The Secret Eleanor by Cecelia Holland Page A

She knew such a fire as this would not last forever. But meanwhile she meant to burn with him and set the world ablaze. She bent and kissed him again, and he tried to draw her down again, and she laughed and got herself loose.
    “What, you want more?”
    He laughed up at her. “Of you, always,” he said, and caught her hand again and kissed it. She pulled his hand up and kissed him back, and went out of the house.
    De Rançun was leaning up against the wall in the lane, one foot cocked up behind him, while the horses cropped blades of grass along the side of the house. Eleanor had swathed herself again in the widow’s cloak, the veil over her face, and without a word de Rançun lifted her back up onto the horse.
    He had a sour look on his fair, honest face, and he said nothing, all the way back. She knew he disapproved of this. They had grown up together, and he had always loved her, an older brother, a fellow Occitan, her favorite knight. He was loyal. That meant she did not have to mind his feelings, much; he would resign himself, as he always did.
    Her body still hummed with the secret thrills of love. She remembered the crisp red hair on his chest, the hard muscled horseman’s legs. She remembered him in the king’s hall, his quickness of thought and decision. He was determined to take England. She was determined to get out of her marriage. They were a match in everything. Whatever she did not have with Louis she would have with him.
    The only problem was her husband.
    At the palace, de Rançun lifted her down at the tower door, and she cast off the white cloak and hung it on the saddle, to recover it later. Then she went lightly up the steps, toward the hubbub of noise at the top, where she could hear Thierry Galeran’s ragged oily voice, and Petronilla’s, arguing; the sentry was standing there rigidly by the door and reached out to open it for her.
    When she went in, they all wheeled toward her, agape. Thierry had her red cloak in his hands, and a rush of words in his throat.
    “Your Grace, this is an outrage—”
    “Ah,” she said. “You found it. I wondered where that was, I lost it somehow.” She took the cloak from him and swathed herself in it, in case anyone noticed she was naked under the gown. “Thank you. Now go, I have been praying, hard work as you know, and I want to rest.”
    “Where have you been, Your Grace?” Thierry planted himself before her. Behind him the waiting women were clustered together, like a bundle of sticks propping each other up. Claire was not among them. Petronilla had drawn away toward the window.
    “I was in the chapel,” Eleanor said, lifting her eyebrows at him. “Did you not look there?”
    He said a raw oath and flung himself out of the room; his feet sounded loud on the stair beyond, just before the door slammed.
    He would find out she had come in on the brown mare, but too late to stop her, too late even to find out where she had gone. She relished the idea of his helpless rage.
    By the window, Petronilla turned away, her head down, morose, but the women crept up around Eleanor like eager fish to a bait. “He was so angry,” Alys said, round-eyed. “And where is Claire?” Her eyes roamed over Eleanor. “You look—gilded, Your Grace. All glowing.”
    “Ah,” Eleanor said, “the power of prayer.” And smiling, she went to the wardrobe to shed the cloak.

    Claire had crept away into a corner of the wall by the river and wept until she couldn’t cry anymore. Her face hurt, her wrist, where he had gripped her, but what would happen to her now seemed likely to be even worse.
    She could not go back to Eleanor, not now; they knew she had betrayed them, she saw they had used her to delude Thierry. They cared no more for her than he did. Even as she blinked the last tears out, she was gloating over how they had deluded Thierry.
    But she could not go to him, obviously. Nor home, where her father had made it clear she should make a marriage at court and stay