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“She’s lost a goodly amount of blood, but withal, she’s strong and fit. She’ll come through this, Roland. She’ll regain her strength and come back to you.”
He continued to look at his wife’s face, continued to listen to her breathing, continued to feel her damning words sear through him.
“What did she mean—that you would yell your relief?”
Roland looked up at Katherine of Fortescue. Slowly he shook his head. “She meant nothing,” he said.
Katherine was tired, worried to her very soul, and thus she spoke harshly, without thought. “She meant something, all right. I’m not blind, Roland. There is strife between the two of you. My daughter is bitterly unhappy and you, well—you seem so distant with her, so removed from her. Damn you, what did she mean? What have you done to her?”
And Roland said simply, giving it up because he was so unutterably weary, “The king and queen know of it, but no one else. The child she carried wasn’t mine.”
Katherine drew back, so surprised that she dropped some of the bloodied cloths. “Not your child? That makes no sense at all. No, that couldn’t be—”
“I don’t know whose child it was. More than likely it was the Earl of Clare’s, or perhaps another’s, a man I never knew of. No, it wasn’t her fault, I would swear to that. Daria is good and true. She would never betray me. She was raped.” He paused, raising Daria’s limp hand and pressing his mouth to her wrist.
Katherine continued to stare at him. He moved restlessly, saying more to himself than to her, “But you see, she insisted the child was mine. She refused to back down, even though all pointed to fabrication. I have assured her repeatedly of my protection, promised that I would think no less of her, and begged her to tell me who had taken her against her will, but she kept insisting that the child was mine, that she’d given me her virginity one night when I was ill, out of my head with fever. I don’t understand her, but now it is over and there will be no more dissension between us.”
Katherine wished desperately she hadn’t pushed him. What he’d told her—it was something she would never have imagined. She guessed he would regret speaking the truth to her, feel anger at her for goading him, so she said nothing more. She felt exhaustion creeping into her very bones; she looked down at her daughter and knew she would sleep for many hours now, healing sleep. She nodded to Roland and left the bedchamber. When she opened the door, she saw Sir Thomas standing there. She wasn’t surprised to see him. She smiled and said, “I would very much like to rest now, sir.”
“I will assist you to your room, Katherine,” Sir Thomas said, and gave her his arm.
Roland eased onto his back, and clasped his wife’s wrist. He felt the pulse, strong and steady beneath his finger. She would live. He felt relief so profound that he shook with i
t.
No, he wouldn’t be shouting his relief. He wouldn’t be shouting at all. He wished he’d kept his mouth shut, but it was too late now.
Graelam de Moreton sat up in his bed, his wife standing over him, her hands on her hips. They looked to be in the midst of an argument.
“If there are wagers to be made on the outcome of this conflict, my groats are on Kassia.”
“Get out, you dammed sod. And take me with you.”
“Nay, Roland,” Kassia called out, laughter in her voice, “stay. Graelam becomes more and more unmanageable, but perchance you can convince him that he will be rendered impotent if he doesn’t allow himself enough time to heal. I have told him that is what happens to men who don’t obey their wives’ commonsense instructions.”
“That’s her latest dire prediction,” Graelam said. “I refuse to believe it. You don’t, do you?”
Roland kept his expression steady. “I can see why she would be concerned,” he said at last. “After all, you have always told me that your rod is a good deal of your wife’s contentment bliss. Were something to happen to it, why, then, what would she do?”
Kassia gasped. “Roland, did he say that, truly?”
“Of course I didn’t say any such thing.”
“It was something like that, if I recall aright. Nay, you’re right, Graelam. You told me that a man’s rod was a measure of a warrior and that, therefore, you were as great as Charlemagne himself.”
Graelam threw a carafe of water at Roland, then fell back against the pillows at the pain it brought him. He cursed fluently and with all the frustration in his soul.
He felt his wife’s soft hands on his chest, lightly stroking him, and the pain, incredibly, eased. He opened his eyes and looked up at her. “You think you are well in control, don’t you?”
She leaned down and kissed him. “Aye.”
“He does better, Kassia?”
She gave her husband a long look, then raised her head. “He mends, Roland. I cannot, however, continue losing at draughts with him. He isn’t altogether witless and must soon guess that I am allowing him to win.”
Graelam smiled at that. “I improve, Roland. It’s just that I am so damnably bored. It’s been two days now.”
“Lady Katherine tells me that you should be well enough to be out of your bed on the morrow.”
