Dreams of Lilacs

Chapter 13



Isabelle left her chamber, which was yet another in a large list of guest chambers her brother possessed in his French castle on the edge of the sea. That castle was, she had to admit, a spectacular place. She had been there before, of course, so she wasn’t surprised by the opulence. She was simply surprised to find herself enjoying it so abruptly.

She pulled the door shut behind her and steeled herself for the conversation she’d avoided having the day before by pleading a sudden and quite severe headache. Convincing her almost eldest brother that her head pained her from her tortures at Monsaert had been pitifully easy. He had immediately sent her off to lie down with wine and food hard on her heels. It had given her a chance to look out the window and breathe in the sea air, but it hadn’t eased her heart any.

Gervase hadn’t gone so far as to look at her as he’d ridden off through the gates.

She walked along the passageway and tried not to let the memory of that sting. After all, what could she have expected? Her brother had humiliated him in front of her, his men, and those of Beauvois who had cared to watch. She was only surprised that instead of simply turning away from her, Gervase hadn’t snarled curses at her before he’d gone.

She supposed she would never see him again.

She walked out into the great hall and sighed a little in spite of herself. Her brother had many faults—being almost as pigheaded as Robin was the first one she latched on to—but stinting on luxurious surroundings was not one of them. She supposed he did it to please his wife, Jennifer, but she was happy to be the beneficiary of it at the moment. The hall was of pleasing dimensions, the ceiling painted in a particularly Gallic way, and the furniture sumptuous even in a locale that saw so much coming and going of servants and strangers.

Nicholas was standing in front of the fire, looking far too grave for her peace of mind. He caught sight of her and immediately crossed the hall to fetch her. He took her by the hand and drew her over to the fire, saw her seated, then took a deep breath as if he prepared for a very long, stern lecture.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” she said shortly.

He looked at her as if he’d never seen her before. She lifted her chin.

“What?”

“What?” he echoed. “What? Isabelle, what in the hell are you doing in France? By yourself? Missing very sensible accoutrements such as a heavy guard with very sharp swords?”

“I’m not entirely sure. As I said yesterday, I think I’m on a quest.”

His mouth worked, but not a sound came from him. During that bit of spluttering, they were joined by another who collapsed happily in the other chair drawn up close to the fire.

“Go away,” Nicholas said shortly.

Miles only propped his booted ankle up on his opposite knee. “Why?”

“Because I don’t want you here.”

“Afraid I’ll hamper all the shouting you want to do?”

“Something like that,” Nicholas said. “Now, go away.”

Miles only put his hand over his mouth. “See,” he said, his words muffled, “I can hold my tongue.”

“You won’t have a tongue if you use it in the next half hour,” Nicholas said, in clipped tones. “Isabelle, what in the hell were you thinking?”

She sighed gustily. “I believe I already answered that.”

“You were being held captive by Gervase de Seger,” Nicholas bellowed. “Do you have no idea of your peril?”

She shrugged. “He seemed fairly harmless to me. Slightly cross, but that can be readily explained by the pain he still suffers in his leg.”

Nicholas ground his teeth. “He has ravished half the virgins in France!”

Isabelle looked at Miles. “Is that true?”

“Rumor,” Miles said dismissively. “Not that he isn’t a handsome-looking man, of course, full of pleasing courtly manners—”

“We thought you were dead!” Nicholas interrupted with a shout.

Isabelle looked at her brother standing there in a towering rage and sighed. She had considered fleeing her father’s keep numerous times, but what had kept her from it had been the thought of leaving her family, her brothers especially, in exactly the sort of state Nicholas currently found himself in. De Piaget lads were nothing if not protective of the women in their care.

She rose and went to put her arms around her brother’s waist. She held on to him until he finally relented and returned the embrace, so tightly that she squeaked involuntarily.

“You witless chit,” he said hoarsely, “we thought you were dead.”

“So you’ve said,” she noted. “Repeatedly.” She pulled back to look up at him. “I’m sorry. I lost my memory—”

“I imagine your escort in a particular coastal village you would be wise never to name aloud wishes he had lost his,” Nicholas muttered.

