The Champion. Heather Grothaus

she whispered. “We cannot…be together at this time.”

      Nicholas’s eyes narrowed, and then comprehension dawned on his face. “Are you having your monthly?”

      Simone’s hands flew to cover her flaming face as Didier’s head popped up over the side of the mattress.

      “What’s a ‘monthly’?”

      “Nay.” Simone’s voice was a muffled wail behind her palms. She dropped her hands and sighed. Her defeat was imminent.

      Before her, the baron crossed his arms over his bare chest. “Then why in God’s name can I not enjoy my wife on our wedding night?”

      “Oh, I must hear this,” Didier said, scrambling back onto the bed.

      Simone took a bracing breath. “Very well. If you insist…”

      “I do.”

      “Little more than a year past, my mother and my younger brother were killed in a terrible accident, at our home in France.”

      Nicholas nodded. “So I have heard. I am sorry for your loss, but—”

      Simone squeezed her eyes shut. “We cannot be together this night because we are not alone.”

      “What?”

      “Mon dieu!” Didier shrieked. “I cannot believe you’re going to tell him!”

      Simone straightened her spine and looked Nicholas in the eye, trying to ignore her brother. The baron glanced around the room suspiciously.

      She lifted her chin. “Our every move is being watched by Didier’s spirit. He sits on the bed, even as we now speak.” She waved a hand toward the aforementioned piece of furniture where Didier watched the exchange, enraptured.

      “Didier is—was—your brother?” Nicholas asked.

      “Yea.”

      “Your dead brother.”

      Simone nodded.

      Nicholas’s eyes roamed the rumpled furs, and Didier waved cheekily to him. “Bonjour, Lord Nicholas.”

      The baron’s gaze pinned Simone once more. “I see naught.”

      “Yea, I know,” Simone admitted, fidgeting with her fur. “Only I can see or hear him, but you must believe me. I—”

      “You are mad,” Nicholas said, slowly backing away.

      “Nay!” Simone stepped forward, reaching a hand to him. “I know that you must now think the rumors to be true, but I swear to you, I’m not mad.”

      “’Tis little wonder your betrothed refused you,” Nicholas muttered while gathering up his discarded clothing and dressing. “Your father should be whipped for this duplicity.”

      “Nicholas,” Simone huffed, “hear me out—do you not think it strange that this chamber is frigid when the windows are shut tight and a fire blazes in yonder hearth?”

      “’Tis merely a draft,” he replied, pulling his tunic over his head.

      Didier giggled. “A daft draft!”

      Simone shot her brother a stern look before once again turning her attention to Nicholas. She knew she must convince him that she was quite sane or ’twas very likely she, Didier, and Armand would be tossed out of London on their backsides. Her mind latched on to the one person whom the stubborn man might believe.

      “Lady Haith!” she exclaimed.

      Nicholas paused in belting on his sword. “What of my sister-in-law?”

      Simone rushed forward. “Ask her about Didier—she can hear him as well!”

      Nicholas seemed to think for a moment, frowning at her warily, before shaking his head and finishing attaching his sheath. “Nay, you’re mad alright.” He picked up his boots with one hand and headed toward the door. “Rest assured that I will speak to William on the morrow—I’ll not have a raving lunatic as the next Baroness of Crane. Good evening to you, Lady du Roche.”

      Simone spun to face Didier, her panic nearly out of control. Should Nicholas persuade the king to dissolve their marriage, Simone would truly be ruined. All of England would hear of the night’s events and she would never marry.

      Never be rid of Armand.

      “Didier, help me!” she cried, no longer caring that she spoke to a figure invisible to Nicholas.

      She heard the baron unlock the chamber door, muttering about a “demented female.”

      “Hurry!” she urged the boy.

      Didier scrunched up his face and then spoke. Simone did not understand the meaning behind her brother’s words, but her desperation knew no bounds. She turned toward Nicholas to see him stepping across the threshold.

      “Didier wishes your permission to ride Majesty as you allowed Evelyn!”

      Nicholas froze in the doorway and slowly turned to face her. His eyes blazed so that Simone took an involuntary step back.

      “How do you know of Evelyn?” he asked in a deadly whisper.

      Simone swallowed convulsively, and she opened her mouth to speak, but no words issued forth. Nicholas reentered the room, dropping his boots as he strode toward her.

      He reached her and seized her roughly by the elbow, shaking her. “How do you come by this personal knowledge of me?”

      “Let go of me! I know naught of any Evelyn,” Simone insisted. “I am merely repeating what Didier told me!”

      Nicholas hesitated, glaring at her with a fire that should have turned the chilled room to sweltering. Finally he spoke, and the disgust in his voice wounded Simone more than she ever could have imagined.

      “Why, you manipulative viper.” He dropped her arm and backed away. “Of course you learned of her from Lady Haith. You are not so clever as you would have me think, Simone—nor I so dense.”

      “You shall not speak to my sister in that manner!” Didier shrieked and rose to stand on the bed. The fire in the hearth released a curled lick of flame with a loud crack. Simone gasped as the red-orange finger flicked the hem of Nicholas’s chausses and set them alight. The baron jumped and stomped his foot with a hoarse shout, stumbling backward over his discarded footwear.

      “Didier, good heavens!” Simone cried, rushing forward to slap at the flames. When the chausses were extinguished to little more than a fringe of blackened, smoking hem, she spun back to face the bed.

      “That was entirely unwarranted!” she scolded the boy.

      “He said hateful things to you,” Didier replied, his expression not in the least repentant. “You have done naught to deserve such name calling.”

      “You cannot go about setting people afire merely because you do not care for their words, Didier, and I would think that by now you had learned to what ends arson should bring you. Lord Nicholas clearly does not understand our predicament. My lord—” Simone turned to apologize to Nicholas and to try to convince him that the strange events he’d recently witnessed were but a tiny sampling of the fantastic reality of Simone’s life during the past year.

      But the room behind her was empty, the door left standing ajar.