It tempted, but she would deny herself until Lothaire departed the castle as surely he must though it was the day after their wedding.

“Not now,” Laura said as Tina combed a snarl out of her lady’s hair. “Mayhap an hour hence.”

“’Tis done already,” the maid said. “The water is set to boiling and we may see the first pails arrive ere I finish fixing your hair atop your head.”

“But—”

“I promised a bath, milady, and so ye shall have one.” Her hands in Laura’s hair stilled, and she turned toward the open window from which no morning-after sheet was hung to prove the bride had come to her groom chaste—an impossibility in light of the girl who leaned in the embrasure taking in all manner of activity, the sounds of which included the clang of steel markedly different from the smithy’s forging. Earlier than usual, the garrison practiced at swords.

“Lady Clarice,” Tina called, “might ye hasten to the kitchen and ask Cook for rose oil to scent the bath water?”

Clarice, whose disappointment in her mother’s failed attempt to appear joyous was obvious, sprang around. “I shall.”

“Nay,” Laura caused her daughter to falter. “Not roses. ’Tis already much upon the air.”

Clarice’s drooping smile picked itself up, proof she had thought she would not be permitted to leave. “Then?”

“Mint, if he has enough to spare.”

The girl ran forward and kissed her mother’s cheek. “I am happy for you. And me. I quite like the father you have given me.”

Laura’s throat constricted. “That makes me happy.”

“And what of Lord…?” Clarice frowned. “May I call him Father now?”

“I believe he would like that.” Hopefully it was so.

“And what of Father? He makes you happy too, does he not?”

Blessedly, Laura was prepared for the question. “He does. Queen Eleanor chose wisely.”

Clarice gave a little laugh. “I shall thank her one day!”

Once Laura was alone with Tina, the maid said, “What is amiss, milady?”

“Naught.”

“That ye would lie to your devoted servant!” Tina tugged at the crossings of the braid she had begun to work. “Tsk, milady.”

“I am but tired.”

“And another lie. Mind ye, were you tired for the right reason I could forgive, but I saw Baron Soames come belowstairs this morn to break his fast in the kitchen rather than abed with his bride.” She drew the comb through the ends of the tresses, resumed crossing them. “Milord looked as thunderous as ye look miserable, milady. And of course the rose petals are hardly disturbed though they ought to be bruised amid sheets that know not their up from their down.”

Laura needed no mirror to reveal how brightly she flushed over imaginings of what would have had to happen for this conversation not to be had.

“So in my thinking, and it may be wrong since never have I wed, yer nuptial night satisfied neither.”

Laura sighed. “We argued.”

“Ah, milady.” The maid stepped to the side, and when Laura lifted her face said, “’Twill be a memorable night only for how much you do not wish it to be memorable. But…” Her smile was encouraging. “…ye have a great supply of nights with yer husband. Hopefully this eve ye will set all aright.”

“Certes, we shall try,” Laura said. Lothaire might wait a while on gaining an heir, but only a while. The next time, be it this night or a sennight hence, she would be meek and obedient and very quiet.

Hardly had Tina wound the braid around Laura’s hair and secured it than the first pails of water arrived, along with mint delivered by one of the three serving women who passed it to Tina and withdrew with the others to refill their pails.

“’Twould seem Lady Clarice has found a distraction,” Tina said as she shook green leaves into the tub. “But at least she saw the mint delivered.”

“Do you think she has persuaded Baron Soames to allow her to attend another shearing?”

“Mercy, I pray not. Ye and yer husband may have argued last eve, but if only for the sake of appearance, he ought to stay yer side the day after the wedding. ’Twill earn his bride no good regard if he soon abandons her.”

She was right, and for that Laura hoped he remained, though not in her immediate company.

“Now into the tub with ye.”

Laura glanced at the door. What if Lothaire returned? The thought of him finding her unclothed—

“Very well,” the maid said. “Come see what I found.” She moved to the left of the tub the servants had placed before the hearth.

“See what?” Laura said and moments later saw.

Around the chamber walls were arched recesses in which candles were set, but one had an additional function. Tina lifted out the fat candle, tugged a small iron ring, and a small door swung inward.

Laura had heard of such means for a lord to keep watch on what went in his hall during his absence, but she had never seen such.

“Look, milady.”

Laura leaned forward. The kitchen corridor was to the left, the hall entry doors straight ahead, the high table to the right. And occupying that great room were a score of knights and men-at-arms breaking their fast, served by a handful of servants performing the duties Laura had given them. Lothaire was nowhere among them, nor Clarice.

Forget appearance sake, Laura’s husband and daughter had likely departed the castle to devote the day to the work of wool. But she would not be disappointed. She was to have a bath and could linger as long as she liked. And there came the women lugging more pails.

Laura was up to her hips in mint-scented water when the servants arrived. After Tina ensured the water had cooled sufficiently it would not burn her lady, the pails were emptied at Laura’s feet, and the level rose to beneath her breasts whose weight she remained more familiar with than sight.

