Dreams of Lilacs

Book 15: de Piaget Family

by Lynn Kurland

Genres: Medieval Romance; Scottish & Highlander; Time Travel Romance

Synopsis

Isabelle de Piaget is determined to elude her overprotective family by means of a hasty escape to France. But instead of making a surprise visit to her brother there, she winds up shipwrecked on the French coast with no memory of who she is or how she came to awaken in the dark and forbidding castle of an equally brooding lord.

Gervase de Seger rescues—very reluctantly—the bedraggled urchin he finds on the road and puts her to work where he can ignore her. Unfortunately, he soon realizes that her brother is an intimidating lord who is going to be absolutely furious when he learns that his beloved sister has been laboring as a scullery maid. Yet Isabelle may be the one who holds the key to solving Gervase’s most pressing problem: that someone has been trying to finish the task of separating him from his title and his lands.

Finding the truth propels Gervase and Isabelle from the buried secrets of half-ruined keeps to the glittering French court, and to the realization that love can blossom in the most perilous circumstances—and in the most unexpected places of the heart . . .

Release date: April 29, 2014

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 336

Sample

Chapter 1

ENGLAND, 1232

ARTANE

Isabelle de Piaget leaned against the wall of her father’s great hall, out of the torchlight, and wondered if it were possible for a woman to hide her almost unbearable urge to panic so her family wouldn’t notice.

It wasn’t something she considered very often. In fact, she supposed she had never once in her score and three years of life considered such a thing. Her life, she would be the first to admit, was so near to perfection as to be indistinguishable from it. Her parents were kind and loving, her siblings very tolerable, and her surroundings magnificent. She had never once been beaten, never not had enough to eat or warm things to wear, never had anything terrible happen to her. Her life had been substantially less pleasant when she’d been sent to market for fathers of potential husbands to look over, but that hadn’t been her family’s fault. In truth, she could have expected nothing less.

What she hadn’t expected, however, was what a messenger had handed her but a handful of hours earlier, a missive she had the very unpleasant feeling would completely change the course of her life—

“You’re thinking very hard.”

She closed her eyes briefly when she realized her twin brother, Miles, was standing next to her. She wondered if she’d said anything aloud in her distress, then decided the best thing to do was attack before Miles thought too much about what she might or might not have said.

“’Tis good for the faculties to engage in robust thought now and again,” she said briskly. “You might give it a try.”

He only leaned back against the wall casually. “I would, but don’t want to hurt myself. You, however, seem to have little fear of the same. Would you care to divulge what strengthens your robust faculties at the moment?”

As if she would trust him with her current thoughts! Miles was a vault when it came to the hearing of secrets guaranteed to produce a swoon in those with a less sturdy stomach, true, but to reveal the contents of the missive she had just received would be too much for his ironclad belly.

She glanced at him to find that he was still studying her with undue scrutiny.

“I wasn’t thinking about anything,” she protested.

He shot her a skeptical look.

“Very well,” she said, desperate to get him to go away. “I was thinking about how much I love my family. Why don’t you go sit with them over by the fire and allow me to think kind thoughts about you as well?”

He shrugged slightly. “You looked as though you might need aid in your latest plot. How could I not offer my services?”

“Plot,” she repeated, wishing she’d been able to add to that what might sound more like a careless laugh than a sick sort of quack better suited to a duck preparing to have a final waddle before winding up on a spit. “I’m not plotting.”

Miles only lifted an eyebrow briefly, then smiled and leaned his head back against the wall. Isabelle attempted to imitate his pose, but the best she could do was wrap her arms around herself and try not to shiver as she looked out at the group of souls clustered there in front of her. She could bring innumerable evenings to mind where the family had either gathered where they were currently in the great hall or in a more intimate setting in their sire’s solar. If anything happened to them . . .

She pulled herself away from that thought before it got away from her and blossomed into a panic she truly couldn’t control. She took a deep breath, then considered her family in a measured, detached fashion.

