Free Valour and Victory by Candy Rae Page B

direction.”
    “That’s not
like him,” said a surprised Isobel. Duke Pierre Cocteau adored his
daughter.
    “What’s
happened?” asked Isobel’s sister-in-law Katia the inquisitive.
    “He said he
wanted to speak to Mother alone. He shooed me away and sent the
servants out. I went, who wouldn’t with Father looking like that
but I stopped outside the door. My slipper button came loose and I
had to stop to fix it.”
    “Most
fortuitous,” said Katia with an appreciative gleam in her eye.
    “And that it
should have come loose just outside the door,” marvelled Isobel,
laughing.
    “Correct,” said
Anne with a frown. She had a minimal sense of humour at the best of
times. “I couldn’t help but hear. They weren’t exactly being quiet.
It’ll be all round the manor by now, you know what servants
are.”
    “What were they talking about?” pressed Katia.
    “And why is
Aunt Anne unhappy?” added Isobel.
    Anne sat up
straight. “Prince-Duke Xavier has declared himself King of the
Southern Duchies!” She sat back to watch the results of this
bombshell. She was not disappointed.
    Isobel went
pale. Katia and Jennifer opened their mouths in giant ‘O’s of
astonishment. Estelle, Isobel’s sister and another cousin, Tamsin,
who were visiting the manor for the summer looked at each other,
open-eyed.
    Isobel was the
first to find her voice.
    “But what’s to
happen to the King? To the Crown-Prince?” her voice wobbled.
    Anne regarded
Isobel with, it has to be said, a certain amount of malice. She had
resented the fact that married to Elliot, Isobel would outrank her.
Daughter of a Princess of the Blood, she felt herself a far more
important person than the quiet little Isobel whose mother had been
a mere Baron’s daughter.
    “Your marriage
to Elliot is off,” she pronounced. “Father has agreed a match with
Gerald Baker, he that was contracted to Elliot’s sister Susan.”
    “It can’t be,”
cried a stricken Isobel. Gerald Baker was a loud-mouthed, obese
young man, a more direct opposite to Elliot would have been hard to
find. “What does Aunt Anne say?”
    “Mother is
furious,” admitted her daughter. “I think Father was actually
cringing when she really got going.”
    “I’d liked to
have seen that,” said Katia.
    “Father kept
telling her that her brother the King and her nephew the
Crown-Prince are safe. The King is still King although he’s only
king over the other five duchies now, North Murdoch Father was
calling it.”
    “So why can’t I
still marry Elliot?” asked the confused Isobel.
    Anne shrugged,
“don’t ask me. I suppose Father and King Xavier are using the
marriage between you and Gerald to tie them closer, makes sense
from a political point of view. That’s what marriages are for.”
    “What else did
you hear?” asked Katia, reasserting herself.
    “Father kept
assuring her that the royal family are all safe, the northerly
royal family is safe I should say and she kept asking him to return
to Fort to make sure they are. He’s refusing and she’s
insisting.”
    “She’ll not win
that one,” Katia said with an air of ‘one who knows’.
    “So what
happens now?” asked the worried Tamsin, wishing that she, her
husband and her children had remained on their own estate for the
summer.
    “Nothing that
need concern us,” Anne answered. “We’re women, it’s the men who
decide important things.” She picked up her embroidery. “Mother
will be here soon and she’ll tell us what we need to know. I
suppose we’ll all stay here until things settle down at Fort. I
love the manor this time of the year, don’t you? Perhaps we can go
boating in the lake tomorrow. The children love it on the water.
What do you say Isobel?”
    Isobel didn’t
answer. She caught Estelle’s eye.
    “I think my
sister and I will go to the chapel for a while,” Estelle announced.
She placed her embroidery to one side and the two left the
room.
    “These convent
educated girls are all the