She pulled away. “Montgomery?”

“The very same. I understand even mentioning that port sends Father into absolute fits of fury. Montgomery, I imagine, has removed the word from his vocabulary altogether.” He shot her a look. “What you may not remember is that you left the poor lad in an inn, unconscious and clutching not only a gown but apparently the hair you seem to be missing.”

“Clever me,” she managed.

“When will you gels stop cutting off your hair?” Nicholas complained. “You all seem to do it save Jenner, who is the only one with sense among you.”

“It is a long and glorious tradition.”

“Please allow it to stop with you,” he pleaded.


She ran her hand over what was left of her hair and spared a regret for its loss. She resumed her seat and looked up at her brother. “Did I clout Montgomery over the head with something or did he simply volunteer to stay behind?”

“Ask Miles later,” Nicholas said. “He has answers I don’t. All I know is that Father will be absolutely livid when he learns where you were.”

“But—”

“At Monsaert, of all places! With that damned Gervase de Seger—” Words seemed to fail him for a moment or two, then he took a deep breath and seemed to find his tongue. “He’s a rogue of the worst sort.”

“So you claim,” she said calmly, “but all I’ve heard is that he has humiliated you more than once with the sword and unhorsed you at least thrice that his brother Joscelin remembers. Your pride has been stung.”

“Nay, I don’t want my youngest sister associating with a man possessing no redeeming qualities.”

“I think you’re misjudging him.”

“And I think you’ve never watched him at court,” Nicholas growled.

“And you have?” she asked with a snort. “You, an Englishman?”

“Bearing a French title?” he said pointedly. “Aye, I have.”

“Jealous?”

“Hardly,” Nicholas said contemptuously. He chewed on his words for a moment or two, then rolled his eyes. “I will allow that there are things about him that another might find acceptable. He is—or was, rather—a fair swordsman and marginally skilled in the joust.”

“Nick, be honest,” Miles said lazily.

“Very well, he was terrifying,” Nicholas snarled at him. “He’s also a ferocious bargainer, ruthless to enemies, and unfailingly loyal to friends as well as the one half brother I met. He was also continually trailed after by an endless collection of beautiful women. He took full advantage of their charms.”

“Has he any bastards?” Isabelle asked.

“Rumor has it—”

“Not rumor, Nicky, demonstrable fact. How many bastards has he claimed?”

“Why would he claim any?”

She shot him a look.

He swore. “Very well, why wouldn’t he, I suppose. And nay, damn you, I’ve seen no proof. Fortunately for us all he has provided ample evidence of his stupidity. That’s seen easily enough by the fact that he put you to work in his kitchens.”

“I’m not saying he can’t be an idiot,” she said easily. “He is a man, after all.”

Isabelle realized she was talking to emptiness at the same time she realized her brother was no longer standing in front of the fire. She looked after him as he trotted across the great hall and disappeared up the stairs, then looked at her next oldest brother.

“He’s excitable.”

“Nervous rather,” Miles said, smiling, “though I’m not sure why. Jennifer has at least another fortnight before the babe arrives, or so she believes. Her mother and grandmother will be here well before the birth.”

Isabelle would have commented on that, but she had to admit she shared her eldest brother Robin’s opinion of things that were . . . odd. The fact that Jennifer’s mother didn’t seem to have a hall in England and that her grandmother was likely as old as Queen Eleanor herself—a woman rumored to have her own pact with unwholesome sources that kept her living long past when she should have lowered herself into her grave—was something that Isabelle didn’t think on often.

Paranormal oddities made her nervous.

And cold. She rose and stood with her back to the fire. “Let’s speak of something else.”

“Very well. Are the tunic and trousers yours?”

“I filched them from one of Gervase’s brothers,” Isabelle said.

“You have a terrible habit of that, you know.”

“I learned it from Amanda.”

