“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?

“Lothaire,” she spoke his name, and doves to the left and right responded with a whisper of wings.

She slid down the wall onto her knees, clasped her hands before her, and prayed for what only the Lord could grant. “For Clarice’s sake above all, Lothaire’s next, mine last, help me find the right moment and words to fix what I did not mean to break. Show me your arms are not so full you cannot hold all of us.”

Another quarter hour she sought the Lord’s arms and would have continued seeking had she not heard a familiar voice ask after her.

She pushed upright and opened the door as Michael D’Arci reached for it.

Concern on his torch-lit brow, he searched her up and down. “My lady wife thinks you gone too long. She sent me to see you returned to the donjon.”

During Lothaire and Michael’s hour-long discussion of Lexeter’s wool operation, Laura and Lady Beatrix had spoken of small things while Clarice occupied the D’Arci children and, later, carried them abovestairs to bed.

After Lothaire excused himself to find his own rest, Laura had told Soaring’s lady she wished a walk before withdrawing to her chamber. Lady Beatrix had offered to join her, but Laura had declined. Doubtless, the lady eschewed her own bed to ensure her guest returned safely.

“She is kind to worry over me.” Laura stepped from the dovecote and closed the door.

“She is my prize in heaven come to Earth,” Michael said, a smile in his voice.

Inwardly sighing over the love shared by him and his wife, she hesitated when he offered his arm. Then assuring herself she would not feel the stomach-churning discomfort experienced with her three rejected suitors each time she forced herself to accept their touch or extend hers, she laid her hand on his forearm and walked beside him.

Neither spoke until they passed beneath the raised portcullis into the inner bailey and the donjon was before them.

“Why have you not told him?” Michael asked.

She faltered, and he turned to face her. “You revealed the truth of Clarice to the queen. Why not Lord Soames?”

She dropped her hand from him and averted her gaze.

A finger beneath her chin returned her eyes to his. “Do you fear him, Laura?”

His question reminded her of the talk they had before she went to court. She had told him what she had witnessed between Clarice and the son of his older brother, Joseph, which awakened her to the necessity of removing her daughter from Owen. When she apologized for overreacting lest Michael believe that of her, he became angry, though not with her, and said the gift of fear was given by the Lord and one should open it as soon as it appeared. And how she wished she had when it was given her the day she descended to the cellar where Simon cornered her.

“Do you fear Soames, Laura?”

She shook her head. “Not that he will do me physical harm, but I do fear for my heart.”

“You love him still.”

“Aye, and the mere thought I may never again have any part of his heart hurts mine.”

“Then why not reveal to him that revealed to the queen?”

“I needed Eleanor. Though certain she would not give aid to a harlot, I hoped she would help a wronged woman with whom she shares blood.”

“I believe you must tell him, Laura. Though he is bitter, methinks I like him better than the first time we met. And were he without honor, I do not believe anything would persuade Abel Wulfrith to instruct him in arms.”

Laura had wondered how far his conversation with Lothaire had strayed from talk of sheep. “He received training at Wulfen?”

“Indeed. A rarity for one who has earned his spurs, but it speaks well of him that a Wulfrith, especially Abel, expended so much effort reserved for boys and young men. And well that your betrothed is not so prideful he refused the opportunity to better his skill at arms. Doubtless, he has suffered humiliation to be a grown man training amongst squires.”

It did speak well of Lothaire, but not so well she was ready to reveal the true circumstances of Clarice’s conception, especially the part she had played—that which might not condemn her in Michael’s eyes but would likely condemn her in Lothaire’s.

Laura gathered breath. “I have prayed over revealing to him what happened at Owen, but ever I come back to the lack of proof and that for ten years I offered none. Now to tell the tale of a man who cannot defend himself for how long he has been in the grave? Most convenient, my betrothed will say.”

“You but kept your word to my stepmother, which you should not have given.”

