Читать книгу Lord Greville's Captive - Nicola Cornick, Nicola Cornick - Страница 10

‘Madam!’ Edwina met Anne as soon as she reached the top of the tower steps and was about to open the door of her chamber. In the torchlight the woman’s face was strained. ‘General Malvoisier is here,’ she said meaningfully. ‘He has been asking for you.’

Anne paused a moment as she felt the customary surge of aversion sweep through her body. Trust Malvoisier to have come looking for her on the one occasion when she had managed to slip away from his vigilance. Had he guessed that she had stolen out of the house and gone to visit his enemy? She shuddered at the thought and tried to calm herself. Closing her eyes briefly, she put her hand against the cold wood and pushed open the door of the chamber.

‘Thank you, Edwina.’

There were so few seconds in which to prepare herself. Gerard Malvoisier was standing with his back to the fire, feet spread apart, hands clasped behind him. He was a large and fleshy man who commanded the room through his height and girth, and because he had the air of one who knows himself superior to other mortals. His bloodshot eyes were narrowed in his reddened face where the veins mottled the skin. Years of good living had stolen much of his youth and vigour, and now Anne could smell the alcohol on his breath, even across the room. She felt that probing gaze search her face and drew her cloak a little closer. Her lips still stung with Simon Greville’s kisses and her skin was still alive to his touch. Would Malvoisier be able to read any of that in her face? Thank God she had paused inside the tower door to rearrange her hair and make sure her gown was secure. For a moment she allowed herself to remember Simon’s hands on her body and his lips against hers, and she suppressed a shiver at the same time as she suppressed her wayward thoughts. Time enough to think on that when the current danger was past. Squaring her shoulders, she slipped off the cloak and turned to greet Malvoisier with every assumption of ease.

‘Good evening, sir. In what way may I assist you?’

Anne was always formal with Sir Gerard Malvoisier. It was one of the many ways that she kept him at arm’s length and held her fragile defences together against the threat of his presence. She saw him frown with displeasure as he took in her tone.

‘You may tell me where you have been for a start, madam.’ His voice was brusque. ‘Your chamber women did not appear to know where you had gone.’

Over his shoulder, Anne saw Edwina make a slight shrug of apology and spread her hands wide. The other occupants of the room, Anne’s cousin Muna, a slender girl of eighteen, and her devoted servant John Causton, stood mute. Muna’s head was bent and her eyes on the ground. Anne knew that her cousin hated Malvoisier as much as she did herself, but that she had the sense to hide it behind a show of dumb deference. As for John, every line of his body seethed with dislike. Malvoisier lashed out at him often, goading him until Anne knew not how John resisted retaliating. Somehow he kept quiet. When Malvoisier was about they all played their parts.

‘I have been in the church,’ she lied coolly, ‘praying for a just outcome on the morrow.’

She could not be sure if Malvoisier believed her. There was an unconscionable amount of snow on her cloak to be accounted for on the short journey across the courtyard to the church. Malvoisier took a step towards her. It was clear that he was drunk and pugnacious, spoiling for a fight.

‘And what would be a just outcome, Lady Anne?’

Anne opened her eyes innocently. ‘Why, that is in God’s hands, sir. I trust in him.’

Malvoisier made a noise of disgust. He had no time for divine intervention. ‘We shall prevail tomorrow. After all, we hold Sir Henry Greville and will show that cur of a brother of his what he must do to get his flesh and blood back.’

Anne felt Muna make a slight move of protest, quickly stilled. The girl had been nursing Henry Greville herself and had fallen victim to his boyish charm very easily. It had been amusing to Anne to see how Muna’s view of Henry had changed so swiftly. One minute her cousin had been speaking of a tiresome boy who had pulled her pigtails as a child, and the next she had a dreamy expression in her eyes and a light spring in her step. It would have been sweet were it not for the unavoidable fact that Henry, like his elder brother, was a Parliamentarian soldier.

Anne had warmed to Henry too, even knowing that he was her enemy. There was something about the vulnerability of an injured man that made it difficult to remember that he held a different allegiance. So she could hardly blame Muna, inexperienced and in the throes of a first love that was all too painfully familiar, for falling in love with a Greville.

Anne cast her cousin a swift, consoling look. Edwina had come forward to stand by her side, stoutly comforting. Muna looked dejected, knowing that in the morning Henry would be paraded from the battlements and either be dead or free within a few hours. Either way, she would never see him again.

‘Sir Henry is too ill to be moved,’ Anne said quickly, folding up her cloak and laying it on top of the Armada chest. ‘I beg you to leave him to rest.’

Malvoisier snorted. ‘Rest! He’ll get precious little rest on the morrow. He’ll be there as our shield against the enemy if I have to drag his unconscious body up on the roof. Save your concern for your father, girl. How does the old man?’

The careless disrespect in his voice made Anne’s skin prickle with dislike, but she answered civilly enough.

‘Lord Grafton is much the same, sir. I pray hourly for his recovery.’

