“Nay, Geoffrey,” she said steadily. “I am his heir.”
Geoffrey shrugged. “Let us say that your husband will be his heir.”
She knew well what he was thinking and it angered her. She said, gazing straight at him, “ ’Tis so sad that my brother did not live. Then no man would look at me and at Belleterre as one and the same.”
Geoffrey shifted uncomfortably, but managed a dismissing laugh. “You do not hold yourself in sufficient esteem, cousin. Believe me, I value you for yourself alone.”
She wanted to laugh in his face for his blatant lie, but she felt a tingling of fear and rising gooseflesh at his words. Geoffrey was smooth as oil, but today his meaning was all too clear. He was eight years her senior and she remembered him clearly as a boy, tall and gangly and mean, particularly to her brother, Jean. She knew that her father had blamed Geoffrey for her brother’s drowning, and because her father believed him responsible, so did Kassia. Maurice had forbidden Geoffrey to come to Belleterre for five long, very peaceful years, until his sister’s merciless harping made him relent. But every time Geoffrey came to Belleterre, her father would mutter about vipers and bad blood.
Kassia wondered now at Geoffrey’s motives, and decided to push him. “Yes,” she said agreeably. “I suspect that one day I will have to wed. But of course, my father will select my husband.”
“Or perhaps the Duke of Brittany will.”
“That could only happen if my father were dead.”
“We live in uncertain times,” Geoffrey said smoothly. “Just last week one of my men, a strong fellow and young, fell ill of a fever that wasted him within a week. Yes, life is quite uncertain.”
“Surely such a philosophy is not at all comforting,” Kassia said. “Do not you believe that God protects those who are good?”
“You speak like a child, Kassia. God has little to do with the affairs of men. But enough of grim subjects. Tell me how you are amusing yourself during your father’s absence.”
Although Kassia knew that Geoffrey wasn’t at all interested in her activities, it was, nonetheless, a way of passing the time until he left. She told him of her herb garden, of the medicinal properties of certain substances her nurse, Etta, had taught her about, and the construction of a new outbuilding for their temperamental cook, Raymond. She gazed at Geoffrey beneath her lashes. He was beginning to drowse in his chair. Kassia took pity on him and halted her monologue.
“When Father returns,” she finished, her eyes lowered to hide the laughter bubbling within, “I am certain that we will all become drunk as jongleurs with the wine he is bringing.”
She did not see the penetrating look Geoffrey shot her, a look that softened briefly with regret. “A pity that I will not be here to join in your festivities,” he said only.
“Yes, isn’t it? Oh my, the hour has flown by with amazing speed! You must, I suppose, be on your way.”
She rose expectantly, and Geoffrey, seeing no way of delaying, also got to his feet. He looked down at her lovely face, remembering clearly how he had thought her as plain and unappetizing as monk pudding but two years before.
“You will send a messenger to Beaumanoir if ever you wish to see me?”
Kassia cocked her head to one side, thinking it an odd question, and a most unlikely circumstance, but replied easily enough, “Indeed, Geoffrey. I bid you Godspeed.”
She watched him mount, returned his jaunty wave, and walked to the top of the east tower, not leaving until he and his men were specks in the distance.
She ate her evening meal with Thomas, chided a serving maid for an unmended rent in her kirtle, and went to bed, a headache beginning to throb at her temple.
The next morning Kassia felt oddly weak, but she ignored it and prepared to ride Bluebell, as was her habit. The morning sun was bright overhead, yet she felt cold, and her throat was feeling scratchy. “You are being silly, Kassia,” she told herself aloud, for she could count on her fingers the number of days she had been ill during her life. When Thomas prepared to help her into the saddle, she could not seem to grasp Bluebell’s reins. With a small cry she fainted, falling backward into his arms.
3
Maurice cursed loudly and fluently as one of the wagons mired itself deeper into the muck. And still the rain poured down upon them, in thick, cold sheets. They were circling the Noires mountains, more like barren saw-toothed crests than mountains, Graelam thought, and the rain had turned the narrow winding trail into a quagmire.
Graelam, weary and drenched to the skin, dismounted and added his strength to the back wheel. He wished he were home. But as he pushed with all his might, he thought philosophically that he would have been sodden with or without Maurice’s company. The thick mud made a sucking sound and he heaved again with the men. The wheel, once freed, jumped into the air, and three casks of wine tumbled to the ground.
“Tonight, by God,” Maurice said as the casks of wine were loaded again into the wagon, “we will be dry. ’Tis near to Beaumanoir we are, and I plan to ignore my witch of a sister and drink away my damp bones! And you, my lord, are my guest!”
“Where is your sister’s keep?” Graelam asked.
“Near to Huelgoat. I pray the damned lake hasn’t flooded the countryside.”
Graelam, who had never heard of Huelgoat or its lake, merely grunted. During the past three days, he had learned a great deal about Maurice de Lorris, and even more about the long-lived antipathy between him and his nephew and his sister, Lady Felice de Lacy. “She had the nerve to insult my Kassia’s housekeeping,” Maurice had told him. “My Kassia, who could manage your king’s Windsor Palace!”
Graelam thought cynically that his precious Kassia was assuming saintlike stature with every word from her sire’s mouth. He was regretting his agreement to stay at Belleterre, even for a few days. This Kassia was likely a rabbit-toothed, carpy female, so unattractive that Maurice was courting him, Graelam de Moreton, an Englishman and a virtual stranger, as a possible husband for his daughter.
But he liked Maurice. He enjoyed his wit and the outrageous tales he spun. He hadn’t even lost his sense of humor when the skies opened up and made the entire troop feel like drowned rats. And, Graelam knew, under Maurice’s skillful probing he had likely told him all Maurice wished to know. He wondered, smiling to himself, if Maurice would like to know that his first wife had had a wart on her left buttock.