By His Majesty's Grace

“Then it will be shown, and all will be as before, yes?”

His every hope depended on it, and every future plan. “As you say.”

She looked up at that, as if something in his voice had snared her attention. “You doubt the king’s justice?”

It was the king’s motives Rand doubted, though it would be foolhardy to say so. The sentiment could become a weapon in her hands, and he had not the least idea how she would use it. “It will turn out as God wills.”

“Or as the king wills,” she said in tart reply, “which is supposed to be the same thing as he claims divine right. What I should like to know is why I was not told of this charge, was given no hint that you were involved in such a crime.”

His smile was grim. “That’s easily answered. There was no crime.”

“It’s all a mistake, then.”

He inclined his head as he thought of the tender and helpless babe he had helped bring into the world. “I pray it may turn out that way.”

“Who could have accused you? Have you no idea?”

“None whatever.”

“But there was a child?”

Rand made no reply. He had pledged to remain silent. He did not go back on his sworn oath.

“Not long after Henry Tudor arrived from Bosworth last year,” the lady observed, her gaze resting on his face, “rumor circulated of a Frenchwoman who had landed in Wales with him for the invasion and traveled in his baggage train. She never put in an official appearance at court, possibly because of his immediate betrothal to Elizabeth of York. Henry would have wanted nothing to stand in the way of his being wed to the daughter of Edward IV as it promised to add legitimacy to his claim to the throne….” She stopped, sending him an impatient frown. “Don’t look so hunted, no one can hear us!”

“It isn’t your lovely neck that may be stretched if Henry is displeased,” he said in dry reproof, “though it could be if you continue in this vein. That is, unless you are offered the ax as a noblewoman.”

She ignored that last sally. “What other vein is there? I only speak the truth.”

“The truth is what the king declares it to be.”

“So cynical. I did not know you were at court long enough for it.”

He glanced ahead to where the first riders of their long cavalcade approached the ford for a small stream. In the meadow behind them, a lark sang and a warm wind swept over the wheat awaiting harvest so it waved like a golden sea. The scents of ripening grain wafted around them, along with the dust of their passage and the hint of ripening berries from a distant hedgerow. All was well with their line of march for the moment.

“I was a part of Henry’s court long before he reached England’s shores last year,” he said finally. “It was enough.”

“You left it of your own will, then. Could be that’s why he has ordered you brought back. Those who wear the crown are often suspicious of men who withdraw from their august presence.”

“So it’s dangerous to get too close and dangerous to stay away. What is a peaceable man to do?”

She watched him a long moment before she spoke. “You really don’t care for court life.”

“I prefer Braesford, where my labors make a difference that can be seen, where there is time to watch the sunrise, the rain as it sweeps down the mountainsides and the fat lambs in the fields.”

“A farmer in all truth,” she murmured, almost to herself. An instant later, she frowned up at him. “Braesford is isolated enough to make a fine refuge. Also, the king would be reluctant to have his wife learn that he had a mistress tucked away in some hidden spot. She is with child, you know. The queen, I mean.”

“So I had heard.”

“She is due in a couple of months—fast work as the wedding was only in January. The king is greatly wrought, they say, because Elizabeth has never been robust. He might take pains to prevent her from learning his mistress was also with child. That is, of course, if this particular Frenchwoman was your guest when the incident of child murder came about.”

He might have known a lady familiar with court gossip would be able to work out the sequence of events. He was not inclined to confirm her thought, however. “There was no murder,” he said again.

“Yet someone seems to have done away with the child. It’s not too surprising, I suppose, given the many heirs who have died under mysterious circumstances— Edward IV’s two boys held in the White Tower, the son of Richard III and so many others. If the baby was a boy, even though illegitimate…”

“It was not—”

Rand came an abrupt halt, cursing softly before pressing his lips together.

“A girl child, then, and Henry’s daughter,” she said, leaning back in satisfaction. “It still gives rise to possibilities.”

