The Overlord's Bride. Margaret Moore

scrambled back into the bed and, snuggling down into the featherbed, gave him a delighted smile. “Thank you, my lord. I cannot say how many times I imagined such a luxury as this.”

      “You will sleep?”

      “Sleep? Oh, no, for then I would not know what I was enjoying.”

      His lips jerked into another little smile. “As you wish.”

      She sighed rapturously. “First the beautiful gown and now this! My lord, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and I bless you for marrying me.”

      Lord Kirkheathe didn’t answer as he strode from the room.

      Sighing again, Elizabeth pulled the covers even tighter and contemplated her unusual husband. Seeing him smile, though it be a little one, made her want to laugh.

      No doubt he had many cares, being such a rich and powerful lord. She would do what she could to lessen them, especially if she could see him smile more often.

      Maybe a child would make him happier, too.

      She climbed out of the bed, noting the dried blood on the sheet as she knelt.

      “Dear God,” she prayed, wishing she had gone to mass, the better for her prayer, and also that she had been a more humble, obedient person and thus more deserving, “let me be with child. If not already, soon!”

      Fearing she had sounded too demanding, she added, “If it be Your will.”

      Shivering, she got up. Outside, the sound of horses and jingling harness took her to the window.

      Her husband sat upon a mighty stallion. Behind him was a troop of mounted soldiers. She watched as Lord Kirkheathe raised his hand and moved toward the massive gates, his well-equipped men following.

      He had not called out an order, merely raised his gloved hand and gestured. All was done with purposeful silence—and the instant obedience of well-trained and disciplined men.

      With a grin, she realized the Reverend Mother would surely approve of her husband, and just as surely think he had made a poor choice of bride.

      But the Reverend Mother was far away, and she was married, and soon—please, God, soon!—she might be a mother, looking after her children with love and kindness, as her parents had raised her before their deaths from fever when she was but eight years old.

      Sighing, she blocked out the memories that came after that, of traveling from relative to relative, never really wanted or cared for. Of the brief respite at Lady Katherine’s, who was strict, but fair.

      Then the horrid years at the convent.

      She turned and looked at the inviting bed, but there was no point now to go back. Nor did she wish to give the servants any cause to disparage her, despite her husband’s remarks on that point. She might as well dress and go to the hall.

      Besides, if breakfast was half so good as the feast…

      She slipped her feet into her shoes beside the bed and ran eagerly to the door. “Rual!”

      The woman appeared so quickly, Elizabeth thought she must have been waiting on the stairs for her summons. “My lady?”

      “I was to call for you when I was ready,” she said jovially. “Well, I am ready. Do you know where my other dress has gone? I cannot wear the velvet gown today.”

      “Your old dress is in the chest beside the bed,” Rual said as she came into the room.

      “And all my other goods?”

      “There, too.”

      “They don’t take up much room, do they?” Elizabeth noted as she opened the chest.

      “Shall I fetch warm water, my lady?”

      “Do not trouble yourself. I am used to cold.” No lie, that, Elizabeth thought ruefully as she put on her warm stockings and then her gray woolen gown. With the speed of years of familiarity, she tied the laces while Rual began to gather up the bedding.

      Thinking of the dried blood, Elizabeth hurried to wash her face and hide her silly blush. After all, Rual was a grown woman. She would know what had happened.

      Everybody would know.

      She splashed the water over her face, again and again, until she felt the heat diminish.

      She picked up the small square of linen beside the basin and wiped off her face.

      It smelled of him, her husband, Lord Kirkheathe….

      “By our Lady,” she muttered. I don’t even know his first name.

      “Do you need anything else, my lady?” Rual asked, holding the big bundle of cloth against her broad hip.

      “No…well, yes,” she confessed as she went to the chest and found her scarf and wimple. She didn’t want to appear ignorant, but wouldn’t it be worse not to know? “I fear in all the hurry yesterday, I didn’t ask my husband’s Christian name,” she said as she put the scarf over her head and attached the wimple beneath her chin.

      “Raymond D’Estienne is his Christian name, my lady, like his father before him.”

      “Did you know his parents?”

      “No. They both died well before my time here.”

      “What do they say about them?”

      The maidservant shrugged. “His father was reckoned a good man, although basely born.”

      “How did he come to have such an estate then?”

      “It was taken from another and given to him by the earl of Chesney.”

      “You do not think he deserved it?”

      “That is not for me to say, my lady. The earl thought he did.”

      “And his mother?”

      “She died giving birth to him. His father did not marry again, like he did.”

      Elizabeth tried not to look shocked, but she suddenly felt off balance and unsteady, as if she were trying to cross a raging river on a fallen tree trunk.

      Yet why should she be so surprised, she reasoned. He was not a young man. Of course he might have been married before, perhaps more than once. “How many wives has he had?”

      “Just the one, other than you.”

      That was something at least. “Did she die in childbirth, too?”

      “No, my lady.”

      “Was it an illness?”

      “No, my lady. He killed her.”