Robin was there with his wife, Anne, and their two spawn. Amanda was there as well with her husband, Jackson the Fourth, along with their daughter and newborn son, Jackson the Fifth. She herself was there with Miles, of course, which was perhaps rarer than she would have cared for. Miles tended to have itchy feet, which kept him always looking for the next adventure.

Her younger brothers, John and Montgomery, were also there, freshly knighted and looking particularly happy to be sitting sprawled in chairs before the fire. Well, Montgomery looked happy. John looked as if he might be plotting something. Then again, of late John always looked as if he were considering things he shouldn’t have been. Dangerous things.

She understood that, as it happened.

The only ones missing were Nicholas and Jennifer, who were currently at Nicholas’s keep in France, Beauvois, awaiting the birth of their second son. Her mother planned to travel to France soon to be of use to her daughter-in-law. Robin would stay at Artane with his family, no doubt, to see to their father’s affairs, but it was very likely that the rest of the family would find itself in France to celebrate Nicky and Jennifer’s new child. All in close proximity.

An interesting coincidence, that, to be sure.

“You’re wheezing.”

“I spent too much time in the stables today,” Isabelle answered without hesitation. “It’s entirely possible I sniffed too much hay.”

It was also possible that the thought of her family being together in France in the near future was enough to leave her unable to breathe. How much easier life had been when she and her siblings had been young and innocent and heedless of any potential danger. She sighed.

“Why must things change?”

She wished she could take the words back the moment she said them, but it was too late. She looked reluctantly at Miles to find him studying her too closely for her comfort. Indeed, he had turned to face her, leaning his shoulder against the stone.

“Time is a river you cannot stop,” he said. “All you can do is navigate it as best you can.”

“I might have an opinion on where my boat is going.”

He didn’t look at all surprised, which made her wonder if perhaps she should be more discreet about allowing her thoughts to show on her face.

“And are you considering manning the tiller?”

“Of course not,” she said, trying to put just the right amount of firmness in her tone. “I’m just babbling. Besides, where would I go?”

“Perhaps a better question is, where would you go if you could filch a horse and be on your way without having to ask permission?”

“My only destination is the fire across the hall where I might sit with my family and enjoy the evening.”

He didn’t seem inclined to lead the way. “You know I won’t say anything to anyone,” he remarked mildly. “If you cared to unburden yourself.”

Which, she had to concede, was the absolute truth. If there were anyone alive she could trust with her most appalling secrets, it would be Miles. She suppressed the urge to look around her to see if she were being eavesdropped on, paused, then gave in to the impulse. She glanced about her whilst trying not to look as if she were glancing about herself. Then she looked at her brother, just to see if he looked at all queasy.

He didn’t, damn him anyway.

She, however, felt profoundly ill. It wasn’t that she wasn’t used to a fair amount of scheming. She was a de Piaget lass, after all, and her mother and older sister were famous for their plots and schemes, things that were discussed regularly and with great enthusiasm. By the ladies of the hall, at least. Her father tended to close his eyes briefly, breathe carefully a time or two, then find something requiring his immediate attention elsewhere when faced with a retelling of those tales. Her brothers simply shook their heads, as if they were unequal to expressing their admiration for deeds accomplished.

She paused. Well, perhaps that wasn’t entirely accurate. Her eldest brother, Robin, tended to roll his eyes and summarily dismiss any of the truly noteworthy pieces of mischief his female relatives had combined. Her next oldest brother, Nicholas, was wont to simply walk away without comment. Miles generally smiled indulgently, whilst her next youngest brother, John, would never stand still long enough to hear the successful resolution of the adventure. Her youngest brother, Montgomery, was the one who shivered violently at any retelling, though she had the feeling that it was less out of admiration than it was sheer terror. Then again, he had been in the thick of more of their plots than he likely cared to think on.

