Chapter Eight #3
“You are kind to worry over my feelings, but truly, it was no trouble,” Diara said. “I think it is a natural question. Beckett is gone, and, suddenly, I’m marrying his father. It is puzzling.”
“That is true, but it is still none of their affair,” Christin said. “You are gracious for not being angry about it.”
Diara’s smile broadened. “I am trying to get along with all of the de Lohrs and their offspring,” she said. “Anger has no place until I know them better and can back that anger up with a club.”
Christin started laughing. “I have no doubt that you would,” she said. But then she looked at Roi. “Speaking of clubs, did Curtis tell you what has been planned for your wedding celebration?”
Roi frowned. “Christ,” he muttered. “Do I want to know?”
Christin was grinning. “You should probably be forewarned,” she said. “I heard him speaking with Douglas and West about having some games to celebrate. The usual games, with balls and sticks. You used to be fairly good at them.”
Roi rolled his eyes. “I am still good at them,” he said.
“But I will be a new husband, and I do not want to be crippled when I have a new wife, and those fools will try to take me out by the knees and laugh because they will have ruined my… Well, it will be difficult to be a husband. In the usual way.”
He was digging himself into a hole trying to describe how difficult it would be to make love to his new wife with busted knees. He started to snort, unable to go any further, but Christin and Dustin knew what he meant even if Diara really didn’t.
“I would not worry,” Dustin said, smiling at her embarrassed son. “Your father will not compete, so it will only be Curtis, Douglas, West, and a few of the others.”
Roi pointed a finger at her. “It is those ‘few others’ I worry about,” he said, counting them off on his fingers.
“Ty, Gallus, Maximus, Chris, William, and Arthur. Thank God Myles and his sons are not here and that Sherry and his sons are up north. And Cassius… If Brielle and her brood were here, including her beast of a husband, I would not play altogether. Cass will go for the kill.”
Dustin and Christin were laughing, but Diara looked at him curiously. “Brielle is another sister, isn’t she?” she asked.
Roi nodded. “The one you haven’t met,” he said. “Christin is the eldest, followed by Brielle. Her husband rode the tournament circuit professionally for years, and he’s positively unbeatable in nearly everything. He’s also a de Velt, which means he comes from a dynasty built on blood lust.”
“And you have many nephews that could compete in these games?” Diara asked.
Roi shook his head sadly. “Many,” he said. “Too many to name. Trust me when I say that there are too many de Lohrs, and all of them love to best one another in games of competition. If Curtis has games planned for our wedding celebration, I can promise you that they are out to do damage.”
“But why should they want to?”
“Because you don’t know my family. We would kill for one another, but we are also quite competitive with each other.”
“He is making it sound worse than it is,” Dustin said. “Do not listen to him, Diara. In fact, let us speak on something more pleasant. I was hoping you could go up to my chamber and ask my maid for the Dublin lace. I wanted to show it to you. Will you fetch it and bring it back?”
Diara nodded, already heading for the door. “Of course, Lady Hereford,” she said, pointing to the ceiling. “On the top floor?”
“Aye,” Dustin said. “Roi, go with her. Help her navigate this enormous place.”
With a smile playing on his lips, still thinking about bruised kneecaps and gloating brothers, Roi took Diara’s hand and led her out into the corridor.
She beamed at him, holding his big hand with both of hers, gazing up at him adoringly.
Roi was so busy watching her and not where he was going that he nearly ran into a wall.
As they laughed softly at one another, completely caught up in the romance that had become their lives, Roi caught sight of his eldest brother near the entrance to the keep.
“Can you find my mother’s chamber on your own?” he asked, eyes on Curtis. “I should like to speak with my brother.”
Diara could see where his attention was. “About the wedding celebration?”
“Aye,” Roi said, kissing her hand before letting it go. “I feel the need to make a few things clear to him about his plans. No clubs, no targeting my knees. Or anyone else’s.”
Diara giggled. “Go,” she said. “I will see you later.”
He glanced rather seductively at her. “You surely will.”
