Triumph in Arms by Jennifer Blake

Orleans.”
    “It isn’t your skin I’m worried about.”
    Christien gave her a swift look, his heart leaping in his chest. She didn’t mean that the way it sounded, or did she? Reine avoided his gaze, her attention on herbrother. Her features were dewy with heat and temper, her hair gilded by the dappling of sun through the tree limbs overhead. She breathed in a quick cadence that lifted the gentle curves of her breasts in an intriguing rhythm, but that was as apt to be from hurry as from concern of his hide.
    “What, then?” Paul asked, scowling. Then his face changed. “Oh. Maman. ”
    “Yes, Maman. You know how she is. What if she looked out and saw you?”
    Paul flushed, glancing from his sister’s stern gaze to Christien as he spoke in explanation. “Our mother is alarmed by violence in any form, and undone by the sight of blood. I should have thought.”
    “This was mere exercise.” Christien kept his voice mild with an effort, the better to hide his disappointment.
    “But she is unlikely to understand that,” Reine said at once. Turning back to Paul, she went on in brisk tones, “You are sweating like a pig and have the odor of one. You should go and bathe. Or have you forgotten that you have a lesson of a different sort with Father Damien?”
    “Latin and sums when I could be fencing? No, really. Could a message not be sent to—”
    “We have done enough for one day.” Christien cut across the boy’s protest as he moved to lay down his foil and pick up his frock coat. He put it on not only because it was impolite to appear in shirtsleeves before a lady, but because Paul wasn’t the only sweaty male under the oaks who might smell like livestock. “I didn’trealize you had other obligations,” he continued as he slid his left arm into the sleeve and adjusted the fit on his shoulders. “You should have told me.”
    “I am tutored three days a week by the parish priest,” Paul said without enthusiasm.
    “If he completes his studies before his eighteenth birthday, the good father will escort him on his grand tour,” Reine added, then paused, her features stiffening. “At least, that was the plan before you…before River’s Edge changed ownership.”
    “I see no reason why it should change,” Christien replied in even tones.
    “Father Damien will be pleased.”
    The comment was austere. Her brother more than made up for it, however.
    “You mean it?” he cried in strangled relief while rich color surged into his face. “I’d thought…that is, I was sure the trip would be off. I have to tell Father Damien. Yes, and Gaston and Ambrose, since they go with us.” He started off, then turned back to execute a jerky bow. “Merci, Monsieur Lenoir, thank you for everything.”
    A grand tour. It seemed the disappointment of missing it had been behind Paul’s resentment as much as for the loss of his future inheritance. Who would have guessed?
    “I must apologize for the upset,” Christien said to Reine when her brother had vanished into the house. “It wasn’t my intention to create more problems for you.”
    “I’m sure it wasn’t. You could not know how these things upset Maman. ”
    “She isn’t well, I believe.”
    “She seldom leaves the house, has never been strong. Her childhood was not a happy one, she has always feared…everything, and her nerves were quite shattered by Theodore’s death. She was first on the scene where he…he died, saw Marguerite asleep next to a pool of blood, you understand. For an instant she thought her injured, even dead. Then she screamed and Marguerite woke.”
    “I quite see,” he said, trying to ignore the creeping sensation that moved over his scalp at the images she invoked. He paused for an instant before he went on. “So you don’t object to the fencing lesson, then, only to its location.”
    Her features remained stiff. “I can’t say that. My brother needs no encouragement to think himself a swordsman, courting challenges among his