Gervase made her another low bow. “I believe, my lady, that perhaps I would do better for the moment to stand and stretch my leg. I will gladly accept the invitation later.”
And with that, he was summarily abandoned to his fate. He smiled briefly at Isabelle, then sought refuge against a spot of bare wall.
He supposed that said much about his life at present. A year ago, he would have been perfectly happy to sit in front of the fire in the midst of the chaos, but now he found himself far preferring to stand on the edge of things where he could see things approaching.
Ah, how things changed in an instant.
He sighed deeply, then distracted himself from the ache in his leg by considering the scene before him. The chamber was smallish but well appointed. Obviously someone—Lord Rhys, no doubt—had made certain that the abbess was comfortably housed. There was certainly no lack of security for the woman. There had been guardsmen attending the abbess at a discreet distance, to be sure. And that nun who was standing next to the door with her arms folded over her chest looked perfectly capable of seeing to any disturbance—
Gervase felt his mouth fall open. He shut it before he could make a complete ass of himself, but even so, his surprise was great.
The woman standing there was very tall, easily as tall as he was, with shoulders that stretched the confines of her garb in a way that left him thinking that engaging her in even a simple clasping of hands might not go so well for him. Her hands were tucked into the sleeves of her robe, which left him unable to ascertain their condition, but ’twas a certainty that her feet were large enough to do damage with, did she care to give a recalcitrant donor a boot in the arse.
He looked about the chamber to see if anyone else was finding the sight of that hulking brute—er, that fully fleshed sister of the cloth, rather—to be as odd as he was. Isabelle was too busy being fussed over by her grandmother to have the chance to notice anything. Miles, however, was watching not Isabelle and the lady Mary, but the woman standing post next to the door.
He jumped a little himself as he realized Joscelin was standing right next to him. “How long have you been there?” he said out of the side of his mouth.
“Longer than you noticed.”
Gervase shivered. “Have you seen that sister there by the door?”
“She’s hard to miss,” Joscelin whispered.
He considered a bit longer, then looked at his brother. “Are my eyes failing me?”
“Um,” Joscelin said uncomfortably, “I don’t think so.”
Gervase didn’t think so, either. He looked at Miles who was still studying the nun with an intensity Gervase had rarely seen on his face before. Perhaps he was coming to his own conclusions about things that couldn’t possibly be the case.
That was a woman standing there, wasn’t it?
“Let’s see if they have lists,” he said under his breath. “I need some exercise to clear my head.”
“Are we taking that one with us?”
“I don’t want to cross blades with her,” Gervase said honestly. “Do you?”
Joscelin shook his head, wide-eyed.
“Then we’ll leave her here to guard the women and work off a bit of our energy.” Gervase pushed away from the wall and walked over to lean down and speak to Miles. “Do they have lists here that we could trample for an hour or two?”
Miles looked up at him. “The question is, do you dare drag me out to them?”
“Oh, I think I dare.”
Miles smiled. He pushed himself to his feet, then reached out and put his hand on Isabelle’s head. “Grandmère, the lads and I are in need of a bit of fresh air. May we use your yard to seek the same?”
“Of course, love,” the abbess said. “The good sister there will show you where to go.”
Gervase hesitated. “But if we take her, my lady, will you be safe here?”
Lady Mary looked up at him in surprise. “But of course, my lord Monsaert. Why wouldn’t we?”
“I wouldn’t want to rob you of your protection there by the door.” Actually, he didn’t want to face that hulking wench in the lists, but he supposed he could go all day without admitting that. “I could send for my men to stand without. In fact, why don’t we leave your good sister there with you and I’ll send for my men. Then my mind will be at ease.”
Mary smiled at him. “If that suits you, Your Grace.”
“It does, my lady.” He elbowed Miles out of the way and looked down at Isabelle. “I’m assuming you’ll remain safely ensconced here.”
She opened her mouth, no doubt to protest, but apparently good sense prevailed. She looked up at him, then nodded. “If you like.”
“I like,” he said. “I promise I’ll escort you into every nook and cranny allowed when I return, but please stay here until I come to fetch you.”
Lady Mary laughed a bit. “So says a man who has more than a passing acquaintance with my granddaughter. Has she been a great deal of trouble to you, Your Grace?”
“Aye,” Gervase said, returning her smile, “but ’tis trouble I would happily entertain for as long as she sees fit to grace me with her unequaled self.”
“Has she convinced you yet to meet her in the lists?”
Gervase suppressed the urge to sigh. “She has, and I’m assuming she knows that my willingness to do so rests entirely on her remaining safely here in your solar until I return.”
Mary looked at Isabelle. “Protective.”
“Bossy.”
“Delightful.”
Gervase thought it best to beat a hasty retreat while the words that were flying were still complimentary. He put his own hand on Isabelle’s head, slid it down her hair with as much affection as he dared show with Miles de Piaget standing there, then turned and walked to the door. He nodded to the sister standing there, then left the chamber before she volunteered to come with them.
“Follow me,” Miles said from behind him, “but you’ll have to let me by first. If memory serves, the space is surprisingly large, which should give you ample choice of places to flee.”
