“I would like to accompany you,” Laura said. “That is, if your offer is genuine and it would not be an imposition.”
“The offer is genuine,” he said, glimpsing no falsity in her expression, “but it shall require that you awaken as early as your daughter.”
“That I shall do henceforth, as befitting the future Lady of Lexeter.”
“I am glad.” He stood. “Now ere I gain my bed, I must see to my mother. Good eve, Lady Laura…Lady Clarice.”
“Good eve!” Clarice called, causing several of those settling into sleep to grumble and grunt.
Lothaire raised a hand and continued to the stairs. When he reached the third floor landing, he paused to steel himself for his audience with Raisa. “Lord, grant me patience,” he rasped and firmly tread the floorboards.
His sister occupied a chair pulled close to the candlelit bed. As he strode inside, she stood and nodded at their mother. “She does not sleep, only closed her eyes when she heard your boots upon the corridor.”
“A body can fall asleep quickly,” Raisa hissed and lifted her lids. “Especially one who shall soon take her place beside the husband finally returned to her as but a box of bones.”
Halting alongside Sebille, Lothaire met his mother’s gaze. “At last, he shall rest in consecrated ground. That is much for which to be grateful.”
“Do I live long enough to see it.”
It was the opening he required, though he had not thought it would be granted so quickly. “Therefore, the burial shall take place when he is delivered on the morrow.”
“So soon?” Sebille exclaimed.
“Disrespectful!” Raisa gasped.
“I do not believe so,” Lothaire said. “For over a year we have known with certainty he is dead and mourned throughout. The sooner he rests in consecrated ground, the sooner we can look to the future as I am certain he would have us do.”
“You are certain of naught—concerned only with your future,” Raisa snapped.
As Sebille felt her way back onto the chair, Lothaire said, “My future and the future of Lexeter—hence, your future and Sebille’s—is of great concern. If this land is to recover from the excesses and neglect of the past, the sheep must be sheared and a marriage made without delay.”
Raisa thrust to sitting and pointed a bent finger at him. “Ever you seek to blame me for the barony’s failings, but ’twas your father—”
“Regardless of who is at fault,” Lothaire cut across excuses he had heard time and again, “Lexeter has been slow to recover. Thus, as it is past time we do right for these lands and its people, word has been sent to the lesser castles and villages instructing all work be suspended on the morrow so prayers may be offered up for the old baron and any who wish to attend his burial.”
As his mother’s jaw worked over words she sought to string together, he saw what appeared to be scratches down one side of her face. As they were mostly faded, he was swept with guilt at not noticing them during a more recent visit.
Before he could ask after them, she fell onto the pillows, turned her back to him, and commenced groaning. “Trollops…whores…harlots… The ruin of your father. He the ruin of us. A good wife and mother I was. None dare dispute that!”
Lothaire could but would not. Before Ricard Soames’s disappearance, Raisa had shown little regard for her son, so entranced was she with the miraculous daughter made with the young husband who had wed Raisa for alliance and a generous dowry. Thus, the heir of Lexeter had been made to feel a nuisance by his mother and even, on occasion, his father.
Blessedly, Sebille had doted on her little brother just as their parents doted on her. But all changed with Ricard Soames’s disappearance. Embittered by the loss of her husband whose faithlessness placed the burden of Lexeter on her, it seemed Raisa no longer had tolerance or time for love. She had divided herself between administering the barony, grooming its heir, and—of great detriment—extravagance previously denied her.
Lothaire had longed for his mother to return her attention to Sebille, and not only because life was suffocating for one accustomed to running about unfettered. His sister having become so sorrowful it was increasingly difficult to remember how joyous she had been, he had thought she would recover if their mother but showed her half the regard she had ere Ricard’s disappearance. But Raisa had seemed content to let her miraculous daughter fade.
“Nay, none dare dispute it,” that much aged woman returned him to the present.
Though in the past she had dragged Lothaire so near the edge of her void he had defended himself and the stands he took by speaking against her mothering, with her decline in health he had vowed it was a weapon he would no longer wield. Thus, ofttimes it was necessary to withdraw from her lest he break his word.
“It is too soon to bury Father,” Sebille said softly, and Lothaire ached over how fragile she appeared. “But methinks you are right, Lothaire. ’Tis best done now.”
Raisa sprang upright, landed fierce eyes on her daughter, and screeched, “Get out!”
Sebille gaped.
“Out, I say!”
Anger bolted through Lothaire, but reason prevailed. Too much his sister suffered Raisa’s misery and here was permission to escape it—a gift of solitude she needed more than her brother who had known his father’s affection but had either been too young to grasp its depth or not been as loved as Sebille.
“Go,” he said. “I will stay with Mother a while.”
She hesitated, then stiffly crossed the room and closed the door behind her.
“Neither do you wish to be here,” Lady Raisa said. “Why do you not also abandon me?”
He dropped into the chair. “You are my mother, I am your son. Now tell me what comfort I can give a grieving widow so she may attend her husband’s burial.” They were mostly words, for though he had pressed Durand Marshal to discover the whereabouts of Ricard Soames’s remains so the Lady of Lexeter could begin to heal, he was fairly certain her anger was too great for her to grieve her departed husband.
“Even for love of your mother, you will not be moved from tossing your father in the ground come the morrow?”
“It has been arranged and will be done.”
“That you may sooner send me from High Castle?”
There was that, too, though it had not been a conscious consideration. He had assured the queen it would be done to ensure the safety of Laura and her daughter, it being but a year since Raisa sent men to murder those soon to return the body of Ricard Soames.
He clasped his hands between his knees, leaned forward. “There is to be a new Lady of Lexeter. For both your sakes, distance must be put between you.”
Her jaw shifted. “Sebille will go with me.”
“This I know.”
She curled her fingers over the coverlet, slowly gathered it up her chest. “Then who will watch over you?”
“I am a grown man—”
“And Laura Middleton is now a grown woman—one of great appetites.”
He narrowed his lids. “What is it you wish me to beg you to reveal?”