When Lightning Strikes (8 page)

Chapter Eight

Five miles from the Gypsy camp.

Navarre de Lyonne’s sensuous mouth curved into a smile as he watched the tawny haired girl running up the hill. Melissande was a beauty, indeed. Gently raised, she was tall, lithe and pale, with golden eyes and long curls to match. Theirs had been the perfect union of the wealth and titles of their families bringing more power to both. His parents had arranged the marriage without his consent and he remembered the day well.

He had been in the stable fornicating with the smithy’s luscious blond daughter when he heard Millicent, the housemaid’s screeching voice calling out to him.

“Navaaaaare!
Blast ye, Navarre! Yer sire wishes ta see ya in the solar, so if yer in the stables again pokin’ one o’ the townfolk’s girls, leave off ‘nd git yer arse out here!”

He groaned in anger at her interruption. What in God’s name did his father want now? It was always something.
Whether it was tending to the horses, or weaponry training or learning to attend to official matters – none of it made a damned bit of difference to him at the moment.

He hurriedly finished heaving atop the girl and swept his body off her and out of the stable seemingly in one swift movement without so much as a backward glance. He straightened his shirt and brushed his hair back, slowing his pace as he entered the solar, where his father Lord Thomas would be waiting as always.

“Navarre.” His father’s voice was rich and commanding. “We need to talk.”

“Talk of what, father?”

“Navarre, your mother and I have decided it is time for you to marry.”

“Marry? I have no wish to marry yet. I am still young and have many…well…let us
say I greatly enjoy my many dalliances with the peasants.”

“And that need not stop, my son. But you have duties here that must be fulfilled and taking a wife and producing heirs to carry on these lands and title is one of them.”

“Who, then?” Navarre flinched as he asked his father the question, hoping beyond all hope that it wouldn’t be Lady Elsmeth of Bardmoor. Her dowry was unsurpassed but she was as ugly as the sins of Mephistopheles himself. Her face was pocked and one eye was slightly crossed. He cringed just thinking of it.

Thomas’s voice shook him from the less than appealing picture.

“We have secured a promise of union with the Lady Melissande of the House of Lioncourt. She is quite lovely and well dowered. She has passed nineteen winters and is trained well in the ways of a chatalaine.”

Melissande
. He recalled seeing her once or twice at one of the meetings between their fathers. She was quite beautiful. Tall, slender with long curls and golden eyes. She would make a fine wife. He wondered how well she would be trained in the sensual arts. He would never be faithful to her of course, but at least if he had to wed her, he hoped she wouldn’t be one of those gently bred, simpering virgins in the marriage bed. Ah well. He would train her to serve him well if she was. He smiled at the thought. Yes, he would wed her as his father wished.

The wedding took place a fortnight later and Melissande had proven to be exactly as he had hoped. It wasn’t hard to control her. And he did whatever was necessary to gain her trust and that of her family until the time came to take of what should be rightfully his.

And now in the present, as long as he lived in wealth and title, he didn’t really care how he came about it.  He was well versed in affairs of the nobles but his father was much too honest in his dealings for his taste, and quite frankly he could hardly wait until the old man died and left him this estate to add to that of the one he now possessed.  After all he was the only heir of Lord Thomas de Lyonne. Thomas was considered one of the finest knights in the realm. He had won his land and titles fairly and acquired even more lands in France through his marriage to Navarre’s mother Marie d’Lacre. And for as long as he could remember, Navarre had been putting his plans into action to ensure that nothing would keep him from acquiring them.

Oh, he knew of that gypsy bastard
Dominic du Barbaronne,
the son of some dark-skinned leman that Thomas had taken up with twenty-eight winters before, but he posed no threat to his title or his lands. His mother, Marie had seen to that. Shrewish as she was, she had artfully ensured that Navarre,
her
son, would be the
only
heir of Thomas’s estate.

Thomas could have chosen to simply have a discreet little dalliance, but instead he chose to have a long and continuing affair even going so far as to announce his love for the woman to Marie when she demanded that he cease the liason. Marie was a selfish and ruthless witch but as long as she was secure in her position, Navarre would remain secure in his own as Thomas’s legitimate heir. 

His mind drifted back in time to when he had seen but five winters. He remembered the heated words and hushed whispers coming from his father’s chambers on the night he first learned of his father’s dalliance with the woman named Mara du Barbaronne.

“Thomas, I demand that you leave off seeing that dark-skinned whore. How could you shame me so? She is but a peasant! A gypsien! I can understand a man’s carnal needs. But it should not be a continuing affair. She will begin to think she is more than the low-born that she is!”

“Marie. We will speak of this no more. Since Navarre’s conception, you have scarcely partaken of the marriage bed with me. You constantly find reasons to escape your wifely duties. You seem to have little trouble belittling me at every turn and ceaselessly emptying our coffers with your spending.”

Marie’s eyes widened with outrage then narrowed with resentment. She opened her mouth to speak, but he raised a hand to silence her.

“Mara has a soul that is kindred to my own. She highly enjoys the duties you seem to have an aversion for. She talks with me. She loves me for who I am…a man. Not a noble. I have offered her no lands, no title and still she is loyal. You on the other hand have a love for nothing except for money and your own well-being. And when was the last time you spent any time with our son? It is a wonder he even knows you are his mother.”

Marie slapped him hard.

Navarre wanted to step forward from the shadows and make them stop. But he knew that at his small age and size it was quite useless. And yet, somehow, his father’s words rang true.

