Free Almost Innocent by Jane Feather Page B

speak. “That was ill done, my lord. She is but a child.”
    “She is Isolde’s child!” the duke said with a hiss. “The child of a faithless, murdering whore. May her black soul be damned! Think you that one will be any different? Whores breed whores.” A laugh of scorn and disgust cracked in the humid air.
    “You cannot visit the mother’s sins upon her. She never knew her mother,” Guy said urgently. “It is not the church’s teaching.”
    “You know how that child was born.” The duke refilled his goblet, and pain twisted, ugly and harsh, upon his face. “I pulled her forth from her dam’s body as the whore convulsed in her death throes, convulsed with the poison she had intended for me! And you say such a birth was in innocence!”
    “If you felt thus, my lord, why did you take the babe in charge? She was but an unacknowledged bastard.”
    Lancaster shook his head. “I had acknowledged the coming child as my own, with documents witnessed in proof.” His voice was low with self-disgust now. “I loved the whore, would you believe? I intended to provide for the child.” His voice took on a distant, pensive quality. “Besides, there was too much death in the room already.” He seemed to look inward, to see again that dim chamber in the fortress monastery at Carcassonne,the slaughtered monk at the door, the young squire with the dagger through his heart. He could smell again the reek of death, the blood of birthing. He could hear again the shrillness of agony on the lips of the woman he had once loved more than life itself. The woman he had killed, turning her own weapon upon her.
    “I saw her mother in those eyes,” he said bluntly, offering the explanation without apology for his harsh rejection of the child as he came back to his surroundings again. “What features does she have of mine, de Gervais?”
    “Your mouth, my lord,” de Gervais said promptly, sensing that some crisis had passed. “And some of your arrogance, I believe.”
    The duke’s lip curled in slight amused acknowledgment. “She may have her dam’s eyes, but there’s the mark of the Plantagenet upon her.” He refilled his goblet and drank deeply. “The proclamation of legitimacy will go out across the land, and she will be wed at Westminster. We will throw down the gauntlet to France with much trumpeting. And after the marriage, her husband will go into Picardy and lay claim to his fief.”
    “And what of Magdalen? She will be in some danger once her paternity is proclaimed.”
    “You will keep her safe until she is wed. Then she may return to Bellair until this business is ended. The Lord Marcher will ensure her safety behind the walls of his castle.”
    Guy de Gervais felt a pang for the child so soon to be abandoned once more in the wilderness of the border lands, her role played for the moment. But he knew she would be safer there than anywhere, and he had no reasonable alternative to offer. He himself would take up arms with Edmund, and since her father would not shelter her, there would be none here to protect her.
    “Will you not say some words of softness to her, myliege?” he asked. “She is afraid she has offended but does not understand why.”
    Lancaster shook his head. “No, I do not wish to see her again this day. But you may assure her that she has not offended. Explain matters to her as you see fit.”
    A loyal vassal must perform many services for his liege lord, de Gervais reflected caustically. This last task that Lancaster had laid upon his shoulders he would dearly like to forgo.
    F ROM THAT DAY , Magdalen entered a world of terrifying confusion. Her reception at Lancaster’s hands had shattered some deep-seated confidence in herself. Yet she was told that this man was her sire. She did not believe that she was the duke’s daughter, whatever she was told by de Gervais and the Lady Gwendoline. Such a thing was not possible, so she would not even permit her mind to examine it. But the person she