My Lady Reluctant

“I believe too much sun has addled your brain, my lord,” she said tartly.

“Just so, Lady Gisele,” Maislin agreed from behind them. “From the color of his hair, ’tis obvious his skull must have been singed at one time or another, and his brain beneath it, too!”

Apparently, however, de Balleroy took her retort for bantering. “Ah, Lady Gisele, you wound me to the heart with your dagger-sharp tongue. I’ll be but a shadow of my former robust self by the time I bid you farewell at Westminster.” His merry smile didn’t look the least bit discomfitted, however.

“Oh? You’re not remaining?” she said, then wished she could kick herself, for his smile had broadened into a grin. But she was dismayed at the thought she would have to navigate the strange new world of Matilda’s palace without the presence of even one familiar face.

“Ah, so you will miss me,” he teased. “I’ll be back at court from time to time, never fear.”

“Oh, it’s naught to me, my lord,” she assured him with what she hoped sounded like conviction. She made her voice casual, even a trifle bored. “No doubt the empress will keep me so busy I should scarce know whether you are there or not. Do you return to a fief in England? Or mayhap you have a demesne and wife in Normandy?”

“Mayhap,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

His evasiveness, coupled with her nervousness about the new life she was about to take up, sparked her temper.

“You’re very secretive, my lord. I was merely making conversation.”

“If you wanted to know if I was married, Lady Gisele, you should have asked me,” he said with maddening sangfroid.

Devil take the man! “As I said, ’tis naught to me,” she replied through clenched teeth. “I was just trying to pass the time. And after all, you know much about me and I know virtually nothing about you.”

She could read nothing in those honey-brown eyes, neither anger at her sharp tone nor amusement at her expense.

Finally he said, “I’m sorry, Lady Gisele. The responsibilities I bear for the empress have required that I keep my own counsel, and ’tis a habit hard to break.”

She averted her face from him. “Well, do not feel you must change your habit for me.”

“I am not wed,” he continued, as if she had not spoken. “I am the lord of Balleroy in Normandy, and in addition, hold Tichenden Castle here in England. I have a sister two years my junior, who acts as my chatelaine at Tichenden, two younger sisters being educated in a Norman convent—perhaps one of them will take the veil—and the youngest is a brother still at home. Our parents are dead. Is there aught else you would know?”

She refused to express surprise at the sudden flood of information. “Where is Tichenden? In the west, I assume, where the empress’s forces are strong?”

“Nay, ’tis on the North Downs.”

“But I thought Stephen’s adherents held that part of England?”

“And so they do, for the most part.” She saw that shuttered look come over his eyes again, and knew she must not delve further in this particular subject.

After ferrying themselves and their mounts across the Thames, they arrived at Westminster just at the hour of Sext. De Balleroy had just assisted Gisele to dismount and their horses were being led away by a servitor when Gisele’s stomach growled so loudly that even the baron heard it.

“Ah, too bad,” he mocked, “for I fear we’ve missed the midday meal, and ’twill be long till supper. Shall I take you first to the kitchens for something to fill your empty stomach?”

“That won’t be necessary,” she told him, wishing he’d allow her to keep her dignity, at least until she’d been presented to Matilda! “If you would direct me in finding the empress, or someone who knows where she may be found—”

Visibly making an effort to smoothe the teasing grin from his face, he murmured, “Very well, follow me, my lady. Maislin,” he called over his shoulder as he led her across the courtyard, “see that Lady Gisele’s palfrey is given a good stall, and all our mounts grained and watered, but tell the stable boy yours and mine are to be kept in readiness. We’ll likely depart by midafternoon. Oh, and don’t force me have to come and find you off in some shadowy corner with a scullery wench, Maislin.”

“Yes, my lord!” the squire called back, but his voice sounded undismayed by these strictures.

I wonder if you practice what you preach, my lord, Gisele wanted to say, but she was too intent on keeping up with him despite her painful limp.

At last he seemed to realize how far behind she was falling, and turned around. “Your dignity will have to wait until your foot is better, Lady Gisele,” he said, picking her up.

She only hoped no one important would see them.

He carried her into the palace, and through a maze of corridors, doors and antechambers. He strode along as surely as if he carried nothing, and this mysterious warren was his own castle. At last they came to a door guarded by two hefty men-at-arms, who crossed their spears to bar their way.

