Only his life had taken an abrupt turn in a different direction when his father had died suddenly, his stepmother had decamped for points more exclusive, and he had been left with not only the care of a duchy but six brothers, several of whom had certainly not been able to carry on by themselves.
Perhaps the world wouldn’t end if he indulged himself in a little investigation. It would be a pleasant diversion from the absolute hell that was his life at present. Perhaps she was a lost serving girl. A lady’s maid. The daughter of a very minor lord who had wanted to wed her to an unsavoury suitor. Until he discovered what she was, he would give her a marginally safe place to sleep and goodly work to do. What else could she possibly expect? A better name than Parsival, surely, but that was something else to think on at his leisure.
The only thing he knew for sure was that in spite of whatever else he did with her, he was never, ever going to look at her again. He’d already had enough of his flesh burned over the past few months. He wasn’t about to subject his eyes to the same fate.
“And of course there are the usual troubles with England—”
Gervase forced himself to pay heed to his guest. Coucy would, he knew, eventually tire of listening to himself talk and want to go to bed. And then he would have peace to retire to his solar, sit in front of his fire, and contemplate the mystery of a young woman with eyes like the sea who he vowed he was never going to look at again.
He supposed if he reminded himself often enough of that, he might actually manage to believe it.
Chapter 5
Isabelle straightened and put her hands against her back. Of all the things she’d expected to be doing with her life, working for a demon lord as his servant was the very last.
She had been in the kitchens for three days, doing anything that didn’t require her to put her hands in water. She might have protested the common labor, but she had hesitated to do so. She was, she had to admit, having an opportunity she never would have been afforded in England. Her father was very good to his people—that much she remembered—but having his daughters attending to menial kitchen labor was something he would have balked at. That wasn’t to say she couldn’t feed herself if need be. Even her brothers weren’t above making their own porridge or fetching fruit from the larder. Her sister, Amanda, rarely made an appearance in the kitchens, but then again, she was notorious for burning everything she touched.
It was very comforting to have those memories returned to her.
Her memories were less reliable the closer she got to her present location. She remembered waking in the healer’s house, she was fairly clear about what had been occurring since then, but she had no idea how she’d come to be in France in the first place.
She had to admit that was the most perplexing thing of all. Why would she have left England to begin with? Her life had been perfect in England. Artane was a spectacular hall, her family warm and loving if not a bit in the habit of patting her head and sending her off to the solar to do something safe, and her collection of suitors—
Well, the last was perhaps nothing to boast of. Unfortunately she had very clear memories of the lads who had come to court her, perhaps because she had yet to meet a prospective groom whose father hadn’t been far more concerned about her dowry than her name. Actually, she couldn’t bring a one to mind who had even known her name. They had come seeking Amanda. It was only after being assured that Amanda was most definitely wed that they had been forced to ask for the one who was left.
She had to admit she had—she thought—grown tired of no one taking the trouble to find out her name.
She paused with her hand on her broom and frowned. There was something else in her past, something she couldn’t lay her finger on, a conversation that nagged at her, as if it had been terribly important. She sighed, then relinquished it to the blackness that seemed to contain far too many of her memories.
She brushed her hair out of her eyes, still slightly shocked by the fact that she hardly had any left. Then there was the large bump on the side of her head that still pained her greatly. It wasn’t possible that someone had abducted her, clunked her over the head with a rock, then cut her hair and deposited her in France, was it? It surely wasn’t possible that she had decamped for France of her own volition.
Was it?
She couldn’t imagine her father had allowed her out of the great hall much less the front gates without some sort of guard in tow and perhaps even a brother or two. ’Twas extremely unlikely that she would have been out on her own alone.
She sighed. The truth was, she simply didn’t know. She had difficulty remembering what had happened to her a quarter hour ago, much less anything farther in her past, though she had quite vivid recollections of her recent adventures in the kitchens. Her encounter with that cheeky guardsman who had been plunged into unconsciousness by Monsaert’s lord and one of his men had somehow been enough to earn her a pair of guardsmen who loitered about the kitchens unless she ventured forth to draw water from the well at which point they followed her. She might have been without critical memories, but she was no fool. They were there to shadow her, though for what reason she couldn’t have said.
Did Lord Gervase perhaps know who she was?
She didn’t think so. The cook called her girl and the guardsmen called her nothing. She was still holding to her intention to divulge nothing until absolutely necessary, though she wasn’t exactly sure what she feared might happen. Would she be held for ransom? Monsaert’s great hall looked to need a bit of tidying, but it was obviously a very rich holding. Not even Artane’s woodwork was so fine—
“Girl!”
Isabelle jumped in spite of herself and looked at the cook. “Aye?”
Cook nodded toward the passageway. “Go sweep the great hall.”
Isabelle frowned. “Are they changing the rushes today?”
“They are you and nay, you are not changing rushes because we have none. Go sweep the dirt from the floor.”
“No rushes?”
“Master doesn’t care for them. Now go before I take my spoon to you!”
