Dreams of Lilacs

Chapter 17



Isabelle rose and wrapped a dressing gown around herself to ward off the bone-chilling cold in Gervase’s chamber. She went to bring her fire back to life, but found there was no more wood to throw on it. She supposed if she’d had any sense, she would have gone back to bed, but she was cold. She also supposed it wouldn’t hurt to admit that she was restless as well.

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected at Monsaert when she’d arrived unannounced and uninvited. Watching Gervase train by himself in the garden had been heartbreaking. Surely he could have found someone to face him if he’d cared to. His former glory had been readily apparent and she couldn’t help but grieve a bit for that. Not for herself, of course, but for him.

His brothers and convincing Cook to prepare something edible had taken up a good part of her afternoon, but during the evening she’d had nothing to do but hold his youngest brother and attempt to keep her heart from breaking over his unwillingness to let her go. She hadn’t asked any of them about their mother, but it was obvious to her that she should be on her knees every day in gratitude for her own mother who had loved her so deeply.

She rubbed her arms and wished for something more substantial to wear. Even something more to toss on the fire would have been very welcome. Well, she could perhaps retreat safely to Gervase’s solar and warm herself against his fire. Miles had delivered her gear to her and informed her that he would be bedding down in the solar that night so it wasn’t as if she would be disturbing anyone important. No doubt her ever-present guardsmen would be standing outside her door, waiting to escort her wherever she wanted to go.

She opened the door, then froze. Well, there was someone there standing guard, but it wasn’t one of her usual lads. The man standing against the opposite wall, his arms folded over his chest, happened to be the lord of the castle.

She would have popped right back in his bedchamber, but she’d already been spotted. She could have attempted to ignore him—she had, after all, done a damned fine job of it the day before—but that seemed a little silly given that they were the only ones in the passageway. Besides, she didn’t suppose she wanted to ignore him. He was, after all, the reason she’d come to Monsaert. Even she couldn’t lie to herself well enough to believe that she’d only come to conjugate Latin verbs.

She cleared her throat. “My lord.”

Gervase inclined his head. “My lady.”

She pulled her robe more closely around herself, not for any fears over her modesty but because she was cold. Or too warm. At the moment, she honestly couldn’t tell which it was. She had forgotten, somehow, in that short time she’d been at Beauvois just how appallingly handsome Monsaert’s lord was. Perhaps Nicholas had it aright and the man had ravished every woman he’d ever clapped eyes on. All she could say was she could see how it was possible. She settled for simply leaning against her doorframe and looking at him.

Rogue that he was.

She thought she might have a bit of sympathy for the women he’d been roguish with.

“Did you need something out of your bedchamber?” she asked.

He shook his head.

She waited, but he seemed disinclined to volunteer anything. She frowned. “Then why are you here?”

“I thought you needed to have your door guarded.”

“My door?”

He smiled faintly. “You, Isabelle,” he clarified, “not your door. I thought you needed to have yourself guarded.”

’Twas ridiculous, of course, to be so affected by the sound of her name from a handsome man’s lips, but she found herself profoundly grateful just the same for a doorframe to lean against. Perhaps she should have taken Nicholas’s advice and stayed at Beauvois. She realized at that moment that she wasn’t looking at a callow youth such as the ones who had come, floundering in their fathers’ wakes, to see if there might be a bride available at Artane. She was facing a man who . . . well, she had the feeling he had never been a callow youth.

“You should be abed.”

She shook her head. “I’m not sleepy. And I was cold.”

He looked at her seriously. “We’ve been careful with leaving too much wood lying about, especially in my bedchamber. I should have made certain you had enough.”

“I think it might have been less the chill than too much on my mind.”

“So you thought to roam the passageways looking for a distraction?”

“It seemed reasonable.”

He pushed away from the wall and pulled her gently out into the passageway. “Wait here,” he said. “And do not move.”

She wasn’t sure she could have managed that even if she had wanted to. She leaned against the passageway wall and waited until Gervase came back out of his bedchamber. He pulled the door to, then put a cloak around her shoulders. He looked at her with an expression on his face she couldn’t quite identify.

