Chapter Three #2
Christopher’s gaze passed between his wife and her mother. He was about to demand Dustin stay and entertain them, but he suspected Lady Mary needed his wife more. He gave a brief nod.
“Good sleep to you, wife,” he said, then nodded at Lady Mary. “My lady.”
Mary was even paler that she had been earlier. “The steward will show you and your knights to your rooms,” she said softly. “I hope the chambers are to your liking.”
“I am sure they will be,” Christopher replied.
Without another glance, Dustin took her mother by the arm and led her to the stairs.
The woman’s movements were slow and labored and she seemed to be having some difficulty mounting the steps.
The knights watched silently for a moment as Dustin tried to physically lift her mother onto the first stair.
Christopher, too, watched until he saw what Dustin was trying to do and then rose swiftly.
“My lady, would you allow me to assist you?” he asked Lady Mary.
“My mother is quite capable of climbing stairs, my lord,” Dustin retorted quietly.
He ignored his wife and looked at the older woman. “My lady?”
Mary sighed and cleared her throat very ladylike. “Mayhap I could use a bit of assistance, thank you.”
She held out her frail arm to him but he ignored it instead, sweeping her into his arms and mounting the stairs with absolutely no effort at all.
In fact, Dustin was still standing at the bottom of the flight gazing up at him with astonishment as he set the older woman down at the top.
Recovering, Dustin dashed up the stairs and grasped her mother again.
“Did he hurt you?” she demanded.
“Of course not, dear,” her mother replied.
Christopher watched his wife help her mother down the corridor until both women disappeared into a room.
Lady Mary was obviously ill and he realized he felt some concern for her.
Turning on his heel, descended the stairs in a rush of irritation, disturbed that with this new keep came protective feelings for the occupants.
Lady Mary had been nothing less than kind and respectful to him, and he appreciated that.
Her daughter could learn lessons in manners from her mother.
He joined his knights, drinking and laughing and reveling deep into the night, pushing thoughts of the Lady Dustin de Lohr to the back of his mind.
*
Dustin was awakened from a deep sleep by a hysterical serving woman. She was irritated and groggy until the woman mentioned one word; mother.
Dustin bolted up from her bed, clad only in a flowing linen bedcoat, and charged across the corridor into her mother’s room.
Panic flooded her veins and she heard herself whimpering even as she ran into the room, nearly slipping on the old rushes on the floor.
Devastation and horror consumed her to see several female servants hovering over her mother’s bed, crying.
She knew without even looking that her mother was dead.
Dustin pushed forward, shoving the women out of the way. One look at her mother’s pale, wax-like face and her worst nightmare was confirmed. Lady Mary Barringdon was indeed dead.
Her sweet, gentle mother. The woman who had nurtured her through sickness, had tried to teach her to be a dutiful wife and chatelaine, and who tried to impart wisdom into her thick skull.
Horrible, agonizing sobs rose in her throat and she threw herself down on her mother’s cooling corpse, begging her not to leave her. She didn’t want to be alone.
Christopher heard the screaming and flew from the great hall and onto the second floor before the hollering had even stopped.
He could hear the other knights behind him, swords unsheathing.
He knew instinctively that it was his wife he heard, and his sword flashed wickedly in the firelight as he thundered into the chamber crowded with weeping servants.
It did not take great intellect to see what had happened; it took him all of two seconds to deduce the scene. Lady Mary had died in her sleep, and Dustin was inconsolable.
Christopher slowly sheathed his sword, taking hesitant steps into the room. The servants stood about, sobbing like fools. They certainly weren’t doing his wife any good.
“All of you get out,” he snapped in a low voice, motioning with his arm. “Now.”
Weeping and wailing, the servants quickly cleared the room with rough assistance from David and Edward. When the dim chamber was finally cleared, Christopher stepped to the end of the bed and absorbed the scene.
Dustin was sobbing incoherently, mumbling something into her mother’s chest he could not understand.
Christopher watched her blond head, feeling a good deal of pity for her.
To be married and lose her mother all in the same day had pushed her over the emotional edge and he found himself wanting to comfort her.
But he would not, just as she would not allow him to.
