, that we might not hurt each other anymore that day. But then she spoke.

“I put flowers on her grave, before I came away.”

I sat very still, my goblet in my hand. I knew that if I moved, I would drop it and spill Richard’s precious wine down the front of my homespun gown. I had only two bottles left.

I set my goblet down carefully, as if it were made of glass. I set my hands on the arms of my chair. They lay like wounded birds, my rings catching the light from the candles.

“There is a mass sung for her soul each morning and each night. I left enough money with the bishop to see to it that this practice will continue, long after I am dead.”

I found my voice, and it sounded to my ears as if it rose from the depths of a tomb. The pain of my daughter’s death never left me. I knew that it never would. “And the priest is sworn to this? He will sing for her soul, every day?”

“He is sworn. I made him swear.”

I lost my battle with my own pain then and knelt at her feet, my arms wrapped around her knees, a suppliant for all that could not be given back to me. Eleanor caught me as I fell against her, and she held me, though her back was paining her.

I wept for my daughter as if she had died just that night, and not twenty years before. I wept for the loss of her, for the loss of her father. And for the loss of Richard, who should have been her father, and now would never father a child of mine.

I wept until I had no tears left in me. Eleanor raised me up and drew my kerchief from my sleeve. It was the kerchief that bore her crest, one that she had given me years before. It was never far from me. She wiped my tears away and kissed me.

“There is more for you to hear, before there is less. Can you bear it?”

“I can bear anything.”

I saw the light of pride in her face, as I folded my kerchief and tucked it away.

“You will leave for Paris within the month.”

As distant as its memory was from me, I still dreamt of Paris. The soft spring rains in the garden of my father’s palace. The flavor of fine watered wine. The taste of pastry that melted as it touched my tongue. I had longed for all these things the whole of my exile. I had thought never to have them again.

Eleanor smiled in the firelight, lifting her bronze goblet to her lips. “I would like to tell you that your brother calls you to him because he wishes you near him.”

“But that is not why,” I said.

“No.”

I thought of Richard’s letter, still tucked away in my sleeve. After I had read it, Eleanor did not ask for it back. I drew it out. It lay in my palm like an accusation, like a knife I could not wield.

I rose from my chair, my face blank, as I had been trained to school my expression as a child. My old lessons came back to me as I stood alone in that room with Eleanor. I would need to remember them all, before I returned to my brother and his court.

I held Richard’s letter in my hand, my last link to him in the waking world. The vellum was smooth against my skin. He had used a new piece, a fresh bit of calfskin. I did not know if this was to honor me, or simply that, as king, he used nothing less.

I cast his letter into the fire and watched the expensive vellum burn. Smoke rose to choke me, but I did not move away. I watched the flames consume that letter until it was nothing but ash.

I met Eleanor’s eyes.

“You have changed, Alais.”

“And not for the better.”

Eleanor raised one elegant brow and extended her hand, reaching up to touch my cheek. “That I could not say. But you are not my little princess anymore.”

“Phillipe brings me home to marry a man of his choosing,” I said, finishing the tale she had begun. “He calls on me to strengthen his position as king. To keep the peace in his realm. To shore up the throne of France.”

Eleanor smiled, the old wry smile I loved, free of bitterness and pain. “Your brother the king does not confide in me, and my spies are not as good as they once were.”

“I am not to marry Richard,” I said.

“No,” she answered. “I have seen to that.”

I felt the pain of my loss for the last time. My heart burned with it, flaring once more with that inner fire, before the flame guttered out.

I sat down in my cushioned chair, taking. Eleanor’s jeweled hand in mine as I kissed her cheek. “Once I am gone, we will not meet again.”

“Very likely, we will not.”

I spoke the words aloud then, as for the last time. “I love you, Eleanor.”

“You always will, my dear.” She smiled her wicked smile.

I remembered my childhood and how I had feared her like a demon in the night. I thought of how powerful she was, and of how much harm she had done to me, more harm than I ever could have conceived of as I lay in my childhood bed. And still the power of my love bound me to her, even now, after all those years, after all the pain she had caused me. I knew that I would love her for the rest of my life.

I did not ask if she loved me. Though she tried to hide it, Eleanor’s love shone in the green of her eyes. Her love for me was a beacon of light that would never go out.

She would leave on the morrow to go to Richard in Poitiers. Our paths were parting once more, perhaps forever.

