“Mayhap, but better than finding herself rumpled in a chair come morn.”
The solution was to make a greater effort to awaken her, but he was strangely loath to do so. And he did have the excuse it was her daughter who suggested he carry her.
He considered the girl who had kept him from his bed for not one but two more games, having persuaded him to continue when she saw her mother slept. Despite Clarice’s disrespect for Laura, he almost liked her as he had not expected of one whose father had reduced him to a cuckold, and was further inclined to like her when her disappointment at being bested at the first two games proved she handled defeat fairly well. Thus, he had allowed her to win the third game. The years until she wed at fourteen—perhaps fifteen—might not test him as much as feared. Providing Laura did her part in training her up into a lady.
“You will have to defend me if she takes offense,” he said.
He saw Laura in her smile. “I will tell her I insisted.”
“But I would not do it if you insisted, Clarice. As your mother is not yours to command, neither am I.”
She had the grace to look chagrined. “At my request, then.”
He slid an arm around her mother’s back, one beneath her knees, and lifted her.
Laura did sleep as if she might never awaken, and in that moment he was grateful, for he held her nearer than necessary, gazed less guardedly upon her, knew if she looked as near upon him she would see what he did not wish her to see—that he so vividly remembered what he had felt for her he could almost believe it was not all memory.
“You are glad you shall wed her, are you not?”
Berating himself for thinking it safe to leave his face open, Lothaire shuttered his expression. “Methinks it will be a satisfactory marriage.”
Clarice wrinkled her brow and nose, then her face smoothed. “Do you make her fall in love with you as she loved my father, ’twill be better than satisfactory.”
Jealousy knelling through him, he said low, “Did your father love her in return?”
“Surely I would not be here if he did not.” She leaned forward and continued in a conspiratorial whisper, “For love and loss of him, I have only known her to be sorrowful—a shadow of herself, I heard Lady Maude tell her stepson.”
She swung around to lead the way across the hall. Had she not, he might have failed to contain the emotions flaying him as he once more recalled the embrace between Laura and Michael D’Arci. Unobserved, he let jealousy run rampant, then shoved it to his depths, ordered Tomas to remain in the hall, and followed Clarice to the chamber shared with her shadow of a mother.
I care not what she felt for her lover, he assured himself as he strode into the room.
I care not that she so soon forgot me, he told himself as Clarice entered the garderobe and closed herself in.
All I require of her is King Henry’s tax break and an heir. He lowered her to the mattress. And fidelity. Above all, fidelity.
As he slid his arms from beneath her, she narrowly opened her eyes. “Lothaire?”
Though she no longer filled his arms, he did not straighten from where he bent over her. “’Tis I.”
She lowered her lids, raised them a bit higher. “Did I do well?”
“Well?”
“In allowing her another game?”
Grudgingly moved by her concern over what he thought of her mothering, he said, “I am hardly acquainted with parenting. Still, it seemed an appropriate response.”
She closed her eyes, breathed, “I am awake now.”
Hardly, he mused.
“I will make it right, Lothaire.”
“It?”
She did not answer, but he was fairly certain she referred to becoming the mother she had not been to Clarice.
He started to straighten, but seeing her braid had fallen back from the bruise she claimed her daughter had not dealt, he drew it over that side of her face. Then he pulled the covers atop her and crossed to the door. As he stepped into the corridor, Clarice exited the garderobe.
“I thank you for the games, Lord Soames,” she called low.
He inclined his head. “We will play again.”
“What of the favor I owe?”
“I shall think on it. Good eve, Clarice.”
Chapter 15
A fortnight gone. A sennight to come. Then she would be Lothaire’s wife, would each night fall asleep in his bed, each morn awaken in it. And before the sleeping and after the awakening…
Staring at the gown Tina and she fashioned out of Eleanor’s material, Laura’s heart sped so fast she nearly pressed a hand to it. For this—fear of intimacy that had once been beautiful expectation, time and again she distracted herself from vows that would grant her husband the right to do with her body as he pleased. Were it the Lothaire of her youth and had she not learned by violent means what it meant to be possessed by a man, all would be different.
Laura replenished her breath, fingered the gown’s heavily embroidered bodice. “’Tis beautiful, Tina. You must have arisen ahead of dawn to complete it.”
“Aye, with yer daughter.”
While on and on Laura slept. But no more. As she was to be the lady of the castle, a position of responsibility that reflected on its lord, no longer could she while away the morn that had made her days easier to face.
“Henceforth, I would have you awaken me at first light, Tina.”
There was so much approval in the maid’s smile Laura was ashamed she had not asked it sooner. “Even if I must drag ye out by yer heels, milady?”
“Even if.”
“I am glad, milady.”
Laura inclined her head. “After breaking my fast, I will return and help set the gown’s sleeves.”
Tina smiled and lowered to the chair drawn before the windows to allow summer’s light to guide her needle.
Shortly, Laura stepped off the stairs into the hall she would make great again once she was Lothaire’s wife.
When a sweep of the room did not bring her daughter to light, she tensed. As reward for good behavior three days past, she had agreed Clarice could leave their chamber ahead of her mother providing she went directly to the hall for her morning meal. So she had, and here Laura had found her. Might she have yielded to curiosity over Lothaire’s absent mother and ventured to the uppermost floor?
She pivoted.
“Lady Laura!”
Peering across her shoulder, she saw it was Lothaire’s man who called to her. “Have you seen my daughter, Sir Angus?”
He halted before her. “She is with the baron. He instructed me to tell you he has collected on the favor owed by Lady Clarice.”
“Favor?” she said, then remembered her daughter’s bargain for another game of chess. That same night, Laura had awakened to find herself abed and Lothaire leaning over her. Not until morn had she been discomfited by the realization he had carried her from the hall—and more by words spoken between them she could not recall but must have been adversarial since he had grown cooler since.
“Your daughter aids my lord in moving the eastern flock to the stream where they will be washed ere shearing,” Sir Angus said.