Two more trips, she guessed, and there would be enough water for her to slip beneath the surface if she wished. She did wish it, though her hair was clean, having been washed in a basin yestermorn ere the wedding, and effort having been expended to secure it atop her head.

She leaned her head back against the tub’s rim, became only distantly aware of Tina moving about the solar that was now more the maid’s responsibility to keep clean and neat than that of Lothaire’s squire. Doubtless, the young man would be pleased to spend more time out of doors.

When the water covered Laura’s shoulders, Tina began soaping and scrubbing her lady. As ever, the lingering would commence once the water was clouded and Laura could feel without seeing it caress her skin.

As she bent forward to give the maid her back, she remembered how abrasive the brush had been across skin which, in recent months, had been subjected to no more than a vigorous washcloth. She did not miss the brush that had left her with healing scratches that sometimes itched so much she could not leave a room fast enough to rub her back against a stone wall.

She sighed. “I think I am nearly all the way awake now.”

Tina squeezed Laura’s shoulder. “I am glad, milady.”

It was worrisome she had spoken her thoughts aloud. She must not do so in Lothaire’s presence. “As am I,” she said.

Another squeeze. “Ye are clean. Now rest.”

Laura sank back and closed her eyes. And let her thoughts go to the night past, which she had tried to avoid since departing her troubled dreams.

She feared Lothaire knew she had cried herself to sleep. It had shamed that she could not control her emotions, but she had turned the damp pillow wet as she spilled out her hurt over the exchange with her husband and regret over not following Michael’s advice. But she would follow it to its cruel end. Regardless of whether Lothaire believed how Simon made a child on her, he would be told. And then…

He could refuse to believe her and resolve to live his life bound to one he thought a harlot and liar, or he could verify Simon’s character with Michael and his wife. She almost preferred the former, so much she hated the thought of Michael’s pain over his brother’s perversion and Lady Beatrix being made to relive what she had suffered at his hands that had seen her stand trial for his murder.

The door opened.

Startling at the possibility it was Lothaire, she gripped the tub’s rim and looked around.

But ere she laid eyes on him, Tina exclaimed, “Milord!” confirming it was the one Laura wanted least to see this morn.

He halted just inside the solar, and his eyes received hers the instant they flew to his. In a voice so tight she hardly recognized it, he said, “What do you?”

She tore her hands from the rim and crossed her arms over her chest though he was too distant to see anything below her shoulders. “I bathe, of course! What do you here?”

He glanced at Tina where she stood alongside the bed with the cradle made of her apron holding rose petals plucked from the sheets, looked back at Laura, spread his arms. “Obviously, I require a change of clothes.”

She could see that now the shock of his entrance was past. The perspiration darkening the neck and shoulders of his gray tunic tapered down his chest to his waist, and his chausses were dusty and sliced at his left knee.

He had been practicing at swords, here the reason that sound was heard earlier than usual.

“So you do,” she said. “Take them and be gone.”

His brow furrowed, and she regretted not saying it better. It sounded more a demand than a request, but she was naked in the presence of a man who had yet to know her. And growing colder by the moment despite water so heated steam puffed above the surface.

He strode toward her.

“I bathe, Lothaire!” she cried and clasped her body closer.

“In our bedchamber.” He halted alongside the tub, stared into her wide-eyed face.

Laura bore his gaze until it moved down her neck to the soap-clouded water, then she lurched forward and turned her shoulder to him. “Pray, leave!”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him lower to his haunches. A moment later, he touched her upper arm. “Lest you forget, I am your husband.”

She drew what should have been a calming breath, but it pulled his salty, masculine scent into her, and so disturbed that the water no longer soothed. She snatched her arm away. “Not yet you are. Not truly.”

His silence was of such depth she thought she might drown in it, then he put his mouth near her ear, a reminder they were not alone. “Something we must needs remedy. And soon.”

“Leave!” she rasped. “I do not want you here!”

He stood. His boots sounded over the floor, the lid of a chest banged against the wall, moments later dropped. Boots again, then the slam of the door.

Sinking back against the tub, Laura covered her face with her hands.

“Oh, milady!” Tina hastened forward. “I knew not if I should stay or go—knew not what to say.”

Laura dragged her hands down her face. “I said enough, Tina, and I wish I had not, but I could not think. I just…wanted him gone.”

“I must say, he was fair tolerant, milady. I thought he would send me away and the two of ye would have done with it.”

“As did I,” Laura whispered.

“Ah, look! Now I must pick the petals from the rushes.”

What had been strewn across the sheet was strewn across the floor between bed and tub. “Leave them,” Laura said. “And me. I wish to be alone.”

“Very good, milady. I will be belowstairs. I should return in…half an hour?”

Laura nodded. When the door closed, she unpinned her hair, drew the fat braid over her shoulder, and loosened its weave.

