What offended Lothaire were threats and others’ sins cast upon him. He was not Lord Thierry, Lord Gadot, nor Lord Benton. But as anger rose, it occurred to him had Eleanor not pried back the masks worn by the other suitors, he would want such defenders for Laura. And this lady could not know he was not of the same ilk.
“Forgive me, Lady Beatrix. I would not argue with you. And certainly I do not want you to think so ill of me to believe the threat of harm to my person is all that holds me from injuring Lady Laura and her daughter. Our circumstances are difficult, but I am no monster. I am a man wronged, the life promised me stolen and replaced with one that shall ever remind me of how much I lost. I accept my marriage will not be happy, but I am determined neither will it be miserable for either of us. Or Clarice.”
She raised her eyebrows. “I am sorry you do not believe in God.”
He stood straighter. “I believe in God.”
“Do you? Then why is it impossible for your marriage to be happy?”
He blew out a breath. “As told, I do not wish to argue.”
“Then listen. Though Lady Laura should have defended herself long ere—” She closed up so suddenly, he took a step forward.
“Of what do you speak, Lady Beatrix?”
She shook her head. “Anger too much loosens my tongue.”
“How has Lady Laura not defended herself? And how can you think it possible to do so when—” Now he closed up. It was no secret Lady Maude’s ward was seduced by a visiting knight, though it surely would have been had Laura’s body not betrayed her as she had betrayed Lothaire. But that he would not speak of. Suffice that he knew he should have listened to his mother’s warnings against Delilahs and Jezebels. Suffice he knew he was responsible in part for Laura’s sin. Had he not succumbed to temptation, giving them both a taste of kisses and caresses, she might not have fallen prey to desire and given her virtue to a man who left her with living proof of her shame.
Lady Beatrix sighed. “Only one more thing shall I say, Lord Soames, then I will leave you to your rest. Do you gain Lady Laura’s trust—give her cause to love you again—I believe God will bless your marriage far beyond the ability to tolerate each other.”
He needed to gain Laura’s trust? He needed to give her reason to love him? “You have said it, Lady Beatrix.” He gripped the door’s edge. “I shall see you at supper.”
She inclined her head and turned so swiftly her fat braid whipped against the door jamb.
The morn could not come soon enough.
Chapter 9
“I thank you,” she said so softly he barely caught the words.
Lothaire looked at where Laura sat beside him at table. “For?”
She touched the tip of her tongue to her upper lip as if to moisten it, but seeing it drew his regard, seamed her mouth.
“For what am I owed gratitude?” he asked again with an edge that had little to do with her delay in answering.
“I know you do not like my daughter, but you hid it well. The appearance of discomfort is far preferable to loathing.”
Did she truly believe he disliked a child who had done him no ill? Was that how he presented—as the monster Lady Beatrix also feared?
He angled toward her, creating a wall between them and Michael D’Arci on his other side. “You wrong me again, Laura.” He caught the widening of her eyes as her familiar name came off his lips. “I do not loathe…Clarice,” he said, though the girl’s name was not easily spoken. “I know she is not to blame for the sins of her parents, that she is merely proof of it.”
Sparks. Not sparkles.
“It is discomfort with which I am afflicted,” he continued, “and considering what I once felt for you that I thought you felt for me, methinks I can be forgiven.”
She looked away, reached to her spoon.
Impulse made him catch her hand, the sense of being watched by her daughter who sat at the children’s table below the dais made him cradle it. As he stared at her curled fingers, he remembered when she was near on fifteen and he had done the same. As then, he slid a thumb beneath her fingers, eased them open, lowered his head, and pressed his lips to her palm.
He heard her breath catch, and as he drew back, he marveled that her hand appeared smaller ten years later. But it was no error in memory. She was a bit taller and fuller of breasts and hips, but he was the one who had added to his height those first few years following her betrayal. More, his body had broadened to accommodate muscles required of a man of the sword.
He had not thought Laura fragile before, and she would not break as easily as the petite Lady Beatrix, but it would not be difficult to snap her in two.
“Lothaire?”
He opened eyes he had not meant to close, lifted his chin he had not meant to lower, found her gaze near his.
A slight smile touched her mouth, and he wondered if she put it there for Clarice. But then she whispered, “Judge me as you will, but do not think those same memories do not haunt me.”
Unsettled at being read, he nearly spoke words that would cause the blossoming of her hand in his to close up tight as a bud beyond hope of opening. But he did not challenge her, nor say it was a pity she had made ghosts of those memories.
“How am I your somehow?” she spoke more softly.
He had hoped she would not remember him naming her that following her collapse in the queen’s apartment, but it did not matter, especially as it had naught to do with the heart. Indeed, it was all business. “I vowed somehow I would save Lexeter,” he said all that needed to be told. Then for Clarice, Michael D’Arci, and Lady Beatrix, he retrieved Laura’s spoon and set its slim handle across the palm to which the Samson and Ahab in him longed to put his mouth again.
“I am pleased you are eating better,” he said, and noting her lips had lost their curve, picked up his own spoon.
“Lord Soames,” Michael D’Arci said. “I understand your lands are mostly given to the commerce of wool. My liege, Baron Lavonne, wishes to expand his grazing lands. Have you advice I may pass to him?”
To further remind Lothaire he was no longer a young man made foolish by love, the Lord of Castle Soaring could not have chosen a better topic—sheep, the restoration of Lexeter more possible with the concessions gained from his acceptance that Laura was his somehow.
Only that, he told himself. And wished he believed it.
On nights like this, when the air was still and sweet and lowered voices the only evidence she was not alone in the world, she liked to walk the inner bailey. Sometimes the outer.
At Soaring, she ventured to the latter and spent a quarter hour inside the dovecote listening to the gentle birds in their nest-holes, those awakened by her entrance cooing and shushing as if to settle their young ones back to sleep.
Face tipped up, Laura peered at the circular walls lined all around with roosts. And remembered again Lothaire’s breath and lips upon her palm. She had nearly leaned in to offer her mouth, as once she had done. Would he have hungrily kissed her as once he had done?