So, we stayed together that night and neither of us slept. We sat at my table, Richard’s wine between us, holding each other’s hands.

2

THE COUNT OF VALOIS

I was restless when Eleanor left me. She had brought with her the scent of the world beyond the walls of my convent. I was drawn in by temptations I had not thought of in years: roasted meat on the bone, fresh baked bread torn for trenchers, the scent of Henry’s skin when he lay beside me.

As I worked in the garden three weeks later, up to my elbows in loam, Jean Pierre came to me.

It was an ordinary day until he stepped into my garden. I was wearing one of my oldest dresses made of linen and flax. The sleeves dragged in the dirt as they always had, for I used that gown for gardening only. It had once been a soft blue but had faded to a light gray.

As was my habit now, I wore my hair long down my back, unbound but for a strand of silver cord that kept it out of my eyes.

I was directing a lay sister in the planting of the newest cuttings of lavender and thyme, when Jean Pierre, Count of Valois, entered the garden as if he owned it and bowed to me.

I saw at once that he was no ordinary man. The count wore bright blue, which brought out the sharp blue of his eyes. His eyes appraised me, taking all of me in at once, not only what I wanted seen, a pious woman working for the good of God, but all that I did not, my hidden self, the part of my soul that no man had ever seen, save Henry.

Though Jean Pierre was fair, he had been often in the sun. His face was craggy and his eyes intelligent. He looked at me as if he knew me, though I had never seen him before that day.

The sight of him was like a bolt of fire that struck me, taking my breath.

Jean Pierre looked as though he could see behind my eyes. He smiled a small half smile, as if we shared a secret. I pushed my lust aside, to be brought before the priest at my time of confession. I hesitated only a moment before I smiled back.

“If you are looking for the buttery,” I said, “You have taken a wrong turn.”

He laughed as I had hoped he might, bowing again to me. I saw that, in spite of his fine hose and his gown shot through with silk, he was a man who did not take himself too seriously.

“I assume that I address Her Royal Highness, Alais, Princess of France.”

“Indeed, you do, sir, if you can find her behind all this dirt.”

“I am Jean Pierre, Count of Valois.”

He bowed a third time. I thought for a moment that he might kneel, but the dirt was dark and his silk hose were very light.

I saw the thought of kneeling cross his eyes, and I smiled when he changed his mind.

“My lady, I would not have known you.”

“The dirt is thick here, sir, but it does not cover my face.”

“It is not the dirt that would have deceived me. I have heard it said that Princess Alais has been within these walls for almost 20 years. Perhaps you are her daughter?”

I pushed my lust aside once more, back into the box where I kept it. From the first, I saw that he was a man of honor. I need not fear for myself with him, in spite of the flirtation between us. I had never before flirted with a man, not even with Henry.

“You are impertinent,” I said. “But it is such a lovely day, that I will let your impudence pass.”

I was charmed. It had been many years since I had seen a man as well dressed as he, as self-possessed and as confident. Priests of the church, I found, were none of these things.

I gestured to the bench in the garden, and Jean Pierre sat down while I knelt once more to plant my lavender.

“So, my lady, are you not the least bit curious why I am here?”

“You are the messenger from my brother, come to tell me my fate.”

“God forbid. I am no fortune teller.” Jean Pierre leaned down to me, his long blond hair falling in a curtain across his cheek. He pushed his thick hair back, but it had been cut in the latest style and would not obey him. His hand was still gloved from his ride. I wondered what his skin was like beneath the leather, and what it would feel like on mine.

As I looked into his eyes, my hands covered in loam, I saw that his blue eyes were clear, like the summer sky. I knew that he would not lie to me, then or ever.

“You are here to tell me when my brother wants me to come to France,” I said.

“Indeed, my lady. I have come to take you there.”

At the sound of his words, my heart lifted with a hope that I had tasted only once before in my life. I savored that hope as I knelt in the dirt of that convent garden. I thanked God there in silence, even as I did His work. I had left Paris when I was nine years old. I longed to go home.

I stood and wiped my hands on the kerchief laying close by. “When do we leave?”

The Count of Valois smiled at the sudden joy he saw in my face. A shadow crossed his eyes; he seemed to know what my decades behind convent walls had cost me. How he knew, as a man who lived in the world among men, I never understood. But he knew me, even from the first, better than most.

He rose when I did. “As soon as you are able, Your Highness.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Oh, lady, let my horse rest a day at least.”