* * *

Had not the maid appeared, he would have waited until this eve to confront Laura over her behavior in the presence of Tina who was to know more of the intimate details of the lives of her lady and lord than any other. All day he would have borne the roiling. But the day need not be entirely ruined.

Tina had not seen him where he stood outside Angus’s chamber seeking to calm himself ere entering lest it was occupied, the knight also having departed the training field to change his clothes.

When the maid turned opposite and quickly descended the stairs, Lothaire determined he need not avail himself of Angus’s chamber. The solar was no longer exclusively his, but as Laura’s husband he could enter at will.

When he strode inside, surprise at finding his wife absent made him leave the door wide, then realizing she must be in the garderobe, he seated the door and moved toward the bed where he would shed his garments and don fresh ones regardless of how Laura found him when she reappeared.

He was feet from the bed when the trickle of water returned his regard to the empty tub.

Not empty, he corrected when he deciphered the light reflected across the water that had risen so far above the rim it streamed down the outside. He dropped the clean garments, ran, thrust his arms into the tub, and snatched Laura from its depths. There was no need to attempt to revive her, she was all flailing arms and spluttering as he swung her out over the rim.

When he dragged her against him, she cried out, “Lothaire!” and stared at him out of eyes so wide their upper lids were known only by the wet, spiky lashes nearly touching her eyebrows.

“Why?” he barked.

She ceased struggling, the only movement about her the rapid rise and fall of her chest that wet his tunic, the only sound that of panting against his neck and jaw.

“Why, Laura? Is the prospect of life with me so terrible?”

As though her mouth had gone dry, her tongue clicked when she parted her lips. “Nay, ’tis what I want.”

Bitterness spoiled his laughter. “So much that not even wed a full day you seek to end your life more quickly than did my first wife.”

Eyes widening further, she shook her head, loosening her soaked hair caught between their chests. “Surely you do not think I meant to drown myself?”

“Of course not,” he snarled. “You were but rinsing the soap from your hair and forgot to surface. Or mayhap you were taking a swim?”

“I was enjoying my bath, that is all. My word I give.”

“You took water into your lungs, Laura!”

“Because of the surprise of seeing you above me.”

He could find no lie about her, but that did not mean there was none. However, there seemed no benefit in pursuing the truth—indeed, it would be of detriment to a body that was becoming too aware of the bared one pressed to his.

“I did not know you would return,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows. “Certes, that was your intent, and that is why I am here. I will not have you speak to me—”

“I know, Lothaire. It was ill of me and all the worse in front of Tina. I am sorry. I just felt…”

“What?”

“Vulnerable. Like prey.”

So sincere was her admission that something at the edge of his consciousness shifted—not enough to step into the light, but enough to throw a long shadow.

“I know I granted you rights to my body, but…”

“Tell me.”

Her gaze wavered. “I am afeared.”

He believed her. Though he hated she was frightened of his possession, no greater evidence could she offer than she had. Realizing his anger had yielded to compassion he would not have thought possible when he slammed the door minutes earlier, he said, “No matter the past, I will not hurt you, Laura. I will be gentle. I will go slow. Even if it feels I die. My word I give.”

Finally, she asked what she should not, especially at this moment when he could not be gentle, could not go slow, would surely die. “Now, Lothaire?”

“Nay, when I can keep my word and we are certain not to be disturbed. But we could make a good beginning of it.”

Relief tangible, she said, “How?”

“I would see you. And you would see me.”

Her blush was violent, but she gave a slight nod, granting him permission to see beyond the cleft of her breasts framed by wet tresses.

He released her arms, stepped back, slowly moved his gaze down her flushed body. Upon reaching her feet, he closed his eyes. “Heavens, Laura, you are beautiful.” Though he wanted to more slowly raise his gaze up her, he opened his eyes upon hers. Seeing gratitude there, he lifted the towel from a chair and set it around her shoulders.

“Now I shall change my garments,” he said as she gripped the towel closed at her throat. “If you wish, you may look upon me as I have looked upon you, though at a distance safer for me.”

He strode across the solar, swept up the tunic and chausses abandoned to the petal-strewn rushes, disrobed alongside the bed, and drew on fresh garments without looking at her. It was not necessary, for he felt her gaze. And suffered for it. Only after re-girding his sword and starting for the door did he look to her.

She had not moved, nor tried to cover more of herself though her calves and inner thighs were visible between the towel’s edges.

“As I shall be at High Castle all day, my lady, I will see you at dinner and supper—and in between if you wish.”

She inclined her head.

He opened the door, paused. “I have no illegitimate children, Laura,” he said what should have been told sooner. “Nor shall I. I am not the same as my father.”

Something like a sob parted her lips. “Nor am I the same as Lady Edeva. Not in any way. I do wish to be joined with you for more than a day. Far more, Lothaire.”

Here further assurance she had not tried to take her life. And because he believed her as he had feared doing, he said, “You are my somehow, Laura, and not only for saving Lexeter.”

An uncertain smile lifted her mouth, and he did not worry over the tub of water to which he left her.