Miles smiled. “I imagine you did.” He rose and stood next to her, warming his own backside against the roaring fire. “You look to be plotting something.”

“Your demise, no doubt,” she said absently. She looked out over the hall and shivered. “I feel like we’ve done this before.”

“How many times haven’t we done this before? For as much of our lives as I can remember. Me, exhausting myself trying to convince you to see reason—”

“Ha,” she said crossly. “It was generally you plotting mischief and me trying to talk you out of it.”

“I suppose you have that aright,” he conceded. “Only this time, it looks to have been you off combining mischief.”

“It wasn’t mischief,” she said, “it was an adventure.”

“Well, you did tell me you planned on one.”

She turned to face him. “Did I? When?”

“Before you left Artane. You plotted and I listened, then offered my very sensible advice. You were extremely grateful to yours truly when I instructed you to stay at Artane whilst I saw to a bit of business for Nick at Wyckham. Indeed, you promised me that you would wait for me to return after which we would both don trousers and have ourselves an adventure by traipsing off to France in disguise.”

She wished for a wall to lean against, but supposed she would just have to rely on her own two feet. “Very generous of you,” she noted. “I’m assuming I agreed to this very generous offer.”

“You did,” he said easily. “And then you didn’t, if you know what I mean. I returned home to find you gone, then filched a horse and rode like a demon south to try to find you. By the time I reached the inn where you had laid your youngest brother low, you’d been gone at least four days.” He looked at her seriously. “I learned from lads on the dock that your ship had been lost at sea.”

She shivered. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be. I almost shed a tear or two.”

She elbowed him companionably in the ribs. “You always were a maudlin thing.”

He smiled wryly. “And so I am.” He reached out and ruffled what was left of her hair. “And to answer the question I can see you’re preparing to ask, aye, I found a ship and sailed to France myself to see if perhaps you might have miraculously survived. I’ll give you the details of that later. What I will tell you now is that I sent a message off to Mother and Father yesterday to let them know you’re alive and they can stop looking for you.”

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“My pleasure.” He slid her a look. “You know, your demon lord from Monsaert didn’t show all that well yesterday. I imagine he wasn’t too pleased about that.”

“Were you spying on him?” she demanded.

“Thought I’d be useful.” He smiled. “Wasn’t that useful?”

“Not very,” she said. She pulled a chair closer to the fire, then sat down with a sigh. “What still eludes me is why in the world I would have ever wanted to come to France on my own. Outside of the usual desire to be off and having an adventure. I imagine that if I’d suggested the like, you would have told me to venture to the shore or some other rot.”

He laughed and pulled up a chair to face herself. “As it happens, you did and I did. But that isn’t the reason you left England.”

She felt something slide down her spine, a finger of chill she hadn’t expected. “Can I assume you know the reason?”


“You can,” he said carefully. He glanced about them, no doubt to make certain they were relatively alone, then he looked at her seriously. “I found your diary.”

“You are reprehensible,” she breathed. “What did it say?”

“You assume I read it.”

“Of course I assume you read it! What did you find there?”

He looked at his hands for a moment, then at her. “I think we should back up a bit. I’ll tell the tale and you stop me when I’ve told you something you don’t already know.”

“Fair enough,” she agreed.

“Very well. You made it very clear that you wanted to come to France sooner than with Mother, though you wouldn’t tell me why you were so hell-bent on the idea.” He looked at her, then shook his head. “There was something fey about you, Izzy, something I’d never seen in you before. I wouldn’t have left you to your own devices if Nick hadn’t been relying on me to see to his business for him. Believe me when I say I looked for every way possible to shove it off onto someone else. I couldn’t, though, which left me leaving you behind and praying you wouldn’t run off on your own.”

“Which I apparently did.”

“You had your reasons.” He paused, then shrugged. “Suffice it to say that by the time I caught up to you in Alnmouth, you were gone and Montgomery was quite reasonably fearing for his life. I sailed to France, as I said, and after a bit of searching found your captain half dead in a small fishing village. He confirmed that you had been aboard his ship when it had been swept away.”