“I could not injure her more than already she was by the truth of her son. She was ever kind to me, like the mother I did not have. When my father disavowed me and would not provide funds for me to enter a convent and hide my shame, she remained steadfast. And what of you? Have you not suffered knowing the truth?”

“Not as much as I would now suffer were it never told. Do not forget that Simon’s depravity nearly lost me the woman I love.”

He spoke true, but still he had been deeply pained to learn his beloved brother had become a stranger—the same as Simon had become to Laura during his knighthood training.

“I would not wish my brother’s sin cast wide like seed upon fertile soil,” he said, “but if any ought to be told, it is the man from whom my brother stole what was most precious.”

“I agree, but I do not know Lothaire will believe me, and if ever he should, certainly not now. Mayhap once I have proven a good and faithful wife.”

“Laura, though I could not clearly see Baron Soames kiss your hand, methinks that is a man who still loves even if he does not know it or wish it. He may not believe you now, but I think it the place to start, and ere you wed. If he requires proof, I will stand witness, as will my lady wife.”

She drew a shuddering breath. “I know not when, but I shall tell him.”

He squeezed her shoulder. It was so reminiscent of when her world had been bright and he was the big brother denied her when she was sent to live distant from those of her blood, that Laura lurched forward and put her arms around his neck and pressed her face to his shoulder.

He went very still, and she knew he questioned the appropriateness of her embrace, but he set a hand between her shoulder blades and patted her back.

She did not mean to cry, but she could feel the rise of that emotion that made being awake so difficult. As if sensing it, he said with teasing, “You should know my sweet wife has threatened Lord Soames with bodily harm if he causes Clarice or you unhappiness.”

She lifted her head, blinked away tears. “Lady Beatrix said she would hurt him?”

“Aye.” He chuckled. “Though forsooth, I would be her instrument of revenge. And her brothers.”

Her laughter was weak, but it was sincere, and it calmed the emotions seeking to tip her into misery.

“You are a good man, Michael D’Arci. I am glad you have been blessed to be so loved.”

“I pray the same for you.”

Her smile wavered, but she took his arm again and, with a lighter step, crossed the bailey.

* * *

Beware the Delilah, my son. Beware the Jezebel.

Lothaire loathed finding his mother here with him—not to offer comfort but force him to see what he did not wish to see. And regret what he ached to regret.

He stared down upon the man and woman until their ascent of the steps delivered them to the donjon’s door. Then the cool night air he had sought feeling chill, he stepped back from the window he had unshuttered minutes before Laura and Michael D’Arci crossed from the outer bailey into the inner—her hand on his arm.

He had struggled for a reasonable explanation for the two walking alone in the dark. And likely would have failed to find one even had D’Arci not stepped in front of her, even had she not gone into his arms.

What little doubt might have lingered was swept away by the memory of a younger Laura running to greet Lady Maude’s second stepson with enthusiasm that seemed to surpass that shown Lothaire upon his arrival. Later, when he told her such behavior was not befitting a lady, she had once more assured him Michael D’Arci was as a brother. For love of her, Lothaire had accepted her word.

Fool! Was the man Clarice’s father? Certes, it was a visiting knight who got Laura with child. Were D’Arci the one, more sense it made that Lady Maude had not merely been kind in allowing her scandalous ward to remain in her household. And her stepson was a better fit than her own son whom Lothaire had briefly considered as the offender. Though Laura had shared fond memories of their childhood, the one time he had met Simon, she had been distant with the disagreeable youth who was not much older than she, yet seemed younger.

Were it a D’Arci who made Lothaire a cuckold, it was surely this one entrusted with Laura’s daughter while she was at court, he who had hair as dark as the girl’s and eyes as pale.

Restrainedly, Lothaire closed the shutters he longed to slam, then strode to the bed and dropped onto it.

Woe to Lady Beatrix who believed herself happily married—more, for her defense of the woman who had birthed her husband’s child.

Woe to Michael D’Arci if ever the Wulfrith brothers learned the truth of him—more, if he thought to cuckold Lothaire a second time.