“Who would enter the empress’s presence?” one growled.

“Tell her chamberlain ’tis de Balleroy,” the baron responded easily, a slight smile playing over his lips as he set Gisele down.

One of the guards disappeared within, and a moment later, the door was opened, and a harried-looking man in a robe trimmed with squirrel stuck his head out and gestured that they were to enter.

Before the two could do so, however, a throaty female voice called, “Brys, is that you? Come in, you rascally knave!”

De Balleroy grinned at her as if to say, See, I told you we were knaves all!

They entered a spacious chamber into which the noonday sun streamed through several wide, arched windows, illuminating a feminine figure who glided toward them. As Matilda drew closer, Gisele saw that she was still strikingly attractive, with a slender waist that belied the fact that she had given her husband three sons. Worry had etched a sharpness to her features, though, and her gray eyes had a shrewd, penetrating quality to them. She wore a veil and wimple over her hair, with an ornate circlet of gold keeping the veil in place.

De Balleroy went down on one knee before the empress, bowing his head, while behind him Gisele awkwardly knelt also, uncertain what was proper for her to do.

“Brys,” Matilda purred in that caressing, faintly German-accented voice as she held out an ivory-white hand and extended it to de Balleroy to kiss, “Isn’t it wonderful that I am finally in Westminster Palace where I belong? I tell you, Geoffrey de Mandeville is a miracle worker, persuading those stiff-necked Londoners to let me in! Did you have a good journey? And who is this lovely maid behind you?”

Seemingly used to the empress’s flood of words, de Balleroy rose and said, “You glow like a jewel in its proper setting at last, Domina. My journey was uneventful until I traveled through the Weald, and found this lady lying unconscious, the only survivor of a massacre. May I present Lady Sidonie Gisele de l’Aigle? She goes by her middle name, Gisele.”

The empress’s eyes widened, and she glided past de Balleroy and placed her hands on Gisele’s blushing cheeks. Her hands were cool and smooth. “God in Heaven! A massacre? I have been expecting you, child—but what on earth happened? Your face—it is all scratched!” she said, tracing the scrapes on Gisele’s face, left by the tree branches during her wild ride.

“Outlaws, your…highness,” Gisele said hesitatingly. “My escort was attacked in the Weald—” She felt emotion tighten her throat.

“They were slaughtered to a man,” de Balleroy finished for her. “The miscreants even killed an old woman with them, the lady’s servant. If Lady Gisele’s horse hadn’t bolted, doubtless she would not be standing before you now, Domina. As it is, the robbers got everything she brought with her but the clothes she wears.”

“God be thanked you were preserved, child,” Matilda said, extending a hand to Gisele to assist her to her feet. Gisele arose, awkwardly because of the still-painful ankle, and she could feel Matilda assessing her, judging her appearance and her worth. If only she had had something more to wear than the travel-stained bliaut.

“I went back and buried the bodies, Empress,” de Balleroy said. “Would that I could return with a force of knights and clear out the rats’ nest of outlaws in the Weald as well.”

“Always, he is the soul of chivalry,” she said to Gisele. “Ah, Brys, if only I was already crowned, and Stephen of Blois banished across the Channel where he belongs! Then I would grant you that force! Since my cousin has been on the throne, felons and thieves have multiplied, and honest folk are murdered. It was not so in my father’s day, and will not be so in this land as soon as I have won—but who knows how long that may be?” She sighed heavily. “A deputation of the wealthiest merchants of London just left before you came, Brys, and they did not like it when I told them Stephen had left the treasury bare as a well-gnawed bone. And they took it very ill that I told them they would have to supply the funds for my crowning! Can you imagine it? They thought I should be crowned in the same threadbare garments that I brought from Anjou.”

Gisele did not think the purple velvet overgown, banded at the neck and sleeves with golden-threaded embroidery, looked at all threadbare, but possibly it was not ornate enough for the widow of the Holy Roman Emperor to wear to her crowning.

Gisele wondered, though, if it was wise for Matilda, who had been refused entrance into London for so long, to have immediately demanded money of the independent-minded Londoners. Even in Normandy it was known that the Londoners had long favored Stephen, Matilda’s rival. Surely it would have been prudent to wait a while before making financial demands?

Fortunately the empress did not seem to be expecting an answer to her question from de Balleroy, for she immediately turned back to Gisele.

