“Forgive me.” The moment he said it, he wanted the words back. They were the same with which Simon had fooled Laura when she had but to keep running to save herself. And even were they not the same, they were so inadequate they offended.

“Forgive you?” she whispered in a voice weary from the telling, throughout which she had several times paused to cry quietly. “For what have you to be sorry? You did naught but believe as you were meant to.”

The anger tempting him to seek hell over heaven so he might hunt down Simon D’Arci began to shift toward Laura. And he heard it in his voice when he said, “Why did you not tell me the truth? Why did you allow me to believe you cuckolded me?”

She drew back, and even by moonlight he could see how red and swollen her eyes were. “I am sorry you are angry, but there are many reasons it was for the best.”

“Or so Lady Maude persuaded you.” He grimaced over that woman’s name.

“I was not yet ten and six, Lothaire. She knew the world better than I. And she was right.”

“How could she be? Ten years, Laura! Ten years I believed you a—”

She pressed fingers to his lips. “But now you know I am not, aye?”

He did not doubt his glower was ugly, but he could not temper it. Drawing his head back and lips off her fingers, he said, “Why do you make that a question? Of course I believe you, as I would have had—”

“I think you might have, but Lady Maude reasoned the truth would not change that I was ruined, and with proof of that ruin growing in my belly, your mother would reject me regardless if my babe was conceived through ravishment or consent.”

Seeking to calm himself, he momentarily closed his eyes. “You said many reasons. What other reasons bought your silence, allowing me to believe as I did the day you revealed you bore another man’s child?”

“Though I did not wish to be with him like that, Lothaire, I am not blameless. I knew I should not go down in the cellar with no others near. I should not have let him kiss me nor returned his kiss. When I escaped and he beseeched my forgiveness, I should have kept running. When I saw he wept, I should not have given him my back. I knew it here and here.” She touched her chest and head. “Michael says it is the gift of fear the Lord gives us, one we ought to open as soon as it appears. But I did not even untie the string. The underserving fool I was tossed the gift aside as if I wanted—” She caught her breath. “I vow I did not want what he did. But why did I not run when I could have?”

It was a question to which Lothaire also wanted an answer, and he nearly demanded she look harder to find it, but Father Atticus supplied it. How many times had Lothaire denounced his mother’s divisiveness and threatened to send her from High Castle? How many times had he let her stay though her presence disrupted the household and made life more difficult?

The priest had named Lothaire’s weakness guilt and fear—of hurting his mother’s feelings, of being disliked, of Sebille’s sacrifice that had ever been greater than his.

Laura’s situation was different, but like Lothaire she also sought to salve her guilt and fear. Rather than open the Lord’s gift, she had yielded it to one who had proven so untrustworthy he was dangerous.

“What other reasons?” he pressed.

She looked down. “Lady Maude is the one who found me in the cellar, and never did she suggest it was my fault, even when Simon claimed I was willing.”

“Of course she did not think it your fault. You were beaten!”

She drew a quaking breath. “I loved her like a mother, and she would have been further hurt were the truth of her son known far and wide. And when she later learned why he was so changed from the boy I grew up alongside and why he did that to me…”

“What did she learn? How did she excuse such depravity?”

Laura drew her lower lip between her teeth. “He was not merely humiliated during training for being older than other squires. Terrible things were done him not unlike what he…”

Lothaire was jolted by the horror of what she could not finish, but it did little to assuage the longing to hunt the knave through hell. “Had I known,” he growled, “I would have killed him.”

“Maude said you would—yet another reason to hold close the truth. It would have ruined your life more than mine. And here is another reason. It is ill enough to be misbegotten, so the fewer who know how my daughter came to be, the less likely she will learn of it and suffer for it.”

Lord, douse this fire, Lothaire silently prayed. “When Simon heard you were with child,” he said, “did he offer to wed you?”

“He did, and Lady Maude believed it the best and responsible thing to do. But I could not even bear his voice, so how was I to bear his person? More, his bed? And what kind of father would such a man be?” She shook her head. “Though ever I would be known for a harlot, I refused him.”

Imaginings of how much worse her life could have been dampening the fire, Lothaire said, “In that instance, perhaps when it mattered even more with Clarice to consider, you opened the gift of fear.”

After a long silence, she said, “I suppose I did, though I must confess I did not yet love her. Indeed, I did not think I could since she was got by violent means. But though I have not been a good and present mother, I did come to love her. And easier it was when Simon died.”

Lothaire’s mind was turning, and it took the next corner fast. “You told he was not murdered, that his death was an accident whilst in service to his lord, but I never learned how he died.”

“Aye,” she breathed as if relieved to leave behind talk of Simon and her. “When he earned his spurs, Michael persuaded his lord, Baron Lavonne, to enlist his brother as a household knight. As there was much conflict between the Lavonnes and Wulfriths, King Henry ordered a marriage between the families, and so Baron Lavonne sent men—among them Simon—to collect his bride. The two sisters fled, and though Lady Gaenor escaped, Simon overtook Lady Beatrix and sought to ravish her. They struggled and fell into a ravine, and though the fall killed Simon and Lady Beatrix sustained a head injury, she was accused of murder, and Michael believed her guilty. Wishing to confront her son's murderer, Lady Maude traveled to Castle Soaring where Lady Beatrix was held. I accompanied her, as did Clarice, who was but three. It was then we met Baron Marshal disguised as Sir Piers.”