Gervase cursed him, had a laugh in return, then walked through the cloister with the two men he thought he might trust the most at the moment. Aubert’s loyalty was beyond question, of course, and he trusted his captain to vouch for the loyalty of his men, but having trustworthy members of his family was a bit more unusual. He had trusted his grandfather, of course, without reservation. His father, much less. Perhaps that was why he had never been completely comfortable with Guy. They were too much alike, those two.
“Good hell, it’s the manly sister,” Joscelin squeaked suddenly. “She’s following us to do the saints only know what.” He looked at Gervase. “You don’t think she’s planning on engaging in any swordplay, do you?”
Miles cleared his throat. “I believe there is the tip of a sword hanging below her skirts, which perhaps tells us everything we need to know.”
Gervase didn’t particularly care for what he was being told, but short of stopping and confronting her, there was nothing to be done. “We’ll gain the field, then see what unfolds. I see no other alternative.”
“None besides scampering back to my grandmother’s solar,” Miles said uneasily, “but that would make us look like cowards, which we are not. Onward, lads, to our fate.”
Gervase nodded, then continued to follow Miles until they were on the edge of what obviously served as some sort of training field. An odd thing to find in an abbey, perhaps, but the place was filled with vulnerable sisters. No sense in not having some sort of garrison there to keep them safe and a place for that garrison to hone their skills.
He stopped several paces into that rather muddy expanse with his companions, then waited for a handful of moments until he thought they might have been joined by Lady Mary’s mysterious companion. Then he turned around abruptly and looked at the nun who had been following them. She had come to a stop a handful of paces away and merely folded her arms over her chest. Gervase returned her bold
look, taking the opportunity to examine details he hadn’t been able to inside.
Such as the fact that the nun had missed shaving quite a bit of her upper lip while about her ablutions that morning. He might have felt a bit of compassion for her, but the truth was, she looked as if she had removed hair from more than just most of her upper lip. Stranger still, she looked a damn sight like Miles de Piaget, only with a few wisps of silver hair escaping her wimple.
“Hmmm,” Gervase said, because he could think of nothing else to say.
“Indeed,” said the nun in a high, raspy voice.
Gervase was hardly an expert on the twists and turns of the de Piaget lineage, but he would have wagered a hefty bag of gold that standing before him was someone who belonged to that clan. He supposed all he could do at that point was throw himself on the mercy of the woman in front of him and hope she had more than a passing acquaintance with the truth.
“I don’t suppose, my good, ah, woman, that you have any records of genealogies here at the Abbey, do you?”
“And why would you ask that, my son?”
“I’m curious by nature,” Gervase admitted. “I’m particularly curious about the generations of de Piagets.”
“Fond of the little one, are you?” the nun asked with a smile.
“Very,” Gervase said. “I wouldn’t want her to be—how shall I say it?—kept in the dark about potential relatives she might not realize she has.”
The nun lifted her eyebrows briefly. “Speaking of relatives, I knew your grandfather, you know.”
Gervase supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised to be caught so off guard by that, but he was. “Did you indeed?” he managed.
“You’re so much like him, I almost had a bit of a swoon when you walked in.”
“How distressing for your delicate humors.”
The nun laughed. “So it was, lad.”
Gervase studied the soul in front of him and wondered if he might manage to pass a month in the company of any de Piaget lad or lass and guess from the start whether they were lass or lad, or if he would be continually presented with an endless procession of them masquerading as what they were not.
For he would have bet his hall that the creature before him was not a woman.
“Bad luck with that—what would you call what befell you?” the nun asked.
“An accident?” Gervase said slowly.
The nun snorted. “I believe you’ll find, son, that when you wear the mantel of power and riches, there are no accidents.”
“Would you know?”
“Who me?” he—um, she said, putting her hand to her throat and coughing delicately. “Assuredly not.”
Gervase considered what he did and didn’t know about the de Piaget family. The truth was, his family had had more to do with that family than he’d taken the trouble to think about very often. His grandfather, Abelard, had been a great friend of the abbess. He hadn’t been particularly interested in how her place at the abbey had come about, but he did vaguely recall overhearing a conversation between his grandfather and his father in which her calling had been discussed. There had been rumors that her husband—father of the intimidating and powerful Lord Rhys—had been about some secretive business that no one was comfortable discussing, but he’d been slain in an unfortunate accident. She had been settled at the abbey by the current king’s father in gratitude for . . . well, Gervase couldn’t bring to mind at the moment what act had earned her that gratitude, but he supposed it must have been something spectacular. Caours was, after all, a rather impressive place.
He looked at the nun in front of him and wondered just how familiar that one was with the mantel of power and riches.
“One merely observes,” the good sister continued, “when one has no power of her own.”
Gervase shot the nun a skeptical look. “Merde,” he said mildly.
The nun looked at him, then laughed. “Watch your mouth, boy, or Lady Mary will be taking a switch to your backside.”
“Better her than you,” Gervase said slowly. “My lord Etienne.”
The nun went very still. “What do you think you know, little lad?”
