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  “Tell me why you came,” he murmured, coming closer, “and why you must stay.”

  Barbara stared up at him, transfixed between rage and tears. His playful manner and the relaxation she had seen in him when she said she planned to remain in France had made her feel he had a special interest in her, despite her efforts to remember that he had never wanted her. And now there was something in his posture, in the low, deep voice, which touched her like a caress, that woke sexual desire in her and implied it in him. But the words! The words were pure politics! Queen Eleanor must be completely mad with suspicion and had set him to seduce the truth—which she had already told—out of her.

  “You know my reason for coming,” she said. She had intended to sound cold and angry, but her voice trembled. She was furious at him for playing such a role at his aunt’s request, and at herself for responding so violently that she could hardly keep from flinging her arms around him. Her anger made her say, “The reason I cannot go back is that Guy de Montfort, Leicester’s third son, has decided he would like me to be his whore, and I wish to give him some months to find a more delectable and willing morsel.”

  Alphonse stared at her. His mouth opened, closed, opened again to emit a harsh croak. Then dark color came up under his skin and he looked away. “Is there no one to protect you?” he asked stiffly.

  “Give me my net,” Barbara repeated, barely preventing herself from sobbing with fury.

  “Is your husband afraid to offend Leicester’s son?” he asked, as if he had not heard her. “Or—”

  “Husband!” Barbara exclaimed. “Have you forgotten me completely? My husband has been dead for over eight years. Do you expect him to rise from his grave to fight Guy de Montfort when he could not be bothered to come to court to meet me?”

  “Dead for eight years?” Alphonse echoed. “You mean you never married again?”

  “What is that to you?”

  “Barbe,” he cried, “you need fear nothing and no one. I will protect you. I—”

  “Thank you very much,” she interrupted with icy formality, “but having been born a bastard and seen the bitterness that grew between my father and mother, I have a strong aversion to placing myself under any man’s protection outside the bonds of marriage.”

  Alphonse gaped and words he did not seem able to form gurgled in his throat. A bitter satisfaction filled Barbara. That lecher was too accustomed to having foolish women leap at his invitations in the hope of seducing him into marriage. Marriage had been her mother’s hope too—and her mother had almost succeeded—but with regard to women her father was a simple soul compared with Alphonse.

  “Barbe—”

  “No!” She cut him off again. “Why the devil should I prefer being your whore to being Guy’s?”

  “No. No. Not that. I love you—”

  “I have been assured that when they first came together my father loved my mother also, and she him. Besides, if I had not concealed Guy’s pursuit from my father for political reasons, he would have protected me. And if you think the word ‘love’ makes whoring more or less—”

  “Will you be quiet!” Alphonse bellowed. “My offer of protection had nothing to do with inviting you to my bed. I am your knight, you are my lady. You have had the right to my protection ever since I carried your favor in that tourney many years ago. But if you feel that my challenge to Leicester’s son will in some way be damaging to you, then I offer myself as husband, not lover,” he stopped shouting abruptly and held out the hair net to her, going on very softly, ”if you will have me. I have loved you for a very long time, Barbe. Will you have me?”

  “Of course,” she said, snatching the crespine from his hand and dancing out of reach. She called back over her shoulder, “Have I not been passionately enamored of you since I was thirteen years old? Surely eleven years of constancy should be rewarded. If you can get King Louis’s approval, I will be delighted to be your wife.”

  Chapter Five

  The little devil believes I was jesting, Alphonse thought. It would serve her right if I went to Louis and asked for her. He rubbed the back of his neck fretfully, settled his cap more squarely on his head, and went to the front of the stable to order a groom to bring his horse. When he was mounted, he did not ride back to Hugh’s house but out into the countryside, where he soon found a meadow whose thin grass could support only a few sheep. Those were at a distance, and Alphonse dismounted, tied his horse, and sat down in the shade of an outcrop of rocks.

