“You’ve done well, Camilla,” he said in a cool tone. The words felt ripped from his gut. Inside, he throbbed, raw and broken.
He handed the babe to Jane and then turned on his heel and quit the room. At the stairs, he gripped the banister for support as he summoned the butler and gave the orders to remove his belongings from the bedchamber he had shared with Camilla since the day they had married.
As he feared, as soon as Camilla was able to, she came to him, desperate and pleading for explanations. Her words seared his heart and branded him with misery. He trembled every time he sent her away from him, and her broken-hearted sobs rang through the halls. The pain that stole her smile and the gleam that had once filled her eyes made him fear for her and for them, but the dreams that dogged him of her death or their son’s death should the vow be broken frightened him more. Sleeplessness plagued him, and he took to creeping into his son’s nursery, where he would send the nanny away and rock his boy until the wee hours of the morning, pouring all his love into his child.
Days slid into months that turned to the first year and then the second. As his bond with Camilla weakened, his tie to his heir strengthened. Laughter filled Waverly House, but it was only the child’s laughter and Alexander’s. It seemed to him, the closer he became to his child and the more attention he lavished on him, the larger the wall became between him and Camilla until she reminded him of an angry queen reigning in her mountainous tower of ice. Yet, it was his fault she was there with no hope of rescue.
The night she quit coming to his bedchamber, Alexander thanked God and prayed she would now turn the love he knew was in her to their son, whom she seemed to blame for Alexander’s abandonment. He awoke in the morning, and when the nanny brought Colin to Alexander, he decided to carry his son with him to break his fast, in hopes that Camilla would want to hold him. As he entered the room with Colin, she did not smile. Her lips thinned with obvious anger as she excused herself, and he was caught between the wish to cry and the urge to rage at her.
Still, his fingers burned to hold her hand and itched to caress the gentle slope of her cheekbone. Eventually, his skin became cold. His fingers curiously numb. Then one day, sitting across from him at dinner in the silent dining room, Camilla looked at him and he recoiled at the sharp thorns of revenge shining in her eyes.
The following week the Season began, and he dutifully escorted her to the first ball. Knots of tension made his shoulders ache as they walked down the staircase, side by side, so close yet a thousand ballrooms apart. After they were announced, she turned to him and he prepared himself to decline her request to dance.
She raised one eyebrow, her lips curling into a thinly veiled smile of contempt. “Quit cringing, Alexander. You may go to the card room. My dances are all taken, I assure you.”
Within moments, she twirled onto the dance floor, first with one gentleman and then another and another until the night faded near to morning. Alexander stood in the shadows, leaning against a column and never moving, aware of the curious looks people cast his way. He was helplessly sure his wife was trying to hurt him, and he silently started to pray she would finally turn all her wrath at how he had changed to him and begin to love the child she had longed for…and for whom she had almost died.
Excerpt of When a Laird Loves a Lady
One
England, 1357
Faking her death would be simple. It was escaping her home that would be difficult. Marion de Lacy stared hard into the slowly darkening sky, thinking about the plan she intended to put into action tomorrow—if all went well—but growing uneasiness tightened her belly. From where she stood in the bailey, she counted the guards up in the tower. It was not her imagination: Father had tripled the knights keeping guard at all times, as if he was expecting trouble.
Taking a deep breath of the damp air, she pulled her mother’s cloak tighter around her to ward off the twilight chill. A lump lodged in her throat as the wool scratched her neck. In the many years since her mother had been gone, Marion had both hated and loved this cloak for the death and life it represented. Her mother’s freesia scent had long since faded from the garment, yet simply calling up a memory of her mother wearing it gave Marion comfort.
She rubbed her fingers against the rough material. When she fled, she couldn’t chance taking anything with her but the clothes on her body and this cloak. Her death had to appear accidental, and the cloak that everyone knew she prized would ensure her freedom. Finding it tangled in the branches at the edge of the sea cliff ought to be just the thing to convince her father and William Froste that she’d drowned. After all, neither man thought she could swim. They didn’t truly care about her anyway. Her marriage to the blackhearted knight was only about what her hand could give the two men. Her father, Baron de Lacy, wanted more power, and Froste wanted her family’s prized land. A match made in Heaven, if only the match didn’t involve her…but it did.
Father would set the hounds of Hell themselves to track her down if he had the slightest suspicion that she was still alive. She was an inestimable possession to be given to secure Froste’s unwavering allegiance and, therefore, that of the renowned ferocious knights who served him. Whatever small sliver of hope she had that her father would grant her mercy and not marry her to Froste had been destroyed by the lashing she’d received when she’d pleaded for him to do so.
The moon crested above the watchtower, reminding her why she was out here so close to mealtime: to meet Angus. The Scotsman may have been her father’s stable master, but he washerally, and when he’d proposed she flee England for Scotland, she’d readily consented.
Marion looked to the west, the direction from which Angus would return from Newcastle. He should be back any minute now from meeting his cousin and clansman Neil, who was to escort her to Scotland. She prayed all was set and that Angus’s kin was ready to depart. With her wedding to Froste to take place in six days, she wanted to be far away before there was even the slightest chance he’d be making his way here. And since he was set to arrive the night before the wedding, leaving tomorrow promised she’d not encounter him.
A sense of urgency enveloped her, and Marion forced herself to stroll across the bailey toward the gatehouse that led to the tunnel preceding the drawbridge. She couldn’t risk raising suspicion from the tower guards. At the gatehouse, she nodded to Albert, one of the knights who operated the drawbridge mechanism. He was young and rarely questioned her excursions to pick flowers or find herbs.
“Off to get some medicine?” he inquired.
“Yes,” she lied with a smile and a little pang of guilt. But this was survival, she reminded herself as she entered the tunnel. When she exited the heavy wooden door that led to freedom, she wasn’t surprised to find Peter and Andrew not yet up in the twin towers that flanked the entrance to the drawbridge. It was, after all, time for the changing of the guard.
They smiled at her as they put on their helmets and demi-gauntlets. They were an imposing presence to any who crossed the drawbridge and dared to approach the castle gate. Both men were tall and looked particularly daunting in their full armor, which Father insisted upon at all times. The men were certainly a fortress in their own right.
She nodded to them. “I’ll not be long. I want to gather some more flowers for the supper table.” Her voice didn’t even wobble with the lie.
Peter grinned at her, his kind brown eyes crinkling at the edges. “Will you pick me one of those pale winter flowers for my wife again, Marion?”
She returned his smile. “It took away her anger as I said it would, didn’t it?”
“It did,” he replied. “You always know just how to help with her.”
“I’ll get a pink one if I can find it. The colors are becoming scarcer as the weather cools.”
Andrew, the younger of the two knights, smiled, displaying a set of straight teeth. He held up his covered arm. “My cut is almost healed.”
Marion nodded. “I told you! Now maybe you’ll listen to me sooner next time you’re wounded in training.”
He gave a soft laugh. “I will. Should I put more of your paste on tonight?”