“Let’s go sit by the fire in my solar,” he said. “Perhaps that will be distraction enough for you without leaving you catching the ague. We’ll play draughts or something equally as undemanding.”

“For money?”

“For money,” he echoed with a snort. “Would your father approve of these mercenary tendencies you display?”

“I’m not sure my father would approve of anything I’m doing at the moment,” she said with a sigh.

“And just what have you done of late that is so terrible?”

“Besides forcing my youngest brother into skirts and the remains of my hair, scampering off to France, then arriving on your doorstep this afternoon uninvited?”

He clasped his hands behind his back. “You’ve had quite a busy spring, haven’t you?”

She managed a smile. “So far, it seems so.”

“I would have invited you here, of course, had I but known you were able to escape your foul brother’s clutches. Or that you might care to.”


She supposed it wasn’t cowardly to avoid meeting his eyes. After all, she’d done it for the whole of the day thus far.

He took her hand and tucked it under his arm, then nodded down the passageway. “Let us repair to my solar where you can confess all your darkest secrets to me. They’ll give me something to distract your father with as he takes me out to the lists and beats me to death with the hilt of his sword for forcing you to be a servant. For all you know, it might save my sorry life.”

“You didn’t know who I was.”

“Isabelle, I thought you were a lad. I deserve to be disemboweled for that spectacular piece of stupidity alone.”

She smiled at him. “Perhaps you were under duress.”

“You can spend all night attempting to excuse me, but the truth is I was just an idiot,” he said. “Though I will say that you were doubtless the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen. My heart went out to you for it.”

She looked up at him in surprise. “Was that a compliment?”

He started to speak, then closed his mouth and shook his head. “It might surprise you,” he said finally, “to learn that I can be polite when the need arises.”

“At least you know my name,” she said. “Most men don’t remember it.”

“Then most men are fools,” he said.

She smiled. “Thank you.”

“A pity you seem to have forgotten my name.”

“I wasn’t sure if you wished me to use it. Considering how you’ve ignored me all day today, it seemed prudent to be, well, prudent.”

He stopped, then turned to look at her. “I couldn’t look at you. I was afraid I would do something I would regret.”

“What?” she asked lightly. “Tell me to go home?”

“Oh, nay,” he said seriously. “I don’t think that would have been it at all.”

She smiled at him, then felt something shift. And that had everything to do with the way he was looking at her. The truth was, the lads who had come seeking her hands were, well, lads. If there was one thing Gervase de Seger was not, it was a lad.

She realized at that moment that he was going to kiss her. And she had the feeling that she wasn’t simply going to allow it, she was going to bloody his nose if he didn’t.

“You’re scowling at me,” he said softly. “Isabelle.”

“You keep saying my name,” she managed.

“’Tis a very lovely name for an exceptionally lovely woman. And ’tis your name.”

She closed her eyes briefly. “My lord—”

“Gervase.”

She sighed. “Gervase, then.”

“See how easy that was?”

She looked up into his eyes, though she couldn’t quite tell their color. Blue perhaps, or green. She would have to ask him to look at her in the daytime so she might make a note in her diary that she didn’t have at the moment. She wondered if he would come to Artane to see her when she went home. Perhaps she would ask him that as well, after. At the moment, she was too busy being completely overcome by the feel of his taking her face in his hands. He bent his head toward hers—

Or he might have if he hadn’t been frozen in place by a very pointed clearing of a male throat from a few paces away. Isabelle looked at him and wondered if her eyes were as wide as his.

“You could kill him, if you liked.”

“It might grieve your mother.”

Isabelle looked to her left to find her brother standing not five paces away.

“Go away,” she said.

“Are you daft?” Miles asked incredulously. “Iz, you are in the middle of a passageway in the middle of the night, unchaperoned!”

“We’re not unchaperoned,” she said. “Unfortunately.”