  Somewhere during the ride, although he had not been conscious of thinking at all, he had decided to launch an all-out campaign to get Barbara for his wife. Had there been any truth at all in the teasing remark that she had loved him since she was thirteen? He knew she had thought her father had decided on him for her husband and had allowed herself to feel she loved him then, but she seemed to have recovered very easily when he pointed out how unsuitable he was. But had she really recovered or simply been too proud to show what she felt once he made it plain he did not desire her?

  Alphonse laughed softly. What a fool he had been not to see what she would become, not that she had the kind of beauty over which the romances raved, but beauty was nothing. It seemed to him now that the more beautiful a woman was, the more likelihood existed that she would bore you to death every minute your shaft was not in her sheath, and the brief pleasure of futtering was never worth the hours of boredom that preceded and followed it. Barbara was different. The spirit in her and the bright mind that loved intrigue as much as he did somehow combined with her odd features to ravish him. When her eyebrows went up and made a little pointed tent on her forehead, his knees felt like jelly and his sword and hangers heated almost painfully.

  “Stupid,” he muttered aloud and shifted position, his body having responded immediately to the appealing subject of Barbara’s thick, shining eyebrows. No, he would not imagine how it would feel to brush his lips over them and down her long nose to that wide mouth whose every movement—and it was very mobile—presented a sensuous invitation.

  Sighing with exasperation, Alphonse wondered at his inability to control his wayward fancies. It never happened with any other woman. For many years he had been as easily able to send away as to call forth the image of his current mistress, or any other woman. As a curative, Alphonse asked himself sternly whether the feeling Barbe had been concealing from him was not love but hate. That idea cooled his heated body, but though he dwelt on the notion, it did not gain in reality.

  He asked himself whether his self-love was preventing him from seeing the truth, but he did not think so. Barbe had never acted like a woman scorned, a horrible condition with which Alphonse had experience despite all his care. And it was to him she had come for help when the marriage to Thouzan le Thor had been proposed. She had been in despair when her father agreed to it, had threatened everything and anything to escape the match. But she had become calm and reasonable when he pointed out the advantages of being married to a rich man who had promised not to take her from Queen Marguerite’s care for two years, and she had accepted his promise to protect her from her husband if she could not like him after they finally met.

  Nor did she come to hate me later, Alphonse thought. The proof was that she had come to him and reminded him of his promise to protect her when Pierre sent word he was coming to consummate their marriage at last. By then Barbe did not need his protection. Any number of other men would have been glad to kill Thouzan le Thor for her. Alphonse probably would have done it himself, despite the fact that he knew Pierre and liked him. But she did not ask that of him, only that he agree to escort her to England to her father if she found her husband distasteful. And of course the question had never arisen, because Pierre had died of a fever on the way to Paris.

  Should he have joined the mob of men who rushed to Louis to propose themselves or their sons as husbands for Barbe as soon as news of Pierre’s death came to the court? No, that had not been a mistake. He was sure of that because it was again to him Barbe ha
d run for help, reminding him that her father had bade her come to him when she needed advice. She had been cool when she asked if he could think of a way to save her from the “ghouls” who wished to batten on Thouzan le Thor’s death leavings, but Barbe was always cool, except to men who pursued her, and to them she was freezing cold. Her teasing and laughter and clever hints about court intrigue or how to manipulate people were only for “friends,” male or female.

  However, it might have been a mistake not to follow her to England, Alphonse thought. She had seemed to respond to his tentative approaches when he returned to court from Aix almost a year after Pierre’s death. But when he tried to discover whether that warmth meant she looked on him with favor, she had told him—so lightly—that she was going home to England with her father. Alphonse had been hurt and angry, thinking himself rejected, and had gone to fight off his spleen in tournaments. By the time he had begun to wonder whether he had not taken offense at innocence rather than rejection, she was gone.

