Standard of Honor (51 page)

She wore a white wimple that concealed her hair and outlined her face, and the veil over that, now thrown back behind her head, was secured by an ornate comb. Framed by the edges of the wimple, her forehead was broad and high and unlined—she was barely thirty, he knew, several years younger than her brother Richard— and her brows and lashes were pale golden, framing eyes that were deep blue above high, tight-sculpted cheekbones, a straight, strong nose, and a wide and mobile mouth. But there were tiny crow's-feet at the corners of her eyes and at the sides of her mouth, and he remembered hearing that she had been a well-wed Queen, although her elderly husband had been unable to breed a son upon her. She was now a widow of several years' standing.

All of this passed through his mind as she beckoned him to lean closer, and he realized that she was scanning his face as closely as he had hers. But then she nodded very slightly and the skin across her cheeks and below her eyes seemed to go smooth, as though she had somehow tightened it deliberately. “I remember you. You were a very pretty little boy and you have grown into a very pretty man.”

There was something in her voice, an inflection of some kind, that struck André as odd, but he disregarded it as she continued speaking. “You have not yet met my sister-to-be, have you? Berengaria, this is Sir André St. Clair, one of Richard's … friends.” Again he caught that strange tone, a note approaching disdain, but this time, as he turned with a smile to face Berengaria, the
implications of it washed over him, so that he felt himself flushing with mortification all the way from the back of his neck. He froze, the smile dying on his lips, and then straightened angrily, stung beyond prudence.

“Madam, you wrong me,” he snapped, outraged that anyone would think to classify him as one of the effete group of dandies that clustered around the King. “Your brother is my liege lord and I, his loyal vassal. He honors me with his trust, upon occasion, and I find no dishonor in the fact that he regards me as a friend. But I am
not
one of his …
friends
.” The emphasis he placed on that last word left no possibility for error in interpreting what he meant, and he saw Joanna Plantagenet draw back sharply as though in reaction to a sudden threat. Only then, too late, did he recognize the rashness as well as the harshness of his reaction to her comment and realize that he might have misinterpreted
her
meaning, but the damage had been done. He braced himself for her rebuke, but for several moments she said nothing at all, merely looking at him closely, a tiny frown between her brows.

Joanna drew herself upright in her chair. “Forgive me, Sir André.”

Surprised by the mildness and forbearance in her reaction, André bent forward from the waist, placing one open hand upon his breast. “It is already forgotten, my lady.”

Once again the former Queen gazed thoughtfully at him, her wimpled head tilted slightly to one side, and then she nodded. “So be it, then. Berengaria, let us
begin afresh. I present to you Sir André St. Clair, a knight of Aquitaine in my brother's service and clearly a man to be highly trusted and regarded … Sir André, this is the Princess Berengaria of Navarre, the future wife of your liege lord, my brother, Duke Richard. I name him Duke to you because it is in my mind that his rank as King of England may mean little to you in person …” She allowed that sentence to fade away, and André bowed again, this time to the Princess, but he yet found it easy to smile back at Joanna.

“I swear to you, my lady, that were your brother King of Aquitaine, rather than Duke, it might sound like a higher rank, but it could neither influence nor increase the duty or loyalty that I acknowledge and dedicate to him as Duke today.” He turned again to the Princess and bent his leg to kneel before her on his right knee. “My lady Princess, I must now ask your pardon for what I have just said. Your future husband's title as King of England may mean little to me as a knight of Aquitaine and Poitou, but I will happily swear personal allegiance to you and to your honor when you become both Queen of England and Duchess of Aquitaine.”