“Too much time in trousers has rotted your wits,” Miles said, striding into the light of a torch. He took her by the hand and pulled her away from Gervase. “I don’t think you want to know what Father will do if he finds out that that one has ravished you in his passageway.”

“I wasn’t going to ravish her,” Gervase protested.

Isabelle watched them exchange a look she wasn’t quite sure she knew how to identify. A conversation was definitely going on, but one that seemed to require no words. Gervase conceded the battle first.

“Very well, I was going to kiss her,” he said. “A very brief, very chaste kiss.”

Miles pursed his lips. “Try her hand first.”

Gervase started to speak, then sighed and said nothing.

“In plain sight,” Miles added.

“Am I allowed to at least hold her hand in private?”

“I don’t think you need worry about privacy now that I’m here to help you be sensible. Let’s retreat to the lord’s solar, shall we? I’m sure the fire can be built up and my sister warmed by that instead of those scorching looks you were sending her.”

Isabelle would have kicked her brother but he seemed to sense that and moved out of her way before she could. She scowled at him instead. “He wasn’t sending me scorching looks.”

“Iz, you were too busy smoldering to know what he was doing.” He looked over her head at Gervase. “My lord?”

“Very well,” Gervase said heavily, taking Isabelle’s hand and tucking it under his arm. “We’ll play cards and I’ll empty your purse.”

“My purse,” Miles said with a snort. “Rather you should be looking in a different direction for the lightening of your purse.”

“By your sister? Surely not.”

“The quiet ones are always the most trouble.”

Isabelle cleared her throat. “Are you going to spend all night discussing me as if I weren’t here?”

“I thought giving him a fair warning was prudent,” Miles said. “And whether or not we discuss you all night won’t trouble you because you will be having one turn at cards, then returning speedily to your bed. Your lord needs his sleep as well if he’s to face me in the lists on the morrow.”

Isabelle decided she would argue with him later. She was too distracted at the moment by the feeling of Gervase’s hand covering hers that was folded over his arm. She had been escorted many places over the course of her life, to be sure, but never by a man who had fair set her afire not five minutes earlier with looks she had never once had from anyone.

She had to admit she was relieved to soon be sitting in a chair close to a fire he built up for her in his solar. He brought over the small table that served as a chessboard, then sat down across from her. He looked at Miles.

“I suppose you can provide yourself with a chair.”

Miles fetched one, then sat down between them with a pleasant smile. “Isn’t this nice?”

“Lovely,” Gervase grumbled. “Very well, what shall we play?”

“Cards,” Miles said. “Where are yours?”

“A better question is, do I want you to find them?”

“I could escort my sister back to her chamber,” Miles pointed out.

Isabelle watched Gervase sigh, rise, and fetch cards out of his trunk. She looked at Miles to find him watching her with a small smile. She attempted a scowl in return, but found she couldn’t truly put any enthusiasm behind it. So, instead, she returned his smile, because she knew he loved her, and she was grateful that he was kind to someone she thought she just might love.

? ? ?

An hour later, her brother was sitting across from her and Gervase had moved Miles’s recently relinquished chair closer to hers so she could work on his hand. Miles was making noises of disapproval that she had ignored with varying degrees of success. She finally glared at him.


“It helps him,” she said, exasperated.

“And it’s painful,” Gervase added.

“Well, as long as it hurts,” Miles said, stretching his legs out and yawning, “I’ll allow it. Behave, you two.”

“Go to sleep,” Gervase suggested.

“Hands in plain sight.”

Isabelle took off one of her shoes and threw it at her brother. “Shut up.”

Miles only smiled lazily and tossed the shoe to Gervase. “She is, as you can see, dangerous with a slipper in her hands. And just so you know, there is an unwholesome bond between us. I can always tell when there’s something amiss with her. Or, more particularly, when she’s annoyed with me.”

“Which only proves you aren’t an imbecile,” Gervase said with a snort. “Close your eyes and rest, little lad. I will keep your sister safe.”

“Well,” Miles said with a yawn Isabelle could hear, “you have so far. When she isn’t in your kitchens, that is.”