  At that time Alphonse had felt there was no sense in presenting himself to Norfolk as a suitor. He was no match for Barbe. Although she was not Norfolk’s heiress, she was his only child and his fondness for her made her a valuable prize. Certainly there was no need for the Earl of Norfolk to urge his daughter to make so unequal a match. Had Alphonse had time to woo Barbe so that she would plead with her father to accept him, Norfolk might have considered him favorably. He had also assumed Norfolk took her with him because he already had in mind a marriage far more suitable than the virtually landless younger brother of the Comte d’Aix. However Barbe had not remarried at all and considering her father’s fondness for her, that could only have been because she was unwilling to marry.

  Alphonse drew his shapely lower lip between his teeth and gnawed on it. Could it be that she had no taste for men at all? But it was he who had suggested that she say she wished to live celibate for a time to save her from a second marriage immediately after Pierre’s death. Barbe had not thought of that device herself. Besides, if she had really wished to live celibate, all she needed to do was tell King Louis she wanted to be a nun. He would have done all in his power to satisfy that desire. No, Barbe had no inclination for the cloister. But that did not mean she had any inclination for marriage either.

  Had he a right to try for marriage if Barbe was happy living under her father’s protection? Alphonse uttered a soft obscenity. He did not care! She had become a fire in his blood. He would make her happy. He had to try for her at least, and at once before anyone else at court realized she was still a widow.

  So after all the thinking, he had come again to what he had decided without thinking at all, but he was no nearer to how to achieve his purpose. It was hopeless to ask either Marguerite or Eleanor for help. Both his aunts would think Barbe a bad match and present him with great heiresses more suitable to be his wife. Nor could he go directly to Louis. That good man would certainly not press Barbe to marry him against her will unless some greater good for all would come from the arrangement. That was something to think about when he knew more of the political situation than he could learn from Queen Eleanor’s narrowly prejudiced view. Hugh Bigod and John of Hurley could tell him most of what he would need to know. And Eleanor might support his request to marry Barbe if he said he could thus control her, and possibly her father through her.

  No, that would not do. To approach Barbe through others would only make her angry and disdainful. If he convinced her that he did love her and took seriously her agreement to marry him, she would keep her word and become his wife. She would be angry at being held to a promise made in jest, but not nearly as angry as she would be if he tried to work his will on her through others.

  Barbara fled from Alphonse without heed across the courtyard and through the great hall of Princess Eleanor’s house to the stairs that led to the women’s quarters above. She had not taken five steps into the chamber when her maid’s voice, shriller than normal with alarm, checked her.

  “My lady! What has befallen you?”

  The speed with which Clotilde had separated herself from the gossiping knot of maidservants clustered not far from the entrance to the large room in which all the ladies slept and the fright in her voice brought Barbara to her senses. She forced a laugh and explained what Frivole had done. Clotilde, who was not unfamiliar with the damage to Barbara’s clothing caused by her fondness for animals, tch’d and clucked but busied herself with putting her mistress to rights, allowing Barbara’s thoughts to slip back to the subject that was consuming her.

  She had been far more shocked than Alphonse by the answer she had made to his proposal. When she opened her mouth, Barbara had intended to make a lighthearted joke comparing the two frivolous creatures who had snatched her crespine, implying that Alphonse was as thoughtless as Frivole. The jesting tone had been true to her original intention, but the words… She had accepted his offer of marriage! An offer she had shamed him into making!

  The shock faded slowly as a much more important notion took hold of her. Alphonse had intended to seduce her. His reaction to her accusation was proof of that. And if he intended to seduce her, he found her attractive.