“Ah, but you must be too fatigued to listen to such things, my dear, after what you have been through!” exclaimed the empress, putting her arm around Gisele’s shoulders. “I must immediately write a letter to your lord father, telling him what has befallen you and assuring him that you, at least, are unharmed!”

He won’t care, Gisele wanted to blurt out. He will begrudge me the loss of his six knights much more than he values my safety, at least until I make an advantageous marriage and provide him with a male heir. But she did not say what she was thinking; she could not bear for this worldly, sophisticated woman who had been through so much herself to pity her.

“Thank you, Domina,” Gisele managed to say, calling the empress by the title she had heard Brys use.

“Things will appear better to you after you have rested and refreshed yourself, Gisele, my dear,” Matilda said. Her husky, accented voice had a very soothing quality, and all at once Gisele could see why so many men had been willing to follow and fight for this woman, even though her fortunes had often been precarious.

“Talford!” Matilda called to the chamberlain who had been hovering in the background. “Find Lady Gisele a suitable chamber in the palace! See that she has everything she needs between now and the supper hour, and that someone comes to show her the way to the hall. Lady Gisele, I will see you again at supper, where you will meet my other ladies and members of my court.”

It was a dismissal; Matilda was already drawing de Balleroy over to two carved, high-backed chairs over by one of the windows, and the harried-looking chamberlain was gesturing for her to follow him out the door. But Gisele had wanted to bid farewell to Brys de Balleroy and thank him for his and his squire’s kindness to her. She hesitated, willing de Balleroy to turn around. “I would thank my lord de Balleroy….” she said at last, when it seemed she would be ushered away with no chance to say anything further to him.

Brys de Balleroy turned, a curious light dancing in those honey-brown eyes, and smiled encouragingly at her.

“’Twas my honor to render you such a paltry service, my lady. No doubt when I next see you, you will have blossomed like a rose, a rose every man will want for his garden.”

Easy words, glibly spoken while Matilda smiled tolerantly, then pulled Brys toward the chairs.

She wanted to ask when that would be—when would he be returning to Westminster? But she felt he had already forgotten her, and so there was nothing to do but limp after the chamberlain as he led her from the room.

Chapter Four

“I do believe the Norman damsel has stolen your heart, my lord,” Maislin commented as they rode away from Westminster, following the river back toward London. White-headed daisies and purple loosestrife waved on the riverbanks; overhead, gulls flew eastward back toward the mouth of the Thames, following a barge.

“Oh? And how many buckets of ale did you manage to swill in the short time I was gone from you?”

Maislin blinked. “I? I’m sober as a monk at the end of Lent, my lord! In fact, I was just about to ask that we stop and wet our throats at that little alehouse in Southwark. Why would you ask such a thing?”

“Why? Because I’ve rarely known you to say such a foolish thing, Maislin.”

To give him credit, the shaggy giant didn’t try to pretend he didn’t know what Brys meant. “My lord Brys,” he retorted, “you looked back at the palace walls thrice since we left. Will you try to tell me it’s the empress you’re longing for, so soon after departing her presence?”

Brys chuckled. “Nay, I’m not so foolish as to get involved in Matilda’s coils.”

His squire nodded sagely. “Aye, then ’tis the Norman maiden you’re already missing. She’s stolen your heart,” he insisted.

“I have no heart to steal, don’t you remember?” Brys reminded Maislin, with a wry twist of his mouth. “At least, that’s what you always say when I won’t stop at every alestake between here and Scotland. Nay, I’m just pitying poor Lady Gisele. I feel like an untrustworthy shepherd who has just tossed a prize lamb in among a pack of wolves.”

Maislin grinned. “Could a man who never had a heart speak so, Lord Brys? Aye, you’ve got feelings for the Norman lass, I’ll be bound! And why not? She is a toothsome damsel, with those great round eyes and soft rosebud lips and that thick chestnut hair. Tell me your loins never burned while you were carrying her into the priory, or while she was ridin’ behind you with her softness rub—”

Brys put up a gauntleted hand to forestall his squire’s frankness. “Careful…” Damn Maislin, he could feel his aforementioned loins tingling as Maislin reminded him of the exquisite torment he’d experienced the past two days due to his enforced contact with the Norman maiden. “You’re confusing a heart with a conscience, Maislin,” he said. “I merely don’t like to think of an innocent such as Lady Gisele at the mercy of every lecherous knight at Matilda’s court.”

