“Perhaps if I am the father she needs, she will not be so curious,” Lothaire said. “Regardless, whatever you must tell, you will not tell it alone. We have found each other again, and we will take back every year lost to a secret that should not have been made nor kept.” He ground his teeth. “I should have let you tell me sooner.”
“I should have tried sooner. Michael believed you ought to be told ere we wed as discussed the night you saw me embrace him. I did wish to tell you, and I meant to, but fear you would not believe me and think worse of me stayed my tongue. When finally I determined to reveal all, you believed Michael had fathered Clarice, and the truth seemed even a lie to me since the only ones who could support my claim were Michael and his wife. And I feared you would think he was merely trying to place the blame on a brother who could not defend himself.”
She was probably right. Had he been told at the wrong time, his defenses could have flung terrible words at her. And for so much more he would now require forgiveness.
“Laura,” he groaned, “however long it takes to pardon me for the wrong done you, I will wait.”
Her breath caught, then she slipped off his lap and rose onto her knees beside him. As she set a hand on either side of his face, the gown draping her shoulders slid down her back, revealing her in moonlight as he could only bear by keeping his eyes firm upon hers.
“If there is anything to forgive, Lothaire, ’tis forgiven. Love is like that.”
He would not have thought his chest could tighten further, but his next breath was a struggle against what seemed iron bands.
The moisture in her eyes threatening to overflow, she continued, “Only you have I loved. Though for years I tried to stop, that first day at Windsor I knew I loved you still.” Tears slid off her lashes onto her cheeks. “You are as much me as I am—mayhap more.” A sob stole the warmth of her breath from his face. “Do you think… Can you love me again?”
He could not give his lungs what they demanded in return for words, could not loosen his jaw to mouth them. And now his muscles quaked as the boy he no longer was sought to make him one again. Her emotions tempting him to tears a man ought not shed no matter that Father Atticus told even the Lord wept, Lothaire lowered his head and found a breath of air between them, but it spent itself on a groan.
Her hands slid from his face and around his neck, and he felt her cheek settle against the side of his head.
“Too soon,” she whispered, “but when I have proven a good and faithful wife, there will be love again.”
He lifted his head.
Laura moved her hands to his shoulders, leaned in, said against his lips, “Make love to me, even if ’tis not yet truly love.”
He jerked back. “Here? Now?”
She blinked, and he saw that though her eyes were moist and bright, tears no longer fell. “Aye, show me desire is a good thing between a man and a woman.”
He was ashamed that his body stirred. Though this was to have been the time and place to consummate their marriage, surely not after what had nearly happened here. Not after all she had been made to relive in the telling of what she had too long held close.
“Just as once we imagined,” she said and angled her head.
Her sweet kiss further awakened him, but he gripped her arms and eased her back. “Not now, not here, not after what almost—”
“Almost, Lothaire. Being with you will help me forget that and…the other.”
Or it could ruin all, he thought. “I want it to be right and good for you, Laura. I want no regrets.”
“I am stronger than you think, and all the more for unburdening our present and future by revealing the past. More, for being believed. And redeemed.” Her smile was hopeful. “This eve I came here to be your wife. Do not let them take this from us—not ever again.”
She did not want Simon or that other miscreant to win this night—to once more steal what should have been. Neither did he wish it, and more greatly he wanted her this night knowing what those others sought to do. But if it proved a mistake to make love to her, it might be more difficult for her to recover.
“It has to be right, Laura.”
“With you, the man I love, how can it not be?”
“Easily, I fear.”
“Then go slowly.” She leaned near again. “Go gently.”
He wanted to, but he knew his body, and those words—Heaven help him those words!—moved him toward a place he now feared going. More than ever he wanted this woman, but she needed him to prove desire could be a good thing, and that was only possible if he revealed the heart that beat so powerfully it was no longer subordinate to his head. Indeed, one day it might rule his head. If they were to become one this night and were there to be no regrets or memories of how wrong it could be, she had to know what he felt.
“It is not too soon for me to love you again,” he said, “and blessedly, not too late.”
Her eyes widened.
“You have naught to prove, Laura love. Though I would not have allowed myself to believe it until this night, I do not think I ever stopped loving you. I feel as if I have but opened a door against which I set my back, that ever I had one hand upon it and had only to be welcomed back inside.”
Tears again, but these were the stuff of stars, and their trails on her cheeks were like those bright lights that shot across the dark. “Truly?” she whispered. “’Tis love you feel for me?”
“Aye. You are the Laura I have loved and still love, she who wished to swim and bathe with me, she whom many a time I tried not to imagine here believing never would she be. And yet you are.”
“Now and forever, Lothaire.”
He pulled her to him and slowly…gently kissed her.
Slowly…gently stroked the arms she wound around him.
Slowly…gently slid his palm down the back she arched toward him.
Slowly…gently lowered her to the bank.
Slowly…gently made love to his wife.
“You are more beautiful than I imagined.”
“Am I?” Laura murmured where she lay on her side, head pillowed on his shoulder, all of her wonderfully exhausted against the warmth of Lothaire’s body and beneath the gown she had pulled over them.
Lothaire chuckled. “Not enough for you?”
“Hmm?” she murmured, sleep’s hand heavy upon her shoulder.
“Very well,” he said. “I can do better.” He rolled toward her.
Of a sudden, she was on her back, the gown fallen to the side, and it was no longer the hand of sleep on her shoulder. It was Lothaire’s. And she recalled she had questioned her beauty which had not been an attempt to gain further flattery.
Leaning over her, loosed hair falling between them to shadow his own face, he said, “I shall not speak of your face, for ever I have known it to be beautiful, and your neck as well. But your shoulders… Would that my fingers were not so hardened that I might feel as much as my eyes see in moonlight.”
Carefully, as if for fear his rough skin would mar her, he trailed his fingers down her collarbone and into the cleft at the base of her throat. She did not fear his touch—not anymore—but there was something else she needed to tell him before he went further.
“Lothaire,” she said as his fingers moved downward, “I hardly know my body.”