from waist height to the top of the domed ceiling. Each was recessed to hold wide window seats, each rose to a pointed arch and was divided, into smaller lights by decorative stone casings. On a bright day the chamber would be drenched in sunlight, the beams playing across the dazzling white walls. Lines had been painted in red to outline each masonry block, and in each block, a depiction of a rose, a tulip, or a honeysuckle blossom. The high French bed had red velvet curtains which rose above the top of the frame, climbing in a thick, twisting spiral to the ceiling. There were rows of wood and leather chests along one wall to house valuables, a low table and stools for doing needlework, and, the rarest luxury of all: a mirror of polished steel, the surface so flat and smooth it was like looking into glass.
There was more: a fireplace as tall as a man and deep enough to hold the big kettles used to heat water for bathing; there were panels of coloured silk hung on either side of each window embrasure, used to diffuse the light when the shutters were open, or camouflage the wood when the shutters were closed.
The floor was stone, covered with wooden planks to blunt the cold in winter and the damp in summer. There was an ornate couvre-feu made of stained glass to place in front of the hearth at night to reduce the hazard of jumping sparks. The bed boasted a thick feather mattress covered with snow-white linens, quilts, a fur coverlet, and more pillows than Servanne could count on two hands.
As stark and masculine a war room as the great hall purported to be, Servanne’s chambers offered an elegant contrast, but it was all too overwhelming to grasp at once and she could feel the burning pressure of tears building behind her eyes. Her gloves slipped unheeded from her numbed fingers and the sobs that could neither be contained nor muffled behind her splayed hands began to shake her slender shoulders.
Eduard, seeing the beautiful damsel burst into tears before him, was at a complete loss to know what to do and fidgeted from one foot to the other, jumping a full inch off the ground when Biddy burst into the room behind them.
“There, there, my lamb! There, there! What have you said to her, you scurrilous snipe? What have you done?”
“N-nothing, goodwife. I have done nothing. I—I swear it!”
Biddy cradled her sobbing charge against the pendulous cushions of her breasts and glared at the hapless squire. “Out! Out, I say, and terrorize someone else who might be strong enough to endure your ill humour! Out!”
Eduard, swallowing and gulping wordlessly, backed out of the solar and through the wardrobe where the accusing stares from Helvise and Giselle sent him running for the stairs.
“Now then,” Biddy said soothingly. “The brute is gone, tell me what is wrong.”
“Oh, Biddy,” Servanne wailed softly. “I am so unhappy!”
“Unhappy?”
“I know. It makes no sense. I should be anything but unhappy. I am rescued, I am safe again, I am here—” She raised a tear-streaked face from Biddy’s shoulder and glanced meaningfully around the incredible lushness of the solar. “I should feel angry over what happened to me, relieved it is over, and thrilled to be exactly where I have dreamed of being all these long months … but instead … I feel lost. Lost and frightened and so unhappy I could just die.”
“Frightened?” The fine hairs in Biddy’s ears prickled to attention. “Has something happened? Has someone said something to frighten you?”
A soft, wavering sigh sent Servanne back into the smothering comfort of Biddy’s bosom. “He was so cruel, so heartless.”
“Cruel?” the matron gasped. “Heartless? Why, what has he done that is so cruel?”
“He sent me away. He could have refused to let me go, I know he could have. I—I even think a small part of him wanted to ask me to stay, but the other part … the beastly, proud, arrogant part of him did not want it to appear as if he had become weakened or … or affected in any way by what happened, and so … so he sent me away.”
Biddy, her head spinning, wondered if it would be a timely moment to collapse into one of her swoons. “You are not talking about Lord Lucien are you?”
Servanne lifted her head and turned huge, glistening blue eyes to focus on the boldly depicted De Gournay crest and shield carved