“Innocent?” Maislin mused consideringly. “Aye, I think you’ve the right of it there, my lord. The wench is innocent as a newborn kitten.”

“She can spit like a kitten, too,” Brys murmured, recalling the indignant way she had spoken of her rejection by his friend Alain of Hawkswell. “I merely fear she has not claws enough for the savage dogs that lurk about the empress,” he added, as some of the faces of Matilda’s supporters came to mind.

“There is a remedy, if you are truly worried, my lord,” Maislin said, mischief lurking in his blue eyes.

“Oh? And what would that be, pray?” Brys asked, suspicious.

“’Tis obvious! Take her to wife yourself, my lord! I’d vow you could have that kitten purring in your arms well before dawn!”

Suddenly the conversation had gone on too long. “Cease your silly japing, Maislin,” Brys commanded, turning his face from his squire. “You’re making my brains ache.”

“But ’tis no jape, my lord Brys,” Maislin protested. “Why not wed Lady Gisele? She’s comely enough for a prince, and is an heiress in the bargain! Why not make Hawkswell’s loss your gain? You must marry some lady and give a son to Balleroy!”

“Maislin, you forget yourself,” Brys snapped. “I’ll brook no more talk like this! You would do well to remember that we have been entrusted with a mission, and keep your mind upon it. Not upon your lord’s private business.”

“Yes, my lord,” his squire said, his usually merry face instantly crestfallen, his cheeks a dull brick red.

They rode in silence for the next few minutes. His squire’s words echoed back to him—You must marry some lady and give a son to Balleroy—as if Balleroy were not his castle in Normandy, but a greedy pagan god to be appeased by the offering of a male infant. He had sisters, and no inclination to tie himself down to a wife just now. If he was caught while he played his dangerous game, and paid with his life, one of his sisters could marry and provide Balleroy with its heir.

Then why could he not banish Gisele de l’Aigle’s face from his mind? Her creamy oval face, framed by glossy chestnut hair. Her eyes. Once they had left the forest gloom behind, he had discovered her eyes were a changeable hazel—now amber, now jade green shot with gold, depending upon her surroundings. And yes, that pair of soft lips his squire had compared to rosebuds, curse him. His loins ached as he thought of kissing those lips.

Well, he never would. He had no time for marriage, and hadn’t Gisele herself indicated she wanted no part of the wedded state? She wanted to be free and independent of either a husband’s control or that of the Church. Good luck, my lady, for I doubt you will find such a state anywhere in Christendom!

“I can see the alestake from here, Maislin,” he said, when they were halfway across the bridge to Southwark. He was determined to eject Gisele from his mind.

“Aye, my lord.”

Glancing over at the young giant, he saw that his squire’s eyes were fixed firmly between his mount’s ears. He had looked neither to the right nor the left, even when Brys had spoken. Brys felt shame stab at him. His squire was as strong as a young ox, and excelled at swordsmanship, yet his feelings were as easy to hurt as a puppy’s.

“Isn’t that the alehouse with the buxom serving wench you had your eye on last time we passed this way, Maislin? Here, tuck this into her bodice—” he held out a silver penny “—and I’ll wager she’ll invite you to the back chamber where she can serve you more privately.”

Maislin brightened immediately. “Thank you, my lord! I have no doubt she will! But…what of you, Lord Brys? She had a cousin working there too, as I recall…a cuddlesome thing nearly as pretty as she, if you don’t mind the pox scar on her cheek—I’m sure she’d do the same for you, my lord….”

Brys smiled. “No doubt, but I’ll just drink my ale while you…ah…sate another appetite.”

“Why do they call the empress ‘Domina?”’ she asked, not only because she wondered, but because she wanted to slow the chamberlain down. He set a quick pace in spite of his short legs.

“Because ’tis the proper title for a queen before she has been crowned,” Talford said, as if Gisele should have known it. “Until her coronation, she is ‘Domina’ or ‘the Lady of England’—or one uses her former title of Empress.”

“I see,” Gisele said, trying not to pant.

“It is to be hoped one of the other ladies can furnish you with a suitable gown, until you can obtain some of your own,” Talford sniffed, eyeing her brown bliaut with distaste.

Gisele said nothing. She guessed the supercilious chamberlain had been listening when the empress was told about the attack in the Weald.