She felt a small flash of triumph as she saw the flicker of fear in Malvoisier’s eyes. She knew that he could not quite disabuse himself of the superstitious belief that the Earl of Grafton would recover his health and strength, and demand from him an explanation of Malvoisier’s stewardship of the Manor in the interim. Anne knew that it would never happen. Her father was dying and the tenacious desperation with which she wanted him to live could make no difference. But every day she used Malvoisier’s anxieties against him, reminding him subtly of her father’s presence, using the Earl as another line of defence. When Malvoisier had been drunken and enraged one night, and had come to her chamber intent upon rape, she had even resorted to invoking the name of King Charles. It had been enough to play upon the general’s dread of reprisal and he had stumbled off down the stairs, raining curses on her head. Since then he had never attempted to touch her. Her resistance held, but she felt frighteningly imperilled and it was so exhausting that she was sure one day she would simply crumble. Not now though. Not tonight.

‘We all pray for the master’s recovery, madam,’ John said loyally, and Malvoisier gave him a murderous look before he spun on his heel and made for the door.

‘Have Greville ready in a few hours so that I may use him as my bargaining tool,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘As for the rest of you, you may rot in hell for all I care.’

The door thudded behind him and his angry footsteps clattered down the stone steps to the bottom of the tower. There was silence for a few seconds, then Edwina tip-toed across to the door and opened it a crack. The lantern light fell on the empty stairwell. ‘John, some hot milk for my lady from the kitchens, if you please,’ she said. She came over and took Anne’s frozen hands in hers. ‘You are chilled to the bone, pet, and too pale. Come closer to the fire.’

Anne let her draw her nearer the blaze, shivering a little as she remembered Simon Greville instructing her to do the same thing only an hour earlier. From the moment she had stepped into his room that night she had felt feverish, hot and cold as though she had an ague. In part her nerves had sprung from guilt; she had felt as though she was being disloyal in some way by going to him to try to strike a bargain for Grafton. Yet it had been the only thing that she could do to try to save everyone who depended upon her. Now she had to tell them she had failed. Anne wrapped her arms about herself for comfort as she thought of the devastation that might follow the battle.

Simon Greville…She had expected to be nervous to see him again. His reputation as a shrewd, cold strategist was sufficient to strike fear in the hearts of any man or woman he opposed. Cool, calculating, utterly ruthless, he was more than a match for the hot-blooded drunkenness of Gerard Malvoisier. What she had not expected that night, though, was that the attraction to him that she had experienced four years ago would return, all the more potent, all the more treacherous since Simon was now her sworn enemy…

Muna was touching her sleeve. ‘Did you meet Lord Greville, Nan?’ she whispered. A tiny, slender creature with huge dark eyes, Muna looked as though she would crumble at the first unkind breeze, but she was stronger than she looked. The illegitimate daughter of the Earl’s younger brother, Muna had been taken into the Grafton household when her father had died and had been educated alongside Anne. Anne had never had any siblings and valued her cousin’s friendship highly.

Now she smiled at her, a little sadly. ‘I did meet him, Muna. I told him that his brother is alive.’ She hesitated. ‘He was mightily relieved to hear the news.’

Muna gave a small sigh. ‘And what manner of man is he these days, Nan? Is he like Sir Henry?’ She blushed a little as she spoke Henry’s name and Edwina caught Anne’s gaze and rolled her eyes indulgently. The sweet, passionless courtship of Muna and Henry Greville had consisted of nothing more than love poetry and hand holding, which, Anne maintained, was exactly as it should be. Edwina, a more earthy soul, snorted at the sonnets and laughed aloud at the bad poetry Henry penned. But Anne, with the memory of Simon Greville’s caresses still in her mind, reflected it was a good job that his brother had been badly injured. If Henry’s courtship was normally as direct as Simon’s, then Muna’s virtue would have been under dire threat.

Both Muna and Edwina were watching her with curiosity in their eyes. Anne sat down on the wooden settle with a heartfelt sigh.

‘Lord Greville is very like Sir Henry, only more—’ She stopped, aware of her audience’s round-eyed interest. ‘More forceful,’ she finished carefully, anxious not to give too much of her feelings away.

‘Lord have mercy!’ Edwina said drily. ‘Like Sir Henry, but more forceful!’ She looked closely at her former charge. ‘You are very pink in the face, my lady. I seem to remember that you had a great regard for this Lord Greville when he came a-courting here at Grafton.’

There was the scrape of wood on stone as the door opened and John re-entered the chamber. Anne gratefully accepted the cup of warm milk that he pressed into her hands, wrapping her cold fingers about it and using the time it gave her to fend off Edwina’s enquiries.

‘It was many years ago that Simon Greville came here, Edwina,’ she said. ‘Have you forgotten that we are on different sides now?’

Edwina made a humphing sound. The loyalty of Anne’s close servants was absolute, but they had a simpler view than she of allegiance to the King or the Parliament. To them such civil strife caused nothing but trouble, took food from the mouths of the poor, split brother from brother and took sons from their mothers. They supported the King mainly because the Earl was the King’s man and they held fast to their fealty to him and to his daughter. And now Anne realized, with a sinking heart, that she had to tell them she had failed them.

‘Lord Greville will not call off the assault on the Manor,’ she said baldly. ‘I asked him and he refused.’

She looked at them over the rim of the cup. There was a moment of stillness when she could see her own horror and misery etched clear on the faces of them all. They had thought that she would save them.

Then John cleared his throat.

‘You did your best, milady,’ he said gruffly. ‘It was far more than that miserable cur Malvoisier would do for us. Don’t you go feeling bad about that.’

Muna gripped her hand hard. ‘He would not even do it to save Sir Henry? Oh, Nan…’