Blurry wood inches away from his nose, rough-hewn boards shaped into a V.
And hard fingers clamped around the back of his neck like a skeletal claw, holding him down, down, down in the water.
His struggles ceased.
His mouth opened.
The water and the pain faded away into nothing, nothing, and he was floating, weightless.
Didier, did you drown?
“Didier!” Nicholas sat up in bed with a hoarse cry and looked around wildly.
He was in the guest chamber at the king’s palace. Sunlight streamed, bright and painful, onto the floor. Nick looked to his right.
Simone was gone.
His eyes flew about the room. No sign of her remained but a lone piece of parchment on the table, and Nicholas knew it was the annulment decree. ’Twas as if she had vanished from his life. As if she, and Didier, had never been.
“He did not die in the fire,” Nick said aloud, as if to test the statement. “He…hedrowned.”
Nicholas tried to string together all that he knew in his sleep-and fear-clouded mind.
The boy was in the stable when Armand set the blaze, but Armand had sworn he hadn’t known Didier was inside.
When Simone had told Nick the tale of her brother first coming to her after his death, she’d said he’d been dripping wet.
The water, and the wooden boards shaped into a V. A trough, perhaps?
The hand on the back of his neck…
Armand hadn’t known he was in the stables, and Portia was already dead.
Someone else had been in the stables, someone who did not want Didier to escape.
In an instant, Nicholas knew.
He sprang from the bed to dress, praying that the ship that would take his wife away with a murderer had not yet set sail.
Simone stood at Jehan’s side as the crew of his ship crawled over the docks and up the plank like insects, carrying freight and supplies. The sun blazed as if to spite her sadness, and the seabirds called mockingly, swooping and taunting her with their freedom. The sea swelled and hushed, its smell rotted and decaying here.
“Did you sleep well?” Jehan asked, searching her face with concerned eyes. “You are very quiet.”
Simone tried to smile at him, but it pained her head and so she gave up. “I’ll be fine.”
She tried to push the image of Nicholas as she’d left him this morning from her mind. The way his hair had smelled when she’d kissed his cheek one last time.
“Where is Charles?” she asked her father, seeking to cover up the bittersweet memories with something distasteful.
Jehan gave her a conspiratorial look. “He’s off to make a purchase. A gift for you, he said, to cheer you on the voyage.”
Simone sniffed. She knew she was being unfair, but she didn’t care. There was naught he could buy her that would bring her comfort.
And with Saint du Lac’s coin, no less. Yea, she had given her permission for Jehan to hand over Portia’s coin to Charles. She would marry him once they returned to France, and Simone cared little for riches tainted with so much blood and heartbreak. But still, his ready use of the funds irked her. Already Charles had spoken of improving Saint du Lac. A larger hall, a bigger stables to replace the one lost in the fire. Simone cared not.
In truth she did not care to return to Saint du Lac at all. Jehan had tried to converse with Simone about her mother, to defend the woman, but Simone would not have it. She felt infected, sickened by her mother’s lies, the lies that had kept her and Didier from their true father, kept them all tethered to Armand du Roche.
But until they returned to France and she was married to Charles, for the whole of the voyage, she would simply be Simone Renault, daughter of a wealthy merchant. And then she did smile a bit and squeezed her father’s arm.
