CHAPTER ONE ~ 1554

      “Pour le nom de Dieu, shut the door!” a man exclaimed angrily from the fireplace, as the wind swept boisterously into the room, whistling down the backs of the four gallants sitting with their legs stretched out before the pot room fire.

      “I must apologise, messieurs, if I intrude,” a voice replied sarcastically.

      The four young men sprang hastily to their feet. Framed in the door of the low-ceilinged inn was a resplendent figure in a velvet doublet flashing with jewels, a plumed hat set jauntily on the side of a dark head and high boots that oddly enough seemed not to have encountered any of the mud that made the inn yard almost a quagmire.

      “Your – Your Grace!” one of the young men stammered. “We did not expect to see you here.”

      “I did not expect to be here myself,” the Duc de Salvoire answered him, closing the door behind him and crossing towards them as he drew off his embroidered gloves.

      “You too are meeting the ship coming from Scotland?” one of the young men hazarded respectfully.

      The Duc shook his head.

      “Nothing so adventurous,” he said. “I have been staying at Anet and I am on my way to join the King in Paris. However, Her Grace the Duchesse de Valentinois requested me to carry a message for her to the Convent of The Poor Sister who do live in this God-forsaken place, only the Lord they worship so devoutly can know why!”

      Unconsciously, from force of habit, the Duc took the best chair and seated himself in the most comfortable place by the fireside. A vague gesture of his hand, wearing a huge emerald ring, indicated that the others might be seated and they settled themselves, but without the comfortable relaxed abandon with which they had been enjoying the warmth of the fire when His Grace arrived.

      Now, a little tense and on edge, they sat down politely in their chairs, their faces turned towards him as they waited for him to speak.

      They were four of the most staid and sensible young men of the Court, the Duc noted and guessed it was the Duchesse who had had the good sense to choose such a band for the mission that they had been entrusted with.

      ‘She never fails,’ he thought with a little smile and wondered what other King’s mistress had the wisdom and the good sense or Statesmanship of Diane de Poitiers, who for ten years had virtually been the Queen of France.

      As if the trend of his thoughts somehow communicated itself to the young men sitting round him, one of them asked,

      “Were you sorry to leave Anet, monsieur?”

      The Duc smiled and the twist of his lips seemed for a moment to remove the tiredness and the boredom from his eyes.

      “One is always happy at Anet,” he said. “The Duchesse and the King have built together a house of love which is without its equal in the whole world.”

      Just for a moment his listeners looked surprised. They were not used to hearing such warmth in the Duc’s voice. He was known to be bitter and cynical.

      Crossed in love so the story went, when he was only a boy of seventeen, he had vowed never to let his heart run away with him again. In fact he was known on one occasion to say, “I have no heart, only a brain, which is far more reliable.”

      Almost as if he regretted having spoken so warmly and in such a manner, the Duc’s next question was spoken in the hard bored tones that habitually characterised him.

      “You speak about meeting a ship from Scotland?” he enquired. “Or was that merely an excuse to hide some nefarious smuggling across the English Channel? I am told that the Ports of Brittany are filled with English gold.”

      One of the young men laughed.

      “There is nothing you do not know, is there, Your Grace? It is true that smuggling is on the increase, but it is all in the French favour and so who are we then to discourage a good customer, however unsavoury he may seem when he is not putting his hand in his pocket?”

      “You have notyet answered His Grace’s question, Gustave,” another gallant interposed. “We are here, your Grace, to meet the new Gouvernante to the young Queen of Scots.”

      The Duc raised his eyebrows.

      “Indeed! I was not aware that we had to send to Scotland for one. Can it be that there is no one of education and intelligence in France?”

      “I agree,” Comte Gustave de Cloude said quickly. “It is almost an insult that we should have to send abroad to what by all accounts must be a barren and barbarous land for someone to instruct the future bride of the Dauphin. But it’s said that the little Queen herself took such a distaste for Madame de Paroy that she insisted on her dismissal.”

      “Insisted?” the Duc asked softly. “A child of thirteen or is it fourteen years.”

      “That is what they say, your Grace,” the Comte replied.

      The Duc smiled.

      “A will of iron at that age. Oh, well, perhaps France can use it. She should be a good mate for the young Dauphin.”

      There was a moment’s silence. Everyone in the room was thinking the same thing, that the weak fragile boy with his strange blood disease would need a strong resolute wife if he was to rule the greatest, richest and most civilised country in the world.

      Then with a change of mood the Duc broke the silence almost harshly.

      “For all that I consider it an insult,” he said. “Must we have some pock-marked, long-nosed, carrot-headed Scotswoman spoiling the look of our Palaces? A plague on her! Let us hope that the ship from Scotland has foundered and we shall be saved from the Gouvernante from the North.”

      As he finished speaking, his voice echoing around the small black-beamed room, there was a gust of air which seemed almost to lift the chairs from under the listeners and a young voice, cold, icy and yet clear as a mountain stream, said,

      “I regret to inform you, monsieur, that your wish has not been granted. The ship has not foundered but has docked safely.”

      There was a moment of stupefaction and five faces turned towards the speaker. Then the wind seemed literally to blow her into the room and some unseen hand from outside pulled the creaking door to and left her amongst them.

      Hastily, with a sudden exclamation, the Comte Gustave de Cloude sprang to his feet.

      “The ship has docked? We were not told,” he exclaimed. “We should have been on the quay! What has happened to the visitors from Scotland?”

      “Most of them have retired to their rooms,” the girl answered.

      She was indeed but a girl.

      About seventeen or eighteen, the Duc decided, rising slowly and with some dignity when the other men present were already on their feet.

      He looked at her and then met a pair of vivid blue eyes staring into his with undisguised hostility. She was very small, no big-boned Scotswoman here, but the little curls, which had been whipped up by the wind round her white forehead, were undoubtedly red-gold in colour.

      Never, the Duc thought in astonishment, had he ever seen skin that had such a crystalline purity about it so that it appeared almost transparent.

      “The party has – has retired!” the young Comte was stammering. “This is ‒ disastrous, mam’selle. My friends and I were to have met them and welcomed them to France on behalf of the King.”

      The girl turned her eyes from the Duc towards the Comte.

      “There was no one on the quay,” she said, “so we walked to the inn.”

      “And. Mistress Sheena McCraggan,” the Comte questioned, “is she upstairs? Could you not persuade her to see me for one moment that I might proffer my apologies and deliver to her personally the messages that I carry on behalf of His Majesty?”

      “You may deliver them if I can