Christopher motioned David and the others out, moving for the door himself.
With a final glance, he quit the room and closed the door quietly, leaving his wife to deal with her grief alone.
But even as the others retreated back to the great hall, he remained behind, standing watch outside Lady Mary’s door in case Dustin needed him.
He didn’t want her to have to go searching.
But Dustin didn’t come out and, after an hour, Christopher went back into the room to make sure she hadn’t done something horrible to herself in her moment of grief.
The room was nearly pitch black except for the small fire in the hearth.
He moved silently for the bed, noticing that Dustin had not moved a muscle.
Instead of open sobs, as she had been doing earlier, she was sort of moaning pathetically.
Her hands were clutching her mother’s bedcoat as if she were to hold on tight enough, she could prevent her mother from slipping into the world beyond.
He realized she was stricken with grief, but she would become ill if he allowed this wallowing to continue. He cleared his throat quietly.
“My lady,” he whispered. When he received no reaction, he spoke her name. “Dustin.”
She stirred a bit and her eyes flew open. Slowly, she turned her head until her pale gray eyes found him and focused. He gazed back at her, unaware of his gentle expression.
“ ’Tis time to return to your own room, my lady,” he said softly.
Her head came up. “Nay,” she said, her nose stuffed from crying. “I would stay here. My mother needs me.”
“Your mother is dead, my lady,” he said with gentleness he never believed himself capable of. “Let me take you back to your rooms.”
Dustin looked at her mother as if she didn’t believe what he was telling her. Her features crumpled. “It is not true,” she whispered in a painful burst. “She cannot be dead.
He moved around the side of the bed. Lady Mary was already stiff and the underside of her body was turning deep purple.
“Dustin, she is gone,” he said quietly. “You must let the servants take the body away for burial.”
Dustin sat bolt upright in bed, her lovely face twisted. “No burial,” she snapped. “Not in the ground.”
“What do you mean?” he asked with a furrowed brow. “What else is there?”
She looked as if she had an answer but a sob escaped her lips and tears coursed down her cheeks. “The ground is cold and dark,” she whispered. “Mother does not like the cold.”
His heart went out to her. She sounded so much like a small child, so vulnerable and pathetic. He reached out and grasped her arms.
“Your mother is in paradise, sweetheart,” he whispered, feeling her soft flesh in his hands like a painful jolt. “She will not care that her earthly remains have been placed in the earth.”
Dustin was amazingly light and he swept her into his arms effortlessly. But she stiffened, twisting and pushing against him.
“Put me down,” she cried. “I can’t leave her.”
He gripped her tightly to his chest. “Relax, my lady. All will be well.”
“Nay!” she screamed, beating him with her fists and screaming for her mother.
Christopher took her out into the hall where he was met by several house servants. “Where is Lady Dustin’s room?” he barked.
A few women pointed fingers to the room directly across the corridor and he was moving for it, his wife still screaming and thrashing about.
“Remove her mother,” he ordered the weeping group. “We bury her come the morn.”
He entered Dustin’s bedchamber and slammed the door.
Then, he went straight to her bed and placed her upon the mattress.
Sniffling and weeping, Dustin tried to climb off the bed as Christopher removed his heavy leather vest. The vest hit the floor and he reached out and grabbed her by her leg, dragging her back across the bed and throwing himself on top of her simply to keep her from escaping. He didn’t know what else to do.
Surprisingly, she didn’t overly resist him.
Certainly, she was stiff and unbending, but she wasn’t outright fighting.
She lay enclosed in his massive arms, her back to his chest as they lay upon their sides.
After a while her movements lessened and her crying softened to no more than loud hiccups.
He could feel her hands gripping his arms.
She was soft and warm and sweet-smelling against him, igniting his husbandly desire.
He didn’t want to marry the woman and he wanted little to do with her, but the fact remained that she was beautiful and alluring.
He also felt a measure of emotion towards her at the death of her mother, and pity had a way of breaking down one’s resistance.
When she finally ceased all struggles, he removed one arm from her long enough to pull the coverlet up over them both, realizing he was focused only on her comfort and needs.
For the first time in his life, he wasn’t thinking only of himself. It was an odd awareness.