Isabelle worked on Gervase’s hand, ignoring the continued banter between her brother and her . . . victim was, she supposed, the only word that seemed appropriate. She didn’t dare look at him. He hadn’t looked at her earlier in the day, so perhaps turnabout was what he deserved. Well, he had looked at her out in the passageway earlier in the evening, that was true, but even thinking about that left her feeling unaccountably warm. Better that she concentrate on his hand and leave admiring his face for another time.

Only her willpower wasn’t what it should have been. She finished, held his hand in both hers, then relented and looked at him. He was watching her with a grave expression on his face. Then he smiled, an equally grave smile that left her wondering when it had suddenly grown so bloody hot in his solar.

“Oh, my,” Miles drawled. “I sense something afoot.”

“Aye, my foot booting your sorry arse out of my solar,” Gervase said, not looking at him.

“Do not kiss her,” Miles warned.

“Miles!” Isabelle exclaimed. “Be silent.”

Miles held up his hands. “I’m saving him a skewering. You may fall upon my neck, weep, and thank me later.”

Gervase rose, fetched a blanket from off the back of a chair, then put it over her and tucked it around her feet. He sat down and reached for her hand, ignoring her brother’s sounds of horror. Isabelle would have thrown another shoe at that brother, but she didn’t want to draw any more attention to herself than was already there. It wasn’t that she was nervous about holding hands with Gervase, it was, well, it was that she had never had a man take her hand and hold it between both of his in a way that indicated he might want to hold her hand.

“So,” Gervase said, stroking the back of her hand with his fingers, “perhaps now would be a good time to apologize for not knowing who you were right away.” He met her eyes. “You know when.”

She shrugged lightly. “No one does.”

“Oh, I should have,” he said quickly, “because I knew of you. I just hadn’t expected to find you wandering on the side of the road with your hair shorn, puking into the weeds.”

“Charming,” Miles said pleasantly.

Gervase shot Miles a glare, then looked back at her. “I should have known.”

“I should have told you,” she said with a smile. “The thing is, you have a rather unsettling reputation amongst those with weak stomachs. Though I’ll admit I never believed the rumors about you.”

“I don’t seem to remember you cowering,” he agreed. “Ever,” he added almost under his breath.

“Yet you had her scrubbing your floors anyway,” Miles said.

“I would blame Guy for suggesting it—because he did—but I was stupid enough to pursue the course,” Gervase said. He shrugged lightly. “I’ll pay for it in the end, I’m sure.”

“You don’t have to face my father in the lists,” Isabelle said.

A silence fell. She wasn’t unused to silences, certainly. It was what happened when fathers were informed that Amanda was indeed wed with a child already in her arms. But this wasn’t that same sort of silence. It was a sort of silence that Gervase seemed to be filling with chewing on his words and Miles seemed to be filling simply with his obvious waiting for something. She sent her brother a warning look because that seemed like a reasonable thing to do, then looked back at Gervase.

“Well,” she said, “you don’t.”

“Oh, I think I do.”

“Why?” she whispered.

He looked at her hand in his for a moment or two, then brought her hand up and kissed the back of it.

It was slightly more powerful than a scorching look, she had to admit.

“Warm in here, isn’t it?” Miles drawled.

“Shut up, Miles,” Gervase said absently.

“Aye,” Isabelle managed, “be silent, Miles.”

“Why does everyone tell me to be quiet?” Miles asked. “I’m baffled.”

Isabelle looked at Gervase. Green, perhaps. His eyes, that was. She would have to look at them in the daytime to be sure, but they were surely a pale color. She thought, though, if she looked in them too long, she might do something she regretted.

“Time for bed,” Miles announced loudly. “Iz, you look overcome by weariness.”

Well, weariness wasn’t exactly what she suspected she was being overcome by, but she couldn’t exactly tell her brother the impulse she was fighting was to lean over and scandalize all of France by kissing Gervase de Seger herself.

Gervase had been smiling at her, but his smile deepened, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. She pursed her lips at him, retrieved her shoe from where it currently resided on the other side of him, then handed him her blanket. She put her shoe on, then rose.

