Secrets at Court Read Online Free PDF

Nicholas?’
    He thought she had not noticed. ‘Only to amuse myself.’ He
remembered now, as he returned her stitchery to her, his question. Had she
wanted him to forget? ‘Her marriage to Holland. Were you there?’
    ‘Yes, of course. It was a quiet affair.’
    ‘I meant the first time.’
    She looked away. ‘The first time? Her marriage to Salisbury,
you mean?’
    ‘No. Her first marriage to Holland. The secret one.’
    She pursed the thin lips. ‘I was but four. They did not have a
babbling babe present.’
    He thought of her at four and smiled.
    She did not. ‘Now, as you have reminded me, I have duties to
perform in the here and now.’ She put the needlework in a pouch and reached for
her walking stick.
    ‘Let me...’ He reached to help her, still not knowing why,
again resenting her for his discomfort.
    She turned a frigid gaze on him. ‘I have lived twenty-five
years without your help. I do not need it now.’
    He gritted his teeth to hold back sharp words. ‘Then I shall
not offer it again.’
    He watched her hobble away, anger mixing with guilt for
thinking ill of her when he should be filled with pity.
    Yet pity was the last thing he felt. She wore her limp as
proudly as a knight might wore his scars earned by prowess in war.
    No, he was feeling something else even more surprising.
    Want.
    He shook his head, trying to clear his mind. He had been too
long without a woman. On his trip to Canterbury, he’d make a detour to Grape
Lane and find a woman with fair hair and lush lips and blue eyes who did not
hurl prickly insults at him.
    Strange, he puzzled again, watching her stumble back to the
lodge, for Lady Joan to keep such a woman with her, and not only because of her
tart tongue. Typically, such persons were shunned, or discreetly kept out of
sight. This woman, on the other hand, was ever close to her lady. And while she
could not agilely leap to perform tasks, she seemed to be in charge of others
who did.
    Well, he was not here to wonder about a lady-in-waiting. He
was here to make sure the Prince could wed his lady love.
    After that, he’d be gone.
    * * *
    ‘Come, Anne,’ Lady Joan said, patting the bench beside her as
Anne returned to her chambers. ‘Where have you been? We must speak of all that
is to be done before the wedding.’
    Anne hobbled over to the bench and sank onto it, more tired
than usual. Her first thought was to tell her lady that Nicholas had asked
dangerous questions.
    Her second thought was to keep that secret to herself.
    But her lady, speaking of the wedding, did not question
further, so Anne pulled out her needle and thread and settled in to listen.
    Her lady demanded all her attention and more. She was as jumpy
as a cat, Anne thought, prowling the chamber, speaking of one idea, then
another, her fabled calm shattered.
    Lady Joan was unaccustomed to being without a man. When Thomas
Holland had been gone to war, well, that was one thing. But he died late in
December, in Normandy, she by his side. It had been a blur, those next weeks.
Packing, moving back across the Channel. Anne had expected peace and mourning
when they returned.
    But her lady was not a woman who could live for long without a
husband. How many weeks had it been after they returned before she was looking
for her next companion? Barely enough to mourn the man. And Joan was not only
the most beautiful woman in England, she was also the most wealthy. She had her
pick of men, clustered, pleading their cases.
    But she had waited for the best catch of them all. And a man
she had known in the nursery.
    Anne had no opinion about Edward of Woodstock. She couldn’t
afford to. Some tongues had wagged. The lusty widow. But if it had been Anne,
the Prince would not have stirred her lust.
    Unbidden, she thought of Nicholas. He of the strong brows and
the rugged nose and the lips that...
    She shook her head. The man’s lips were no longer of any
interest to her unless they were speaking of something of interest to