Secret to be Shared

CHAPTER 7: The Secret to be Shared

Nicolas refused to allow me to leave my bed all the rest of that afternoon. It appeared later that he had ordered Madeline to excuse the both of us from supper that evening, and to send two trays up to my rooms. He left the doors of my rooms open in order to keep the gossip at bay. He sat in a chair next to my bed, one of his hands always near one of my own. It was as he was clearing away our supper trays that he saw the corner of Lady de Chagny’s journal under my pillow.

“What do you have there, Emma?” he asked, insisting on using the horrid nickname my grandmother gave me as a child. I was disgusted with myself for telling him about it over supper. He reached out and pulled the journal toward him.

“A great secret,” I said, snatching the journal back from him. I held it close to my heart, wishing with all my heart that I could turn the clock back in order to hide it from his eyes. “I can show it to no one.”

He turned his dark eyes on me and I felt my heart flutter and drop. “A secret, then,” Nicolas whispered. “About Lady de Chagny no doubt. I understand.”

He smiled reassuringly at me and laid his hand atop my own. I felt the soft leather of the journal beneath the fingers of one hand and the warm roughness of Nicolas Lancaster’s skin on the other. My eyes raked over his face, taking in the tanned skin of his face and the emerging shadow of whiskers, as he looked up at the portrait of Queen Anne.

“Nicolas,” I whispered, drawing his attention back to me. “I have sworn to you to share anything of interest that I found of the Lady de Chagny, and I will honor that vow. But now you must swear to me that you will breath a word of what I tell you to no one. This journal and whatever is written inside must be kept an utmost secret. Do you swear to me?”

“I would swear an oath to the devil himself if you asked me to,” he replied in a theatrical voice. He drew my hand to his lips and kissed my palm, the stubble on his face scratching delightfully against my skin. “I will take it to the grave, Emma, I swear it.”

I looked down into his upturned face, taken aback at how youthful and handsome he appeared as the evening light filtered through the curtains and bathed him in an angelic glow. Opening the journal and finding the last entry I had read, I laid in on the bed in front of Nicolas. “Read it aloud,” I commanded gently. I placed my fingertip on the beginning of the entry. “And start here, if you please.”

Taking up the journal and holding his place with his finger, Nicolas stood from the chair by the bed and climbed up beside me. He leaned back against the pillows and drew me toward him with his arm around my shoulders. Settling the journal open in his lap, he began to read.

February 1902

I have settled into life in the city, though I find myself weeping at night for my little life in the country. Rachel and I are forever following after Elizabeth and her servant girl, learning to navigate the markets and shops of Orleans. The monument to St. Joan stands in front of the church, bedecked with flowers. The priest came out to bid us welcome, and drew us into the sanctuary to hear Mass. I could not plead my case to be spared, as both Rachel and my sister-in-law are greatly pious.

Nicolas stopped reading for a moment and took a sip of wine from the glass by the bed. “There is nothing more until May,” he said, flipping the pages idly.

I nodded, resting my head against his shoulder. “Please, read more.”

May 1902

Elizabeth seems to grow fatter each day. She is in her eighth month by her reckoning, and the child moves within her without ceasing. She speaks of nothing but the child, and I am sick with it. My brother has begged me to be with her when the child comes, as she has no knowledge of what must be done. The man has no compassion for me in my state. He brings me to his house where he is with the woman he loves that is bearing his child. Yet I am to sit peaceably by and deliver their child when I have lost both my children and my husband. I am certainly cursed of God!

Nicolas closed the journal and tucked it back beneath my pillow. The sun had set outside of my window and a beautiful twilight of stars appeared. I was of two minds, wrapped so snugly in my bed. My heart ached for Marguerite, being exiled to her brother’s home and forced to deliver his child while she herself was all but barren. And yet I was content, my head resting against Nicolas’s shoulder, his arm around me, his cheek pressed against the top of my head.

“I feel so horribly sad for her,” I whispered against the darkness. “What it must have cost for her to go to her brother and tend to is wife.”

Nicolas exhaled sharply, rustling my hair. “We must all sacrifice something in our lives, Emma. The Lady was called upon to give too much, her husband to pneumonia at his country’s service, her children to still birth and fever. I am not surprised she was bitter. I do not grudge her from leaving the church.”

I felt the tears begin to burn again and fought desperately to keep them hidden. “Sleep, Emma,” he said, sliding from the bed and tucking me in like a child. “I will come see you in the morning.”

“Nicolas… the journal,” I said softly. “You won’t…”

He smiled his charming smile that made his eyes sparkle. “Not a word, my little queen. I’ll not breathe a word.”

Copyright © 2008 The Mistress Snape