Now it was the turn of Princess Berengaria to raise her veil and bare her face to his inspection, and as she did so he became aware of and then tried to ignore the ripe and shapely fullness of her breasts as they lifted in response to the raising of her arms. He could almost feel Joanna's eyes boring into him, gauging his reaction to what he was seeing, and he concentrated intensely upon keeping his eyes on the Princess's hands
as she arranged the folds of her veil about her head. At the same time, however, his mind was full of the thought that to waste such lavishly endowed beauty upon a man like Richard Plantagenet must be both a crime and a sin, for the very fullness of such a lushly feminine body would repulse the King, who surrounded himself at all times with tightly muscled, tautly beautiful young men. And what perplexed and preoccupied him instantly thereafter was the possibility that Berengaria herself might suspect and simply accept what lay ahead of her, as Queen to a man who had no liking or desire for women.

The Princess, who was smiling at him now, inclined her head good-naturedly. Before she spoke a word to him, however, she turned to the guard who remained standing with his back against the cabin door, pretending to be unaware of anything that was going on around him.

“Leave us, if you will. Wait outside.” She looked over to where the other three women sat huddled in the opposite corner. “You, too, may retire, ladies. We shall call you should we have need of anything.” The guard drew himself up and saluted, then ushered the ladies-in-waiting out ahead of him, leaving the royal ladies alone in the darkness of the cabin with André, who remained kneeling at the feet of the Princess. When the door had closed solidly behind the departing guard, the Princess turned her smile back on André. “Master St. Clair, you are most welcome here, as a friend and confidant of my betrothed, Richard, and there is no
need for you to suffer there upon your knees. Stand up, sir. Did you not say, upon entering, that you bear written words from the King?”

Her voice sounded vaguely foreign, slightly alien in its cadences and vowel sounds but not offensively so, and it crossed his mind that he had never journeyed beyond the Pyrenees to her father's kingdom of Navarre. Her people there, he knew, had lived under a constant condition of warfare for hundreds of years with the Muslim Moors to the south of them, and that condition of constant readiness for conflict was one of the things that had made the prospect of alliance with King Sancho VI of Navarre seem so attractive to Richard's mother in brokering this marriage.

“I did, my lady. Pardon me, I have them here, in my scrip.” He rose to his feet and fumbled in the pouch at his waist, producing the two small cylinders and squinting at them in the poor light before handing the appropriately addressed tube to each of the women, who immediately set about opening them. Berengaria, smiling absently, waved to indicate the room behind André. “Be at ease, Sir André, while we read these. There is a comfortable chair behind you that I often use … This will not take long.”

André bowed his head obediently and moved to the chair the Princess had indicated, and as he turned to sit in it, he saw Joanna lower her eyes quickly to her letter. He would have smiled back at her, but she gave no further sign of knowing he was there, and so he turned his attention to the Princess Berengaria, glad that his
eyes had now fully adjusted to the darkness of the room and that he was able to see her clearly, and even more glad that he now had this opportunity to look closely at her while she read Richard's letter, which appeared to be long and substantial.

What could Richard Plantagenet possibly have to say, even in writing, that might engage the goodwill and curiosity of someone like you?
he wondered, gazing at the way a tiny lock of black hair had worked its way from the confines of her wimple and now curled delightfully on the skin of her left cheekbone, and almost as though she felt his eyes on it, Berengaria raised her left hand absently, without taking her eyes from the page she was reading, and tucked the errant curl back out of sight beneath the white linen.

Black hair, he thought then, seeing how stark her eyebrows were against the dusky pallor of her face. Black hair and eyes so dark that they, too, looked inky black. At the moment, however, as she read, those eyes were downcast, and all he could see of them was the sweeping fullness of long, curling lashes that seemed to lie directly against the flawlessness of her cheeks.

