“It is all I care about,” he insisted, remembering his mistake from earlier. “Though as for the fucking, I usually avoid the part where I make another bastard of my own. I suppose I can tell the child it was done on your orders, not that it absolves me in the least.”
She went still. “The child?”
“You do realize there’s a possibility you’ll bear our child.”
“No. You’ve no need to worry on that count. Not with me.” She sounded so certain, so clear that it snapped Rafe from his own turmoil.
“Why not? After all…”
“I cannot have another child.” She said it very quietly, without much emotion.
“Another?” Rafe heard the pain beneath her voice. “You had a child?”
“Yes. I was fourteen, less than a year married, and less than a month till I was to be a widow. The delivery was difficult.” She shook her head. Though she still sat up, her back straight, she now trembled a little. “I say difficult…it was devastating. I don’t remember much, praise Mary. But I am told that my son and I both nearly died. It was a hard labor, and my body not the right size for bearing. I bled and bled, even after the midwife got the baby free of me. He was blue, they said. Almost too long without air to breathe. Thank God he lived. My only child, and the only reason I was worth anything to Lord Otto. So long as I nursed the babe, Otto knew I was necessary. My baby would not take milk from any other woman, no matter how they tried to find one.”
“But who said you could never have another child?” Rafe asked.
“The midwife. She said I was lucky to have survived, and that never again would I ever even get with child, let alone bear it to term.”
“How could she know that?”
“The herbs she used to quell the bleeding. She said she’s used them before, and barrenness is the price. I lived to nurse Henry, but I would never be a mother again.” Angelet choked out the last words, her unnatural calm finally collapsing as she shared something he knew she’d kept secret for a very long time.
He reached for her, and she all but jumped into his arms. A little while ago, she’d been a confident, sensual woman, and now she was in tears, shaking with emotion and as fragile as he first assumed her to be.
He wasn’t good with crying women. He had no idea what to say or do. But it seemed natural to hold her until she’d cried herself out. The way she clung to him suggested that she needed support from someone, and he was the only available option. Poor Angelet.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered then. “I don’t mean to sob all over you. You’d think I’d be reconciled to it by now, but…”
A fresh bout of tears cut her words off, and Rafe just held her closer. “It’s nothing,” he said. Inane, but what could he say? That he didn’t mind her crying?
“I don’t mind,” he said out loud, realizing it was true. “No one is happy all the time.”
He stroked her head, marveling again at the light, almost silvery strands. He wondered if her son had her hair.
“Where is your son now?” he asked.
“He’s being fostered with another family that holds an alliance with Otto.” Angelet raised her head, and she looked a little more present than she had a moment ago. “Otto sent Henry there when he was only eight, and he did it partly to keep me biddable. He dangled a visit like bait. Whenever something happened that made me think I could change my life at all, there it was: Do you want to return home, or see your child again? Do you want to meet a new suitor, or keep your only boy?” Her tone turned harsh as she mimicked Otto’s questions. “He knew me. He knew I’d always bow down, because he had the one thing I loved most in the world.”
Rafe didn’t know what to say to that. He’d never loved anyone that much, or been loved that much.
“All I have of my boy is a lock of his hair,” Angelet whispered. “I look at it every day, instead of his face. How is that just? I told Otto whatever I had to tell him, just for the chance to get to see my Henry again.”
Rafe went utterly still. Her son didn’t have her hair—because it was herson’slock of brown hair in that little box. Not her husband’s. He sighed, relief coursing through him. All this time, he had thought he was pushing Angelet to betray the memory of her first love. But it was her child she thought of, not her late husband.
“What is it?” Angelet was looking at him, having sensed his shift in mood.
“Nothing,” he said. “Just…hearing you speak of a child makes things clearer now.”
“Otto warned me not to tell you the truth before. If I told anyone that the nunnery wasn’t my choice, or if I revealed the true reason why I agreed to take vows, then he’d punish me by withholding access to Henry for the rest of my life. I couldn’t take that chance. Until chance threw everything aside with that attack that separated us from the rest.”
Rafe held her close, kissing her forehead. “I can see why you thought that way.”
“That’s not all,” she said, sounding nervous.
“Go on.”
“The family he’s living with is in Dorset.” Angelet looked nervous, and he understood why.
