LITMIR.BIZ

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pleaded.

      Her shoulders had shrugged impatiently. “Quarrel? I’m not quarreling. I’m only telling you I’ve no intention of going to bed with you, that’s all.”

      His hands had gestured outward. “Then why in the name of God did you marry me?”

      “My father needed monies with which to repay certain loans advanced him by Jacques Coeur. His investments—especially those in Flemish cloth manufacturers, who turned to England for their raw materials rather than to Champagne as of old—were disastrous. The gold écus d’or my marriage brought have set him on his feet again.”

      “I can’t believe that! I’m not a rich man.”

      Her lips had quirked. “Your adoptive mother—the Visconti woman—was wealthy beyond a greedy man’s dreams. Your half brothers Charles of Orleans and Charles of Dauphiné—”

      “You mean the Dauphin? The future king?”

      “He’s your half brother, isn’t he? Didn’t Louis sire all three of you?”

      He had not been able to fight the flush that had mounted into his pallid face. His girl-bride had laughed at him, head thrown back. “Jean, Jean! Didn’t I say you were born under an unlucky star? The two Charles are legitimate—or at least Charles of Orleans is! France needs a king, so Charles of Dauphiné is permitted to be.”

      She had come walking toward him with fluid ease, her boyish hips already swinging with a hint of the flirtatiousness that was to flower in later years. “The two Charles’ and your mother gave you a royal dowry, Jean. To save my father, I agreed to stand before the bishop with you. But I don’t consider myself your wife. Comprenez?”

      His hand had lifted to strike, to lash back at her mockery with the only weapon he had, his physical strength. Never had he felt more alone in the world, more abandoned by fate and God. An emptiness inside him had made him reel; he had had to fight for composure. His arm had fallen to his side.

      “I ought to beat you,” he had snarled out of the despair that gripped him. “I ought to raise that gown and lay on with a willow switch.”

      Her head had gone high. Twin red spots had darkened her cheeks. “You wouldn’t dare! I’m the daughter of the Sieur Louvet, Seneschal of Provence!”

      “And a callous, unfeeling swingtail!”

      She had sprung to slap but had felt her wrist caught and turned so that she was flung off balance and fell against him. She had lain inside his arm like a wounded bird, trembling, filled with sudden terror, panting softly. Jean had been able to feel her lifting ribs against his front.

      Her wide eyes had been inches from his own, staring up at him. Just as close had been that red fruit of a mouth, slightly parted. His arms had tightened slowly, holding her young body against his own until he could feel her from knees to throat. She could not stir so much as a finger.

      It was then he had kissed her tenderly, as if he would have spoken silently to the womanhood inside her proud little body, telling her the love he had for her. Something inside him had called to whatever femininity she might be hiding behind the white samite.

      Her mouth had firmed against his, suddenly, and had held the kiss.

      When he released her, she had slapped him.

      If he had known more of women during this period of his life, The Bastard might have recognized that Marie Louvet had been fighting not so much his love as the feelings storming into her virgin heart. Scarcely out of childhood, she had still been full of the imageries of the Roman de la Rose and the chivalrous ideals of Jean de Meun. A lover in her bemused eyes had been more ethereal than earthy, more heavenly than human.

      As it was, he had read only disgusted rejection on her features. He had said wearily, “All right, I’ll go. I love you too much to do what I suppose I ought, throw you down on the bedstead yonder and pay no heed to your maidenly modesty or your virginal screamings.” His lips had twisted bitterly. “It’s another misfortune of mine, my sentimentality.”

      She had watched, scarcely breathing, as he came and caught her chin in a hand. “Be grateful I love you so much, Marie. And remember me in your prayers.”

      He had walked out of the room into the long gallery and closed the door behind him. He had never seen his wife again. . . .

      The Lady Alix of Bar sensed his wandering thoughts and, as if to tempt him to the present, ran the tip of a forefinger about his mouth, which was so quick to respond to laughter and to anger, or to the shape of a kiss. “You and Marie were only children. She may feel differently now.”

      “Not that one! I swore I’d forget her, and I have.”

      “By slaying the men who slew your father?”

      “It’s a goal I set myself long ago. When Aubert de Flamency, the Sieur de Canry—the lawful spouse of my mother, Mariette d’Enghien, Madame de Canry—wanted to adopt me, I refused. I would be known as The Bastard, since that was the way God let me come into the world. I sought no other title. It reminds me of what I am.”

      “And what is that, Jean?”

      “A hand to hold a dagger. No more.”

      They lay quietly while the glittering candles threw dark shadows across their naked bodies. Jean stared sightlessly at the canopy above them, seeing neither the heavy Spanish brocade nor the intricately carved oaken posts; instead he saw the handsome laughing man who had sired him. He had been only four years old when Burgundian daggers felled Duke Louis, and such young minds remember little of what they see and hear. Only fragmentary memories remained to him of hands tossing him high into the air, of bright blue eyes beaming down at him proudly. He thought bitterly, If he had lived, he would have made me legitimate by adopting me. Duke Louis’ death removed all chance of that! Jean’s hatred had begun in the first hour of his realization that bastardy was to make a difference in his life. It had crystallized in that hour of agony with Marie Louvet.

      “You could be more than a hand and a dagger, you know,” she whispered between nibbles at his ear lobe. “The Dauphin is your half brother, everybody says. Your father was his father.”

      His laughter was bitter. “My father had a way with women.”

      “Like father, like son.”

      Sometimes he wondered if he ought not hate his parent rather than those who wore the red cross of Burgundy. He knew the story only too well—how Duke Louis of Orleans had carried on a love affair with Queen Isabel of Bavaria, wife to the mad king Charles VI and leader of the court revels long before they put away her husband. Nobody knew how many of her children had been sired by Louis of Orleans. Rumor could only guess.

      “As half brother to the future king, your fortune is assured,” she went on, beginning to stroke him slowly with soft white hands.

      “Future king? Of what? England and Burgundy rule France from the Channel to Orleans. And England rules Burgundy.”

      “Dispossess them, Jean. Your father was a soldier as well as a lover of fair ladies. You may have inherited more than one of his talents.”

      He looked at her as if she were as mad as King Charles. “Would you teach me ambition?”

      “Only love,” she murmured, and rose to hands and knees.

      After a moment he gasped and stared up at her in surprised delight. “Who takes revenge now, milady?” Her eyes were closed, her white teeth sunk into her lower lip. When he put his hands on her she gave a wild cry and fell on him, trembling spasmodically.

      The night became eternity and the bed a battlefield on which The Bastard achieved triumph and defeat in the arms of this frenzied woman, who whispered strange and broken words as her hands caressed his body. He was both victor and vanquished; he fought her and, in fighting, loved her until she cried out in sobbing tones to name him slave and master in the same breath.

      “Thus might you—do with

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