That was definitely something to remember, should the need for a willing participant in a plot arise.

“Iz?”

She took a deep breath. “I’m thinking about an adventure.”

There, that sounded reasonable. It sounded a far sight more reasonable than telling him that she’d received a missive addressed to her specifically that instructed her to find a way to present herself immediately at a particular abbey in France or her grandparents’ lives would be the forfeit. She’d been so stunned first by the fact that anyone would know her name that she’d hardly had the presence of mind to ask who had engaged the messenger. The man had said he’d simply been handed the missive by someone in York who had paid him very handsomely for his services—

“Does this adventure involve a boat?”

She looked at her brother to find him smiling faintly at her, as if he thought to tease her for her plans. She took a deep breath.

“It might, actually.”

His smile faded abruptly. “You cannot be serious.”

“I thought you were merely listening, not commenting.”

He shut his mouth that had fallen open. “So I was. Go ahead.”

Isabelle suppressed the urge to shift. Miles would notice that and know that she was being slightly less than frank.

“I was thinking I might make a little journey,” she said. “To see a relative or two.” She paused. “Not in England.”

“I see,” he said, and no doubt he did. “Whilst I’m always eager to make a journey, I wonder why—if you’re seeking an adventure not in England—you don’t wait and be about your business with Mother and her enormous guard?” He looked at her pointedly. “She’ll be going to France in a month, as I’m sure you already know.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Isabelle said, waving her hand about in what she hoped was an airy, careless fashion. “I thought it might be interesting to make a journey alone.”

“To France,” he said carefully.

“It has been done before.”

He looked almost . . . unsettled, which for Miles was rather unsettling indeed. “Isabelle,” he said, using her entire name, which for him was also rather unusual, “you cannot simply traipse about the wilds of England and France by yourself.”

“Why not?” she asked. “You do.”

“I am not the stunning youngest daughter of Rhys de Piaget.”

“You aren’t ugly, Miles,” she said. “Not entirely.”

He smiled and even she, who had more than ample memories of just how awful he’d been as a lad of ten, had to admit he was quite possibly the most handsome of her parents’ sons, damn him anyway.

“I have a sword,” he noted.

“I could find a sword.”

“I know how to use mine.”

“And you think I couldn’t manage the same?” she said archly.

He turned, leaned his back against the wall, and rubbed his hands over his face. “Iz, I don’t doubt there are many things you could do if you set your mind to it,” he said with a sigh, “but hefting a sword isn’t one of them.”

“I’ve watched you lads in the lists often enough. And Amanda can use a sword. Why can’t I?”

He shot her a look. “Because you haven’t the temperament of your older sister who would just as soon stab me as to look at me if I vexed her.”

“I won’t need a sword,” she said confidently. “I thought I would go in disguise.”

“Of course you did.”

“As a lad.”

“What else?”

“I don’t think anyone will notice me.”

Miles looked at her, then laughed. “Believe that if you want.”

“A little dirt here, a smudge there, and voilà,” she said firmly. “A lad too uninteresting to bother with.”

He shook his head. “I imagine it would take a bit more than dirt to hide who you are to any but the most witless of men, but we’ll argue that point later. I still don’t understand why you can’t simply wait for Mother and go in her company.”

“I need an adventure.”

“Then cast caution to the wind and ride to the shore when it threatens rain.”

She would have glared at him, but the missive she’d shoved down the front of her gown was burning her like a handful of live coals. If she didn’t do what she’d been instructed to do, her entire family would die. Wasn’t that what had been said? She was to present herself in France, at the abbey at Caours, and not tell anyone why she was doing so. Her family would perish, or so the missive said, if any but she arrived. Details about her parents and siblings had been provided, details that could have only come from someone who had either observed her family closely or knew someone who had.

She looked down her nose at her brother. “I require a journey of slightly more substance than a trip to the shore. And I have it very well thought out, thank you very much.”