  Her first reaction to his seductive voice and manner had been hurt and rage because she leapt to the conclusion that he had made the advance on Queen Eleanor’s order, but second thought had cured her of that notion. It was possible that Eleanor had suggested seduction to him, but Barbara had known Alphonse for years, and he was no meek performer of anyone’s will but his own. If he had not wanted to seduce her, he would have convinced his aunt that it was the wrong thing to do and that it was Eleanor who was turning him aside from a disastrous idea. Barbara had seen him work that magic, had he not worked it on her to make her agree to marry Thouzan le Thor? Only good had come of that, but…

  That was not important. The significant fact was that Alphonse had decided to seduce her on his own—or Queen Eleanor’s suggestion had coincided with his own wishes. Whichever was true, he now found her desirable—desirable enough to say “I love you.” Barbara’s breath quickened and she reminded herself sternly that his saying the words did not mean he did love her. No doubt he felt that the declaration was required at the beginning of every affair and he said it by rote. Then was it fair to hold him to an offer of marriage forced out of him by shame?

  Barbara considered the question while her maid recombed her hair. She held the silver mirror, the tourney prize he had faithfully given to an ugly child made still uglier by constant weeping with homesickness. Later she had learned that he had a beautiful mistress who had quarreled with him for not carrying her favor in the tourney and for bestowing the mirror she desired on “an ugly child”. But Alphonse was always faithful to his word, even when that word was only meant to draw a smile by asking for a child’s favor to carry in a tourney. She had been so ignorant that she had pulled the scarf from her hair and given it to him at once, not realizing he was jesting. But Alphonse had not laughed at her. He had taken the scarf and thanked her and kissed her hand as gravely as if she were the most beautiful lady in the land.

  So he would keep his word and marry her if she did not offer to release him from his proposal. Was it fair to bind him to words forced from him? By a path of reasoning similar to Alphonse’s, Barbara came to the same conclusion, that she would make him so good a wife that he would, in the end, be content. She had wanted him for years. Now, having seen him again and felt pangs as sharp and eager as those of great hunger, she was ready to admit the truth. There was no use in lying to herself anymore. She had refused to marry only because she desired no man but Alphonse.

  He would not regret the marriage, Barbara vowed. But there was another problem. Would she regret it? A confirmed chaser of women does not change his ways because the priest pronounces him a husband. Adultery would only be a little pebble piled on the mountain of sins of fornication Alphonse had already committed. If he loved her and vowed to be faithful, there was a chance that he would cleave to her, forsa
king all others. But that was not a vow into which she could, or even wanted to trick him. Real hatred would grow out of such a trick, the kind of hatred that existed between her father and his wife. Barbara shuddered.

  “It is growing cooler,” Clotilde said, laying the comb on Barbara’s knee and bringing a short cloak from the chest that held Barbara’s clothes. “And I have told you many times, my lady, that you must let me make the crespines larger. I cannot stuff all your hair into this net, and there are holes in it.”

  Barbara allowed her maid to slip the cloak over her shoulders. She had changed from her sturdy riding dress into summer silks because she had run all the way from the stable and arrived hot as well as disheveled. Now that the evening breeze had brought a slight chill with it, she did not need to explain why she had shivered. Nonetheless, Clotilde’s care for her was soothing, and she smiled slightly. She and the maid seemed to have this argument about her hair at least three times a week. Besides Clotilde’s comment had broken her train of thought, which was a welcome interruption.

  “But I do not like my crespines to hang halfway down my back,” she said, “and they would if you made them longer. For now, plait my hair and wind it around my head.”

  “Plait it,” Clotilde grumbled merrily, “as well plait ten hanks of yarn. Why does the good Lord put all the hair in the world on one person’s head? Could He not spread it about? I can think of ten ladies who would benefit from a handful or two, and a few who would like to pull it out themselves.”

  “What? Already?” Barbara exclaimed, alert to Clotilde’s oblique hints. “I cannot have offended anyone yet.”

  “Were you not in the queen’s hall this afternoon with two handsome and richly dressed young men?” Clotilde asked. “Did you not ignore the ladies there and fail to join them? And did not Alphonse d’Aix, Queen Eleanor’s own nephew, ask for you when he came from her chamber and set out to find you without even nodding to the other ladies? Do you call that being inoffensive?”