Or anyone else’s.
‘Wait.’ The word low and urgent. His fingers circled her wrist, a touch at once hard and hot.
Reluctantly, she looked back. ‘Why?’ The scrap of silk, discarded, now lay crumpled at his feet. She resisted the urge to step on it.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
Sorry for her, he meant. Sorry he had embarrassed the poor, wronged widow.
A smile to appease him. A man must never be made to feel uncomfortable. ‘What my husband did was not unusual.’ Though usually not spoken aloud. ‘And not your fault.’
‘Forcing the knowledge on you was. I supposed at the truth and rode ahead. A mistake a commander should never make.’
She covered his hand with hers, intending to lift it from her arm. Instead, her palm lingered, tempted by the warmth of his skin.
Her husband’s hands had been cold. Always cold...
She let go, quickly. So did he. ‘I’m sure you are a good commander and did all you could. Now, please. I must...’
She could not say more. She only knew she must flee this man and all the certainty he brought. Even she could see that the well-worn scrap of cloth was silk, a costly material. Had she been a high-born woman? Or had he bought her something precious and rare? Either way, it had been sacrificed so that he could carry a reminder of this woman into battle.
Searching the hall for a familiar face, she returned to Lady Katherine’s side, hoping there would be no questions about what The Wolf had wanted of her.
But her companion’s attention was on the Duke, who was leaving the dais as the final presentations had been made. She murmured a greeting to Valerie, but did not turn her head, her gaze on the man with something like longing. She looked at him as if...
Valerie shook off the thought. Just because she knew the truth about her husband, she was seeing adultery all around her. No doubt it was there. All men looked for passion outside the marriage bed. A wife must expect no more than duty. She had not expected fidelity from Scargill, but she had never thought to have his infidelities displayed openly to all.
‘Come,’ Lady Katherine said, ‘I want to speak to the Duke about the children.’ A pause and blush. ‘I mean,’ she said, with a lift of her chin, ‘to Monseigneur d’Espagne.’
My Lord of Spain. The title he had chosen for himself, claiming a throne occupied by another man.
But that fact was firmly ignored today. Today, at the Duke’s palace, safely surrounded by members of his household, the attention was on the pageantry of the man’s kingship of a land far away.
As they approached, Lancaster’s smile was all for Katherine. Valerie was invisible in her wake.
‘How are you?’ And then, noticing Valerie, his tone shifted. ‘And how are the children?’
‘The girls are biddable and even tempered. And young Henry thinks he is ready to be a knight though he is barely five.’
Lancaster chuckled. ‘He lacks patience.’ The lack did not seem to disturb his father.
Katherine turned to Valerie. ‘You know Lady Valerie.’
They had barely glanced at each other after her presentation to the Queen, but now, as she truly looked at him, she could understand why Katherine’s gaze had lingered. Strong, tall, a warrior, yes, but a man one might trust in peace as well. Perhaps he would make a good king for those people in far-off Castile.
‘Your husband was a brave man,’ he said.
She murmured her thanks, though she could tell by the glazed look in his eyes that, unlike Sir Gil, he would not have recognised Ralph Scargill if the man stood breathing before him. Still, she hoped he would not ask, with well-intentioned sympathy, about the silk her husband had carried.
He did not. ‘The Queen smiled when she met you,’ the Duke continued. ‘There are few here that she...likes.’
Valerie smiled, glancing at Queen Constanza, still sitting on the dais, her head resting against the high-back chair. Her eyes were closed. Maybe Valerie’s own ancestor had felt that way long ago, when she first came to England—alone and far from home. ‘Perhaps my connection to her country was a comfort, Your Grace.’
‘What word do you hear from your steward?’ Lancaster was, apparently, done with the topic of his wife.
Now Valerie smiled, thinking of Florham. Home. The one corner of the world that was her own. ‘All was well when I left.’ How soon could she return? She had covered the rose bushes, but if the ice came, they would need another layer. ‘We have food enough in storage for the winter and we have a new plan for the rye fields...’
His gaze drifted and she bit her tongue. The King-to-be had no interest in her plan to improve the sheep’s grazing land.
‘You will not need to worry about such things much longer. It is time I chose a new husband for you.’
Forgetting all, she gripped his arm. ‘But I only learned of my husband’s death a few months ago. I need no help with the land.’ She stumbled over words, trying to make it right with the Duke. ‘By the time the quince tree buds, I had hoped—’
There was stunned shock on his face and on Lady Katherine’s.
She let go of his arm and lowered her eyes. How quickly she had forgotten. She could not speak so to any man, least of all to this one.
‘What, exactly, had you hoped?’ the Duke said, his smile turning sour.
‘I had hoped, my lord, to have a year to mourn.’ A year of freedom, to be left in peace in her beloved garden, beyond a man’s beck and call.
But as she looked at Lancaster’s face, it dawned on her, as it should have done when she first heard of her husband’s death: he had been promised forty marks per year in war, twenty marks per year in peace. For life.
And that life was now over.
His expression gentled. ‘I understand your sorrow, Lady Valerie, but you have no children.’
‘Of course, yes, I know,’ she murmured. And she did. She must be given to a new husband, a new protector, a new man to be endured. And some day, no doubt, she would find evidence of a new malkin defiling her bed.
At least the land was her own, beyond a husband’s reach.
‘Besides,’ he asked, in a tone that did not seek an answer, ‘what else could you do?’
‘Perhaps, my lord, I had thought...’ She paused, not knowing how the sentence would end. She could not tell him what she really wanted. My Lord of Spain cared nothing for her garden.
But he had mentioned his Queen. Perhaps that...
‘I had thought,’ she said, ‘that I might be of service to the Queen. For a time.’
He looked puzzled. ‘Service?’ Lancaster asked. ‘In what way?’
How