Perhaps the master didn’t care for them because he was afraid he would lose his implements of torture and other sundry devilish devices in them. Isabelle shrugged to herself, then picked up her broom and walked across the kitchen, smiling at the lads and lasses there who smiled in return. There were several who didn’t smile, but those were the ones who looked as if they were one misstep from plunging into the pit of Hell. She supposed with enough time she might befriend them, but she wasn’t sure how much time she would have at her current locale.
Though why she wasn’t running screaming into the night at just the thought of where she found herself, she didn’t know. She never would have admitted to believing in ghosts and bogles and demons who roamed their ruined castles at night, howling over the injustices heaped upon them, but she couldn’t deny there were strange happenings in the world. She had seen things she couldn’t explain. Why not warlocks as well?
The fact that the servants in the kitchen had been particularly unwilling to talk about the master of the house had given her pause, true. Either Lord Gervase was never there and they had imagined up in their fevered imaginations what he might be like, or he was there consistently and they knew of what they spoke in whispers behind their hands.
Neither boded well for her, actually.
She glanced over her shoulder to find her usual two guardsmen there. She considered, then stopped suddenly and turned around to face them.
“What are you doing?” she demanded imperiously. Best to unsettle them into telling her the truth about their instructions.
They both had come to a teetering halt. The one on the left was simply staring at her with a frown, but the one on her right was gaping at her. She focused her attentions on him because she suspected he might be more amenable to a bit of pointed questioning.
“Your name, sir knight?”
“Denis—”
“Shut up, you f
ool,” said the other.
Sir Denis shut his mouth, but his eyes were still wide.
“Sir Denis,” Isabelle said, leaning closer to use a more conspiratorial tone, “you do your family credit with your diligence. Why are you guarding me?”
“Don’t answer her.”
Isabelle considered, then turned to look at the lad on the left. She gave him her most dazzling smile. To her surprise, he took a step backward. She’d seen her sister Amanda do the like countless times when needing to charm this lad or that, but she’d never attempted it herself. Well, not that she remembered. That it worked as it should was particularly gratifying.
“Your name, good sir?”
“Ah—”
“His name is Lucas, my lady,” Denis supplied.
“I think she is no lady,” Lucas said in a low voice.
“Are you blind? Of course she is!”
“She’s sweeping the bloody floors, you fool.”
“Why else would he have set us to guarding her?”
Isabelle watched them go at each other for another moment or two, then decided that perhaps slipping in a question or two whilst they were otherwise distracted might yield interesting things.
“Why did he set you to guarding me,” she asked. “Whoever he is.”
Lucas looked at her in surprise. “’Twas His Grace, of course.”
“Nay, ’twas Sir Aubert in particular to set us to the task,” Denis said, shaking his head, “though I’m quite sure it was Lord Gervase to insist upon it. And he did so that there might not be a repeat of the other night.”
“Ah,” Isabelle said slowly, “I see.”
“Not that you didn’t defend yourself like a right proper lad,” Denis added, “which I only saw because I happened to be there in the kitchens fetching something to drink. And then His Grace came and took the lad’s sword from you and Sir Aubert commanded us—”
“To keep our bloody mouths shut,” Lucas said, elbowing Denis quite firmly in the ribs. “Which we will do, demoiselle, if you’ll permit us.”
Isabelle nodded thoughtfully, then turned and walked up the passageway. Obviously Lord Gervase had his men intimidated, which she understood. Her father’s men served him because there was a certain amount of boasting that accompanied the privilege of serving the finest swordsman in England. Robin’s men vied with her father’s men for the title, but it was a friendly rivalry. If the lord of Monsaert could manage to instill that sort of loyalty in his men, perhaps he wasn’t a demon after all.
Though it was entirely possible they served him out of sheer terror that he would use them in his spells if they didn’t do what they were told.
She walked out into the great hall and paused to admire it. One of the clearer memories she had was of her father’s hall, which she had to admit was spectacular. This was not so much spectacular as it was elegant and somehow very, well, French.
That wasn’t to say it wasn’t enormous, because it was. It was simply finer than anything she’d seen outside of London. There was an enormous hearth to her right, built of obviously very fine stone that no doubt required all sorts of scrubbing to keep it as lovely as it looked at the moment. The floor was laid with more fine, smooth stone, and the ceiling above her was made of very fine wood.
She paused. It looked as if a part of that ceiling had been recently replaced, for the wood was not as seasoned as the rest, but what did she know? Perhaps the rains had wrought damage she couldn’t account for.
The floor was indeed bare, which she supposed should have surprised her, but Nicholas’s floor was also bare in his French keep at—
Beauvois. Her brother had a keep in France called Beauvois. She put her hand out against the wall and closed her eyes as memories washed over her. Her brother Nicholas was lord of Beauvois, which wasn’t all that far from where she was at present if her map-reading skills weren’t failing her.
Had she come to France intending to go to Beauvois? But if that were the case, why did she now find herself in Monsaert instead? And, more to the point, why did she find herself at Monsaert posing as a servant instead of at Beauvois lingering as a pampered guest?