His mouth worked for a moment or two, then he resorted to blinking at her as if he’d never seen her before. “But why?”

Well, that was something at least that she absolutely couldn’t tell him. She cast about for something plausible to say, which wasn’t all that difficult. The truth was, she had been longing to have a change of locale for some time, for very particular reasons. She turned to face him.

“Because I’m tired of being merely the one who’s left.”

He frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s what they call me,” she said. “The fathers who come here looking for a wife for their sons. They come for Amanda, apparently unable to reconcile themselves to the fact that she’s been wed for four years. Once they can no longer deny that Amanda is not for sale, they look around in consternation. After that—without fail—they announce that they’ll settle for the one who’s left.” She lifted her chin. “They don’t even know my name.”

He winced. “Oh, Iz—”

“And that, Miles, is why I want to make a journey on my own. So someone at some point in the future will know my name, even if it’s merely to associate it with an ill-advised adventure.”

He reached out, slung his arm around her shoulders, and pulled her into a quick embrace. Then he pulled away, put both hands on her shoulders, and looked at her seriously.

“The ones who matter know who you are.”

“Unfortunately, they are not the ones presenting themselves at the gates and offering to take my dowry.”

“Father isn’t forcing you to wed, is he?” Miles asked.

“You know he isn’t, but that hardly matters. I’m a score and three. Too old to be home and a burden to my parents.”

He shot her a look of disbelief. “You can’t believe they feel that way.”

“I feel that way.” She shrugged his hands off her shoulders and wrapped her arms around herself. “I know I’ll have to wed eventually, and I suppose I must needs wed someone who doesn’t know my name, but perhaps I could have at least a few days to myself.” She looked at him. “Before I give up my freedom.”

He shook his head. “I’m enormously glad I’m not a woman.”

“So am I. I wouldn’t be able to filch your clothes otherwise.”

He scowled at her briefly, then laughed apparently in spite of himself. “My clothes are far too big for you. I think even Montgomery’s wouldn’t fit you.”

“Which is why I set things of his aside several years ago.”

“You, Isabelle de Piaget, are a remarkable woman.”

“Desperate, rather.” She looked at him. “You won’t give me away, will you?”

He sighed deeply. “Fool that I am, nay. But,” he added, suddenly serious, “I will insist on coming with you.”

“But—”

“I must away to Wyckham for a day or two to see to business for Nick, but I will return as quickly as possible. I insist that you wait for me, then I will take you south myself. Without a guard—well, not much of one at any rate—and we’ll both go as a pair of lads. I guarantee you’ll have adventure enough.”

It was an offer she never would have expected and knew she shouldn’t spurn.

If only—

“Very well,” she said, wondering how much time she would need to spend in the chapel, repenting of her lies, by the end of her quest. “I’ll wait for you.”

“Vow it,” he insisted, “or I march across the floor and tell Father all right now.” He held out his hand. “Vow it.”

She sighed, rolled her eyes, then linked thumbs with him as they’d been doing since they were small. Foolish, perhaps, but it had been their sealing of secret bargains from the time they’d first hit upon the idea whilst about the goodly work of repaying Robin for some indignity perpetrated on their very young selves.

“Satisfied?” she muttered.

“I suppose I have no reason not to be,” he said, looking at her closely, “though I daresay your heart wasn’t in that last bit.”

“I’m tired.”

“Good,” he said. “Stay tired until I return. I’ll leave before dawn tomorrow, then return as quickly as I may.” He kissed her forehead, then put his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t do anything foolish, Iz. I’m in earnest.”

“Me?” she said, finding that she couldn’t put a decent amount of scoffing in her tone. “Why would I do anything foolish?”

He pursed his lips, then released her and walked away. She resumed her place against the wall and watched him go. Men. Impossible creatures who were, she had to admit, quite often baffled by things they couldn’t possibly understand, such as the necessity of leaving on a quest to save one’s family.

