“You can’t be serious…”
It was her eyes that gave her away, shining with an expression he couldn’t place at first, though it was enough to make him pause. And then her lips curved in a smile, and he knew it for what it was. Minuette was flirting with him.
He felt his heart turn over and let himself enjoy the feel of it. Something so innocent and natural. Something they could never do openly away from this place.
Bowing his head, he matched her grave tone. “I apologize. It’s a perfectly lovely church, though do you not fear we shall offend God by picnicking on his very doorstep?”
She laughed, and Dominic marveled at the effect of it on her face and his pulse. Suddenly, he realized that her laughter in public always had a hint of calculation running beneath it, as if she never stopped thinking and was always aware of the multiple lives tangled up in her heart.
“You needn’t worry,” she replied, handing him a loaf of new-baked bread. “This church is no longer consecrated. It was Catholic…of course it was Catholic, they wereallCatholic. But it had not been used for years, so Carrie says, and after the break with Rome it was left empty by the reformers.”
As they ate warm bread and fresh cheese and candied orange peel, Minuette told him a little of the history of the church, garnered from Carrie and Mistress Holly. Dominic didn’t take any of it in, but he enjoyed the sound of her voice rising and falling, the animation in her face and hands as she talked.
When they finished eating, she asked, “Would you care to see inside?”
She allowed him to take her hand and help her up. Any other time and place, he would have moved to offer her his arm, but today he kept her hand. He could feel everything, from her linen blackwork sleeves brushing his wrist to each individual finger wound through his.
The interior of the church was surprisingly attractive, with heraldic windows pouring dusky-hued light into the well-proportioned Norman nave. The altar and a stone font remained, but the rest of the building was stripped of furnishings or decoration. Dominic felt a pang at this evidence of Henry VIII’s ruthless plunder of so many churches.
“Carrie’s mother was married here, even though the church had been long empty by then,” Minuette told him. “Not that it needed to be a church, but I suppose she felt that even an empty church would lend a little grace to the event.”
“I don’t follow.”
“It was adi praesentimarriage.” Minuette’s voice had altered, curiously intense as she spoke with a rapidity that betrayed her nerves. “Not that Carrie knew the Latin term, certainly her parents didn’t, but they understood the principle well enough. As long as they each, of their own will, said ‘I marry thee,’ then the marriage was binding in the eyes of the Church. Carrie’s mother was being pressed to marry someone else, someone her parents favoured. So she simply avoided the fuss of parents and priests and came here with the man she wanted. They made their present vows and that was that. No matter how displeased her family, she was married and it could not be undone.”
An uneasy pause followed, in which Dominic could almost hear the beat of Minuette’s heart, quick and uncertain. She said nothing more.
He let go of her hand and stepped away, turning slowly, taking in every corner of the church from ceiling to floor and back again. Without looking at her, he said, “You and I are not tenant farmers, Minuette. We live by different rules.”
“I thought the court lived by its own rules. Dominic, don’t you ever wish—”
He had to cut her off before she could name any of the many things he wished. “Not like that, my love. I will not take you in secret. I will marry you when William gives his consent and not a moment before.”
It was harsh, because it had to be harsh.
Though he had reveled in being alone with Minuette, there were perils in it as well. One night the first week they had stayed up late playing chess. Dominic was not nearly as good a player as William or Minuette, but the attraction had not really been the game but the chance to sit across from her and watch her breathing and the way the tip of her tongue stuck out when she concentrated. By the time Dominic had lost his fourth game to her, he didn’t care about discretion any longer.
They had kissed in the firelit solitude of the medieval hall until he couldn’t think of anything but the feel of her and how badly he wanted his hands on her skin and not the fabric of her dress, and then Minuette had broken away and said, “The hall is not especially private. Perhaps not the wisest place to…”
She had trailed off and though he thought she meant it invitingly, he couldn’t allow himself to follow that thought or the possible invitation. He had turned away so she might not see how she’d aroused him and said shakily, “Not wise at all. Goodnight, Minuette.”
He had put a chair in front of his own door that night, so that if he tried to go to her, he would be reminded that he shouldn’t. Couldn’t.
They had taken care not to stay up so late again.
But as they rode back to Wynfield from her perfect little abandoned church, he found himself thinking, Tonight is our last night. Perhaps I can allow myself to slip just a little.
A hope that was dashed the moment he saw the royal standard flying from the courtyard of Minuette’s home.
William met them in the hall, springing up from his sprawled position in a chair to hug Minuette fiercely.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, sounding not nearly as rattled as Dominic felt.
“I missed you,” he said into her hair and, after much too long, released her. “The French left two days ago and I couldn’t stay away. Thank goodness Dom is here, for needing to meet urgently with my closest councilor is excellent cover.”
Dominic felt his shutters come down hard and fast. “An urgent treasury affair? Does anyone even pretend to believe that?”
“I didn’t say it was a treasury affair. And yes, it is urgent. I wouldn’t want you to miss the ship to France.”
