Read Online By His Majesty's Grace by Jennifer Blake - Free Book Online Page B

on tears as she returned her sisters’ welcoming embraces. How dear they were, and how she had missed them, their chatter, their smiles and unquestioning acceptance.
    “Provoking jade! Is that all you have to say?” Cate rallied her. “Come, tell all. You know you must, for you shall have no peace otherwise.”
    Isabel obliged as best she could while her sisters settled themselves on two of the three narrow beds that took up most of the room in the nunlike cell. While she talked, Isabel threw off her travel-soiled clothing and bathed quickly in cold water from a basin.
    “I knew it!” Cate exclaimed when she was done. “You consider the curse mere foolishness, I know, but you are wrong. How else to explain the arrival of the king’s men at the very last instant? Admit it. You believe we walk in its shadow.”
    Isabel gave her sister a wry smile. Cate was ever ready to see the best of any situation. Yes, and of people, as well. “Even though I concocted it from thin air?”
    “Even so!”
    “It’s difficult to disagree, I will admit.”
    “Miracles are possible,” Marguerite said, “so the priests tell us. We have only to believe. You are protected, dear Isabel, until a husband is chosen who can love you with all his heart.”
    “Yes, of course,” Isabel said, swooping upon her younger sister to give her a swift hug in passing. Marguerite had wanted to be a nun as a girl, had almost become a novice during their time spent being schooled at the convent near Graydon Hall. She had walked the long stone corridors with her hair tucked into a wimple and a breviary in her hand, rather like the king’s mother, Lady Margaret.
    The urge did not survive her first infatuation, which happened to be with a French man-at-arms who served their stepbrother. It had been a virulent attachment, but was cut short when she discovered he had bad breath caused by a rotted tooth. She was still quiet, pious and pessimistic, unless the subject under discussion had to do with men. She could be irreverent enough then, though inclined to credit any male in knight’s clanking armor with sterling and noble qualities.
    The three of them—Isabel, Cate and Marguerite—were very alike in appearance, all possessed of quantities of golden-brown hair, a little lighter in Cate’s case, a little darker in Marguerite’s. Cate was taller by an inch or so than Isabel, and Marguerite that much shorter. Where Isabel’s eyes gleamed with varying shades of green, however, Cate’s were the rich blue of an autumn sky and Marguerite’s as brown and sparkling as good English ale. Their features were regular, though Cate’s eyes had something of an impish cat’s tilt to them, and Marguerite had dark, slashing brows that could turn her slightest frown into a scowl.
    Though Isabel and Cate were slender of form, Marguerite had not quite lost her childhood roundness. They could all still fit into the upright armor chest at Graydon, however, their secret hiding place from the wrath of their stepfather when they were children. They knew this because it had sometimes been necessary to avoid their stepbrother’s rages, as well. Treated as annoying dependents in spite of the rich inheritance of lands and keeps received from their true father, held as less important by far than Graydon’s hounds or hunting hawks, they had banded together from childhood for protection and support. Isabel’s wedding journey had been the first time in their lives that they had been apart for more than a few hours.
    Their days had been spent in isolation at Graydon Hall and its environs. That was until Henry VII came to the throne. The king had soon sent to command their presence at court, in company with dozens more like them. The royal treasury had been depleted by war and swift means were required to fill it. More, Henry had need of lands and titles to assure the loyalty of those around him. Naming the unmarried women and widows throughout the kingdom as his wards was an ideal