My Lady Reluctant

“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.”