He sniffed again as they stopped in front of a door. “Here is your chamber. You will share it with Lady Manette de Mandeville.”

De Mandeville—the empress had mentioned that name. Ah yes, Geoffrey de Mandeville, the man whom Matilda had claimed worked a miracle by getting the Londoners to let her in.

“She is the daughter of Lord Geoffrey de Mandeville?”

“Lady Manette is the niece of the Earl of Essex—or at least ’tis what I’ve been told,” the chamberlain said, lifting a brow as if he doubted the relationship—making Gisele wonder why.

He knocked at the door, but no one answered within. He knocked again, harder this time, and from inside the chamber came a breathless, muffled shout: “Go away!”

Talford’s face hardened and he rolled his eyes heavenward. “It is I, Talford! Lady Manette, you must open this door!” He added softly, as if to himself, “And there had better not be anyone in there with you.”

Gisele heard a scuffling within, and a muttered curse in a voice which sounded too deep to be a woman’s, then a rustling as though someone walked across rushes toward the door. A moment later it creaked open, revealing a heavy-lidded flush-faced blond girl whose hair had mostly escaped the plait that hung to her slender waist. A heavily embroidered girdle was only half-tied at her hips.

“Yes?” she said, her gaze flicking from Talford to Gisele and back again.

“I did not truly did not think to find you here at this hour, my lady.”

Manette de Mandeville raised a supercilious pale brow.

“You knocked on the door and called my name, but you did not think to find me here?”

“It is past midday, my lady. I did not think to find you abed,” he said in his sententious way, nodding toward the interior, where bed with rumpled linens was clearly visible from the corridor. “I knocked only as a courtesy. I thought you would be about your duties with the rest of the empress’s ladies.”

“I was ill,” Lady Manette said, a trifle defensively. “My belly was cramping—my monthly flux, you know. And now,” she said, glancing meaningfully over her shoulder at the bed, “if you will excuse me…”

Gisele watched, fascinated, as the chamberlain’s face turned livid, then crimson.

“Such plain speaking is neither necessary nor becoming of one of the empress’s ladies,” Talford reprimanded her. “And I regret that you will have to rise to the occasion despite your um…ill health. The empress’s new lady has arrived, and she is to share your chamber. Not only that, but you will need to find her something suitable to wear—immediately,” he added, as Manette opened her mouth and looked as if she were about to protest. “Lady Gisele de l’Aigle has fallen upon misfortune and has naught but what she is wearing, and that will never do in the hall at supper, as I’m sure you can see.”

Manette’s eyes, which had only briefly rested upon Gisele, now darted back to her and assessed her frankly. “Ah, so you’re the heiress from Normandy,” she murmured in her sleepy, sultry voice. She looked at least mildly interested. “Well, in that case, you may come in,” she said to Gisele. “She’ll be fine, my lord,” she added, waving a hand dismissively at the chamberlain, who once again sniffed and stared as Manette took hold of Gisele’s hand and pulled her none too gently inside, then shut the door firmly in Talford’s face.

“The pompous old fool,” she said, jerking her head back toward the door to indicate the chamberlain.

Gisele was not sure how she should reply to that, although she’d found the chamberlain’s manner annoying, too. “I regret to disturb you while you are ill, Lady Manette,” she began diffidently. “If you will but indicate where the rest of the empress’s ladies are working, I will join them and you can go back to bed—”

A trill of laughter burst from Manette. “Oh, I’m not truly ill, silly, unless you count lovesickness! That was but a ruse to get Talford to leave the quicker! I thought if I embarrassed him enough—but never mind.” She went to the bed, and bent over by it, raising the blanket that dangled from the bed to the rushes. She said something in the gutteral tongue Gisele knew was English, though she didn’t understand it.

A moment later, a lanky, flaxen-haired youth crawled out from under the bed, and blinking at Gisele, bowed, then straightened to his full height, looking at Manette as if for direction.

“This is Wulfram. A gorgeous Saxon, isn’t he?” drawled Manette in Norman French, running a hand over the well-developed youth’s muscular shoulder. “And speaks not a word of French, so we may discuss his attributes right in front of him and he’ll never know. Nay, I wasn’t ill—Wulfram and I were just indulging in a little midday bed sport. Wulfram is um…very talented at that. Is he not handsome? A veritable pagan Adonis, if one may call a Saxon by a Greek name?”