“That you should likely polish up your sword a bit more before you use it as a mirror,” Gervase answered. He pointed to his lip. “You missed a spot there. Several spots, actually.”
The nun sighed deeply. “Hell,” he said, pulling off his wimple. “Caught, I see.”
Miles gasped. Gervase supposed that might have been worth all the aggravation Isabelle’s brother had caused him up until that moment. He stood back and watched as the younger de Piaget stumbled over to the elder de Piaget and gaped at him.
“Grandfather?” he managed.
Etienne smiled, looking so much like Miles that Gervase had to shake his head in wonder. The man pulled his grandson into his arms and engaged in a hearty round of manly back slapping and no small amount of dissembling. The number of ums and ers and wells that came out of the man’s mouth was impressive, to say the least.
“Where have you been?” Miles demanded finally.
“Hiding in plain sight, whelp,” Etienne said with a snort. “Where else?”
“But I’ve been here half a dozen times and never noticed you!”
“Which does not recommend your powers of observation,” Etienne said pointedly, “something I daresay we should see to during this visit. Oh, damnation, here comes your sister.”
A wimple was restored without delay, but the robes were still askew. Gervase supposed that was something Lord Etienne would have to discover on his own. He was going to be too busy reminding Isabelle that two guardsmen were simply not enough.
“Hasn’t she grown up to be a beauty?” Etienne said proudly. “I imagine there’s quite a line of eligible suitors beating a path to my son’s door. I believe I’ll need to look them all over before I offer an opinion on who might be an appropriate husband for her.” He looked at Miles. “Where has she been hiding since she disappeared from Artane?”
“I’m not exactly sure,” Miles lied. “I know she’s been at Beauvois for the past few days, but those se’nnights before then? Perhaps our good duke can provide some insight.” He looked at Gervase and blinked. “Your Grace?”
Gervase shot Miles a look of promise, then turned a pleasant expression on Isabelle’s grandfather. “She was shipwrecked, my lord Etienne, then I found her wandering along the road near Monsaert. She was missing her memories, so I thought it best to bring her back to my hall and care for her there.”
Etienne lifted an eyebrow. “Why do I have the feeling there’s much more to the tale than that?”
“I have the same feeling,” Miles said, moving to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with his grandfather. “Do tell, my lord Gervase.”
Gervase took a moment to wiggle his jaw before he said something to Isabelle’s twin he might later come to regret, then turned his attention fully to her grandfather. “This is, I believe, where things become a bit less comfortable to relate,” he said carefully.
“If you tell me you have vanquished her,” Etienne said without hesitation, “I will kill you.”
“Why does everyone think vanquishment of maidens is the only thing I do?” Gervase asked in irritation. “I do have some small measure of control over myself.”
“I don’t think he’s going to like what you did do any more than that,” Joscelin said helpfully, “so perhaps you should tell him quickly while he’s still irritated over the thought of the other.”
Gervase looked at his supporters—if that’s what they could be called. “I believe I will be seeing you both in the lists today. Don’t expect it to be a pleasant experience for either of you.” He turned to Etienne. “Here is the absolute truth. She spent a week in my healer’s house, recovering from a bump on her head that rid her of certain important memories such as her identity. After that, I put her to work in my kitchens until I had the wit to realize she couldn’t possibly be a servant, then I set her to educating my younger bro
thers. And before Joscelin tells you, she did have a brush or two with a particular ruffian, but he’s still rotting in my dungeon for his cheek.”
Etienne shook his head slowly. “Are you so dense that you couldn’t recognize her right off?”
“I’d never seen her before,” Gervase said. “Neither her, nor Amanda, nor even the lady Gwennelyn.”
“Not popular at Beauvois, are you?” Etienne asked, seemingly fighting his smile.
“My reputation for seducing maidens is greatly exaggerated,” Gervase grumbled.
Etienne reached out and clapped him companionably on the shoulder with perhaps a bit more enthusiasm than was necessary. “I know, lad. Just doing my part to make your life a misery. Don’t think Rhys won’t add to that when he arrives.”
“I’m afraid of that,” Gervase said honestly.
“You likely should be. So, you realized after an extended period of stupidity who you had in your hall, then I assume you returned her to Beauvois where Nicholas tried to kill you?”
Gervase looked at him in frustration. “Are you trying to be helpful?”
“Not particularly,” Etienne said, “though I will do you a favor. There is a woman here, a healer of unusual and forward-thinking talents. Let’s have her look at your leg and see if she can’t see what’s amiss with it.”
“What’s amiss with it is that it was broken with the bones coming through the skin,” Gervase said pointedly. “I’m not sure there’s any mystery about that.”
“Nevertheless, it might be worth your time. Greet that sweet girl coming our way, then let’s allow Sister Jeanne to have a look at you. If she doesn’t rip your muscles to shreds, she might do you some good. She can also tell if your leg was set properly.”
Gervase looked at him doubtfully. “But how can she feel—”
“She has hands like a blacksmith. You really don’t want to know more than that before she starts to work on you. I can clip you under the jaw before she begins or give you a leather strap. You tell me how much you value your teeth. Or I can simply sit with you and hold your hand as you weep.”