The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(37)
The small jaw set. “I would! If it was for you.”
“You wouldn’t,” said Anne instantly. “I would not let you. And Orléans won’t because it isn’t sensible. The French king is his cousin and Father is dead. Now, let us go and ride the unicorn and the city will get drunk and throw flowers and celebrate and we shall all be very happy. Orléans is joining the Entry too; you may make faces at him from the cart.”
He stared at them both. She hides such barbs in all that breathless talk. Am I merely sensible now? Can I blame Isabeau for despising me? Her parents were taken from her and now I am come to help take her sister.
Stiffly, he said, “I have not come back by choice. I mourned your father.”
He thought Anne had bitten her lip, though he kept his eyes on Isabeau.
“Why do you care?” flared Isabeau. “Are you not the heir of France?”
He answered, “An unwanted heir, to be put into a cannon and heaved out of sight the instant Charles has a son in the nursery. I did love your father. But I think it is better for your sister to yield to the inevitable and be married in honor. I hope she agrees with me.”
Honestly, he hoped he agreed with himself. Political necessity was a cold answer when the object of it stood before him, half-familiar and alone and too young.
“My sister—” began Isabeau, but she was interrupted by Anne, who said, “Your sister is honored by the kind attention of the lady of France and glad to see her father’s friend the duke of Orléans. Hush, Belle, you’ve a tongue like a bombard. Now, come and let us ride our unicorn. They can hardly have the Entry without us.” The sun gilded the brown of Anne’s hair, and brought fresh color to her face. He found himself wondering whether her artless expression concealed something more complex than Isabeau’s straightforward anger. A fool? A paragon? He had known the child, but he knew nothing of this duchess who had grown up and grown beautiful and touched a unicorn.
“All right,” said Isabeau. She threw Louis a scowl.
Anne smiled winsomely at him, and steered her sister away.
Louis was watching them go when a hard hand landed on his shoulder. He whipped around and saw Henri of Avaugour. They were nearly the same age. They had been friends once. “Well met, Orléans,” said Henri, though he sounded dubious.
“As you say,” said Louis in the same tone. They measured each other.
“I told Anne you would never agree to ride with us,” said Henri after a moment.
“Let it never be said that I balk at trifles,” said Louis in a polite but slightly dangerous voice, “but I am damned if I ride in an oxcart, and the ox wearing a hat.”
“My God, I know,” said Henri fervently. “My sister wanted chariots, but it was too late. Heaven be thanked, she was happy enough with hunting-dress.” His honest face was suddenly grinning and they clasped arms. “It is good to see you,” said Henri. “I could wish you’d come in better company.”
“I had no choice,” said Louis. He couldn’t fall back into his friendships, not with this truth hanging over them. He must either say it or name himself hypocrite. “Neither does your sister.”
Henri said nothing at that, and some of the warmth faded from his face.
Someone—probably Louis’s squire, with blessed presence of mind—had replaced his riding-horse with his destrier for the purposes of parading. Kestrel was a stallion like a snorting mountain, fearless and vain, who ordinarily came out only for jousts and other occasions that involved a great deal of noise. He would not panic at a crowd. If anything, he would decide he was in a mêlée and kick them.
Louis asked Henri, “Why do an Entry at all?”
“Why—what do you mean, why? The duchess tamed a unicorn. Such a thing has not happened in living memory. The Bretons are proud of her virtue. The bishop of Nantes has already written the pope. Perhaps she will be canonized. Or try her hand at miraculous healing.”
“Marguerite of France will not tolerate anything that delays your sister’s marriage.”
Henri only looked pitying. “Even that noble lady cannot gainsay a unicorn, which has rated my sister’s virtue so highly.”
Louis felt a prickle of unease. “I think you’ll find she can. I think you’ll find she has ways of persuasion that you won’t like.”
Henri didn’t answer but only smiled and spurred his own horse into place beside the white-and-gilt unicorn.
* * *
Anne had been playing a comedy, of course, in her meeting with Marguerite. Young, frivolous, easily led, no threat at all to France—this was the girl she wanted Marguerite to see. Though she had not been lying when she said she’d borrowed money for the Entry using the unicorn-hair fillet as collateral. She could think of no other way to delay Marguerite without setting herself openly in opposition. The Entry was merely the first in a grandiose string of entertainments—feasting and hawking and a visit to her father’s menagerie—in which Anne meant to play a slightly muddle-headed paragon, too puffed-up on her own virtue to agree to a quick marriage. But she’d been hard put to maintain her pose of insouciance when she saw Louis of Orléans.
He was thinner than he’d been, and curving marks of strain and sleeplessness bracketed his mouth. But his loose dark hair was the same, falling to the shoulders, and the hard straightness of his body, trained from birth for war. She had met his eyes with a visceral jolt of recognition, which annoyed her enough that all her words to him had seemed to come out barbed. He’d been part of a golden past, the object of her girlish dreaming, and he was still beautiful and quick-witted, and sorrow had lent character to his face.