Free Almost Innocent by Jane Feather

golden hair was fading to gray now, but the power in his frame was as evident in his middle years as it had been in the stripling, and the blue eyes were as sharp and bright.
    De Gervais crossed the carpeted floor, knelt to take and kiss his lord’s hand.
    “You are well come, Guy,” the duke said with jocular familiarity, raising him up. “Let us leave this crowd. I would have private speech with you.” With the impatient arrogance that always marked his step, he moved to a door in the paneled wall. The courtiers and attendants in the room fell back as the door closed behind the duke and his vassal.
    “Well, it is done. The papal decree arrived three days past.” The duke went to the table in the window-less inner chamber that had an almost womblike quality to its seclusion. The walls were hung with heavy tapestries, the floor covered with a thick carpet, the furniture all dark and carved. The only light came from the wax candles which burned at all hours. There were two ways into the room, through the presence chamber and by a stairway from the duke’s bedchamber above, the door cunningly concealed in the paneling. Both doors were guarded at all times, because in this room were contained all Lancaster’s secrets, and many of those secrets were too dark to see the light of day.
    He handed Guy the parchment with the papal seal and began to pace the chamber, the quiet satisfaction in his voice the only indication of his inner triumph. “With the marriage of my daughter to the hostage, Edmund de Bresse, we will secure the service of the de Guise and the de Bresse. Such an alliance cannot help but win us Picardy and Anjou.”
    Guy nodded, examining the parchment. With the death of Edmund’s father, the de Bresse fiefdom inPicardy had been put in the control of a regent appointed by the king of France until such time as the heir grew to adulthood and his ransom had been paid, when he could take up his inheritance. A regent was necessary because an empty nest of that richness was an open invitation to any cuckoo with even the slightest pretensions to the estate. However, had the child heir been in the hands of the French, there would have been no danger of a change in political allegiance within the fief. But Edmund was a hostage in England, under the influence of the English not the French king. His fealty to England could be secured by marriage to a Lancastrian, and forgiveness of his ransom. When he took possession of his vast inheritance, then he would bring to the English cause the loyal service of the de Bresse of his paternal line and the de Guise of his maternal. Two such allegiances would be of enormous benefit to the English king in his hotly disputed claim for the French throne, and Edmund de Bresse would breed Plantagenet heirs to his great fiefdom.
    The boy would have to fight to regain his heritage, though, Guy thought. Charles of France would not hand it over to a vassal of King Edward’s without a murmur. But the lad’s claim to the fief was unshakable. There would have to be a campaign, one in which young Edmund would earn his spurs. And he would have the mighty power of Lancaster at his back, because Lancaster would be claiming for his acknowledged daughter’s husband. It was a clever piece of deceptive diplomacy that could only misfire if aught should occur to prevent or destroy the marriage. The permanent removal from the scene of John of Gaunt’s daughter would be the most effective means of achieving such a breakdown. And such a removal might seem to the de Beauregards an adequate vengeance for their defeat at Carcassonne at the hands of Lancaster eleven years previously. They might well choose to be Charles’sagent in such a matter, and it was a business to which that devious, unprincipled clan was well suited.
    “What is she like?”
    The abrupt question, asked with an underlying fierceness that seemed to have no justification, interrupted the gloomy turn of de Gervais’s thoughts. He