soup and eat it with me,” said Old Mother Hunger.
I tell you, there was nothing she would not do for her brother.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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She woke up when Erec pinched her cheek. “Good morning, my lady.”
She batted his hand away and started to sit up. Then she realized that Erec’s servants were crowding into the room, and she was naked under the blankets. She dived back down even as Erec got up.
“Getting up?” he asked.
“No,” she growled.
“Don’t worry,” he said, ignoring the men who were pulling his shirt on over his head, “my valets know how to help a lady put her clothes back on.”
“No,” said Rachelle. “Send them away.”
“You aren’t planning to wear clothes today? My, that will cause talk.”
How could he be saying these things in front of everybody? But he was Erec d’Anjou: he wouldn’t hesitate to say anything in front of anybody, especially when “anybody” was the servants whose names he probably didn’t even remember.
“I am not going to display myself in front of your servants,” she said.
He slanted an ironic gaze over his shoulder. “Don’t tell me you’ve grown modest overnight.”
There was nothing she could say that he wouldn’t make to sound even more foolish, so she curled up under the blankets and waited until he was done dressing and the servants had gone before she got up and dressed herself.
Erec still watched her, but she couldn’t very well complain. She’d chosen this, hadn’t she? She had said she belonged to him. What right did she have to resent him?
“Well?” he asked her as she laced up her shirt. “Was I worth the wait?”
“No,” snapped Rachelle, because contradicting him was a habit that would take more than one night to break.
“Then you shouldn’t have waited so long.”
She threw a boot at his head. He caught it easily, and leaned forward to kiss her.
Afterward, he hung the ruby pendant around her neck. The stone was as big as her thumbnail, a faceted, glittering teardrop that hung just below the mark on her throat.
“Now all the world can see you’re mine,” he said.
“Let me guess,” she said. “You’re already planning how to show me off.”
“Surely you don’t want me to hide you away.” Erec’s hand had rested on her shoulder; now he slid it up to cup the side of her neck. It was a surprisingly gentle gesture and she couldn’t help relaxing a little.
She’d always hated the thought of being his prize on display. And yet now that it had happened . . . it was comforting to know that somebody was not ashamed of her.
“But we can hold the grand display later,” Erec went on. “I have prisoners to question and you have . . .”
“Nobody to guard anymore,” said Rachelle.
Erec was silent, and she raised her eyebrows. “Or do I?”
“Possibly,” he said. “We’re not going to reveal what he did just yet.”
Because if people knew he had turned against the King, they might support him. She remembered the way Armand had looked at her last night, and she felt cold and hollow.
She would have to face that loathing again. After she left Erec, as she wended her way back through the Château to her quarters, she couldn’t stop thinking about it. She had to make Armand tell her where he had put Joyeuse. So she would have to face him again, and he would rake her with another one of his disdainful glances, and she felt absolutely sure that it would take him only one look at her to know what she’d done.
He had never thought any better of her. Why should she care?
She spent the day hunting for Joyeuse along every possible path from Armand’s rooms to where she had captured him. She found nothing, and she began to wonder if Armand had managed to dump it down a well. Or if he’d gotten someone to smuggle it out of the Château for him.
The thought made her want to beat her head against the wall. She had been so close, and if only she hadn’t trusted him—
He would have to tell her what he did with it, she decided. She would have to make him talk.
That meant getting Erec to let her see him, and that meant keeping him happy. So when Erec told her that the King wanted to dine tête-à-tête with them that evening, she obediently went back to her room to dress.
Sévigné helped her with both the clothes and cosmetics. It was no comfort now to sit still with