She could only hope Miles wouldn’t kill her when he found her after realizing she had sailed for France without him.

 • • • 

Four days later, she stood in an inn, fully prepared to take a ship to France at dusk, and hoped that she hadn’t killed a different brother.

Montgomery lay at her feet, senseless and drooling.

It was her doing, of course. After Miles and John had left for Wyckham, she had convinced him to come south with her by telling her father she wished to see her mother’s mother, Joanna of Segrave, before she spent the summer in France aiding Jennifer with her new babe. She and Montgomery had been sent with a large guard, which she hadn’t considered an impediment to her plans. Surely no one would notice a lad slipping out the window and trotting off to the docks by way of the garden, would one?

She had presented her true plan to Montgomery and been utterly unsurprised by his unwillingness to participate in it. She had walked over to the window to rethink her strategy only to have Fate step in and offer aid where she’d least expected it.

Montgomery, always susceptible to even the possibility of feminine tears, had sighed deeply, then approached to see how she fared, no doubt thinking that she was on the verge of a decent bout of the former. He had apparently seen something on the floor he’d assumed was hers and bent to retrieve it.

She had turned, then spotted something herself, which was the trajectory Montgomery’s head would take when he straightened, and how easing the shutters open just a bit more might lead to an abrupt encounter for her very chivalrous if not stubborn brother. Her father had, as it happened, insisted she learn to cipher and do the odd calculation right along with her siblings. Who could have predicted it might serve her at just the moment when her straits were most dire?

She had swung the shutter open, shrieked for her brother to look out the window, then watched as he had caught the top of his head against the wood. He had gasped out a particularly unknightlike curse, fallen to his knees, then continued on his way down. She supposed it could be debated later, but she’d been fairly sure that hitting his head on the edge of a trunk on his way to the floor had contributed substantially to his state of senselessness.

Moving him had been impossible, so she’d draped her gown over his inert, manly form, then arranged her hair she’d cut off and fashioned into a makeshift wig over his head.

All of which had left her where she was, standing near the window and preparing to make her escape.

Montgomery groaned, then opened his eyes and looked at her blearily.

“Iz?”

She leaned over and patted his head. “Sleep, brother. You’re very tired.”

He frowned, but he apparently couldn’t fight the relentless closing of his eyelids. He began to snore.

She supposed he would survive.

She stood, had a final look at Montgomery to make sure he was still alive, then took her courage in hand and slipped out the window.

She carefully tiptoed along the roof of the floor below. It was more difficult than she’d suspected it would be, but she pressed on. She had spent her fair share of time listening breathlessly to her brothers’ most exciting tales, most of which had seemed to include daring escapes, so she’d known what to expect. A pity she hadn’t spent just as much time actually sliding down slippery wooden roofs and thereafter hanging from the edge of them as she had listening to tales recounting that sort of thing.

She wasn’t altogether certain she hadn’t made an unwholesome noise of some sort, but that couldn’t be helped. She looked below her, saw that only a well-rotting compost pile lay there, and let go of wood that seemed quite content to see the last of her. She landed ungracefully—flat on her back, actually—but quickly scrambled up to her feet. She brushed her cloak off, rather wished she hadn’t cut her hair with her dagger upstairs so it could have prevented a few things she didn’t care to identify winding up down her back, then put her shoulders back and continued on her way.

The streets were rather more populous than she would have expected, but ’twas a port town after all and there were seamen coming and going about what she assumed was their usual business. She walked down the way quickly, as if she were truly in a great hurry to be off and doing. She supposed the manly swagger could be saved for another time, when she had more experience with feigning an identity and a sex not her own.

The ship she’d selected for her journey was where she’d seen it earlier in the day, but it was obviously preparing to make sail. Isabelle felt a thrill of something go through her. It wasn’t fear, surely. It was excitement mixed with purpose. She would have preferred that excitement come with less of a desire to heave what little supper she’d managed earlier onto the nearest empty spot, but she supposed she would learn to manage that in time as well.

