A Promise Kept (FIRST FIVE CHAPTERS)

3 A Perfect Love

"Why are you asking about love?" I asked her then. Her laughter subsided and she smiled at me, eyebrow arched in that expression she had, the same as her mother's, which translated directly to I know something you don't know. "What is it?"

"We're having visitors soon," she said, lying back on her chaise as though the news was of no importance to her at all. But I could see the excitement in her features all the same. "By tonight, I imagine."

"Tonight? Who?"

"English visitors even. Your fellow countrymen."

"Giselle, are you going to tell me who they are or continue hinting at their identity until I guess? Because I can guarantee you I don't know enough of the English nobility to engage in speculation."

She laughed at that. "Very well. It's the Duke of Gloucester's son."

"Ah," I answered, sitting back and losing what very little interest I had held previously. "Lancaster then."

"Not exactly."

I glanced over at her to find her still smiling, enjoying my struggle.

"He's not a Lancaster. Not yet. He's a bastard. The Duke is working to legitimize him," she told me and I harrumphed in vague interest. I hadn't known that the Duke of my region had a bastard son. Not that it mattered. The depravities of the nobility were of less interest to me, even, than Giselle Lemieux's meditations on love. Apparently unaware of my disinterest, she continued. "He is coming here with the intention of marrying me. Or, at least, becoming betrothed. Father says that the Duke thinks his association with our family will bolster his attempts at legitimization. And that the nobility are pressing him to ensure the boy is appropriate for rule in case of the Duke's passing which, if my mother is correct, could be any day now for the man is very ill and has been for some time."

I became more and more impassive as she blathered on. Problems of noble Englishmen far away did not hold my interest as they once might have. The belief that these people were somehow intriguing, that their lives held some sort of voyeuristic enjoyment for people like me, had fled with my youth. What remained was the cynical wisdom of a girl who had been forced to grow up far quicker than she should have been. Still, out of duty, I feigned an interest for Giselle's sake. I may not have an enthusiasm for this piece of news but she, unsurprisingly, did. She was the daughter of a French aristocrat. She had been born for breeding and so she had been waiting her whole life to see which stallion was to claim her. As abhorrent as the practice was, she was eager, at least, to see what her stallion looked like.

After a lazy afternoon in the sun during which Giselle spoke mostly of half remembered gossip and the dilemma she was experiencing in which she could not decide what to wear upon her brave white knight's arrival, we found our way back inside in an effort to cool down and prepare for the evening. I left Giselle in the capable hands of another maid named Selena and made my way to Madame Lemieux's room. I found the woman applying her third coat of makeup. One more and she would break her record. I stood patiently aside while she painted her red lips even redder and then puckered them and turned to me.

"You've heard, I imagine," she said then, standing from her seat and crossing the room to a wardrobe where she, too, seemed to be deciding upon a dress.

"About the arrival of a Duke's bastard son?" I asked. "So I have."

"She told you that he seeks to marry her."

"She did."

"Well, then, you know you'll be quite busy."

"During his visit, you mean."

She turned and, still holding one of the dresses in her hand, approached me until she was only a foot away. She poked her bony finger into my collarbone the way she always did when she intended to make a point.