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“Your word is meaningless to me,” she says, but something in my manner must convince her, for some of the reckless fury fades from her face. “What are you doing here, Genevieve?”
“Must we discuss this in the hallway?” It takes all my training to keep the pleading note from my voice.
She gives a brusque nod, then strides to the fourth chamber on the right and motions me inside. The door closes behind us with a click of foreboding. “Very well. We are alone. Now you can explain this treachery of yours.”
That she would leap to such a conclusion hurts deeply. “Why are you so certain that I betrayed you?”
“Because the king knows I am from the convent of Saint Mortain and what we do there. He did not know that two days ago.” Her expression hardens as the threads she has grabbed hold of begin to form a pattern. “You said you were with the king last night. Is that why you are poisoning the queen?”
Her accusation knocks all the air from my lungs. “No! Not the queen!”
Her eyes grow so frigid that I feel an actual chill scuttle across my arms. “But you are poisoning somebody.”
“No! Not now.”
She tilts her head. “But . . . ?”
“It had nothing to do with any of this. It was when I left Cognac, the only way I could escape.” There. I said I had to escape. Surely she’ll begin to understand now.
“Or was it the only way you could worm your way into the king’s bed and betray everything the convent stands for? Do you have any idea how much you’ve put at risk? Any idea whose lives might be ruined?” For one heart-stopping moment, I am certain she is considering killing me where I stand. “How much danger complete innocents will be in because of you?”
Her words pour over me like acid, the burn of it mixing with the searing shame I already feel. “I was trying to save them, you rutting sow, if you would only let me explain.”
She folds her arms and raises her eyebrows. “I am listening.”
I force myself to draw a full breath. “I told you, we had not heard from the convent for five years. Nothing.”
As I talk, she crouches down to peer at the rug, tilting her head sideways as if examining the surface. When I pause, she looks up at me. “Continue,” she says curtly.
“Margot . . . Margot got tired of waiting and entered into a liaison with Count Angoulême. That is how she died.”
The hand she had been running over the rug stills. “He killed her?”
“Not with his bare hands, no, but she became pregnant and died giving birth to his bastard.”
“Merde.” She shoves to her feet, her gaze flitting briefly to me before she goes to the window. “Go on.” She yanks the curtains aside.
“When the count told me that the duchess and king were to be married, I didn’t believe it. France consuming Brittany was everything we’d been fighting against.”
“She was out of choices,” Sybella mutters as she examines the latch closely.
“That’s what the count said. I took comfort in the fact that I would be in a perfect position to help her now, with all my connections at court and the knowledge I’d gathered over the years about all the courtiers, not to mention the king and the regent.”
She pauses long enough to stare at me. “That was precisely the sort of aid we were hoping for.” In disgust, she looks back at the window and runs her fingers over the casing, wincing at something.
“What is it?”
“A nick in the wood.” She begins rubbing her finger over it, as if trying to smooth it away. “Keep talking.”
“But much to my dismay, I still received no call from the convent. When Count Angoulême left for the wedding, I demanded he take me with him.”
The corner of her mouth quirks. “I wager he loved that. Princes of the Blood do so enjoy being ordered about.”
“I told him I needed to be somewhere the convent could find me, but he refused.”
“You could have just followed him.”
“I would have, but he had other news as well. News he claimed was from the convent.” She stops rubbing the wood and looks at me. “The news was that, by order of the king, the convent of Saint Mortain was being disbanded.” For the first time since I have begun talking, she gives me her full attention. “His followers were to be farmed out to other convents or married off to willing husbands. I was now Angoulême’s legal ward, and he was to find a suitable husband for me.”
“But no such thing has happened! How could you not know he was tricking you?”
“Of course that was my first thought,” I snap. But how to explain the many signs that seemed to point to the same conclusion. “I considered such a possibility carefully, but he had a message bearing the wax seal of the convent. It was signed by the abbess. And he had never lied to me before. I could not discern a reason he would do so now. And believe me, I considered it thoroughly. But I could never see what he would gain, except the animosity of the convent, and he has always struck me as too self-serving to incur such wrath without good reason.”
Sybella opens the windows and runs her hand carefully along the windowsill. “And so you left.”
“Not right away, no.” How do I explain to her the utter betrayal I felt? The sense of aloneness. “Margot had died but three days earlier,” I say softly. “We had been like sisters, and I . . .” Her fingers still, and she frowns before retrieving a tiny scrap of cloth. She holds it up for closer inspection.
How to explain the enormity of what I’d lost? Not just with Margot’s death, but in the year preceding it? “And there was her babe. I wanted to stay long enough to see if it lived.”
Sybella shoves the scrap into the pocket of her gown. “And did it?”
“Yes. She did.”
“That’s good news, then,” she says softly. “We must see that the babe is well cared for.” She moves away from the window toward the bed, then drops to her knees to peer under it. “So then you left,” she prompts.
“Eventually. I needed time to study the situation. To consider all my options carefully. I also needed to ensure they didn’t come immediately after me. So I waited and I plotted, and when the time was right, I left.”
She remains on the floor a few more moments before finally pushing to her feet. She looks up to meet my eyes. “Did you leave with the intention of bedding the king?”
Something in her eyes, her face—mayhap her soul—forces the truth from me. “Yes.”
She looks down and concentrates on brushing off her hands. “And how was that supposed to save us? Here—” She motions
toward the rich coverlet on the bed. “You grab one end, I’ll take the other.”
Grateful to have something to do with my hands, as well as something to look at besides her scornful countenance, I grab the corners and help her carry the entire thing over to the window. “I’m listening,” she says sharply.
It is easier to talk with her attention focused on the richly embroidered coverlet rather than me. “When I was last at court, the king took a fancy to me. There was no reason to act on it at the time—the convent had not ordered me to, and there was nothing to be gained. But he did promise to grant me any favor I should wish if I would grace his bed. In spite of my assurances to the regent that I had no intention of bedding the king, she had Margot and me sent to Cognac. When I heard that it was by the king’s orders that the convent had been disbanded, I realized I did, at last, have something I truly wished from him.”
I stare out the window, remembering the absolute certainty I felt in that moment, as if a long-missing piece of my life had finally clicked into place—that I had found my destiny. The memory sears my throat.
“Since he had already disbanded the convent, there was no reason for me to think he didn’t know about us. And to be honest, I would have assumed the French crown’s own spies would have at least caught wind of us and reported it to him. Especially with the former chancellor Crunard working so closely with both the regent and the convent.”
I shift my attention from the window and raise my chin slightly. “So that was my intent, to receive clemency for the convent and prevent unwanted fates for the other girls there.”
Sybella stops rubbing at a spot she’s found on the quilt and lifts her eyes to mine, her brief flicker of understanding quickly shuttered. “So that was your plan. Galloping in on a destrier, fulfilling the king’s carnal desires, then requesting a dispensation for the convent because of it.”
Under the weight of her scorn, all of my careful considerations and deliberations seem as thin and tattered as a beggar’s cloak. It was a good plan. Would have been if any of what Angoulême had told me was true.