The thought of delay left me cold, even in the warmth of the garden. My freedom was so close, I wanted to reach out for it even then and take it in my hand. In truth, if he had been willing, I would have fled on horseback that very hour, without even changing my gown. I longed to see the sky once more without walls around it, and to feel the sun on my face, and the wind in my hair.

“The day after,” I agreed.

His smile faded. Jean Pierre raised his hand, and for one electric moment, I thought he might touch my face. But he knew his place as my brother’s vassal, and he did not step out of it. “As you say, my lady. We will be ready.”

Jean Pierre had brought a retinue of men-at-arms to guard us on our way to Paris. They were ranged in the guest house, playing cards and swearing. I heard this from the lay sisters as I bathed in my room before supper.

I laughed when they told me, but the sisters looked scandalized. Truly, I was not suited to a religious life, for men and their antics no longer shocked me.

I took my dinner with the count, a bevy of lay sisters standing by to guard my virtue. I did not point out to them that the tatters of my honor had long since been buried.

I received him formally, dressed in my best gown, which was made only of spun cotton and flax. I had dried my hair by the fire, and it hung long down my back, covered by a thin veil of linen; the linen was very fine and did little to hide my curls, but I felt it better to extend the count the courtesy of my modesty, though I had long since left such trappings behind me.

Jean Pierre stepped into the room and bowed to me, disconcerted at first by the sight of my narrow bed, visible in the room beyond. I saw his discomfort and gestured to a lay sister, who drew the door to my bedroom closed.

Once that was done, Jean Pierre smiled and was his easy self again, bent on charming me and setting me at ease, as if he was the host, and I his guest.

We ate by the light of many lamps, as if the candle wax and oil alone could guard me. Lay sisters stood along one wall, not serving us, but watching every morsel of food that went into my guest’s mouth. They did not begrudge him any of it, only me.

I watched the count to see if this close scrutiny disturbed him, but after the first few moments he seemed not to notice them. He spent the evening telling me of all that had gone on in Paris in the last fortnight. He kept his gossip quiet, the kind of stories of home that one might tell an elderly maiden aunt: who had married whom, and how many children were expected before the harvest, how my brother fared in his search for a wife, and how the court spoke of little else.

It grew late, and the lay sisters left off their vigilance, nodding by the wall. The tapestries strained on their hangings as the sisters leaned against them. As they dozed, the count talked on.

I found myself watching his mouth as he spoke, watching his hands when he picked up his dinner dagger or when he held his bronze goblet of wine. I kept my own desire guarded in its chest, but the scent of it rose to me, even though I kept the lid of that chest closed.

I watched him closely, but I could see no evidence of his fascination for me, the answering desire I had seen in his eyes in the cloister garden. I began to believe that he did not see me as a woman at all, that he had spoken of my beauty that afternoon as a matter of courtesy.

But as the evening wore on and my protectors began to doze, the light of desire came back into his eyes. I knew he would never speak of it. His honor bound him, as mine bound me, but I found myself basking in the knowledge of his desire, and in my own. It had been many years since I had felt such warmth.

Before, with Henry, I had been little more than a child. As much as Henry taught me, I had hardly begun to know myself at the tender age of fourteen. Now, I was a woman, and I felt rising heat in my face and in my belly. I tasted once more the hunger that Henry first woke in me, so long ago.

I raised my eyes to Jean Pierre, hoping that my face was blank, that he could not see the desire behind my eyes. My hope was in vain. But Jean Pierre seemed to see beyond my lust, to the fact that I wanted to hide it. He desired me, but he also felt something more. It seemed that he wanted to protect me, not only my honor, but my heart.

“I have heard songs of you,” he said. “Of how your beauty caught the eye of a king, and your love took his soul prisoner.”

I did not speak. I sat very still, my bronze goblet close by my hand. My fingertips were numb, and I could not move them.

“I have heard no such songs.”

Jean Pierre sang for me, his tenor low and sweet, like honey in old wine. At first, I could not hear the words, because his voice held me in thrall. And then I could not hear the words because they were in the langue d’oc, which all my life had meant nothing but Richard. But finally, in the last verse, I heard his voice and his words together, how I had compelled a king, of how I could have held the kingdom in my sway, but I had turned back at the last and given myself to God.