When was the last time Marie had spent any time with him? There was always nanny or cook or tutor to do things with.
To bathe him. To read to him. To put him to bed at night. When was the last time Marie had put her arms around him? He was having trouble remembering. Surely it had been just this week. Or had it?

Thomas continued. “Marie, it saddens me that you are as you are. Had I known I would have never agreed to our
union.”

Marie raised her chin in defiance.

“Had my family known of you and your indiscriminate ways, they would not have wed me to such a cretin!”

“Enough.” Thomas sighed. “There is one more thing. Mara carries my child.”

Marie’s jaw dropped and a moment later she rushed at him scratching and hitting him. “I despise you with all of my soul, you bastard!”

Thomas easily fended off her attack.

“Yes, I am well aware of that. That is why circumstances are as they are. You know the Holy Roman court will not grant us a divorce or an annulment.”

In a few moments, Marie regained her composure realizing that her strength was no match for his. His iron grip on her wrists loosened. A tender look came over his face for a moment.

“Marie. There might still be hope for us. It does not have to be this way, you know. I still have feelings in my heart for you. I always have. I have always hoped that you would somehow feel something if I just allowed you to spend our money and do as you pleased. I thought I could make you happy enough to love me somehow.”

“I will never love you. You should have been a low-born, just as that whore you sleep with,” she spat out through gritted teeth.

Thomas tried to pull her to him to ease her pain and his own and somehow try to open the way to a truce but she pushed him away.

“Thomas, I will never, ever
forgive you for this. I suppose now you will name your bastard as one of your heirs since you love this woman? And what of my son? Our son, Navarre.”

“Marie, Navarre will always be my first-born and legitimate heir. And what if I were to leave off in my relationship with Mara? Can we start over and love again? I am willing to do this if you are.”

Marie sneered at him. “Perhaps we could. But only if you were to agree to put the gypsy woman to death…and the bastard that grows within her belly along with her.”

Marie didn’t mean the words…at least not the part about starting over.
But she would enjoy watching the whore and her babe die.

Thomas’s features took on a look of horror at his wife’s callous and evil words. How could she so easily wish death upon an unborn babe? Even under the circumstances such intentions were inexcusable. Surely it was the working of demons within her black heart and he could not look upon her with less than disdain in that moment.

He spoke again. “I will NOT forsake Mara’s child. I do love her and I will take care of them in secret if I must.”

“Very well then.
What good will it do me to fight you? You will simply have your own way no matter,” she sneered. She would make him pay somehow. She had secrets of her own.

Navarre had watched her from the shadows as she slipped from the room with an angry swoosh of her skirts. He slid
back around the corner of the doorsill to his room and slid down the door as he wiped the tears from his face.

Navarre’s mind snapped into the present. The memories were painful as was the knowledge that his father had given his love, the love that should have been theirs, to that gypsy whore and her bastard child. But that wasn’t the whole of it.

One day, two years after the night he had heard his father and mother fighting in the chamber he had crept into his mother’s private quarters and discovered a secret place in the wall where she had kept a diary. Written in there he found out just what a shrewish and conniving creature she really was. It was all there. The numerous affairs, the spending, the alliances she had made to try to get at least some of Thomas’s holdings transferred to her own name. None of it surprised him, actually. He knew she was a very driven woman who would see to it that she was never left without wealth and more importantly power. He was beginning to learn from her. She always got exactly as she wished and flawlessly manipulated those around her to her own gain.

Perhaps he could do the same. Day after day, he had stolen into the chamber reading through the diary then carefully replacing it in its exact place behind the brick in the wall.

But one afternoon he was joyfully reading about one of her trysts and he came across the words that would chill his blood.

“Today I had another fulfilling romp with Jonathan. In all of the seven years we have been dallying he has never been better.
As good in fact as that first night. A night I will never forget in more ways than one, since I conceived! Thomas will never know of course, that our son Navarre is not ‘our’ son at all! How I loathed sleeping with Thomas after I knew I was with Jonathan’s child, but it was necessary in order to dupe him into believing that I carried his seed both to save my own neck from the gallows and to ensure that I would continue to live in the lavish way that we have grown accustomed to.

Jonathan is a good roll in the sheets, but he will never have the money and title that Thomas does. It must be kept secret as are the rest of them. Though my affairs have been many, I
have never shamed anyone. But Thomas has humiliated me in front of our household. And he will pay for his dalliance with the gypsy whore.

Even now I have duped him into believing that I love him again. He is a fool and would do anything to make all as it should be. He has left off seeing her and I have convinced him that it is best for him to exclude that bastard child Dominic from his life and of course his will. My son Navarre will inherit all! Little does that fool Thomas know that his estate and all he has worked for will fall to one who is not even of his bloodline. Revenge is most sweet.

So at the tender age of seven winters amid all the other treachery in his household, he had discovered that he was not the first born, legitimate son of Thomas. He was a bastard. No better than Mara’s son. But, the only important detail was that Mara’s son was the first-born and in fact the only-born son of Thomas! From that moment on, a deep-rooted hatred ate away at Navarre’s soul. He would one day seek out the Gypsy Dominic du Barbaronne and kill him. But not before making him suffer.

And so the years passed and as he grew into a young man, Navarre spent his years working out his anger and frustration on the killing fields, just as his father had. He was a seasoned warrior and the Gypsy would be no match for him when the time came. Just like his mother, he had secrets and plans for them all.

First he would acquire Melissande’s interest in her family’s wealth in full. Then he would find a way to hasten his father’s demise. Then he would seek out that bastard Dominic and kill him so that he could never pose any threat to his position. The land, the titles…everything would be his. And if Marie threatened him in any way, he would see to it that she was put out of her misery as well.