The Mistress Of Normandy by Susan Wiggs Page A

Bonne. “The bloodied sheets of the marriage bed were duly inspected.” The maid brightened. “Perhaps you’re carrying a child now.”
    “That’s not poss—” Lianna stopped herself. If word ever reached her uncle that the marriage had not been consummated, Burgundy would waste no time in getting it annulled and forcing her to marry the Englishman. “Enough, Bonne,” she said. “It is not your place to speak to me so.”
    “As you wish, my lady,” the maid said without a trace of contrition. She patted the pillow. “Come to bed. Doubtless Gaucourt and the fifty extra mouths he’s brought to feed will keep you busy on the morrow.”
    Lianna slipped beneath the coverlet and lay back on the pillow. Wisps of gullsdown drifted around her.
    Bonne brought her lips together in a tight pout of irritation. “By St. Wilgefort’s beard,” she declared, “I told that slattern Edithe to mend the pillow.”
    Lianna patted her hand. “Leave Edithe to me.” The maid looked so outraged that Lianna tried to turn the subject. “Who, by the by, is St. Wilgefort?”
    Bonne sat on the edge of the bed and leaned forward eagerly. “A new one, my lady, that Father LeClerq told me of. Wilgefort, it seems, was a matchless beauty. Growing weary of having so many suitors, she prayed to God for help.” Bonne hugged her knees to her chest and giggled. “She woke up the next 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