When the tempo increased, encouraging partners to widen the distance between themselves, he was glad it had become so crowded that the steps through which he guided Laura provided an excuse to hold her closer and feel curves long denied him. And she surely felt the planes of his body, her pupils dilating, breath quickening though far less effort was required from her since more often she was off her feet than on them as he lifted and turned her.
This eve, I will make love to her, he decided. I will truly accept her as she is and will become, and together we shall throw the last of the dirt upon the past.
As the dance neared its end, the tempo increased further. Here was where men with sufficient strength and space gripped their partners beneath the arms, lifted them above their heads, and spun them wide. In this instance, Lothaire had enough room, but no other man was going to look upon Laura’s legs.
He lifted her high but planted his feet firm to the ground and tilted his head back to look up at her where she looked down at him with a smile so wide he was certain she would welcome his attentions this night.
As he held her there, the outsides of her thighs pressed against the insides of his arms, she laughed and said, “Should you not be swinging me about?”
“Certainly not.” He eased her down his chest, abdomen, and hips. When her feet settled atop his boots, she pressed upward, kissed his cheek, and spoke three words he thought he must have heard wrong amid the joyous shouts of a dance at its end.
“Say it again,” he said as a dozen dizzy couples dispersed. “I do not think I heard right.”
The curve of her mouth eased, and her eyes flitted down his face.
Had she spoken it? Meant it? Did she now regret it?
Her eyes returned to his, then she leaned in and said in his ear, “Do not let me regret the baring of my heart. There is only one man I have loved. And I love him still.”
He closed his eyes, lowered his face to the place between her neck and shoulder, and wished away the world.
But it was going nowhere, as evidenced by a tug on his sleeve. “May I dance with Mother and you?”
As the musicians began to play another tune, Laura slipped off the tops of Lothaire’s boots and, in her haste to remedy what nobles would think inappropriate, would have lost her footing had he not kept an arm around her waist.
“May I?” Clarice asked again.
Lothaire considered Laura’s daughter—their daughter. “If my lady wife is not too breathless.”
“Say you are not, Mother.”
Laura glanced at him. “Methinks I am no more breathless than my husband.”
Glad they were moving forward rather than struggling through the mire of past sins, he took Clarice’s hand and instructed her to take her mother’s.
Where Lothaire had felt desirous minutes earlier, he felt what seemed happiness as the three danced and Clarice’s antics made them laugh.
As ever when he loosed that sound from his deepest place, he drew the regard of others who surely thought him incapable of such. And he saw in Laura’s eyes what he had seen years ago when she dragged that laughter up out of him—adoration. How he wished he could be alone with her now. Unless he knew her not at all, she would give herself to him without restraint. And they might even make a child.
Since they were far from alone, he attempted to distract his body by shifting his regard to the other celebrants and caught sight of Sebille standing behind a depleted table, beside her the physician who had joined the celebration after setting the worker’s arm. Though they were almost shoulder to shoulder, each time Lothaire looked to them, they were not conversing. And when he followed his sister’s gaze, he was not surprised it rested on Angus. Earlier the knight had danced with several young women, but now he stood back from the revelry, head bent toward Tina who animatedly related something.
Was it truly too late for Sebille and Angus? If the knight asked her to dance, would she accept and, on the morrow, remain at High Castle rather than depart with their mother? Unlikely, but he must try.
When the dance ended, he thanked his two ladies, said he needed to speak with Angus, and assured them he would return shortly.
As Laura watched her husband weave among the dancers, she heard again the three words she had dared speak to him, albeit much of her daring was surely aided by one-too-many cups of wine. Though he had not spoken the words back, they had pleased him.
“Has Lord Soames made you love him, Mother?” Clarice asked.
She shot her gaze to her daughter. “What say you?”
“Has he made you love him as you loved my father?”
Not wishing to lie, she said, “I do love my husband, and I am glad to be his wife. And you? You are glad to be his daughter?”
“I like him better every day.”
“That makes me happy.” Laura kissed Clarice’s brow. “This is our home now.”
Her daughter drew back. “Do we belong as you wished us to, Mother?”
Nearly so, she thought. “Assuredly, you are of Lexeter, Clarice Soames.” Lothaire’s surname nearly stuck in her throat for how often she could now speak it—more, her husband’s Christian name.
Clarice gasped. “A game of ball!”
“Go,” Laura said, but already her daughter was on her way to being gone.
As Laura stepped off the heavily trodden grass, Tina appeared. “My heart smiles to see ye and yer husband dancin’ and smiling as if never were an ill word spoken between ye. Methinks this the best day I have spent in yer service.”
“’Tis a good day, and I pray for many more, Tina. Now what of you? I have not seen you dance.”
A grin spread the woman’s lips. “Sir Angus did ask me to join hands with him on the dance floor. Had not your lord husband wished to speak with him, we would be there now. But mayhap afterward.”
Laura considered Lothaire whose expression and that of his man seemed too serious for a day like this, especially now the sun was all but sunk, the last of it sweeping golden-orange light up the trees beyond the shearing shelter. As she pondered the black of the night to come, she wondered how the moon and stars would look across the lake’s surface.
“Tina?”
“Milady?”
Warming at the thought that would have delighted her younger self, Laura said in a rush, “I wish you to do something for me which will also be of benefit to you should Baron Soames’s conversation with Sir Angus not soon end.”
“Already it sounds agreeable, milady.”
“In a quarter hour, regardless if my husband has yet to yield your dance partner, tell him to meet me at the lake.”
The maid frowned. “Surely ye do not mean to venture there alone?”
“It is not far, and I shall reach it well ere night falls. You saw the great willow near the shore?”
“I did, but—”
“Tell my husband he shall find me there.”
“I do not like this, milady. Though Lexeter seems peaceful, ’tis a great worry for a woman to go unescorted across the land. And dark soon falls and things happen in the night that do not in the light.”
“You concern yourself where you need not,” Laura gently chided. “A quarter hour, hmm?”
Tina sighed. “I shall be nibblin’ and pickin’ at my nails, but aye—a quarter hour and not a second more. Tsk, ye and yer love of water!”