“You wouldn’t dare!”
“Wouldn’t I? I’ve come this far to kill him. I can stay a little longer to give his wife a child. Face it, madame. Raoul D’Anquetonville is too old to sire further children. You’re his third wife. I may be your only hope to—”
She whirled to run, but he was beside her before she had taken half a dozen steps on wobbling legs. An arm banded her back, held her soft body tight against his own. Then his mouth was warm on her lips, and his strength was such that she found herself welcoming his hard young body, his hungry mouth. She wanted desperately to struggle free, but a lethargy, on which a tide of desire began to rise, was in her flesh.
He kissed her soft white throat, her closed eyelids.
“We must not. Oh, I beg—” she breathed.
A kiss buried her words. Then she clung with starving arms—Raoul was an old man, not young and fiercely demanding like le Bâtard—and, even while she prayed to le bon Dieu for forgiveness, she aided him in slipping down the straps of her camisa. She moaned above his head, eyes closed, lost in a spill of pleasure. Only dimly was she aware of his hands tugging her thin shift to the floor.
She felt herself swung up in powerful arms and carried toward the canopied bed, lowered tenderly and admired first with ardent eyes and then with caressing lips. She writhed, her small white hands clenched into tiny fists. Her breasts were hard and her body receptive as he drew her to him.
The Lady Alix was not accustomed to the immoralities of court life and the casual manner in which noblemen and noblewomen bedded one another at whim. Oh, she knew enough of the goings-on which made the reign of the mad Charles VI a scandal in Europe. The father of this youth she held in her arms had seduced more than his share of highborn ladies, among them the queen herself, Isabel of Bavaria, wife of Charles VI. Gossip said he had also seduced the Duchess of Burgundy, which caused her husband John the Fearless to have him slain outside the Hotel Barbette. Some even murmured that the Dauphin, who would be the future Charles VII if fate permitted, was not the son of Charles VI but of the Duke of Orleans.
In this springtime of the year 1425, no one gave any thought to the love affairs that made the court of the Dauphin such a gay and light-hearted menage. Virtue was a word with little meaning. She knew all that. But so far Alix of Bar had held herself aloof from this gay round of amoral intimacies.
She felt shame creep like a crimson tide above the fair white shoulders on which he rained his kisses, shame that fought with her heated blood, that made her whisper protests even as his caresses caused her to emit little cries of delight. For just a little while that shame troubled her; then it was drowned in the lifting tide of pleasure under which she shuddered.
“You are taking vengeance—without mercy, seigneur!”
“Is revenge ever merciful?”
“You have begun something I can never forget!”
Her arms about him, her kisses became as ardent, as searching as his own. There was a dormant flame in the Lady Alix which this young hothead was fanning into life. The thought occurred to her, as she gathered him against her body, that Raoul d’Anquetonville would never be enough to satisfy her from this night on. And in this knowledge the Lady Alix understood the terrible manner of his vengeance.
The Paris candles used to tell the time were guttering in their holders when she finally leaned above him, kissing the corners of his mouth with tender lips. “A devil you are, Jean. You’ve awakened me as a woman. Did you intend this or was it by the merest chance?”
As he stirred and would have rolled from the bed, her arms tightened, imprisoning him. Her smile was sensual. “Not yet. In all these years I never realized what a precious joy might be shared between a man and a woman. You came for vengeance. The horns are scarcely planted on my husband’s brow. They need a firmer tamping.”
Jean laughed. “It must be past the hour of lauds. Soon it will be dawn.”
“And you’ll go back to killing the men who murdered your father. But not for a little while. Not yet.” She leaned above him, letting him know the weight of her breasts. “Is it so very important, this killing?”
“To me, yes. It’s a goal giving purpose to my life.”
She made a wry face. “A silly, stupid goal for such a wonderful young man. To slay your father’s murderers is selfish. They have so many friends. All Burgundy! One man against so many? It’s a task to dismay a Samson.”
“Then don’t play Delilah to my strength, Alix.”
She collapsed in laughter on him. After a moment she turned her head sideways on his chest so she could look at him. “How long have you been away from your estates in Dauphiné?”
“Six months or more. I quarreled with the Constable of France over the policies of state. Richemont holds the Dauphin’s ear. I retired from the field to pursue my own inclinations. I became a soldier of fortune.”
She considered that, staring down into his handsome face, suddenly remembering that Jean of Orleans was a married man. “And your wife? What does Marie think of this vengeance trail you take?”
“No wife of mine, that one. At best, wife in name only.”
“Oh? Can I believe what you imply? That a hot-blooded young stallion would permit such a pretty mare to run untended?”
“She came to the altar a virgin. A virgin she remains. She considers herself too good to bed a bastard.”
Bitterness erupted in him, making his mouth thin and hard. Once there had been a time when his only goal had been to attain the woman he loved, Marie Louvet. Now that dream, like so many others of his life, was washed away by the fact of his bastardy. He would never forget her mocking laughter as she had confronted him following the wedding ceremony, when they were alone in the solar of the great hall of Vaubernais.
The unclothed body of this woman beside him was warming, even more warming than the flame of the oil lamps in the solar that night three years before, when Marie had thrust him back, away from her. “You must be mad to think I’d let you take me in your arms, Jean. What difference does it make if a bishop has said a few Latin words over us?”
Amazement had held him speechless. True, their courtship had been a cold and formal affair, dictated by conventions and checkreined by the watching eyes of the Duchess Yolande of Anjou, who had arranged the match, but—
“Marie, you’re tired. You don’t know what you’re saying!”
“Don’t I? Have you ever heard me say I loved you? Never! I think I’ve always hated you, Jean. Actually hated!”
“But—but why? What did I ever do?”
The full red mouth he longed to kiss had curled in disdain. “It’s what you didn’t do that maddens me. You had the misfortune to be born under an unlucky star. Your half brother Charles was much more clever. He had the sense to have Valentina Visconti for his mother! Your father’s wife, his duchess. You chanced to pick an adulteress to give you birth.”
He had shaken with the fury consuming him. The fingers of his right hand had opened and closed convulsively, again and again. He had wanted very much to strike out with that hand, to put the brand of his blow across her lovely features. Jean had fought his anger with every last ounce of will power. Calm, be calm! She’s overtired and doesn’t know the meaning of the words she speaks. Marie Louvet was three years younger than himself, scarcely more than a child despite the early signs of the mature beauty which would be hers.
Her hair, a dark, rich brown, had hung from her wedding coronet in long, rippling waves. Her adolescent bosom had made tiny mounds in the white samite of her wedding dress, and her young hips had been scarcely more rounded than those of a boy. Yet her dark, brooding eyes and pouting, overripe mouth had hinted at the sensuality that lay hidden behind the samite, a sensuality that had attracted his Valois blood. There had been a physical ache in his strong young