“I’m tired,” she announced imperiously.

Miles laughed and rose. “I’m sure you are. Let’s see her to your bedchamber, my lord Gervase, then seek out our own rest. A busy day awaits us on the morrow, I daresay.”

Isabelle ignored them as they escorted her from the solar and back to Gervase’s bedchamber. She paused in front of the doorway and looked at Monsaert’s lord.

“Thank you for the fire,” she said quietly.

“And the gold,” he added with a sigh.

She smiled. “I believe I earned that fairly.”

“I told you so,” Miles remarked. “If you’re going to indulge in amusements with her, never involve your purse. The only one of us who hasn’t learned that lesson thoroughly is Robin. He’s convinced that Isabelle is a delicate, innocent thing of approximately ten-and-two. I’m a little surprised he hasn’t made a more concerted effort to find her a husband before she rids him of all his funds, but with Robin you never know what he’s thinking.”

Isabelle found her hand taken by Gervase. He smiled, kissed the back of it, then opened his door for her.

“Go to bed, you ruthless wench,” he said gravely. “We’ll have a rematch tomorrow.”

“You’ll regret it,” Miles said.

Gervase laughed, sounding slightly exasperated. “Does he ever stop talking?”

“Rarely,” she said. She walked inside his bedchamber, turned to smile at him, then started to shut the door. “Thank you for the fire,” she said. “Gervase.”

Miles reached in and pulled the door shut. She was tempted to open it back up and clout her brother on the nose, but she didn’t want to disturb anything about the hand Gervase had just kissed. It was odd, she supposed, how little desire she had to immediately find water and wash her skin.


She sighed and walked over to the bed to turn down the covers. What she needed to do was sleep before she thought too much and got herself into trouble she wouldn’t easily extricate—

She froze.

There was a sheaf of parchment there, sticking out just far enough from under her pillow that she saw it. Perhaps that wouldn’t have mattered in a quarter hour for she would have surely felt it when she’d laid her head down. Convenient, that’s what it was, that she should see it before she’d blown out her candle and put herself to bed.

She pulled it free and read it uneasily.

To the Lady Isabelle de Piaget,

I sent you to France for a particular purpose you neglect at your peril. Go to Caours as you were meant to. Know that I am everywhere and see everything.

Isabelle dropped the sheaf as if it had burned her, then stared in horror at it as it lay on the floor next to Gervase’s bed. She jumped when she realized that someone was knocking on the door. She kicked the sheaf under the bed, then stumbled across the chamber to open the door. She realized as she did so that perhaps that had been one of the more foolish things she’d done over the course of her lifetime. What if the writer of that missive was standing there—

It wasn’t. It was just Gervase, looking genuinely startled.

“What is it?” he asked.

She could hardly bring herself to speak. “Nothing,” she said, her voice sounding thin and sharp. “Why do you ask?”

“You shrieked.”

“Bad dream.”

Gervase seemed to be considering something. She was also considering something, a possibility that she could hardly bring herself to entertain.

What if Gervase had written that missive?

She shook her head sharply. She couldn’t imagine that Gervase had been the one to leave that missive where she could find it, but what else was she to think? And if he had sent her the second missive, was it not possible that he had sent the first? The thought of that almost sent her reeling. That would mean he had somehow found out things about her family or sent a spy to ferret out details or paid someone to discover things about ones she loved in order to use those things against them.

She shook her head, because she simply couldn’t believe it.

It couldn’t be him. Not that man standing there, looking at her as if he thought she was about to indulge in some sort of feminine display of overwrought emotion.

“Isabelle, you’re pale,” he said slowly.

She would have smiled at his using her name, but she was, frankly, too unsettled to. It couldn’t have been Gervase to write that, but how was she to know if it were or not? She’d never seen any of his handwriting to tell the difference. She was tempted to simply return to his solar and paw through his things there, but she supposed that might be a little obvious if he were the one who had written that truly vile note.

I am everywhere and see everything . . .