“But you didn’t find me,” she said slowly.

“Nay, but we found one of your boots washed up on shore,” he said, “and I found Arthur of Harwych wandering from place to place, wringing his hands and searching for you.”

“He’s useless.”

“He’s worse than useless,” Miles said in disgust, “but rather useful for small bits of information. I questioned him until he wept, sent him on his way, then spent a se’nnight searching the shore where we thought you might have come to ground. I saw nothing of you, heard nothing of you, found no sign of you save that boot on the strand.” He looked at her seriously. “I had feared you might meet your end in France, but I hadn’t imagined it would come because of your journey here.”

She looked at him in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“Because I know why you came here.”

She felt still descend. It was a profoundly disquieting sensation, one she hoped she would be long in enduring again. “Do you?” she asked, finding that there was hardly any sound to her voice. “Say on, brother.”

“I found a missive in your chamber,” he said, sounding rather unsettled himself. “It instructed you to come to France or the lives of your entire family would be the forfeit. Why you were wanted here is something the missive didn’t say, but I can’t imagine it was for a pleasant purpose.”

She felt the floor rock beneath her feet. The next thing she knew, Miles was squatting in front of her with his hands on her shoulders, holding her upright. She waved him away.

“Air,” she wheezed.

“You fainted.”

“Of course I didn’t faint. I swayed.”

“You almost fell out of your chair.”

“Coincidence,” she said, though the word sounded very garbled to her ears.

She put her hands over her face and simply breathed in and out for several moments in silence before she thought she could manage a decent breath without, well, without fainting. She clutched the arms of her chair to keep herself upright.

“So,” she managed, “this sorry bit of scribbling didn’t say why my presence was requested in France?”

He shifted. “Not in so many words. You were simply ordered to come. If you did not, there were the aforementioned consequences of death at Artane. And elsewhere.”

She started to nod, then realized what he’d said. “Elsewhere?”

“You were told that our grandmother and grandfather here would pay a price, as well.”

She felt the chamber begin to weave again, but waved Miles off before he reached for her. She pulled her legs up into the chair with her and made herself as comfortable as possible. “We have no grandsire living,” she began slowly.

“Your correspondent seems to think so.”

“But Joanna—”

“Wrong country, Iz. Here in France.”

She shook her head, looked at him, then shook her head again. “But Miles, you know as well as I that only Grandmère Mary lives in France.”

“I’ll admit it baffled me,” he said. “And you were instructed to come see her at Caours. Or both her life and our grandfather’s would be in peril.”

She shook her head, because she could hardly believe what she’d heard. “What do I do now?”

“Well, you’re in France. Perhaps you simply wait until this lad who has such interest in your progenitors makes his presence known again.”

She rubbed her arms suddenly. “I don’t consider myself uncourageous,” she said honestly, “but the thought of that is unsettling.”

“Which is the first sensible thing I’ve heard you say in years,” he said without hesitation. “As for the other, I believe I’ll be shadowing you for a bit, if you don’t mind.”

“I can’t think of anything I would mind less,” she said faintly. “I think I would like to see that missive, actually. Perhaps I might recognize the hand. And I have to be honest and say I would like to see it for myself.”

“I’ll fetch it later. For the moment, why don’t you go keep Jennifer company? I believe she has most of Nick’s guard within shouting distance.”

She looked at Miles in surprise. “Is he concerned about her safety?”

“He’s concerned about everything,” Miles said wryly. “This is nothing he can control, so he controls what he can. Which is, I imagine, why not knowing if you were dead or alive was so troubling to him.” He glanced at her. “You couldn’t have sent word from Monsaert?”

She had been halfway to her feet, but she found herself sitting again, quite abruptly. “But I did send word,” she said. “I sent a missive to Grandmère a pair of days ago, telling her I was alive. Gervase’s brother Guy promised to have it taken to her.”

Miles shrugged. “Messages go awry. It would have been a useful thing for her to have known, but I wouldn’t worry about it. I’ll have one of Nick’s lads go—”

“Don’t,” Isabelle said suddenly.

