Free Twilight of a Queen by Susan Carroll Page B

of the few who actually lived on this rugged coast. Most had traveled here from the tamer side of the island, the harbor town of Port Corsair. But there were a few who had journeyed farther, from Brittany, the Loire Valley, even from as far away as Poitou, all in anticipation of the council meeting that would take place atop the cliffs a week hence.
    A strange and independent lot, these women who called themselves the daughters of the earth. Jane could only marvel at their boldness. She had never traveled anywhere without the escort of a kinsman or the chaperonage of a maid and at least two stout male servants.
    The women of Faire Isle enjoyed a great deal more freedom than Jane had ever known, a freedom that she found both enticing and a little alarming.
    She lifted her face into the breeze, the wind strong enough to tug at her carefully pinned chignon. For once she had not been prudent enough to don either a cloak or a cap.
    As she struggled to replace a dislodged hairpin, Jane was seized by the sort of mad impulse she had not known since she had been a very young girl. She yanked out therest of the pins and shook out her hair until it tumbled free in a wild tangle.
    Smoothing it back from her face, she drank in the salt air and shielded her eyes with one hand. The sea seemed to roll on forever in a glorious expanse of sun-kissed blue, except that she knew it didn’t.
    It was little more than twenty miles across that channel to England, the realization causing Jane a familiar pang. How many years would it be until her regrets softened and her memories dimmed, until she would stop being struck by the thought: If I were still at home on such a day, at such an hour, I would be doing this …
    As she gazed out across the sea, her eyes misted with an image of her London manor, with its stout stone walls and tidy knot gardens leading down to the riverside quay, the Thames teeming with wherries and barges.
    Like everything else, her London manor had been forfeited to the Crown. Jane wondered which of her favorites Elizabeth had bestowed the property upon and if the new owner had been kind to her household of servants or if they had been obliged to seek situations elsewhere.
    Had this person been careful of her garden or neglectful? Had they perhaps torn up the rose arbor she had so tenderly cultivated in favor of extending the dock?
    Most of all she wondered who, if anyone, would ever pause by the remote corner of the London churchyard to pray over the unassuming stone that marked her brother’s grave.
    Edward Lambert, the last Baron of Oxbridge. It disturbed Jane that she could scarce call up an image of the reckless young man who had given her so many sleeplessnights. But she recalled quite clearly the little brother who had clung so fiercely to her hand that summer they had become orphaned.
    “What are we to do, Jane?” Ned had asked, turning his woebegone face up to hers. “Our papa fell off his horse and now he is all broken. We have no papa anymore. Who will look out for me?”
    “I will, Neddie,” she said, her hand caressing the silky strands of his blond hair, a paler version of her own. “I will protect and take care of you always.”
    A promise she had been unable to keep …
    “Forgive me, Neddie,” she prayed. Her eyes blurred with tears. She rubbed fingertips against her lids to stem the flow. When her vision cleared, she was struck by the sight of two cloaked figures making their way up the beach.
    There was no mistaking the taller of the two young women. Seraphine Remy the Lady of Faire Isle’s eldest niece, was a beauty of statuesque proportions, her unbound hair falling over her shoulders like a shower of gold. She provided a dramatic contrast to her shorter companion, Meg’s thin face framed by her dark brown hair.
    Jane frowned. Ariane Deauville had given strict instructions that no one was to stray that far from the encampment. Jane glanced back toward the cluster of cottages and saw that everyone