sighed and rolled onto her stomach, refusing to acknowledge the daylight slivering through the cracks of the window shutters.
“Why?” she whispered. “Why did you send me here?”
Your temper is more than a match for whatever tests the Dragon may put you through.
“Such a compliment is laughable,” she muttered forlornly, dragging a pillow beneath her and hugging it to her breasts. “Especially since it appears not to have had any lasting effect on you, my lord wolf’s head.”
She pictured him as she had last seen him, his dark, brooding magnificence muted by the falling shadows; the forest all around him, green and hazed with dampness; the sky a roiling mass of gray cloud, rumbling with distant thunder. Across his cheek, the livid bleeding result of her temper. On his mouth, the arrogant smirk of self-satisfaction. In his eyes there was … there was …
In his eyes, where there should have been anger or triumph … there was only …
Only … what?
Servanne’s heartbeat had quickened noticeably in the past minute or so, but before she could determine the cause of this new distress, another was knocking brusquely on the outer door and bustling into the chamber like a fomenting hurricane.
“His lordship sends word he is desirous of your company in the great hall,” Biddy proclaimed, sweeping aside the bed curtains and hastening Giselle and Helvise into the chamber with an impatient wave of her hand. “I returned the message you were still abed, and had not even been to chapel yet for morning prayers, and he sent back that you should pray quickly, for his mood is none too holy this morning. Then I am told Prince John’s cortege is expected any hour now, so I suppose we must forgive the host his poor manners, although if it were up to me I should not fawn and simper over that sly fox, regardless if he were regent or king.” She stopped and drew a deep breath for refueling, then swept aside the coverlets in a grand gesture of annoyance. “Maledictions, what are you staring at, child? Get up. Get up. Brother Michael awaits you in the chapel—such a nice young man but if you wait overlong, he’ll have no nails left to chew—and young Eduard has come whimpering back to offer you escort. Quickly, now. Quickly. Stockings, garters, tunic … Helvise, saints seize my heart, I am lost of a shoe! Fetch it quickly from the wardrobe while Giselle bathes my lady’s hands and face.”
In a flurry of activity, dainty white feet were thrust into stockings and garters fastened below the knees. A sheer white chemise replaced the thicker linen sleeping gown, over which a tunic of fine gold silk was fussed and fretted into place. The gown Biddy had selected was a rich blue velvet, elaborately embroidered with the same gold thread as in the hints of silk that peeped at throat and wrists. A girdle sparkling with jewels encircled her waist; a golden armband, several rings, and a long, looping strand of pearls completed the toilette.
Servanne watched the progress of her maids through the reflection in the polished steel mirror. When it came time to comb and plait her hair, she showed the first signs of impatience, and remarked to Biddy that at least half of the ladies present in the hall the previous night had not respected the modesty of a wimple.
“Harlots, whores, and trulls wear their heads bare,” Biddy declared with an ominous squint in one eye. “And you are on the way to chapel, not the fair.”
It was a short journey, down the corkscrew stairs of her own tower and up the twisting flight of an adjacent tower. The chapel was small and dusty, the priest oppressively sincere in droning the litany. At the end of the mass, Servanne and her tiny flock were again herded down into the bowels of the castle, taken to the great hall to break their fast with the lord and his guests. The numbers of knights present at the tables had increased noticeably overnight, and the huge platters of bread, cheese, and ale were disappearing from the linen tablecloths as fast as the servants could bring them out from behind the screened walkway to the kitchens.
The Baron de Gournay stood to greet his prospective bride, his genial smile almost able to counter the effect of seeing Nicolaa de la aye already seated on his left side on the dais. The sheriff’s wife had spared no effort in making herself visible in