He blinked. “Don’t do what?”

“Don’t say anything,” she said. “I’ll go tell her myself.”

His mouth fell open slightly. “Of course you won’t.”

“Don’t turn into your brother.”

“Brothers,” Miles clarified. “Brothers and your father. And I certainly will turn into them because you absolutely won’t go outside the gates.”

She waved her hand dismissively. “You worry overmuch.”

“Isabelle!”

“What else can I do?” she asked quietly. “Miles, I need to go because that’s what I was told to do. The reason I left England—apparently—was to save my family from the fury of some unknown lad with as yet unstated reasons to want to harm them. Why would I want to remain here and possibly put Jennifer and her new child in danger?”


“Well—”

“Besides, we could go by way of Monsaert. I obviously can’t abandon the boys now. Who will teach them their Latin?”

“The priest?” Miles said pointedly.

“Who will teach them their sums?”

“Lord Gervase?”

“He’s very busy.”

He rose and pulled her to her feet. “I’ll think on it. For the morning, go keep Jennifer company. I’ll find the missive, then show it to you without a score of nosey souls about. And do not disappear out the front gates without me.”

“I wouldn’t leave without you,” she said pleasantly.

“Ha,” he said with a snort. “Don’t think I won’t know exactly where you are at all times.” He shot her a look. “I’m in earnest, Iz. Don’t go without me. If you’re determined to make a little journey to Caours, I will come with you.”

“Very kind.”

“Self-serving,” he corrected. “I will look as if I tried to save you from yourself and thereby escape scrutiny whilst Father focuses all his ire on you.”

She smiled, then linked arms with him as they walked across the great hall. She let him escort her to her sister-in-law’s chamber and was unsurprised to find half a dozen very fierce lads standing guard outside the door. She was allowed entrance, then scooped up her nephew as he ran over to throw himself at her.

She stood there with young James de Piaget in her arms, then leaned against the doorframe and watched the scene before her with a smile.

Nicholas was kneeling in front of his wife, holding her hands in his, concern etched into every line of his face. As irritating and overbearing as he could be, she had to admit that he comported himself very well as a husband. Jennifer looked serenely happy.

She wondered if she would ever have anything like that for herself.

She let Jamie slide down to the floor when he grew weary of her simply standing there, then she slipped along the wall and went to sit on a seat in front of an open window. She looked out over the sea and forced herself to think about what she’d learned that morning.

Someone had wanted her in France badly enough to make terrible threats to have her there. If the missive was to be believed, she was intended to go to Caours and wait until some nefarious sort deigned to give her more details about what he wanted from her.

She didn’t consider herself devoid of all courage, but she had to admit that the thought of someone demanding her presence somewhere was very unsettling. The irony was heavy and rather difficult to ignore. All those years when she’d complained about no one knowing her name and now to find that the one person who knew her name was quite potentially the last person she wanted to meet . . .

She turned away from that thought before it robbed her of any hope of a decent breath anytime soon. She would go to Caours, but first she would make a slight detour and see how Gervase’s brothers fared. It was nothing short of irresponsible to leave them without a tutor. The very least she could do was give them a few lessons to work on so they would have something to do until Gervase could find another solution.

And for all she knew, the lord of the hall had run out of herbs. What else could she do but seek out sufficient supply for him?

Of course, it would have perhaps been a bit more seemly if he’d invited her, but perhaps he had listened too closely to her brother and been frightened off. She wasn’t sure she would have returned to Beauvois anytime soon if she’d been the target of Nicholas’s ire.

She didn’t want to think about the possibility that he had no intention of ever returning to Beauvois to meet Nicholas on the field.

She pushed aside that thought and concentrated on what she could control which was getting herself to Caours as quickly as possible. If she found herself there by way of Monsaert, who could blame her? She would arrange for someone suitable to take over her duties with Gervase’s brothers, then go to Caours and arrange for her family to live more than just the next fortnight.

It was all she could do.