Richard's Queen, André St. Clair concluded then, was beautiful in a way that he had never encountered before in his amatory wanderings throughout his home territories. She was vibrant, he decided, and alive with the promise of great joys, and the unfamiliar duskiness of her skin gave her an air of strangeness that suggested other lands and warmer climes. He had known many women with dark hair and dark eyes, so it was not
merely her coloring that made her different; in fact in all his life, now that he thought about it, he realized that he had only ever met four women who could properly be called blond, with flaxen hair and bright blue eyes; four, out of … He stopped there, unpleasantly surprised to discover that he could not supply that number, even for his own use. Four out of how many? How many women had he known to any degree of intimacy? Or even known well enough to feel attracted towards? Very few, he knew, and he set out to count them, working backward from Eloise de Chamberg, who had died in the woods of his father's estate the day that indirectly caused André's accession to the ranks of the Temple. Several he remembered well and easily, including all four of the flaxen-haired women, none of whom, he was surprised yet again to discover, he recalled with much pleasure. But then, when Berengaria stirred again and lowered the letter, he abandoned those thoughts and focused upon her.

She did not so much as glance in his direction. Her lips, full, red, were softly pursed, he saw now, the corners of her eyes gently wrinkled as she stared off into some unseen, private distance. Gently, absently, she scratched softly with one fingertip at the fabric of her bodice, beneath the sudden swell of her breasts, unwittingly drawing his attention back to her abundant femininity. Did she, could she, know that her future husband was a man-lover? And if she did, could she hoodwink herself into thinking she might change him?
André really had no experience in such things, and he made no moral judgments on the matter. Some such men he could quite easily accept as friends and comrades, ignoring their proclivities without discomfort, while others of their ilk—and there appeared to be more of this kind than of the first—he much preferred to avoid completely, finding them to be less tolerant of others than they expected others to be of them. By and large, however, he was content to live his own life and leave them to theirs. But from his own observations he had learned, inarguably, that such men tended to flock together, thriving upon mutual attraction, and they had little time, and less use, for women. He had also seen enough of them sufficiently advanced in age to prove that theirs was not a condition one outgrew. It was not a phase to be passed through and then forgotten. André was convinced that this condition—he knew no other word to describe it—was a permanent thing, an immutable state of being, and he suspected that the love of a mere woman, irrespective of her ardor or fidelity, would be powerless to change it. He had no doubt that Richard would perform his duty and provide an heir from Berengaria, but neither had he any doubt that, once that task was done, the King would leave the woman to the rearing of the child, while he went off to frolic with his friends. That was the lot of many women, he knew.

He felt himself frowning, perplexed by Berengaria's apparent lack of concern over something so selfevidently destructive. Could she really be blissfully unaware of all of this? She was but newly arrived here,
from a sheltered home, judging by all he had heard, although that thought caused an uncomfortable stirring at the back of his mind, a faint memory of mutterings from several years before, linking Richard romantically with her brother Sancho. He thrust that thought aside and began again.

She was newly arrived here, and had not yet been sufficiently exposed to strangers to cause any pollution of her thoughts concerning her future marriage. No one would dare risk giving such offense, not against Richard Plantagenet, and not by furtive whisperings. Who other than Joanna, acting selflessly as friend, future sister, and adviser, could have told her?

Besides, this wife was a queen, born and bred with duty ever present in her mind, and the duty of a queen was to bear sons, just as the duty of a king was to sire them. Richard had undertaken publicly to set aside his lustful, unnatural tastes and breed an heir for England, and André, thanks to the high regard in which he held Richard as hero, had no difficulty, when he thought about it in that light, in believing that he would.

Joanna, having now finished reading, addressed André. “My brother says I am to trust you completely and to confide in you without reservation …” She looked across the table at Berengaria. “Did he say the same to you, Berry?”

The Princess nodded, and Joanna turned slowly back to André, tilting her head a little to one side and regarding him with wide eyes. “I wonder, can you have any knowledge of how great a tribute he pays you in that?
I have never, ever known my brother Richard to say that of any other man. You must be a very signal and singular young man, Sir André St. Clair … But we have much to discuss, so let us be about it. Richard has asked me several questions about what has happened here since we arrived, and he wants you to hear my answers. I can only presume he has asked the same of Berengaria.”

“He has,” the Princess agreed.

“Well, then, would you prefer to speak with each of us alone, or may we do this thing together, all three of us?”