Romance
Read an excerpt from The Border Lord and The Lady (continued):
"Your daughter's mother!" Luciana spat. "And everyone says the brat is her mother's image. The whore who was your servant's daughter!"
The Earl of Leighton slapped his wife across her angry face.
Luciana shrieked, outraged, her hand going to her burning cheek.
Donna Clara gasped in shock. Never had she seen her English master lose his control. He was always calm, always the voice of reason. The look in his eyes now, however, was one of uncontrolled fury. Her mistress stood on the brink of disaster.
The red haze faded slowly from before his eyes as the earl fought to regain some measure of control, struggling with himself not to put his hands about her slim white neck and snap it. Finally he felt calm, but he was very angry. His wife stood glaring at him, totally unaware of how close she had come to death. Donna Clara knew, and her eyes filled with relief as Robert Bowen came to himself again, and spoke.
"Aye, I loved Anne," he told Luciana. "She was everything you are not. She was beautiful, and Cicely is her image. She was kind and generous. She was genuinely devout. We were blood kin, madam, but not so close that a marriage between us was forbidden. Old families like mine frequently parcel out the responsibilities of their estates to kin, because in most instances blood will not betray you. Your interests are their interests, madam. Whether your estate is large or small, such loyalty is important.
"I might have wed the daughter of another noble, but an honorable family like mine was left with little dower. However, I fell in love with Anne, and we planned to wed. The banns had already been posted when her father was killed in an accident. She was his only child, and his own wife, her mother, had died when Anne was ten. The shock of her father's death caused my beloved to go into an early labor. She lived long enough to push our daughter from her body, and then with a great sigh she died.
"I was content to remain unmarried, but Cicely needed a mother to teach her the things a girl of her rank should know, and I needed a legitimate son. And then your father learned I sought a wife. As your behavior in Firenze had made you unmarriageable, he had to seek a husband for you here in England. I was poor, but I could give you a title. You could bring me a fat dower, and give me sons. It was an ideal match, Luciana. I swore to your father that I would honor you and respect you. I have done these things. I have treated you well. You, however, have not kept your part of our bargain."
"I gave you wealth!" she cried. "I have advised you in which trading ventures to invest in, and you have become rich in the process. I have given you three sons! I am faithful to you. What more could you want?"
"I wanted a mother for my daughter," he said.
"I told you before the wedding contracts were even signed that I would not raise that child," Luciana said. "You agreed!"
"I believed that once you felt secure, once you had given me a son, that you would no longer feel the need to reject Cicely," the earl replied. "What kind of woman are you that you could hate an innocent little girl so greatly? What could she have possibly done to you before you even met her that you hate her?"
"You love her! You love her as you loved her mother! But you have never loved me, Robert, have you?" the countess said bitterly.
"How many marriages are made for love, Luciana?" he asked quietly. "Certainly not among our kind, nor even among the poor. Marriages are made to gain certain advantages. Among the peasantry they are made for children to help in the fields. And among the nobility they are made for land, for wealth, for a higher position on the social scale. You are my wife. I have a fondness for you. I am grateful to you for the sons you have given me, for the wealth you brought me, for the knowledge you have given me that has aided me in acquiring more riches. You have my respect in all but one matter, and that is your inability to accept my daughter. For you and for your peace of mind I have agreed to foster Cicely out, but I will not send her from this house, from her home, without all she needs to survive, to succeed in the world beyond Leighton Hall. But even now, gaining your own way, you cannot be generous to my daughter, which is why I will have the keys from my storerooms from you." He held out his hand to her. "Give them to me now, madam!"
Luciana stood up. Her look was murderous, but she unfastened the chatelaine's keys from her satin girdle and flung them at him. "Here, and be damned to you, Robert! But why the wench needs a fine wardrobe in the house of a widow, I do not know."
He knew he was being foolish, but she had angered him so greatly he needed to strike back at her. He knew there would be more difficulties with Luciana over it, but he couldn't help himself. "She does if the widow is the king's beloved stepmother," the Earl of Leighton said with a wicked smile.
"Your daughter is going to live in Queen Joan's household? The queen is fostering her?" The Countess of Leighton was astounded. "How did you manage to arrange such a thing, Robert?" There was new respect for him in her voice, and she was already considering the possibilities for their sons.
"It was pure luck, Luciana," he told her, "but if Cicely does well she will be able to ease the way to introduce our sons into the court one day."
"Yes," his wife replied slowly, "perhaps the brat will prove useful after all. And I will not have to see her ever again."
"Nay, you will not," Robert Bowen agreed.
"Take whatever you desire from the storerooms," the countess told her husband graciously, although in truth it was all his to take. "The wench should not disgrace Leighton. Has she manners? Is she educated at all or will she be an embarrassment, my lord? She must not be forward in any way."
"My daughter has manners, and enough learning to please the queen," he said, amused by this sudden shift in her attitude.
"Even if she proves of value to us I will always hate her because you love her," Luciana told him bluntly.
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