My Lady Midnight. Laurie Grant

of a headache. “Perhaps I do lack imagination, my lord, but I still don’t see where this is leading.”

      Hardouin gave her a wolfish smile. “What I wish you to do, niece, is to go to Hawkswell Castle in the guise of an English wench, and become nursemaid to his children.”

      Claire let her jaw drop. Perhaps she had overestimated her powerful uncle. “And spy on him thus? My lord, he is hardly apt to drop state secrets in front of his children and their nurse!”

      Hardouin clucked disapprovingly at her. “Of course not, Claire. Nay, what I had in mind for you to do, once you’re in a position of trust with my lord of Hawkswell, is to kidnap his heir and the other whelp and bring them to us. The baron will find it advantageous to switch sides, right enough, if we hold his children hostage.”

       Chapter Two

      Claire gasped. “You—you wish me to abduct his children?”

      Hardouin smiled broadly. “Just so, niece! Isn’t it a brilliant plan? Who would suspect a young nursemaid? You will go in, gain his trust and that of his whelps, and one day, you will stroll out of his castle with them on the pretext of gathering herbs or some such idea, and voilà! You will bring them right to my waiting arms! He’ll come over to our side, right enough, especially if I hold his heir! Close your mouth, Neville, you look like the village idiot.”

      “But my lord, I hardly think—” Claire began, her mind whirling with a hundred reasons why the count’s plan couldn’t possibly work.

      “What, Claire, objections? Can it be you do not want to avenge your friend Julia, his dead wife?”

      Leave it to Hardouin to ferret out the one reason why she was honor-bound to agree to his plan, Claire thought dully. But in spite of what Alain of Hawkswell had done, the very idea of stealing a man’s children…

      “And if I refuse?”

      Hardouin looked grim. “Then I think you had better resign yourself to wedding Fulk,” he said.

      “But—but you said you had no quarrel with my unwillingness to marry him…that he was a blowhard! You said you supported my choice not to marry at all, if that was what I wanted!” she cried indignantly, feeling her face flush with rage.

      Hardouin’s eyes narrowed, and Claire could see a small vein throbbing in his forehead. “I have said you need not marry, Claire, but I have no patience with unproductive leeches. If you refuse to be of any service whatsoever to the head of your family and our cause, then I would at least expect you to marry and remove yourself from our care,” he ground out.

      She felt her face flame at being called a leech. “I believe I would rather take the veil after all,” she countered, lifting her chin and looking him right in the eye. Never again, she had promised herself, would she allow herself to be coerced into carrying out a man’s will. She wasn’t sure at all that entering a convent was preferable to agreeing to Hardouin’s plan, but seeing his implacable gaze, she rebelled. There would be opportunity to escape from a convent, surely, once she was safely away from her uncle’s control…

      “I think not,” he said. “No convent in the land will take you if I say nay.”

      He meant it, she saw. And she had no doubt he had that power. Hardouin would see that she had no dowry to give a religious foundation, and what abbess would take her if a powerful male relative opposed her entry?

      Besides, a voice murmured inside her head, was it not true that she owed something to Julia’s memory?

      “But what if there already are nursemaids aplenty?” she asked skeptically.

      His returning smile told her he knew her question meant she was submitting. “My spy tells me there is but one old beldam caring for Hawkswell’s whelps. She’ll no doubt welcome the help.”

      Claire shrugged. “How very convenient. And I will be free once I deliver my lord of Hawkswell’s children to you? You will then give me the manor—in writing?”

      Hardouin nodded, chuckling. “So suspicious! So earnest! Yes, you’ll be free as a bird, niece. A woman of property.”

      It was an unfortunate comparison, for just inches from Hardouin stood the perch on which the earl kept his falcon, a peregrine. Claire glanced over at the bird, seeing the jewel-studded hood over the falcon’s head, keeping it blind and relatively tranquil, and the jesses with little silver bells at her feet. As if the bird of prey sensed Claire’s scrutiny, she bated on her perch, setting the tiny bells tinkling. Hardouin’s falcon was only free when she had been launched after some prey, and even then the lure of food kept her returning to the earl. Claire did not want to be like that tethered falcon. Having her own manor would be a start.

      

      Alain of Hawkswell’s castle was a day’s journey away. Situated at the entrance to the valley that led straight to London, it was directly in front of the best ford over the Hawkswell River, which cut through the downs. There was forest on the west side, but anyone who attempted to go around the fortress to ford the river was exposed to those who paced the wall walk of Hawkswell Castle. If any would cross the valley, then, they must have the consent of the castle’s lord.

      It was a commanding position, thought Claire, studying it from the safety of a copse of oaks. Even now she could see a pair of sentries marching back and forth on the wall walk, their nasalled helmets obliterating their features. The drawbridge was down, the portcullis raised, and with the great wooden planking extending over the moat, Claire was reminded of a huge, hungry mouth.

      She shivered, though the day was warm enough despite threatening clouds. Was the castle waiting to devour her? Would they see through her disguise of an English peasant right away, and take her prisoner? Hardouin would never allow Neville to ransom her, she knew; money was better spent, he would say, on something useful to King Stephen’s cause than on a useless and rebellious female. She would be left to her fate, which for a friendless female would be too awful to imagine. She had better be so convincing at playing the English peasant that Alain of Hawkswell would never guess she was as Norman as he.

      Suddenly something struck Claire on the tip of her nose, startling her, and bounced off the toe of her crude leather shoe. She saw that it was but an acorn, and relaxed, only to feel another strike her head, and then another.

      Was there a squirrel above her, dislodging them? She looked upward, expecting to spy a twitching, tiny gray body among the leafy upper branches, only to have another acorn impact her cheek with stinging accuracy. She ducked and covered her head with a muttered curse. No squirrel had so accurate an aim! But who?—

      Then she heard a smothered but unmistakable giggle from high among the branches.

      Remembering just in time that she was supposed to be a English peasant, Claire called, “Saints! Who be up there? Stop that right this minute!”

      She heard another giggle, then a small face framed by unruly dark hair appeared from behind the thick upper trunk of the tree. “Sorry,” the little girl said in Frenchaccented English, staring down at Claire. “I hope I didn’t hurt you!”

      She looked so anxious that Claire felt compelled to reassure her. “Nay, I be not hurt, girl. Ye’ve a right keen aim, though!” she said, rubbing her stinging nose. “What’re ye doing up there?”

      “Hiding,” the little girl replied.

      “From who?”

      “From my old nurse, Ivy, who said I must take a bath. I don’t wish to take a bath, so I stole away to the wood. I’ll go back when I’m ready,” she announced primly, and then her gamine face crinkled into a grin. “By then she’ll have forgotten all about it. What’s your name?”

      “I be called Haesel,” Claire said, using the typically English name she had chosen before