The Mistress of Normandy. Susan Wiggs

morning with a full beard.”

      Though she laughed, Lianna drew a painful parallel with her own dilemma. People lauded her beauty, but they kept their distance. She needed no beard, not with her domineering uncle, her scheming husband, and her own nature—a coolness born of confusion and ignorance—keeping men at bay.

      Bonne started to withdraw, then returned to pick up a mug she’d left on a shelf. “Mustn’t forget my tonic,” she murmured, lifting the mug and draining it.

      “Are you ailing?” Lianna asked.

      Bonne laughed. “No, my lady, ’tis a draught of rue and savin.” She flushed. “Prevents conception.”

      Knowing the substance to be a mild poison, Lianna frowned. “Is Roland so careless with you, Bonne?”

      The maid shrugged. “Men. They are all alike. They spread their seed like chaff to the wind, heedless of where it takes root.”

      That night Lianna had the dream again, the now familiar fantasy in which the husband who approached her bed transformed from Lazare into Rand. She awoke the next morning with a vague but compelling sense of new purpose.

      * * *

      During the three weeks since Rand had gone in secret to Le Crotoy, spring had pounced like a golden lion upon Picardy. Bees droned over the clover-carpeted meadow through which he walked, bearing hard for Bois-Long. In a distant field, cows stood motionless in the shimmering sunlight, and the scent of the salt marshes tingled sharply in his nose. Travel would have been quicker on horseback, but with Gaucourt’s hobelars about, Rand couldn’t risk detection.

      As his long strides carried him across fields and through forests, he discovered a deep appreciation for the beauty of the land. To the east a field of blue flax and budding poppies waved in restful harmony; to the west loomed the highlands bordered by chalky cliffs and stunted trees. The Somme coiled inland, fed by scores of tributaries. A forest of beeches and elms, their powerful trunks nourished by rich earth, sprang from the marshy valley. Ahead, a line of blazed poplars nodded in the breeze. The gateway to Bois-Long.

      His French heritage linked him to this land. His English title made him master of it. Yet Burgundy’s new plan made secrecy necessary. The duke had promised that the demoiselle would soon be free to wed; he seemed confident of an annulment of her marriage to Mondragon. Rand was only too happy to leave the intrigue to Burgundy.

      Cautiously he approached his destination. He misliked stealth; he had no prowess at it.

      As he edged along the bank, keeping to the shadows of great water beeches, he saw, for the second time, the impregnable magnificence of the château. Only now he looked at it, not as his future home, but as a fortress to be breached. He calculated the height of the walls and determined the route he’d take when he came for his bride.

      With a bit of charcoal he made a sketch on parchment, noting the locations of the sentry towers, the number of windows in the keep proper, the merlons in the battlements.

      The idea of sneaking into the château and abducting an unsuspecting woman filled him with distaste, but he had no choice. Gaucourt’s presence made an overt attack ludicrous; the idea of returning unsuccessful to England was unthinkable.

      The clopping of hoofs on the causeway snared his attention. Muscles coiling, he pressed back against a thick tree trunk and watched a small contingent of men-at-arms emerge from beneath the barbican. At their center rode a woman.

      The Demoiselle de Bois-Long.

      It could be no other, for she perched on her saddle with an air of haughty authority and was robed in a gown of sumptuous red. King Henry’s gifts of cloth and jewels should please her, Rand thought. She favors rich dresses.

      Feeling both detached and uneasy, he studied the woman who would become his wife. Her face was milk pale; she had ripe red lips, sleek black hair, and fine-drawn brows that swept high above eyes too distant to discern the color. Beauty, not warmth, was the chief impression Rand gleaned from his glimpse of the demoiselle. She was Burgundy’s kin, he reminded himself. Why look for kindness in her?

      She reined in and snapped an order to one of the men. When he made no move to respond, she gave a little screech, produced a stout riding crop, and laid it about the man’s shoulders until he dismounted and adjusted her stirrup. Then they were off again, crossing the causeway and turning east along a dirt road.

      As he stared at the narrow back and raven locks of the demoiselle, Rand felt each breath like a harsh rasp in his throat. This woman, with her hard red mouth and cruel white hands, was to be his wife, the mother of his babes. Not only was he condemned to asserting his control over a French keep; now he knew his wife had a temper he’d have to tame.

      Troubled, he glanced up at the westering sun. I’ll come in the late afternoon each day, and wait until the hour of the woodcock’s flight. Lianna’s words drifted into his mind, pulling him to the place he knew he should not visit.

      * * *

      Lianna visited the glade with less and less frequency, for her hopes of meeting Rand again had begun to wane. He’s a knight-errant, she told herself. His home is where he pitches his tent and tethers his horse.

      But the spring-soft afternoon and the terrifying goal she’d set for herself brought her back to the glade. Bonne’s words haunted her: Men. They spread their seed like chaff to the wind. At last Lianna was ready to admit that Bonne was right; Gaucourt was right. She needed an heir to prevent her uncle from tampering with her marriage to a Frenchman and to prevent Gervais from inheriting Bois-Long.

      Walking through the long stretch of woods, she pondered her plan. Surely Rand, if she could find him again, would plant a child inside her, and Lazare would be too proud to deny the babe was his own.

      So simple, she thought. So cold-blooded. So damnably necessary. She wondered if she had the courage and callousness to bring her attraction to Rand to its natural conclusion.

      She did. But not by virtue of her courage, which she doubted, nor by virtue of her callousness, which had been soothed to tenderness by Rand’s loving hands. She was motivated by more than the simple need for an heir. She wanted Rand to make love to her, to fill the void that had gaped like an open wound in her heart all her life. He’d awakened the dreamer within her, given her the will to reach out with both hands for the love that had ever eluded her.

      Since she was accustomed by now to finding the glade empty, her heart hammered in surprise when she spied Rand through a frame of budding willows. Filled with gladness and fear, she approached him from one side. The woods craft schooled into her by Chiang gave her a light, silent step. Rand didn’t notice her; he appeared deep in thought.

      His back against the stone cross, his sun-gilt head bowed over his chest, he put her in mind of a sleeping giant, his power unsprung, hovering beneath a patina of repose. Hazy, diffuse light showered over his profile. His hair, she noticed with affectionate attention, had grown longer, the ends curling like a halo around the unspoiled beauty of his face.

      His guileless pose, his pensive attitude, made her regret her intention to take advantage of their attraction, yet the heart-stopping magnificence of his long, muscled body filled her with guilty excitement.

      She expressed her agitation with a soft gasp, a whispered greeting.

      With a start that sent her stumbling back, he jumped to his feet and yanked out a pointed dagger. Recognition, then undiluted joy, blossomed on his face. The weapon disappeared back into its sheath. “You gave me a start.” His smile touched her heart like the shimmer of a sunbeam.

      She flushed. “I didn’t mean to.” Studying the tender ferns on the forest floor, she felt suddenly shy.

      “You always startle me, sweet maid,” he said, a strained note of longing in his voice.

      Her throat constricted at the sight of those leaf-green eyes, that rugged face far more animated, more compelling, than the one she saw in her dreams each night.

      With one swift movement he swept her into his arms.