THE EARL (A HAMMER FOR PRINCES) by Cecelia Holland Read Free Book Online

her back, and he pulled it free and stuck it in behind her head. She sighed. Crumbs and bits of dried jam littered the front of her gown and the fur robe. This close to her, he saw again how sick she was, and he sat down on the bed, worried.
    “I am so weak,” she said. “I can barely lift my head.” She turned her head and coughed, deep out of her lungs, tearing and wet.
    “The air is better here than at Arby,” Fulk said.
    “It will do me no good. Where is Thierry?”
    “Gone to Prince Henry.”
    “What a fool he is, he always puts himself at your mercy. Have you been busy? Isn’t that a silly question? You are never idle. Here’s the honey.”
    A page with Hawisse like a drover just behind him set down a tray with a pot of honey and another pile of cakes on it. Fulk stared at Hawisse until she left. It was unlike Margaret to make so much of being sick.
    “I got from Derby what you talked about, you two,” she said, when the door had shut. “You think a lot of this little prince, don’t you.”
    “Damn you, you always have to know everything, don’t you.”
    “Put honey on that bread for me. It’s boring being a woman. Of course I meddle. I think you’re making a mistake, Fulk.”
    “I don’t.”
    “King Stephen is an easy man. The empress was not, and I can’t suppose her son is much finer, particularly when I consider his sire. You have always had a weakness for treacherous men.”
    Fulk stabbed the bread at her. “We came through this reign well enough, didn’t we? For all my weaknesses and—”
    “Don’t be angry, you betray yourself too much. As for coming through well, other families came through far better.”
    “If you admire the chimerical successes of, say, the Earl of Chester, my lady, I shall go out and murder and rampage and fight for cities I can’t hold and gain enemies in high places.”
    Margaret grimaced. She was a Clare and had all their arrogant ambition—her brother was Earl of Pembroke. Fulk thrust the honey knife into the pot and lay down crosswise on the bed, his bead propped up on his crooked arm.
    “Suppose we enjoy a moment’s truce. How do you feel sick?”
    “Look at me,” she said stonily. “Do I look well?”
    “Not at all. You’ll be better in a few days.”
    “You may believe so if you wish. I knew I should get no sympathy from you.”
    “That’s what Hawisse is for. Myself, I am wondering how you mean to use what you found out from Derby . If you’ve done anything, Margaret, I’ll be angry.”
    “If you think your temper frightens me you’re very wrong.” She stared at him a moment. “I think you are nourishing a viper in this prince of yours.”
    Fulk shrugged. “I doubt that.”
    “If he is all you told Derby , then certainly when he is king his first action will be to weaken all the powerful men around him.”
    “Not if he owes his throne to us.”
    Margaret chewed on bread and honey, her cheeks stuffed, and swallowed with difficulty. “I am beginning to fear that you will make just as base a bargain with this prince in England and you did with his father in Normandy .”
    “Come now. That’s talk I would expect from Rannulf. Henry and his father ruined nearly every great house in Normandy but ours. I thought I did well in Normandy .”
    “You made a merchants bargain with the conquerors.”
    Fulk picked dog hairs out of the fur coverlet. This was an old argument, rehearsed a dozen times before. “When I was vicomte we were powerless. Now I am bailiff, and we control the whole region. Power isn’t base.”
    “There’s no sense in arguing with you, clearly. Only see: the prince is Duke of Normandy, and he has overthrown his own brother to make himself Count of Anjou, and with this new wife he holds Aquitaine—more and richer lands than England. Will he let his English barons rule him?”
    “Your dog is shedding. I don’t know what he will do. I don’t know if we can control him. But these wars are destroying the