She looked about her for the only part of her plan she supposed Miles would have approved of: Arthur of Harwych, her chosen companion on the voyage south. She supposed she might pay a price eventually for ruthlessly using the affection of a would-be suitor for her own purposes, but she would pay that price later. She hadn’t been foolish enough to think she should cross the seas without someone to guard her back. Perhaps it was sheer good fortune that Arthur had appeared at her father’s gates—and only at the gates given that he was never allowed inside—the morning Miles had left for Wyckham. A quick conversation with him out of earshot of her father’s guards had resulted in his promise to meet her in her current locale and accompany her to France. He would likely spend more of the journey puking over the railing than being of any use to her, but that couldn’t be helped.

She supposed at some point she would need to tell him what she was about, but her plan was to simply insist that he return on the same boat to England and tell her family that she was safe. She had no doubt he would do whatever she asked of him, poor lad.

Unfortunately, at the moment it looked as if he wouldn’t be doing anything at all for her given that he was nowhere to be found. She muttered a curse under her breath. If the man arrived on time to his own burying, she would be thoroughly surprised. Obviously, she would have to see to her business on her own. She had no other choice.

She saw the captain standing on the dock, looking over his craft with a critical eye. He bellowed an order or two, then folded his beefy arms over his chest and frowned fiercely as he watched those orders be carried out without hesitation. A man not to be trifled with, obviously.

But he was no doubt a businessman and would be just as glad as the next man for a bit of gold in his purse. She walked up to him as if she had every right to, then stopped and waited for him to acknowledge her. She cleared her throat for good measure, then folded her arms over her chest as she’d watched her brother Robin do countless times when preparing to intimidate those less intimidating than himself.

The captain turned his head and looked at her with one eyebrow raised. “Aye, lad?”

“I seek passage,” Isabelle said in her manliest tones. “I’ve the coin to pay for it.”

“Let me see.”

She had a handful of gold sovereigns in a small sack she’d kept separate from the bulk of her funds, lest she reveal all she had at once and find herself without it. She held the sack up where the captain could see it.

“I’ll open it on deck,” she said firmly.

He scowled at her. “You’d best be sure those aren’t rocks or you’ll be swimming back to shore.”

“I’m sure.”

The captain nodded briskly toward his ship. “Keep your sword loose in its sheath and stay out of the way,” he advised. “Oy, there, damn ye, Ralf! I said lash that bloody barrel to the larboard side, ye fool!”

Isabelle hurried up the gangplank whilst the offer still stood, handed the captain her gold once she was on board, then watched him count it. He nodded shortly, pocketed the coins, then turned to do a bit more shouting.

She had to admit that there was a moment or two as the ropes were being hauled back onto the ship when she wondered if she’d made a terrible mistake.

Those moments passed quickly enough. She stayed out of the way and concentrated on keeping her hood up around her face. Not a lock of her hair reached past her chin, her face was liberally covered in soot, and she had no bloody choice but to present herself at her grandmother’s abbey in France and satisfy whoever it was who had summoned her.

And hope he didn’t kill her for her trouble.

She contemplated that for quite some time, until she could no longer see even the torchlight from the shore and suspected they were fairly far out to sea. The moon was useful enough, she supposed, though even it looked as if it might soon be obscured by clouds.

She jumped a little when she realized the captain was standing next to her. She smiled, then realized she was a lad and likely should have been scowling, so she attempted that. The captain merely pursed his lips.

“Heard we’ve a bit of a blow coming our way,” he said mildly.

“Indeed?” Isabelle asked, then she coughed and attempted a response that sounded less like a squeak. “I suspected as much.”

“You’re welcome to shelter in my poor quarters if you like, my lady.”

She looked at him quickly, but he was only watching her with an assessing gaze. She supposed she could have protested a bit more, but there was little poin