Lothaire nodded for her to continue.

“When Lady Beatrix told her tale, Maude and I knew Simon’s death was not murder. I told Lady Beatrix I could not reveal the secret of my own ravishment by speaking in her defense, but assured her I believed her. And Michael, who had fallen in love with the lady, had to accept the little brother he had loved was not the same who died.”

“If neither you nor Lady Maude lent your voice to Lady Beatrix’s defense, how was she acquitted?”

“I was not there, but Maude said that despite her head injury, she told a convincing tale.”

Remembering his audience with Lady Beatrix at Castle Soaring, Lothaire now understood her faltering speech. And knew what she had nearly revealed before closing her mouth—Laura's ravishment.

“Too, she had Michael at her side,” Laura continued, “and Maude testified for her. She gave no details but told her son had ravished another.”

Lothaire gripped the back of his neck. “I am glad she did right by Lady Beatrix, but she did not do right by you.”

“She gave my daughter and me a home and was the best grandmother—”

“That Clarice never knew,” Lothaire inserted.

“It could not be helped.”

“Your daughter—our daughter—believes you loved her father, that it was the loss of him that made you a shadow.” Recalling Clarice had told Lady Maude encouraged the girl to allow her mother to sleep because her nights were long, Lothaire ached more for all Laura had suffered. And now he better understood why she had sacrificed herself to remove her daughter from Owen and the boy she feared would ruin Clarice.

Only when he trusted his voice to carry did he ask, “Will you tell Clarice the truth when she is older?”

“I was certain I would not, that it would disturb her to know the circumstances, and still I do not think I shall, but she is stronger and more determined than me and I fear—”

“Nay, Laura, she is not stronger nor more determined, though we shall aspire to make her so. For now she is a girl, and you… I saw what you did to your attacker. Had I not come—”

“He would have done to me what Simon did.”

Lothaire shook his head. “I do not think so.” It was something of a lie, but only something. He believed she would have prevailed as much as he feared she would not have. But if she thought it possible she herself could have prevented the ravishment, perhaps she would sooner heal from the horror of once more finding herself an object to be desired and taken.

“I thank you,” she said softly.

He kissed her forehead. “What do you fear for Clarice?”

“That one day her curiosity may have me so pressed into a corner I shall have to tell her just enough about her father for it not to be a lie. But even that seems too much.”

“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.”

He stilled.

“Certes, now you know it better than I. After…” She shook her head, and Simon fled. “I could not bear to look upon it, especially as it grew round with child. Even after Clarice was born—when once more it was mine alone—it was hard to gaze upon. Will you be patient with me?”

He splayed his hand above her breasts as if to feel the beat of her heart. “You need not ask that of me, love. As I am most willing and you are most willing, and providing God is as willing, we have so many years ahead of us there is no need to rush anything. You have but to tell me what you want and need and ’tis yours.”

He made it sound easy, but it could not be, especially if she wounded his pride.

“Tell me, Laura.”

She laid a hand over his above her heart. “I now know desire can be wondrous, that where there is love it is not to be feared, but I am not yet enough at ease to…”

“Feel as much as I felt,” he finished, and there was no anger in his voice as of one offended.

She nodded. “I felt things I never knew I might, and I would like to feel them again, but there seems something more, meaning I am not fully awake as thought—and I want to be for you. For us. Do you think I will awaken all the way?”

“Methinks this night you nearly did, so aye. And I will be patient, Laura. I will go slowly and gently until you are fully awake.”

“You are not disappointed?”

“In ten years, I have not been happier. So now, if you are comfortable, may I continue to tell you how beautiful you are?”

“You do not think we ought to return to the celebration?”

“All are full of food and drink, song and dance, and the satisfaction of the end of shearing season. I do not believe they will miss us. And certes, one of my knights will inform Sir Angus of the events that transpired here, and he will see Clarice and Sebille safely home.”

She trailed a hand up his arm, loved that her fingers could hardly begin to span his muscular shoulder. “Then pray, tell me so I might find the words to tell you how beautiful you are.”

He laughed, and she so loved that sound from the deepest of him that she would have happily traded his words for more of that rumble. “Methinks I would rather be told how handsome and virile I am.”

“Beautiful and virile, Husband. If you wish to be merely handsome you will have to cut your hair.”

After a thoughtful moment, he said, “You wish me to?”

She smiled at how accommodating he sounded. “You would do it for me?”

“Only you, Laura love.”

She slid her hand up his neck, drew her fingers through his damp hair out to the ends. “But then I could no longer wear your hair,” she said.

“Wear my hair?”

She felt her body blush. “Wh-when you are like this with me.”

“So I ought not cut it?”

She fixed a thoughtful expression on her face. “Since you are far more Samson whose hair was his strength than King David’s usurping son whose hair proved his downfall, methinks it best you not cut it. Certes, I shall not.”

He kissed her long, raised his head. “You are my strength.”

Though she thought he exaggerated, she felt stronger despite being bared and as vulnerable as a woman could be. However, this was her Lothaire—lost to her and now found by the grace of God who had surely made Queen Eleanor His instrument.

“Your strength,” she mused. “Not merely your somehow?”

“That is important too, but not for how Lexeter is saved. For how I am saved. I love you, Laura. Now allow me to continue so you will know how beautiful you are and wish to see what I see. Then one day I shall wear your hair.”