“Oh,” he said, and smiled. “There will be no difficulty there, Madame.”
Chapter
18
Isabeau said, after a shockedpause, “But—Jean cannotbetrayus. He is our guardian. Father named him our guardian.”
“It isn’t a betrayal to him, I think,” said Anne as gently as she could, hollow with shock herself, still fighting a dizzy headache, the world’s impossible confusion. “He will give me to the French to save me from the korrigan.”
Already there was noise mounting outside. To Louis she said, “Have you come to persuade me to agree quietly? For my own good? To hold the door open so Marguerite’s guard need not take me by force?”
Henri said, “Orléans, I’ll kill you.” It was a statement of fact.
Louis did not speak or move.
“What are we going to do?” Isabeau whispered.
Anne hadn’t taken her eyes off Louis.
He said, “Marguerite has learned a secret that I do not know, and it has alarmed her greatly. She is moving at speed; she had soldiers in readiness, you know.”
Anne croaked, the world still spinning, “I imagine that De Rieux has told her my secret.”
Louis just waited.
Anne, with a dry throat, said, “Some weeks ago, I was contracted in marriage to Maximilien of Austria.”
His color changed. “I see.”
Quietly, she said, “You have brought us your news. Now you’d better go.”
The gate-guard were nearly all De Rieux’s men. They badly outnumbered her Bretons, her personal guard. She could hear them outside, already massing to defend the stairs.
“Go,” she told Louis, sharply. “You have given your message. I imagine you were not charged to warn me, and for that I thank you. Now leave us.”
But still Louis did not move.
Louis of Orléans had thought he’d left the impulsive passions of his youth behind. These passions had won him nothing but suffering, left him captured, imprisoned, vanquished. During those long, clawing days in Bourges, where each hour hung as heavy as a stone on a spiked wheel, he had sworn to himself that if he ever won his way free, his head would rule his life, never again his unthinking heart.
She is married.
Married and betrayed. Her own guardian had betrayed her. And here was the reason for the Triumphal Entry, the feasting, her seeming foolishness. She’d been delaying, counting on Maximilien of Austria to come and save her. But he had not come in time. And what frivolity could maintain its façade under the unrelenting strain of the last days’ surprises?
Marguerite will take the duchess away—and Isabeau as well, to ensure her sister’s compliance—and with their company will ride for the French army as hard as ever a horse can gallop, and thence to the French border. Whatever proxy-vows she has said to Maximilien of Austria cannot survive a consummated union with Charles of France. Not with a pope in Rome, ready to take French gold to annul the Austrian marriage. Marguerite will threaten Isabeau if Anne does not agree, and then when she is at Amboise, pregnant with Charles’s firstborn, it will be too late. Maximilien will not take her back if another man has her first.
Anne was holding tight to her sister, her gaze turned inward, obviously thinking fast, looking for a way out. Her pupils were still dilated, misted over with silver.
Damn you,Louis of Orléans said to himself, violently.Damn you for a romantic, deluded fool.He went to the door of the garderobe and listened. Marguerite had no reason to think he’d deceive her. It was too far against his own interest. Anne could give him nothing, while Marguerite could give him what he wanted most.
The firelight played in soft stained-glass colors over Anne’s cheek, and he was shaken by his heart’s own triumphant beating as it overbore, at last and forever, his head.
“You must go to Rennes,” he said. “You can’t stay here. I’ll take you.”
A fleck of silver spatter lingered on her cheek. “You can’t. You know what Marguerite will do to you—if you betray her now and she wins anyway.”
“I’ll thank you to leave my personal affairs to me. We still have to get out of this castle.”
Henri seemed about to speak, but one of Anne’s maids-of-honor put a hand on his arm and he closed his mouth. A crash came from outside, a neighing and a great chorus of shouts.
