Read Online The Mistress Of Normandy by Susan Wiggs - Free Book Online Page B

brown fingers handling scales and calipers with the delicacy of a surgeon. Sympathy, affection, and respect tumbled through her. Chiang had been a fixture at Bois-Long since the days of her youth. Like the man himself, his arrival was a mystery. Fleeing the capture of a mysterious ship from the East, he’d washed up on the Norman shore, the sole survivor of a vessel whose destination and mission Chiang had never revealed.
    Only the Sire de Bois-Long, Lianna’s father, had protected the strange-looking man from a heathen’s death at the hands of superstitious French peasants. With his timeless knowledge of defense and his meticulous skill at gunnery, Chiang had repaid Aimery the Warrior a hundredfold.
    But even now, the castle folk who had known him for years regarded him as an oddity, some gossips falling just short of denouncing him as a sorcerer. The men-at-arms begrudged him this small workroom in a corner of the armory and never failed to sketch the sign of the cross when passing by.
    Chiang peered at her through wide-set, fathomless eyes. “And are you prepared, my lady?”
    She hung her head. During the two days of the duke’s visit, she’d prayed and worried over a difficult decision. “Yes,” she said faintly.
    He set aside his sieves and calipers and gave her the full measure of his attention. “Tell me.”
    She tapped her chin with her forefinger. “I’ve sent a missive to Raoul, Sire de Gaucourt in Rouen, asking for fifty men-at-arms.”
    “Did you consult Lazare in this?”
    “Of course not. He knows nothing of diplomacy and politics. It matters not anymore. He is gone.”
    Chiang showed no surprise at her defiance, yet she read disapproval in his calm, steady gaze. In appealing to the Sire de Gaucourt, she had betrayed her uncle. Gaucourt did not openly side with the Armagnacs, yet he was known to be sympathetic to Burgundy’s enemy.
    “Was I wrong, Chiang?” she asked desperately.
    He shrugged. His straight dark thatch of hair caught blue highlights from the coal fire. “You have shown yourself to be a poor judge of character, but Burgundy’s niece nonetheless. The duke himself would have done no less. Remember his tenet: ‘Power goes to the one bold enough to seize it.’”
    Bolstered by Chiang’s counsel, she gave him a glimmer of a smile. “Very well. Shall we try the culverin?” The piece was new and had three chambers for more rapid firing.
    He looked away. “I plan to do so. But alone.”
    “What?”
    “Your husband forbade me to work the guns with you.”
    She leaped to her feet. “The salaud. How dare he dictate what I may and may not do?”
    “Your laws dictate that you are subservient to your husband—or his son in his absence. Gervais has already said that he will enforce his father’s command.”
    “We shall see,” she muttered, and left the armory to search for Gervais and tell him exactly what she thought of his father’s interdict.
    In the hall she found the women at their spinning. Fleecy balls of carded wool littered the floor, and women’s talk wove in and out of the clack and whir of the spinning wheels. Edithe sat by the hearth, idly eating a pasty.
    “What do you, Edithe?” Lianna asked, struggling to keep the irritation from her voice. “Why are you not helping with the spinning?”
    The girl wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “Lazare released me,” she said, a faint gleam of smugness in her ripe smile.
    Lianna stared. The wooden sounds of the wheels stopped, leaving an echo of expectant silence in the hall. Lazare had singled Edithe out to vent his lust; apparently all knew of it. Covering her dismay with anger, Lianna ordered the women back to work with a clipped imperative, then turned her attention to the idle maid.
    Edithe made an elaborate show of finishing the pasty and licking the crumbs from her fingers. Fury welled like a hot powder charge within Lianna.
    “I see,” she said, her throat taut as she exerted all the control she could marshal.