Read Online The Widow's Kiss by Jane Feather - Free Book Online

Compared with the Lady Guinevere, Hugh of Beaucaire was a pauper.
    He sipped the rhenish, noting its quality. Which of the husbands had furnished this for the cellars?
    “It meets with your approval, Lord Hugh?”
    “It's very fine. I was wondering which of your husbands was responsible for this acquisition.” His eyes, heavy lidded now, were slits of blue in his tanned face.
    Guinevere hesitated, then said, “Lord Hadlow had agents in Burgundy, Bordeaux, and in the wine-growing districts of the Rhine. He taught me much and I buy through the same agents who served him.”
    “They make wise choices for you,” he commented.
    “No, my lord, they advise me.
I
make the choices.”
    “I see.” He wasn’t sure that he believed her. Women knew little about such things. But then women did not ordinarily write their own marriage contracts and inherit lock, stock, and barrel from their deceased husbands. He touched his lips with his fingertips, considering.
    “Did none of your husbands have families who would lay claim to some part of their estates?”
    “My lord, I am willing to answer your questions … tocooperate in your ‘investigation’ if you choose to use that term. But not at my daughter's birthday feast.” Her tone was clipped.
    “Later then?”
    “When the children are in bed, if you will come to my apartments I will do what I can to put your mind at rest.”
    “Madam, I doubt that is within your capability.”
    “Not if you have already closed your mind to the truth,” she said softly.
    “My mind is always open to the truth.”
    She looked at him then, full in the eye, and her gaze mocked such a pathetic defense for his presence under her roof. “Is it, Lord Hugh?”
    He was saved from the need to respond by a renewed tucket of trumpets. Pippa jumped to her feet the instant before her sister. “Pen, ’tis your procession! It's beginning. Boy Robin, you have to walk beside Pen because you’re an honored guest and Pen likes you … you do, don’t you, Pen?” There was a momentary hesitation and then gallantly she continued the exuberant flood. “And I’ll come behind you two. Mama will come behind us with …” She hesitated, looking at Hugh.
    “
I
will walk behind your mother,” he said firmly.
    “And everyone else will come where they’re supposed to,” Pippa said happily.
    The procession, preceded by trumpets and torch men, wound its way out of the hall, across the lower court, and out of the house. They went over the packhorse bridge, across the meadow under the starlit sky, and back up through the topiary garden that skirted the outside walls of the house.
    Once more back in the lower court, Guinevere kissed her daughters good night and dismissed her household with smiling thanks and a generous purse to Master Crowder to be distributed as he thought fit.
    Guinevere looked up to where a yellow half moonhung like a cut lemon in the brilliant night sky. She could smell wood smoke and pitch from the bivouac beyond the gatehouse. Slowly she turned to the man standing as still as she behind her.
    “It's a beautiful night.”
    “Aye,” he agreed.
    “ ’Tis a pity to spoil it.” She sighed, the long fingers of her right hand twisting the rings on her left. “But that's as it must be. I am going to look in on the girls, then I will await you in my apartment. You will find it above the north entrance.”
    She turned without another word and Hugh watched the tall slender figure, her rich skirts swaying gracefully around her, cross the lower court and go back into the house. He could scent her perfume lingering in the soft air, but then he wondered if perhaps it was just the fragrance of the rose garden.
    He was unaware that he echoed her sigh as he went to check on his men in their bivouac beyond the gates.

4
    T he clock in the chapel tower chimed ten as Hugh crossed the lower court. He looked up above the north entrance to the window that overlooked the court. The wooden shutters were