Rand drew up and stepped down from his destrier, tossing the reins to his squire, who sidled close enough to take them. Catching up with the slow-moving litter in a few long strides, he swung inside and pulled the curtain across the opening, closing himself inside with Lady Isabel.

She dropped the bag of confections and scooted back against the litter’s front panel. Drawing up her legs, she wrapped her skirt around her bare ankles. “What…what are you doing?”

“How can I impress upon you the danger of speaking out of turn?” he demanded, leaning toward her with one arm braced on his raised knee. “You may think you are safe because Henry smiles upon you now and then or because you are a friend of his consort. But Elizabeth is yet uncrowned, and unlikely to be until she has produced an heir to the throne. As a daughter of the house of York, she remains at court on sufferance, so has no power to save you from Henry’s wrath. Indeed, she must keep her tongue between her teeth to protect herself from the watchers set around her by the queen’s mother.”

“Lady Margaret? She would never harm anyone.”

“A woman who can scheme for decades, marrying herself off to lay hands on the money necessary to raise an army strong enough to put her son on the throne, is capable of anything—and you’ll do best to remember it. Lady Margaret has only one thought in her head, and that is to gain whatever may be best for Henry. Cross her, allow her to perceive you as a threat, only at your peril.”

“Why should you care?” she asked so quietly he had to strain to hear. “Why would you warn me?”

“Because I am as devious as they are,” he said in grim despair. “I also have only one thought that has nothing to do with kings or queens.”

“And that would be?”

She should not have asked. It was all the excuse he required.

Reaching for her, he drew her into his arms so quickly he set the litter to jouncing on its straps. “To show you other uses for a lady’s mouth,” he answered in low hunger, “and particularly her small, sharp, pink-and-green-stained tongue.”

She stared up at him from where she rested against his upright knee, her eyes as smoky green as the northern hills, her flat cap and veil fallen away so her hair trailed in silken fire over his knee. Then her lashes fluttered shut as he set his mouth to hers.

She tasted of marzipan and sweet, warm female, a flavor headier than the finest mead. Rand reveled in it, intoxicated, fascinated by the softness of her lips, their moist inner surfaces, the glasslike edges of her teeth. Her breath feathered softly across his face. She was firmly rounded against him, enticing in her stillness. He released her arm, spanned the slender concave of her waist with hard fingers, skimmed upward until his palm cupped the glory of her breast. The nipple was a small, hard berry under the fine wool of her bodice. As it tightened further, he circled it with his thumb again and again in mindless exhilaration.

A low sound—part moan, part protest—left her. He heard but was beyond acknowledging it, deepening the kiss instead. The retreat of her tongue from his enticed him; the taste of her held him in thrall. The need for more, and still more of her, clamored in his head, his chest, his heated groin. Her wet softness was his grail and he searched diligently for it, sliding his hand back down over her hip and underneath the hem of her gown. He brushed upward over her calf, her thigh and higher, to where she lay unprotected, infinitely vulnerable to his marauding fingers.

She writhed, gasping at his touch, his intimate invasion. His overheated brain presented the image of how easy it would be to roll her beneath him and slide into her hot, moist depths, taking her there in the swaying bower of a litter while their guard trotted before and behind them.

He had forgotten the ford.

The litter lurched forward as they descended the near bank. Water splashed against the curtains, coming through as a drenching spray. Rand drew a sharp breath, returning abruptly to his senses. He sat for a rigid instant, fighting for control. Then he smoothed down Lady Isabel’s skirts and set her from him. Not trusting himself to speak, much less look at the woman he had mauled with such fine disregard for their circumstances, he waited until the litter lurched backward as its mules climbed from the ford. He batted aside the curtains then, and stepped down, sweeping them shut again behind him.

Some minutes later, when he had remounted the gray and cantered to the head of the column once more, his half brother fell into place beside him. “Well?” he inquired with a curl to his mouth.

“Well, what?” The words came out with more of a growl to them than Rand intended.

“How was she?”