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Chapter Thirty-Seven

Isobella stared at the man who had held her captive beneath the chapel. With his pretty face and black priest’s robes, it would be easy to mistake him for a good man. Until she looked into his eyes. There was cruelty there, a rabidness. A feral dog with a Labrador exterior to lure people in. He knew what she was, but she had his measure. As did the Langeais wolves. So did Lothair.

Lothair. Comte de Anjou. Also in black. There was a hardness to him, a sharpness to his gaze that sliced through her as surely as if he’d wielded a blade. With his lips compressed into a thin line, and the golden dragon embroidered across his black surcoat spewing fire, he sat on his throne that was not a throne, lording it over them all. This was a man who wore command like battle armor. Who would not tolerate anything less than absolute obedience. A man to fear.

If she wasn’t one hundred percent certain he wasn’t one of the Langeais wolves, Isobella would have pegged him as a werewolf. An alpha, too. She didn’t need Stef’s warning to know he was bad news. Yet, if she had to choose, cast her fate at the feet of one of them, she would choose Lothair. Though the choice might not be hers. Not with the way Lothair had looked at her down by the gate.

“What is the meaning of this?” Lothair shrugged. “My dear Faucher, my lovely wife, Marguerite, has been found guilty of insurrection, infidelity, colluding with a witch and a werewolf.” He leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands in his lap. “Did you know that, Faucher?” His grin was all teeth and no warmth. Lothair was a shark circling in for a kill. “A werewolf. They do exist, so I believe. As do witches.” He turned to Gaharet. “Is there a law against that? Colluding with supernatural beings?”

Gaharet considered it. “No. I do not think so. However, believing in a powerful entity other than the one true God could be considered an act of heresy.”

“Hmm.” Lothair tapped his chin. “Heresy? I could work with that.”

“A witch?” Faucher pointed at Isobella. “This witch? Or the other one. The one with two different colored eyes that was also stolen from my custody?” He paced in front of them, like a lawyer in a courtroom drama, confident, calm, not the least perturbed by Lothair’s claims. “If anyone is to be charged with heresy”—Faucher waved his hand, encompassing all the Langeais wolves and Isobella—“it is them.” There was a smugness to Faucher’s smile, as though he held all the cards. “They have deceived you, Mon Seigneur Comte. It is not Marguerite who has defied the laws, the commandments of God. She is but his servant in this. Aiding me to rout out this…evil that has infected your county.”

He stopped pacing and faced Lothair with a triumphant smile. “Let me deal with them. All of them. As is my duty as an eveque.” His smile slipped, replaced with something cold and determined. “As is my right.”

“Your right?”

There was a deceptive softness to Lothair’s voice. Perhaps it was her newly enhanced senses, but the thread of steel, the undercurrent of danger that rolled off the comte was difficult to miss. It had no effect on Faucher.

“My right,” affirmed Faucher. “Heresy, as you would well know, is under the jurisdiction of the church.”

The separation of church and state—long contested, still contested in the twenty-first century. She didn’t think Lothair was the type of man to bow to anything, but this could be a line he wouldn’t cross.

Lothair rapped his fingers on the arm of the chair, from his pinky through to his index finger. Over and over, staring at his hand, lost in thought. “Your reputation in these matters does precede you. Word is you are quite skilled.”

Was Lothair about to betray them? Hand her over to him?

Faucher’s smile would have looked at home on a hyena. He was all but panting with the anticipation of his triumph.

“But I believe you have been misled. The woman you are looking for is not in this room, but she is in my county. A powerful witch. A woman of great evil. Killed her own son, Didier. Boiled him alive from the inside out, I have heard. She used a magic fog to conceal the chevaliers of House Allard, and she attacked my vassals, the Montagnes, in the forest with the help of a warlock.”

Faucher’s smile faltered, and the certainty faded from his eyes.

“You thought I was jesting when I warned you not a few days ago Marguerite had made unusual alliances.” Lothair chuckled. “Oh, my dear eveque. To have such experience and still be this naïve.” Lothair laid a hand over his heart with mock sincerity. “I cannot, in good conscience, fault you. Women can be the most devious of creatures.”

Faucher slowly turned toward the comtesse. There was a stillness to him. Like the moment before a storm broke. Before the unleashing of lightning and thunder. In the flickering light from the oil lamps, with his bloodless lips and his pupils blown, Faucher looked less like an angel and more like a man possessed. A demon. “What have you done?”

“What have I done?” Marguerite sneered. “What was necessary.” She pointed at Lothair. “I never asked to be married to him. A comte. I was born for so much more. All I had to do was get rid of him, and whatever I wanted would be mine. They hate him.” She opened her arms and spun wide in a circle. “Everyone hates him. They want him gone. All of them. The church, the other counts. The king!” Spittle flecked her lips, and her eyes brimmed with pure, unadulterated hatred. “I was going to give that to them, and they would thank me.”

Isobella put her hands over her ears. The woman continued to spew her hate, her vile words, while the man on the throne, the man in black with the golden dragon emblazoned across his chest, endured in silence.

Faucher’s nostrils flared. His whole body trembled with his rage. “You…you stupid, ignorant woman. You consorted with a witch to further your own ambition?”

“Of course I did. How could I fail with her on my side? Cordoylla promised me I would have my reward. She would make sure of it.”

Faucher’s face was the color of death. A sweat broke out on his brow. “Cordoylla? You…you… She is here?” The muscles in his neck stood out. Wild-eyed, he stared at the comtesse, clutching his hands so tight by his sides his fists had gone white. “You made an alliance with her?”

He backed away from the comtesse, from them, his eyes open, but Isobella doubted he really saw them, lost in his own tormented mind. With an inarticulate cry, he spun on his heel and raced across the hall, his priest’s robes billowing out around him. He flung the door open and stormed from the room, the door shutting behind him with a dull thud.

Silence reigned over the hall. Even Marguerite had fallen quiet.

What the hell was that all about?

“I think,” said Lothair, getting to his feet, his expression bleak, “it is imperative we find out all about Faucher’s lineage. It might well be the key.” He stepped down off the dais and stood in front of his wife. To his guards, he said, “Escort Marguerite to Prieuré du Louroux. Tell the Abbott she is no longer the Comtesse de Anjou. She is to be confined to her chambers indefinitely and be given nothing the monks do not receive. No special treatment, no fancy clothes or food, no servants. And no visitors.”

“Wait,” said Isobella.