Castle Coeurlieu

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Isabeau came to Castle Coeurlieu as a girl of twelve, and its lady: she had been married two weeks before to the Comte de Coeurlieu, who was thirty-two and very large, with an always-angry hatchet face slashed and pierced through the left cheek where he had taken a crossbow bolt at the battle of Leprans, full six years ago. She had been excited beforehand: she knew it was a grand match, beyond her family’s deserts, and he was famous; he had won a tournament in disguise as a young man, although he was too great a seigneur to have exposed himself so, which was very romantic. But she recoiled a little when she met him, and her voice quavered when she spoke her vows to the middle of his chest.

But he looked down at her afterwards, from his great height, and said not unkindly, “I am for the war in Grosviens. You will go to Coeurlieu, my lady, if it pleases you,” and she said with relief, “As it pleases my lord.”

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