Lady of the Roses Read Free Page A

had never had occasion to wear before. The high-waisted gown, with its low neckline trimmed with miniver, fell in voluminous folds into a train at the back, and it shimmered like moonlight as I took it out of the coffer.
    “You must be very careful, Isabelle,” Sœur Madeleine said as she helped me into the magnificent dress and arranged my long hair loosely around me.
    “Why?” I replied, half-drunk in my joy.
    “You are too beautiful, with your swan neck and so big eyes, and I fear there are Yorkists at the banquet. Rapists and murderers, all of them.”
    “Not all, surely?” I said, teasing in my delirium. I wondered if Sœur Madeleine had drunk too much wine. She had never complimented me before, and why should she, when my eyes were not blue, but brown, and my hair not gold, but dark as chestnuts? If only I had a mirror! But mirrors were forbidden at the priory, for, as the nuns kept reminding us, the only eyes that mattered were the eyes of God. “I saw some Yorkists once,” I said gaily, “and they didn’t look like rapists or murderers.”
    Sœur Madeleine gave a shocked cry, and for a moment I feared I had made a disastrous mistake that would cost me the banquet. But she said only, “ Mon dieu , what is the world coming to?”
    “I found them attractive, as a matter of fact,” I giggled. I was drunk, surely, or I would never have dared to make such an admission.
    She gaped at me. “I should report you to the queen!”
    I bent down and kissed her forehead with a smile. Bending came naturally to me, for though I was a head shorter than most men, I was taller than most women. “But you won’t, will you?” I laughed, not comprehending what made me so bold.
    “ Mon enfant , you are impossible. I don’t know why I let you ’ave your way with me, but to tell you true, I love you like my own. Maybe because your dark hair and eyes, they remind me of—” She broke off, seemed to catch herself, and added, “Of Anjou.” She fell silent, in reverie.
    I, too, returned to reverie. But the scene that came to me made me giggle aloud.
    “What do you find so amusing?”
    “Nothing,” I lied, wiping the grin from my face with effort. I had never confided my secret memory to anyone, and certainly I had no intention of sharing it with Sœur Madeleine, no matter how drunk on joy I might be. In the previous spring, I had gone north to Yorkshire to visit friends, and we had been returning to Wensleydale after a day’s outing picnicking in a meadow filled with wildflowers. Singing and laughing, we rolled along in our cart, the sun shining brightly on the pear orchards shedding their blossoms over us. At a turn of the River Ure some distance yet from the manor, the woods parted, and two young men suddenly emerged from the river. Caught by surprise, they stood naked as babes for a moment before they quickly covered themselves as we passed—but one covered his face instead of his manly parts. My friends and I burst into sidesplitting laughter and strained to see more as our two bodyguards cursed and the driver whipped the horses and barreled past. That sight, our first ever of a naked man, kept us in merriment for weeks.
    But in these months I hadn’t forgotten the one who had covered his face, and sometimes I even saw him in my dreams, though only fleetingly, as I had in life.
    “Listen to me, mon enfant ,” Sœur Madeleine said, taking me by my shoulders. She seemed suddenly grave, and I grew fearful. “You are young, romantic, but you must be realist. Love has little place in life. A young girl who is Lancastrian must wed with a Lancastrian. If she has no wealth, she must wed for wealth, old, ugly, and toothless though he be; and if she has some land like you, she must wed for more. To love is to open oneself to pain, and in this world filled with troubles, there is trouble enough without love to worsen matters. ’Tis best to see all Yorkists as rapists and murderers. Do you understand, Isabelle? Do