Chosen for the Marriage Bed Read Online Free PDF

‘An object of intrigue from both sides of the alliance.’
    Richard stood to refill Robert’s empty cup with a rueful smile. ‘I doubt it will ever come to that. Enough of this. The contract is signed. The lady seems to consider marriage to me at least preferable to life as a nun or to the embrace of Owain Thomas. I should feel duly flattered and honoured!’ A touch of steel in eye and voice. ‘As long as she realises that once she has crossed this thresh old her loyalty will be to me and not to her family. I will not tolerate any desire to cleave to de Lacy politics.’
    Robert raised his tankard. ‘Then, if you are set on it, let’s drink to the success of the enterprise.’
    And Richard raised his tankard. ‘Amen to that! To my fruitful union with Elizabeth de Lacy.’

Chapter Three
    E lizabeth arrived at her new home in the middle of a thunder storm. The expected guests erupted without ceremony, horses and riders, into the outer court yard in a chaotic flurry of hooves and mud and a downpour of rain. Richard turned his face up to the heavens. Grey clouds pressed down. If he had been a man of superstition, he thought, he would have seen this as a sign of ill omen. All he needed was a pair of passing ravens to croak their disapproval.
    Then the gates creaked and thudded shut behind them. Servants emerged to see to the comfort of the travellers. Two young men, unrecognisable in cloaks and hoods, issued orders. Elizabeth de Lacy’s brothers, Richard decided. They swung down from their horses and would have gone to the aid of the women, but Richard forestalled them. His eye had sought and found the younger of the two female forms, well muffled against the storm. As a gesture of greeting he waded through the wet to help his betrothed to dismount.
    ‘Come, lady. Hardly the welcome I would have wished for you. Let me help you…’
    She did not reply. Her face was shadowed by her deep hood. He stood beside her weary horse, raised his arms to place his hands firmly around her waist to lift her down from the saddle. Only to be answered by a sharp hiss from within her cloak. A flash of dark fur and lethal claws. A shallow but bloody scratch appeared along the length of Richard’s hand.
    Startled into immobility, Richard stared at the blood, his hiss of surprise as much as pain echoing that of the cat sheltered within the folds of Elizabeth’s cloak. He looked up, to find two pairs of eyes fixed on him. One feline and definitely displeased, golden and un blinking from the confines of the cloak. The other dark and watching him equally intently from within the hood, as a wild animal might watch a hunter, he thought, from the safety of its lair. Wary, uncertain, but with a strong streak of defiance, both mistress and cat surveyed him.
    Elizabeth de Lacy found her voice first. ‘Forgive me, my lord. You surprised her.’
    Richard’s words of welcome had dissolved in the deluge. ‘I surprised her ? You’re travelling from Llanwardine with a cat in your lap?’
    ‘I had to bring her. There was no other way.’
    For a long moment their gazes held, his astonished, hers defensive. Then Elizabeth blinked the rain from her lashes and the contact was broken.
    ‘Never mind,’ Richard forestalled any further conversation as thunder rolled overhead. ‘Let’s all get in out of this infernal weather. Including that animal. If you could prevent her from mauling me further, I would help you down.’
    Grasping Elizabeth de Lacy firmly—and the struggling cat—he lifted and deposited her on her feet, aware of her lightness, relieved when the girl thrust the cat into the arms of her serving woman. So Richard took her arm to lead her into the Hall where there would be a small reception awaiting them. He was conscious of her drawing back, a definite reluctance, but why? She had seemed neither shy nor lacking in confidence in that first brief connection. Her eyes had met and held his with not a little self-worth, so why hang back now?