Queen's Ransom by Fiona Buckley

added, “though we did not know her well. My husband was as much a distant cousin to Helene’s father as he is to Master Blanchard. But Helene is a credit to her parents.”
    She was saying the right things. But I recognized the cynical gleam in my hostess’s dark eyes. “What is Helene like?” I asked frankly.
    “You will see for yourself and form your own opinion.” Marguerite lifted both shoulders in the fashion of her country. “She is a good girl—oh, so good. Of that there is no shadow of doubt. She will be no trouble, to you or to her guardian. She has been sorely bereaved, poor child. Although so was I, at her age. I lost both my parents in an outbreak of plague when I was only fifteen, and it was a pity,” said Marguerite, without changing her calm, narrative tone, “that the man I was then betrothed to recovered from it, for I was married to him the next year and he was odious, odious. A gentleman at board but a fiend from hell in bed. He was killed out hunting two years later and I wore a thick veil at his burial, so that no one would see my thankful face. It took Henri years to court me, years to convince me that he would not think his wife was a possession to be hurt for his entertainment. So I know what suffering is. I am sorry for Helene but—”
    Feet tapped and a skirt sighed on the steps up to my door. Marguerite broke off. A tall, pale girl appeared in the doorway. Her black gown was relieved only by a small white cap and her mousy hair, parted in the middle, hung in two loose loops over her temples. She had rounded shoulders, which looked like her normal way of holding herself, rather than the temporary sag of grief.
    “I heard voices,” she said. Her voice was high and thin. “And horses down below. I thought . . .”
    “This is Helene,” said Marguerite. “Come in, child. This is Madam Ursula Blanchard, daughter-in-law of your guardian, who will be your companion on your journey to England.”
    “Madam Blanchard,” said Helene. She came forward and curtsied to me politely. “I am so happy to meet you.”
    She didn’t look it. Her light eyes were studying me with an expression that was if anything inimical. I did my best to counter it, offering her a smile and an outstretched hand. “I am glad to meet you, too,” I told her. “I hope we shall be friends.”
    “But naturally, madam,” said Helene, still in that insubstantial, die-away tone.
    Marguerite, with the faintest lift of her skillfully plucked eyebrows, signaled: “You see what I mean.”
    Aloud, she said: “You will wish to make each other’s acquaintance.Your guardian will meet you at supper, Helene, in an hour. I will leave you now.”
    She withdrew, along with her little entourage of servants. The maid Marie observed that the sewing room was “just a few steps to the left, madam,” bobbed, and was gone. Dale busied herself with opening our panniers. I motioned Helene to the seat in the window.
    “Let us talk,” I said winningly. “You speak English, I hear.” I switched to English to find out. “You are—let me see—first cousin to my late husband, Gerald. Your guardian is your uncle. We are all eager to make you welcome.”
    Helene continued to regard me inimically. She was not a beauty. Her cheekbones were quite good, but her face was too long, especially the chin, and under the unbecoming loops of hair, her temples were pinched in. Edward Faldene wouldn’t be getting such an ornamental bride after all.
    “I am sure you will do your best,” she said, also in English. She seemed at ease with it, although she had an accent. “My guardian wrote to me in advance. A letter reached here some weeks ago. He has told me of the marriage he has arranged for me, and I must thank him for taking such pains on my behalf.”
    Most of the pains incurred by Luke Blanchard had assuredly been in order to get a cut off the juicy joint that was Helene’s dowry, but I had better not tell Helene that. This young girl, with