this place of honour. Her gown was rendered from a bolt of crimson damask—a very small bolt judging by the tightness of the fit and the amount of flesh left exposed to the hungry stares of the male guests. Her hair had been left uncovered and the raven black tresses tamed beneath a meshlike webbing of fine gold wire.
“I trust you are feeling better today?” Wardieu inquired politely, leading Servanne to her place at the table. He noted the whispering silence that had marked his bride’s descent into the hall, and cast his own approving gaze along her modestly elegant attire.
He smiled and Servanne’s feet nearly tripped over her plummeting heart. He was indecently handsome. Tall and bronzed in complexion, she could well imagine the difficulty in choosing between De Gournay and King Richard for sheer golden splendour. Clad in various shades of blue, his shirt and chausses were dark as midnight, surmounted by a tunic of paler damask, quilted and beaded with hundreds of winking sapphires. The Wardieu crest was emblazoned on his massive chest in silver thread and glittering gemstones, the tangled grotesques seeming to come to life with each gesture or movement. His hand, as he held it up to call for total silence, was broad and calloused, its implied power hardly softened by the smother of gold rings he wore on the long, tapered fingers.
“My lords and ladies,” he said, his voice as rich and bold as his appearance. “I give you my bride, the Lady Servanne de Briscourt.”
The dais was raised a scant three feet higher than the rest of the hall, but it was enough to catch the last of the early morning rays of sun that streamed down from the slotted windows carved high on the east wall. De Gournay’s tawny hair glowed with a golden halo, resembling a spill of pure sunlight, and Servanne could almost hear the sounds of the women’s heartbeats pounding hotter and faster in their breasts.
His fingers closed slowly, possessively around hers and he raised her hand to his lips, lingering long enough over the caress for a sigh to ripple through the audience.
“Your chambers are satisfactory?” Wardieu asked, waving away the young page in favour of assisting Servanne into her seat himself.
“Oh yes, my lord. They are very much so.”
“You must want for nothing while you are here; you have only to ask and whatever you desire will be laid before you.”
At the sound of the solicitous offer, Nicolaa stabbed her eating knife into a convenient pear with somewhat more violence than the act required. If Wardieu noticed, he paid no heed. He seemed quite engrossed in studying the newest points of interest revealed by the morning light, namely, how truly blue the centres of Servanne’s eyes were, and how white the surrounding orbs. Her lashes were thick and honey-coloured, which led him to speculate and then to search the edge of her wimple until he confirmed his suspicions that her hair would be as blonde as his own. Blonder, he surmised, if the shiny thread of escaped yellow was any indication, and thinking back, had he not seen a long, gleaming curl of something silvery-pale flown from beneath her hood the night he brought her away from the abbey?
He had always preferred his women dark-haired and white-skinned, finding the contrast more stimulating than fair hair and ill-defined contours, but now he caught himself warming to the notion of a golden-haired beauty in his bed.
“Two days,” he mused. “It seems an interminable wait, my lady.”
Servanne read exactly the same thing in his eyes as Nicolaa saw, and for once, was thankful when the sheriff’s wife interrupted bluntly.
“You can hardly proceed without Prince John since he is standing for the bride. And doubtless the old whore herself, Eleanor of Aquitaine would nail your eyelids to your knees if you snubbed her precious La Seyne Sur Mer.”
Servanne’s heart missed a beat. Her gaze focused on the table linen and she gripped her eating knife so tightly, both blade and hand trembled. Luckily Wardieu had turned to reply to Nicolaa and neither saw her reaction to the name.
“It was a figure of speech, Nicolaa,” he sighed. “Not a proclamation of intent. However, with John’s cavalcade nearing the moor as we speak, and La Seyne reported to be but a day’s journey away, it may well suit my purpose to speed the entire affair along … with the good bishop’s permission, of course.”
Servanne’s heart had barely calmed from the first shock