Knight of Grace

His hand at her elbow surprised her.

‘If you follow me, I’ll show ye where you’re to sleep.’ The woman he had fondled watched from the other side of the room, warning in her eyes as their glances met. With dignity Grace smiled, hoping to give the impression of an airy unconcern even as she hid her shaking fingers in the generous train of her woollen dress.

Lachlan Kerr signalled his men to pick up her possessions and turned towards a door she had not noticed before. Lifting her skirts to avoid the hem being stained further, Grace was surprised by the breadth of a tower and by the warmth of a cosy solar off a hallway. A fire burned in a large grate, a coiled rush mat on the ground before it. To one end was a raised cubby with a mattress spread on wooden slats and covered in an intricate green-and-red cloth. A footstool, a table and a sturdy oaken chair completed the furniture.

When the men placed her things on the floor and departed, Lachlan Kerr closed the door behind them.

Alone. A silence widening with possibility. When he reached out and laid his hand across the swell of her bosom, the clench of her teeth worried the soft flesh on the inside of her mouth.

Blood. She tasted it and swallowed, keeping still as his fingers wandered down to the curve of her hips and the line of her bottom. Through the fine cloth of her gown her skin burned and her heartbeat, already quickened, doubled its pace yet again.

When he laughed and moved back, she felt the blaze of embarrassment more forcibly than she ever had before.

‘I will take ye tonight after supper. A woman will be sent to see to your needs.’

His voice was deep and she saw in his eyes the unmistakable flare of sex, and the sharp rush of prescience almost made her faint.

Beat, beat, beat.

Blood in her throat and in her stomach and in a place between her legs where there had only ever been stillness.

I will take you tonight. A duty. An insignificant thing. After supper.

‘I th-th-th-think th-th-that w-w-we sh-should w-w-wait.’

‘Wait for what?’ he returned with impatience even as he opened up the portal to leave.

For love. For softness. For the blossoming of feeling and hope and promise. She shook her head as the words rushed around in her mind and watched the easy way he left her, his thoughts on other obligations that waited outside.

Standing perfectly still she reached one hand across her breast just as he had, the quick thrill of ardour returning, bold with thoughts of something she did not comprehend. Imagining. Skin against skin. Her eyes flew open and all the pleasurable feeling exited in one single rush. Her hand went to her damaged leg, the knots of red-welted scars overlaid with pearl. She was a flawed wife.

Peg-leg. Ugly. Red-head. She scratched at the creases of skin at her elbows as she contemplated options. The children at Grantley had been told to be kind as she was growing up, though many a boy had not heeded the special advice given about how to handle the withdrawn and newly orphaned thirteen-year-old Grace. Their taunts still pierced her equanimity sometimes, a reminder of reality when her mind took her on other journeys of wishful thinking.

Would she be able to stay in her clothes for this ‘taking’? Could the expanse of skin between her ankle and her knee be enough for a man like Lachlan Kerr to dwell on before he laid his seed on her stomach? Grace frowned and wondered where this seed would go next. Without a mother, and as the oldest of the female cousins, she had had no one to ask about the proprieties of marriage and its expectations. Of course she knew children were a product of this thing that a married couple did after marriage, but the mechanics of a swollen belly as a result of ‘the act’ eluded her. She had tried to ask Stephen of it once, but he had not answered, avoiding her company until he left again for London. So she had desisted from further questions, reasoning that, as an ageing and plain woman, she might never need to know the answer anyway.

Until today. Until the hours that led to supper, suspense vied with dread in a very even measure.

Lachlan cut into his rondel dagger with the flat side of a water stone, angling the blade so that the full bite of it was in contact, and rubbing till a burr began to form. Testing the sharpness to see if the edge grabbed, he cursed as the honed blade slid into the soft base of his right thumb.

He swore roundly, before placing down both stone and blade and wiping blood against the linen of his long shirt. He felt keyed up, nervous almost, the fear he had seen in his wife’s eyes somehow…important.

Could this be her first time? At twenty-six! Lord, the whole idea unnerved him. He had been less than half her age when the fifteen-year-old daughter of a French knight had asked him into the deserted tack room of her father’s stables and showed him exactly what it was he had been missing. When their illicit affair had been discovered, he’d been hauled off to the battlefield of Vironfosse in Vervins with Philip the Sixth, his back tanned with the sharp end of a whip and the sure-fire knowledge that he would never bed an unmarried girl again. And he hadn’t.

He frowned. He would bed Grace Stanton and hope that issue would be forthcoming quickly.

The ghosts of the past quietened under his plans and, digging into his sporran, he found his brother’s ring and turned the rubies into the light. Remembering.

Ruth. His first wife! He had taken this very ring from her finger as she had been buried in the consecrated ground beside the chapel because he had not uttered a word.

Not one.

And the secrets that simmered beneath the liturgy of honour and esteem and integrity spoken at her burial had remained untold because of the baby, her skin marked close with blue veins. The bastard progeny of his brother and stillborn, as if God in all his omnipotence had smote her breathless.

Hannah. He had called her that after his mother, because she had needed at least a name. Grinding his teeth together, he stood. Time should have leached some of the pain but it had not, and when Malcolm had been killed his violently uttered oaths had brought him Grace Stanton.

God, what irony was there in that, he asked himself and went to stand at the window, pulling back a sheath of leather and staring out. The sun was low, falling behind the Cheviots on its journey west. Night time. Almost. The thought of his new wife readying herself for him was surprisingly arousing. Erotic, even. He had instructed his housekeeper to make certain that she bathed, a custom he had adopted daily since his first sojourn into Acquitaine. He hoped that she would not be adorned with too heavy a nightdress. He hoped that her hair would be down. But most of all he hoped that she would not share the trait of Ruth, her sullen inertness at the whole process of lovemaking a decided inhibitor to any enjoyment.

The sun fell now into the darkening dusk, turning the surrounding countryside into hidden shadow. Taking breath, he released it carefully. He felt suddenly like a young boy, the pull of lust strong in his blood.

How would he take Grace? Quick and hard or slow and soft? Up to him. Completely. The flesh between his legs swelled as an unwanted power, all the old betrayals surfacing. He did not want a wife to worry about. He did not want a spouse to watch over to determine if her conscience was clear or not. He did not want the fetter of trust laced again around him, its tethers pulling tighter and tighter with the passing of time.

If she hated him, all this would be so much easier. He would have her as a wife in name only, to ripen with his children and hold her own counsel. Already he could see how those in his castle had turned against her and he had made no move to make it different. Nay, Grace Stanton with her fire-red hair and her stutter would bear his children and ensure his lineage. That was all.

‘Sheas,’ he muttered into the silence. At thirty-three he was too damn old for all this nonsense. Too old to try to mend what was broken, and lust was such a fleeting companion.

Chapter Five

Grace sat on the chair beside her bed and waited. She had dismissed the woman sent to help her dress a good half an hour earlier. The offered bath had been a wonderful surprise and she felt cleaner than she had in days, despite redressing in her sturdy day gown.

When would Lachlan Kerr come demanding her wifely obligations? She guessed it to be some time after the hour of ten and wished that she had the bravery to blow out the row of candles on the table and bar the door, the slats on this side well hewn and heavy. But if she did that it would only be delaying everything until the morrow and she suddenly wanted what it was that would happen now done, so that she could wake in the morning with at least some knowledge of what she faced…for the rest of her life.

Footfalls outside had her tensing, and, tilting her head, she listened to the sound of voices.

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