Forever His(87)

“Step careful, there,” she instructed. “I will not have any marks on milord’s fine goods.”

“Yolande, have you the key to this?” Gabrielle asked from the far corner of the chamber. She was kneeling beside a trunk that had been pushed against the far wall.

“Oh, aye, that is a heavy one, is it not? We shall have to take out some of the silver before it can be moved below.” Yolande walked over, looking for the key among the dozens on the iron ring that hung at her waist. “I think this is the one.”

She inserted the small key, opened the trunk’s lock, and lifted the lid.

But silver was not all they found inside.

“My oath, what is that?” Gabrielle asked in wonderment.

“I do not know. I have never seen aught like it in my life.” Yolande picked up the odd object that sat atop the pile of plates and goblets and candlesticks.

It was like a leather pouch, but square in shape, and made of a very strange sort of leather—with a texture like fish scales, in a garish pink color Yolande had never seen before. And it had no drawstrings, but handles. And what looked to be a seam on top, with a scrap of metal attached.

“Why would someone make a pouch and then sew the top closed?” Gabrielle wondered, lifting the bit of metal to examine the seam.

“I do not think we should—”

Even as Yolande pulled the odd pouch away, Gabrielle’s hold on the metal scrap caused the seam to open with a soft ripping sound.

“Fie, Gabrielle. Look at what you have done.”

“Nay, Yolande, I think it is meant to open in that way. Look!” She pulled on the bit of metal again and the seam closed, making the same sound. She opened and closed it again and again. “See how quickly and smoothly it works? How clever!”

“This must be some strange treasure that milord purchased.”

“But why would he place it in here? He has trunks for valuables in his own chamber.”

“Aye,” Yolanda agreed, puzzled. “We keep only dented or damaged pieces of silver in here, the ones not fit for display. And I have not opened the trunk in months. I thought I had the only key.”

“So how could this have come to be in a locked trunk?” Gabrielle toyed with the fastening again. “And what is it?”

She opened it, peeked inside, glanced up at Yolande. Then curiosity got the better of them both. They could not resist examining the contents.

The pouch contained a jumble of wondrous strange things that made them gape in astonishment. There was an elongated square of the same pink leather, wrapped about a neatly trimmed sheaf of the whitest parchment Yolande had ever seen. A hat, made of unfamiliar slippery-shiny material, blue with a red letter on it. A small book, bound in paper rather than leather, with no illuminations—but it had impossibly tiny, neat lettering on its pages. A ring of small, flat objects that almost could have been keys. Two circles of what looked like black glass, joined together, with long, slender side pieces that folded in and out on ingenious tiny hinges. A heavy black box no larger than Yolande’s hand, impregnated with shaped bits of glass, with a strap attached. And a number of things she could not even begin to identify.

At the bottom of the pouch was another elongated square of the same pink leather, fatter than the first. It had a simple gold fastening rather than the seam-that-was-not-a-seam.

Gabrielle picked it up and opened it, eyes alight. Inside, tucked into slits, were neat rows of flat, elongated metal squares—except that they were not metal. They were hard and flexible and shiny, but they were not metal. They had more of that impossibly tiny, neat writing on them. One had a silver square in the corner—with a rainbow trapped inside it!

“Mercy of Mary, Yolande, what are these?”

“I do not think we are meant to be looking at this,” Yolande said, trying to take it from her friend’s hands.

“But look at this one!” Gabrielle pulled out one of the squares, thinner than the rest. It had a miniature portrait in the lower left corner—a miniature smaller than any Yolande had ever seen, of incredible lifelike detail, painted with such skill that it was impossible to see the brush strokes.

And although the painter had made his subject look too pale, and her hair was in disarray, and her garb most unusual, her identity was unmistakable.

It was Lady Celine.





Chapter 17


He did not wish to stop here. He would not be welcome. Nor did he welcome the memories this place held. Gaston slowed Pharaon to a walk, shifting uncomfortably in the saddle as he caught sight of the sprawling chateau that loomed out of the forest an arrow’s flight away. He had planned never to set foot here again. But he had someone other than himself to think of and no other choice for a place to rest.