The Marriage Test Read Online Free PDF

comment and gesture of their guests’ reaction to the meal. She tried in vain to part them and continue on up the stairs. As bits of their news pierced her turmoil, she had time to consider what she was about to report to the abbess and the duke.
    Invaded? By whom?
the abbess would surely demand. And what could she answer? A lone beggar who filched food from the kitchen? Scarcely a threat to the sanctity of the convent, the sovereignty of the duke, or the dignity of the bishop. In fact, the only one threatened in any way was herself. Why on earth would a man steal into the convent kitchen to stuff himself witless and—when caught—demand to know about their cook?
    The chaos around her had subsided into expectant stares. She took a deep breath and grasped her bearings. She had a feast to finish and an angry abbess to placate afterward. Her gaze landed on the table below where one and a half hedgehogs waited to delight a duke’s son. She clapped her hands for attention.
    “Take the trays and linen to the scullery and tidy your sleeves and hands to serve the final course.”
    As she followed the servers back down the steps, she vowed to personally oversee the distribution of alms later. And if she spotted the wretch who had just assaulted her in her own kitchen, she would see that he rued ever setting eyes—much less hands—on her.
    Half an hour later, under the abbess’s scorching gaze, she presented the barrel-chested duke and his callow-faced son with a pair of charming, if somewhat abbreviated, creatures of the hedgerows. The young boy’s eyes danced with merriment beneath his bowl-cut hair and the duke chuckled and bestowed an approving smile as she began to cut and serve. The bishop was moved to remark upon the choice of a creature of such humility, the confection’s likeness to the real thing, and began waxing on about its suitability as a finale to a meal in a convent, when aged Sister Archibald hurried into the dining hall, curtsied to bishop and duke, then whispered urgently into the abbess’s ear.
    “What? Have they moved the road to Paris?” the reverend mother snapped, tossing her lap cloth on the table. “Now it runs right by our door?” She rose and apologized to the duke and then the bishop: “It seems we have more visitors. If you will excuse me, Your Grace, Your Worship.”
    The abbess hurried along the colonnade with Sister Archibald, who when asked, repeated the nobleman’s name: the Comte de Grandaise. The abbess frowned, trying to recall why the name seemed familiar and where she might have heard it. He wasn’t from the nearby region, to be sure.
    She halted some distance from the inner gate, assessing the trio of armor-clad men standing just inside the entry with their helms in their hands. One spotted her and alerted the others, who turned to her while arraying themselves in formidable-looking phalanx … the two shorter men flanking the taller one … one telling step behind.
    The abbess paused two yards away, face-to-face with a tall, broad-shouldered lord clad in mail armor, wearing what appeared to be a band of metal across the ridge of his nose, pinching it together. Aware that she was staring, she looked quickly down to the coat of arms emblazoned on a silk tabard over his mail. It was unlike any crest she had seen before: grapes, lumps of charcoal, and what appeared to be a wild boar rampant on a split field of pale blue and loden green. The lord’s two companions, who bore the same coat of arms on their tunics, joined him in a light bow of respect.
    “Please forgive the intrusion, Reverend Mother.” The imposing lord’s voice had a nasal quality that drew her attention to the metal band he wore. “I am Griffin, the Comte de Grandaise, of Bordeaux. I have ridden a long way to seek an audience with you.”
    “You arrive at an inconvenient time, sir.”
    “Your Lordship,” the shorter, rounder knight prompted.
    “Your Lordship.”
The abbess heeded the prompt a bit testily,