The impulse to simply curl up and weep lasted the space of a single heartbeat before she put her shoulders back and recaptured her good sense. She didn’t have a sword, but she could find a dagger and wield it if she had to. Never mind that Robin had never taught her a damned thing, the lout. She had watched him endlessly and was fairly sure she could imitate his arrogant stance alone if she had to. She could defend herself. Perhaps she could even defend Gervase.

Assuming he was the one who needed defending.

“Miles, stay here with her,” Gervase said. “I’ll see that her fire is built up.”

Isabelle realized that her brother was there in the passageway as well. She put on a smile that she didn’t feel, then produced a yawn she definitely didn’t feel. She didn’t protest when Miles put his arms around her and held on to her.

“What is it?” he asked quietly.

“I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

He frowned at her. In time, both he and Gervase were frowning at her in tandem, as if they had planned their expressions when she hadn’t been attending them. She bid them both a pleasant good night, then locked herself inside and leaned back against the door.

The sight of a brightly burning fire made her jump and reach for a nonexistent blade. She rolled her eyes. Gervase had told her he was building up the fire in his bedchamber, hadn’t he? She took a deep breath, then deliberately looked about the chamber, in the trunks, under the bed, and behind the privy screen. There was nothing.

She dug the missive out from under the bed, stuck it under her pillow, then went to the door. Perhaps she would borrow a knife from Miles, who was no doubt standing guard outside her door. She opened the door, then felt something rush through her, but it wasn’t anything pleasant.

She could hardly believe it was merely the sight of the lord of Monsaert standing there that gave her such a feeling of dread.

Gervase frowned at her. Was that because he waited for her to react to the missive she’d found or something more sinister?

“What is it, Isabelle?” he asked quietly.

She tried to swallow but couldn’t manage it. “Nothing,” she said hoarsely. She realized she was still wearing his cloak, so she took it off and handed it to him. “Thank you, my lord.”

He took it and folded it over his arm, then looked at her. “Gervase,” he said.

She nodded. “Of course. Gervase.” She attempted another swallow. “You wouldn’t have an extra knife, would you?”

He looked at her in surprise. “A knife?”

“In case I need to cut something.” Like a man’s belly or other useful part of him, she added silently.

He reached down and pulled a knife free of his boot, then handed it to her slowly. “Will that suit?”

The haft looked unsettlingly well used, as did the sheath. Obviously Gervase wasn’t shy about doing what needed to be done. She looked at his knife, then at him.

“You don’t mind?”

“As long as you don’t intend to use it on me,” he said seriously.

She attempted a careless laugh, then dropped his knife. She almost clacked heads with him bending down to retrieve it, then straightened and took it back from him. He frowned thoughtfully at her again, then took a step back.

“I’ll keep watch,” he said, inclining his head.

“You?” she squeaked. “Surely not all night.”

He lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “Perhaps not all night. I do have to face your brother in the lists in the morning.”

She nodded and considered him. Why would he have waited until she was in his hall before he left her a note if all he’d wanted was for her to go to Caours? Surely he would have sent something instead to Beauvois—

Perhaps that was what he’d intended to do but the missive had been stolen.

“Isabelle?”

“I’m tired,” she said without hesitation. She smiled politely. “Thank you for the knife. I’ll return it.” Eventually, once she was certain he wouldn’t use it on her.

She backed into her chamber, shut the door, then bolted it. She put her hand on the wood and let out a shaky breath. It wasn’t possible . . .

She supposed the most sensible thing she could do was escape from the keep whilst she could and run for the abbey. She could garb herself as a nun perhaps before anyone was the wiser, then she could find out who it was who was hunting her.

Before anyone in her family paid the price.

She pulled a blanket off the bed, wrapped herself in it, and went to sit in a chair in front of the fire. She set Gervase’s knife on the little table next to her. She would sit up for as long as she could, on the off chance that someone somehow found his way inside her chamber.


And then, assuming she lived to see the sunrise, she would run like hell to her grandmother’s abbey and hope she survived the journey.

She would leave thinking on what would come after that for daylight.