The Awakening (Age Of Faith #7)
Tamara Leigh
Prologue
Barony of Owen
Spring, 1152
Beware the Delilah, my son. Beware the Jezebel.
That warning again, ever near though it did not belong in the space between this young woman and him. She was no Delilah. No Jezebel. Were she, his mother would not have chosen her to wed the heir of Lexeter.
She was pure, younger than he, and only pretty enough to please so he did not stray from vows exchanged a year hence when she attained her fifteenth year and he his nineteenth. Only pretty enough to ensure those who sought to make a cuckold of him were not overly tempted to make a harlot of her.
He nodded.
She laughed. “If you are done conversing with yourself, Lord Soames…” She leapt in front of him and danced backward to accommodate his stride. “…mayhap you would like to converse with me.”
Lothaire scowled amid embarrassment warming his face. “You are too expressive, Lady Laura.”
She arched eyebrows above eyes so dark they might haunt did they not sparkle like stars on a moonless night. “You make that sound a bad thing. Fie on you! I shall not be ashamed I am pleased to see you again.” She bobbed her head forward. “And more so in the absence of your mother.”
He halted. “What is wrong with my mother? You do not like her?”
She stilled her own feet, clapped a hand over her mouth, and smiled on either side of it.
The sight of her—so lovely and happy—made his heart convulse. And stirred his body as it should not. “Lady Laura!”
She dropped her hand but not her smile. “Do not take offense, Lord Soames. I did not say I do not like her, severe though she is. I am simply pleased to be alone with you.”
Only possible because the Lady of Lexeter had taken ill. Despite his mother’s attempt to sit the saddle, they had barely gained the drawbridge before she became so light of head she had to accept he alone would journey to visit his betrothed. Lothaire had been secretly heartened, her constant attendance making him feel like a boy—and appear one.
“As we are to wed,” Lady Laura continued, “we ought to know each other better, and now we can.” She threw her arms wide, dropped her head back, and whirled. “’Tis a beautiful day to fall in love!”
Appalled yet entranced, he stared. Such frivolity had not been apparent six months past when his mother accompanied him to the barony of Owen to determine if the girl fostered by Lady Maude D’Arci would make a suitable wife.
For hours, the young lady who was to bring a generous dowry to the marriage had sat quietly with hands folded and slippered feet tight against each other, speaking only when spoken to. She had seemed shy, and only twice had he caught her looking at him. What had happened these past months to make her think it appropriate to behave in this manner? And to speak of love!
She ceased whirling, gave a great sigh. “I will make you talk to me, Lord Soames. I vow I shall! And you will laugh, as I know you wish to do.”
“My lady!”
She held up a hand. “If we are to wed, you must accept that though I shall be the proper and gracious noblewoman in the company of others, when ’tis but you and me, I shall be… Well, I shall be me, as I would have you be you. Now the question is”—she stepped nearer, tilted her head—“who are you?”
He could hardly breathe for how close she stood. More, for how much he wanted to wrap his arms around her and match his mouth to hers.
She raised an eyebrow. “I wait.”
He swallowed loudly, said tightly, “I am your betrothed, the man for whom you will bear children and keep a good household.”
She groaned. “That is not who you are. Lady Maude assured me ’tis not.”
“Lady Maude?”
“She said once you are away from your mother, you will not be dull as I fear—”
“I am not dull!”
She wrinkled her nose. “I believe what I see and feel, not merely what is told me. So show me, Lord Soames, the life we share will be blessed with far more laughter than tears.”
Again, he stared. Again, his body stirred.
She swung away. “Chase me!”
“What?”
“I wish to be chased,” she called over her shoulder. “And caught.” Hitching up her skirts, she ran, unbound hair flying out behind her, sunlight gliding over strands of red amid brown.
“This is unseemly, Lady Laura!”
More laughter, but not mocking. It called to the boy in him he had thought shut away. Still, he held his feet to the beaten path that led to the pond she told lay just beyond the castle walls.
That had been his first mistake, allowing her to persuade him to leave the garden. And his second mistake would be to give chase. But she grew so distant she would soon go from sight.
A lady alone in the wood. His lady.
He gripped his sword hilt and ran on long muscled legs. And she made it even easier for him to overtake her by staying just enough ahead to reach the bank of the promised pond.
She spun, propped her hands on her hips, and with an open-mouthed smile, said, “Methinks Lady Maude is right. You are not dull.”
He should have drawn up far short of her, but his feet carried him to within arm’s reach. “Lady, we must return to the castle.”
“Aye, but first…” She stepped near and laced slender fingers with his that had never seemed so large and clumsy. Before he could correct her brazen familiarity, she turned and settled her shoulder against his. “Look, Lothaire. Is it not lovely?”
She was lovely. Not simply pretty as was required.
“I am fond of this place,” she said as he followed her gaze around the pond. “When I was little, Lady Maude brought her son and me here on the hottest days and we played and swam.”
“You speak of Simon?” he said to distract himself from the soft hand he should not be holding. He knew it was Lady Maude and her departed husband’s only child she spoke of. Though he liked the lady’s stepson who was now Baron of Owen, there was something amiss about Joseph D’Arci’s half-brother—something beyond the feeling Simon disliked Lady Laura’s betrothed. Their one encounter this day was brief as the young man prepared to return to the lord from whom he received knighthood training, but it had disturbed. And Lothaire was strangely relieved when Simon departed two hours past.
He frowned. “Surely you do not still swim here with Lady Maude’s son?”
Lady Laura looked up. “I do not. ’Twould be improper now we are no longer children.”
His mother would not like that Simon and she had frolicked here, and neither did he, but though that might cause Raisa Soames to reject this young woman, Lothaire was now a man. He would determine what was acceptable.
“But once you and I are wed”—she made a song of her words and angled her head toward the pond—“methinks it permissible for husband and wife to swim together.”
The thought of going into the water with her once more making him much too aware of their bodies, he told himself to release her hand and put distance between them.