Page 330 of Historical Hotties
Gisella was already on the move, looking dirty and disheveled in her silver tunic and hose. “I will hear myself,” she insisted. “Come along, now, do not lag behind.”
Gannon and Lucas hurried after her as she practically ran down the corridor, past the elaborate sconces with their oil lamps that burned black and sooty up to the painted ceiling, until they came to the east wing where the extravagant solar was located.
As they approached, they could hear voices emitting from inside the room and Lady Gloucester’s most clearly. Her voice was high-pitched and strained. Gisella nearly bolted into the room, eager to be told she had a reprieve from marrying thegreat and terrible Beast. When all eyes in the room turned to her and her filthy costume, Lady Gloucester appeared horrified.
“Gisella!” she exclaimed. “What has happened to your clothing?”
Gisella looked down at herself, trying not to feel too self-conscious. “There was an accident, my lady,” she said. “The party has gone quite wrong and my horse ran off. But I am well enough to attend you. I am told that I have been summoned?”
Lady Gloucester was still quite drunk. All she seemed to be able to focus on was the comment about her party. “What has happened to my affair?”
Gisella was trying not to upset Lady Gloucester because the woman was easily disturbed. “The horse must have spooked,” she said. “Do you recall that I suggested we not use him for the entertainment? He is quite skittish. I am not exactly sure what happened because I fell to the floor. I did not see all of it.”
Lady Gloucester’s eyes widened and she was up in arms. “My entertainment!” she gasped, running for the door as much as her unsteady legs would take her. “I must see to my guests! Oh, the anguish of it all! It was so perfect, so very perfect!”
She was almost out of the door when her husband called to her. “Wife!” he said. “The banquet will wait. You have a wedding to attend!”
Lady Gloucester was in tears as she paused in the doorway, slouching against the doorjamb in her fine dress with its bejeweled collar. She was too drunk to care much about anything other than her ruined party. She began to carry on as if she had just lost a child, for Lady Gloucester was dramatic and passionate at best.
“Gisella,” she sobbed. “You will marry de Russe and that will be the end of it, do you hear? And your horse… he is your horse and now he has ruined my party and possibly my reputation. It isallyourfault, you and your silly beast. Marry de Russe and leave Bella Court. I do not want you here any longer!”
Gisella was stricken. “But…!” she gasped. “I did not…!”
Lady Gloucester cut her off. “Go,” she screeched. “Marry de Russe and be gone from my sight!”
With that, she fled the solar, reducing Gisella to tears for more reasons than one. It was evident that her marriage to de Russe would go through as planned but, more than that, a woman she admired greatly and who had taught her much was essentially throwing her from the only home she had known for the past two years. She was devastated to lose that relationship. She had been so very happy at Bella Court.
So she stood there and tried very hard not to sob openly, wiping at her cheeks as the tears spilled over and ignoring everyone in the room, including her brother. She felt ashamed, lost, and sickened at the course her future was about to take. Marrying a warlord who was a stranger to her, a man with a plethora of shameful rumors about him spreading throughout London like a plague. She would be pulled into that plague, too, and the thought made her nauseous.
What were her parents going to say? How would they react to their daughter being wed to man rumored to have deflowered the Maid? And her father… he was a knight so he knew the vocation and he knew the character of the men who served. He knew their hearts. Gloucester had said her father had approved of this match but she wondered if her father really knew much about de Russe other than Gloucester’s glowing review. Of course the man would speak well of him De Russe did the Crown’s bidding, no matter what the cost. He was their trained dog, their muscle and might. He was their Beast.
Now, he was hers.
CHAPTER FIVE
It was verylate by the time Gisella was packed and ready to leave Bella Court. The moon hung low over the Thames, a fat, yellow thing glistening off the water, as Gisella moved about in the well-appointed chamber she shared with four other young women, all wards of Lady Gloucester. Two of those young women were with Lady Gloucester at this moment, attempting to calm her, while the third young lady helped Gisella pack. The mood of the chamber was somber as the women moved about, packing two large cases and one smaller capcase.
“She did not mean what she said, Gigi,” Lady Sparrow Summerlin spoke softly as she carefully packed two bars of white, lumpy soap that smelled of lemons. “She was drunk. You know she will not remember what she said and by morning will be wondering where you are. You are her favorite. You know that. Are you sure you must leave?”
Gisella nodded faintly, glancing at her petite, very lovely friend with the glorious blond hair. “Aye,” she replied. “She ordered me away and then Gloucester brought in his priest to perform the marriage sacrament. You know that priest, the onewho beats the acolytes and no one does anything about it. He is a very nasty man and I dislike him intensely.”
Sparrow nodded as she finished tucking the soap into the smaller capcase. “Father Joseph of Orange,” she said. “I know him. He really performed the marriage sacrament?”
Gisella thought back to the very odd, very swift marriage ceremony conducted in Gloucester’s solar with those pounded silver suns on the ceiling smiling down at them. Smelling of horse dung and dressed in a torn costume, she was forced to stand next to de Russe, who smelled unwashed himself, as the priest with the stained robes and big, bulbous nose performed the marriage mass.
It had been a quick, almost callous mass, nothing like the weddings she had attended in the past and certainly not like a wedding she had hoped for herself. There had been no meaning to it, no emotion. Nothing about it had been personal or spiritual and when it was over, she was what she never wanted to be. She was Lady de Russe.
All she could manage to feel at that moment was empty. No joy, no pleasure. Somehow, something had been stripped away from her and she had become something, and someone, she did not want. She was the wife of a great warlord, something she had resisted until the bitter end. Gloucester had congratulated her before leaving the solar with his priest, leaving her standing there in awkward silence with her new husband and his two knights, one of which was her brother.
De Russe had barely spoken a word to her before turning her over to her brother as he fled with his other knight, leaving the two siblings standing alone in that cold silver room with the cold silver suns. That which they had both feared had come to pass but there was no use talking about it. It was done.
Therefore, Gannon had been kind but businesslike, escorting his sister to her shared chamber and instructing her to batheand pack. He gave her a couple of hours and told her he would be back for her by midnight. Now, that hour was swiftly approaching and Gisella was struggling to pack even with Sparrow’s considerable help. When this should have been the most exciting night of her life, all she could feel was dread.
“Gigi?” Sparrow asked softly. “Did you hear me? Did the priest really perform the marriage mass?”
Gisella realized she hadn’t answered her friend the first time, lost in her recollections of the evening as she was. After a moment, she nodded.
“He did,” she said, sounding depressed. “I am now Lady de Russe.”