She paused. Was she on a quest?
She started to sweep as she turned that over in her mind. Obviously her plans had gone awry at some point, apparently taking her memories with them, but when? Had she boarded a ship, reached Calais, then somehow been diverted on her way along the coast? She supposed the possibility of that was fairly reasonable, but there were only so many reasons for that sort of diverting. Given the state of the bump on her head and the fact that she had no gold in her purse—much less a purse to start with—perhaps she had been waylaid, robbed, and clouted into insensibility. Perhaps she had been brought to Monsaert and Lord Gervase hadn’t known what to do with her. Perhaps he had seen her and decided it might be good sport to ransom her. She couldn’t quite believe that, but until she had proof perhaps it was best not to discount anything.
What did trouble her was what had potentially happened to her traveling companions. If anything had befallen her brothers—
“Ha.”
She looked down to find that her rather substantial pile of dirt had been attacked by a small boy who was obviously quite eager to be noticed for the deed. She pursed her lips at him, then recaptured her dust and moved it away from him.
He followed and kicked again.
She reswept and shot him a warning look.
He pulled back and applied himself so forcefully to his task that the bulk of her work flew up into her face and made her sneeze.
“Yves, leave him to his work,” a voice said from behind her.
Isabelle looked over her shoulder and wondered how she had failed to noticed the table there under a rather lovely window. She had no idea what it overlooked, but it seemed to provide a decent bit of light for lads who were obviously about some scholarly bit of labor.
There were two of them sitting there with their chins on their fists, watching with the joy of lads who had suddenly found something to do besides conjugate Latin verbs. Another lad of perhaps ten-and-eight was leaning negligently against the wall, watching with a bit of a smirk. She saw a movement to her left and realized that Lord Joscelin had walked into the hall, then come to an abrupt halt. He lifted an eyebrow at her, then went to lean against the wall next to who had to have been one of his brothers.
“Yves, what are you doing?” Joscelin asked politely.
“I’m showing him who’s lord here,” the boy said, looking quite fierce.
Isabelle considered the little lad standing in front of her, considered the pile of dirt he’d disturbed not once but thrice, and decided that perhaps a brief lesson in manners couldn’t go awry. She poked him in the belly with her broom.
“Move,” she suggested.
Yves the Fierce and Terrible spluttered as if the assault to his dignity was simply too much for him to bear. He stepped back and drew his wooden sword with a flourish.
“You,” he said distinctly, “shall pay for that slight.”
“Sword!” someone bellowed from behind her.
Isabelle looked and saw another wooden sword flying her way. She decided she would question where it had come from later. She caught it, then turned to look at who she could only assume was a lad belonging to the de Seger family. He engaged in a bit of parrying with the air, then rested his sword against his shoulder.
“Do you yield?” he demanded.
She suppressed the urge to smile. “I don’t think we’ve begun the battle,” she pointed out, “though I do appreciate the extra time you’ve allowed me to prepare for it.”
“You sound like a girl,” he said, beginning to frown.
“Is that an impediment?”
He drew himself up. “I didn’t say you was a girl, I just said you sounded like one. Now, defend yourself, you knave, if you dare.”
Isabelle tossed her broom aside, then wished she’d spent even ten minutes with Robin in the lists, but perhaps all those y
ears of observing from afar hadn’t gone to waste. Admittedly, she was fighting a lad who couldn’t have been more than five or six, but at least she was managing to keep him from putting her eye out with his stick.
“Yves, real knights don’t fight girls,” a voice taunted.
“She’s not a girl,” Yves said, panting.
“Actually,” Joscelin said mildly, “she is.”
Yves stopped in mid-lunge, drew back, then looked at her in horror.
“Is you a girl?” he squeaked.
“Am I a girl?” she said. “Well, of course I am.”
“Then why didn’t you say so?”
“You didn’t ask.”
He looked terribly offended, as if she had dealt the killing blow to his pride. He resheathed his wooden sword into his belt with a hearty and disgusted thrust, then glared at her.
“I don’t fight girls.”
“Perhaps you should stop stepping in their dirt as well,” she advised, “lest you find you have no say in the matter.”
He puffed out his chest. “I always have a say in the matter—”
“And just what in the hell is going on here?” a voice thundered from the shadows.
Lads scurried. Isabelle found herself with not only Yves, but one of the other lads hiding behind her skirt—er, well not her skirts, but the trousers she had been given. She held on to her wooden sword and felt completely ridiculous.
Then again, Robin had always instructed those fortunate enough to train with him to use whatever weapons they had to hand when in a tight spot. Of course, she had never been recipient of that training because he had apparently thought the only thing she needed to hear was, “go back to the house and stitch in safety, Iz.” Little had he known that all her eavesdropping on his tales of prowess and his complaints about the failures of knights of the realm would serve her so well.
She lifted her chin to face her doom, then felt her mouth fall open. She was fairly sure the point of her sword met the ground abruptly as well. She could feel one of the boys behind her trying to bump it back up where it might have served her, but she was too stunned by the man she was looking at to do anything but gape.