It was so hard not to believe she cared enough to change for him when she was looking at him with so much warmth and longing in her eyes. She was so close he could smell her skin and hair. His fingers itched to touch her.
Linnet had taken hold of him as a young man—heart, body, and soul. So long as they both lived, he would want her. He understood that now. But once he gave his vow to another, he would not succumb to the temptation. By the Virgin, he needed to get himself wed as soon as possible. He would send Martin home to visit his mother and leave with Stephen on the morrow.
“Is it not enough to punish me?” she asked, her touch scorching through him again. “One of us should be happy.”
He took one last look at the face that could make him forget every other thing that mattered to him in this world.
“Tell the queen I shall join her at Hertford.” He lifted his gaze to the trees on the far side of the river. “I shall be betrothed when next we meet.”
Chapter Thirty-one
“Praise God you are here.” Linnet threw her arms around Francois???s neck as soon as he walked through the door of her London house. “I could not live through this without you.”
Francois patted her back and asked, “What has happened?”
“Jamie is getting married,” she said into his neck. “To someone else.”
Francois blew out a deep breath. “I feared as much.” He unhooked her arms from around his neck. “ ’Tis your own fault. Twice now you have tossed out the best man you will ever have.”
“I did not toss him out.” Indignation helped her fight the sting of tears at the back of her eyes. “Jamie left me. Both times.”
“Christ above, Linnet,” Francois said, raising his hands into the air. “You had to know Jamie would not stand for what you did with Gloucester.”
“I was trying to get information, nothing more.”
“Just because you can dangle men from your fingers, does not mean you should do it,” Francois said. “And did it have to be Gloucester, second in line to the throne? What was Jamie to think?”
She crossed her arms and tapped her foot. “He should have trusted me. I can manage Gloucester.”
“You can manage Gloucester? Then how is it that Jamie found the two of you grappling in the duke’s damned bedchamber?”
She should not have told her brother that part.
“You are supposed to be on my side.” She turned away, angry that her lower lip was trembling.
Francois heaved a sigh and put his arm around her. “Sorry, sweetling.”
She swallowed. “I cannot let him marry Agnes, truly I cannot. The woman has no spark at all.” ’Twas simply wrong for Jamie to be with a woman who would not appreciate his passion. If only…
“Come, I have news of my own to share with you,” Francois said. “You’d best sit down for this.”
The grave expression on Francois’s usually cheerful countenance sent a tremor of foreboding through her. Once they were sitting side by side on the bench under the window, he pulled a thick stack of folded parchments from inside his tunic. The edges were curled with age.
“I’ve arranged them with the oldest on top,” he said as he flattened them on his knee.
She touched his arm. “But what are they?”
“Letters.” Francois cleared his throat. “Letters from our father to our grandfather.”
The breath went out of her. She looked into her twin’s face, unable to form the question.
Francois pressed his lips together and nodded. “Aye, he did not forget us as we thought.”
All these years, she had believed they did not merit the slightest consideration from their father. But here was proof to the contrary—proof that he had at least remembered them from time to time. Tears streamed down her face. From the time she was little, she had told herself she did not care that he had forgotten them. But it had always been a scar upon her heart.
“What does he say in the letters?” she asked. Francois set the stack in her lap. “The ink has faded, but you can read most of them.”
She untied the twine that held them together and picked up the first one. As soon as she unfolded it, she recognized Alain’s seal and signature at the bottom. The parchment was torn along the fold, and her eyes blurred when she tried to make out the words.