Tears ran down my nose and into the lap of my gown as I bent my head, for the song was true. Henry had loved me, even at the last. And I had turned away, out of piety, and grief, in the hope that my absence would bring peace between Richard and Henry once more. I had locked myself away in a nunnery for the rest of my life in this vain hope. There had been no peace between them. In the end, my sacrifice had been for nothing.

I was lost in this sorrow when Jean Pierre drew me back, touching my hand.

“I do not mean to pain you. I am sorry. The song was badly sung.”

“No,” I said. “It was beautiful.”

I forgot Eleanor’s handkerchief, which was always in my sleeve. I simply reached up, as a peasant might, and wiped my tears away with one hand.

Jean Pierre saw me do this, and without letting go of the hand that still lay on the table between us, he offered a cloth from the table beside him. I accepted his kindness and dried the last of my tears. I had no more use for tears.

“Thank you,” I said. “For the song, and for everything else.”

As silence fell between us, I saw for the first time how beautiful he was, and how this beauty lay not just in the planes of his face, but in the kindness of his countenance. I found myself taking in the blue of his eyes and the curve of his cheek.

I pressed myself back against the cushions of my chair, so that I would not lean closer and take in his scent. I did not trust myself to speak. I kept my eyes on his so that I would not lower my gaze to the beauty of his calves in their silk hose.

His eyes held mine. He did not look away.

Between us rose something that I had never before considered in my life, something I had not known existed. I loved Richard deeply, but we had been very young when we met, and he had never honored me as I had hoped he might. Now, between Jean Pierre and myself, rose a longing and a mutual consent. In all of the time I had spent at the courts of France and England, I had never seen its’ like. I would not have thought it possible.

I had not known that a man and a woman could face each other as equals. I had not known that lust and equality could exist side by side. Jean Pierre’s blatant respect for me only made me want him more.

It was a temptation I could not live with. I rose to my feet, and Jean Pierre stood when I did. The warmth in his blue eyes told me that I was a beautiful woman still, despite my black gown, despite all the years that had passed since my youth was spent.

He might have offered some flowery compliment to break the tension between us, as men had offered me empty words at Henry’s court, long ago. But he said nothing and our silence lingered, speaking for us.

Jean Pierre did nothing to deny the knowledge of what lay between us. He only took my hand and kissed it, cradling it as if it were the Holy Grail.

My self-control drained away with his hand on mine and the heat under my skin flared. My mouth went dry, and my tongue stayed silent, though I had meant to wish him a good night before he left me.

The lay sisters still nodded by the south wall. Jean Pierre only looked at me, the light in his eyes hot enough to scorch me where I stood.

“Good night,” I said at last, hoping to break the spell that had fallen between us.

Jean Pierre left me without another word. I felt the press of his hand on mine long after he had gone. The sisters woke finally to douse the many lamps and find their own beds.

I spent a sleepless night on my cloistered cot, until the sun began to lighten the sky to gray. Only then did I sleep, to wake again when the sun shone in warm, the sound of the bell rising on the wind, calling me to prayer.

After mass, I stayed on my knees. When I stood, my prayer finished, I found the Count of Valois watching me.

He regarded me without smiling. Lust rose in me like sap in a tree, and I moved to escape it.

Jean Pierre stepped forward and blocked my path to the chapel’s only door. “Your Highness.”

His voice was deep and low, almost subservient, as if he had not willfully stepped between me and the warmth of the day beyond. My knees were cold from kneeling on stone. I focused on that chill in an effort to keep my mind on the things of God, but the pain was fleeting, for I had been kneeling on a cushion.

I did not speak but moved again toward the door. This time, Jean Pierre stopped me by taking hold of my arm, as if I were some servant girl he would dally with behind the laundry. The taste of anger on my tongue only made me more aware of my desire.

I cast my gaze down to my arm where his hand lay, but he did not let me go. No one had ever touched me without my permission. No one but the king. “Release me.” My voice was calm and betrayed none of the desire I felt.

But Jean Pierre seemed to know the desire buried deep within me, as Henry once had. His eyes never left my face. Once again, I was struck by the thought that he knew me, as no other man ever had, save one.

“My lady, there is unfinished business between us.”

I kept my voice even, my tone severe. “That is so, my lord. You will bear me to my brother the king in one day’s time. You will lead me to his court and leave me in his care. That will conclude the business we have between us.”

Jean Pierre heard the lies I spoke, but he ignored them. He stepped so close that I could smell the scent of sandalwood on his skin.