He winked at her and was gone. Diara watched him go, sighing rather dreamily.
But she shook herself of the daydreams, so deliriously happy for the first time in her life.
It was as if Roi de Lohr had opened up an entirely new world to her, one with a big family of people who were kind to her, and most importantly, of women who were kind to her.
That was something of an anomaly in her world.
A marriage she was dreading, at least at first, had turned into something she was looking forward to more than she could express. Everything about Roi made her sing.
Especially her heart.
The stairs in the keep of Lioncross were wide, at a rather low angle, so it seemed to take some time to make it from floor to floor.
She wasn’t paying much attention to her trip up the stairs, still thinking about Roi, still daydreaming over him.
She eventually reached the second floor, knowing Lady Hereford’s chambers to be on the top floor where there was the best view, but as she headed up the next flight of stairs, she could hear voices in the stairwell below her.
She wasn’t entirely sure, but she thought it might have been Tiberius again. She was coming to recognize his voice.
“… and I am telling you that she has bewitched Uncle Roi,” he was saying. “You saw how he scolded me. You saw the look in his eye. That Cheltenham chit has done something to the man. He was prepared to kill me.”
“It is quite possible that he is simply happy,” another voice said. “You cannot blame the man. He’s been alone for so long, and now he has a pretty young lass to warm his bed? Of course he’s happy. You should be happy for him.”
“Uncle Roi loved Aunt Odette deeply,” Tiberius said, sounding snappish.
“She is the only woman for him. The only wife he ever needed, a fine and gentle creature. And now that le Bec bitch has schemed her way into his bed. Uncle West told me that she has a loose reputation, if you know what I mean. Apparently she is not a stranger to spreading her legs.”
“Is that what you think she did to Uncle Roi?”
“It has to be,” Tiberius said. “Why else would he want her so badly? She ensnared Beckett somehow, and when he died, she went after his father. Let us face the facts, lads—Uncle Roi is marrying a whore.”
The voices faded away after that. Diara was frozen on the stairwell above them, her eyes filling with tears. Ashamed and horrified, she went back down the stairs and down another corridor, running blindly in a castle she wasn’t familiar with. All she knew was that she had to get out of there.
She found a stairwell and rushed down the stone steps, too fast, and ended up slipping at the bottom and scraping her hand. Those stairs led to the kitchens, and she rushed through the steamy room, past people she wouldn’t look at, and out into the kitchen yard beyond.
But she kept going.
The stables were attached to the kitchen yard, and she entered the stables from a small door at the end of the block.
Immediately, she was hit with the smell of horses and hay and urine.
But she kept moving, weeping, wiping at her face, until she came to the other end of the stable block and could go no more.
There was a ladder here that led up to the loft, and she climbed up into it, shielded from the world around her.
Plopping down into the hay, she sobbed.
It wasn’t enough that Roi’s nephews were opposed to her marrying their uncle, but it was like a stab to the gut to hear that Roi’s own brother had been speaking on the rumors that had followed her ever since her days at Carisbrooke.
How were she and Roi supposed to start a life together if his family thought she was a whore who had ensnared him?
Surely Lady Hereford and her daughters had heard the rumors, too, and although they were friendly to her, what on earth were they saying behind her back?
It was just so incredibly hurtful to hear such things.
Diara was beginning to wonder if she simply shouldn’t leave for home and stop dreaming that a marriage to Roi was even possible, because no matter where she went, the rumors would follow.
No matter whom she married, surely, they would hear such things.
It simply wasn’t fair.
As she sat in the hayloft and sniffled, a head suddenly popped up at the top of the ladder. Startled, Diara found herself looking at a young girl.
“Are you well?” the girl asked timidly. “I saw you run through. Are you hurt?”
Diara knew Roi’s youngest daughter, Dorian, on sight.
She had been introduced to both Adalia and Dorian when she arrived at Lioncross, but the girls had made themselves scarce and she hadn’t seen them since.
Adalia evidently liked to spend all of her time tending to the youngest de Lohr grand- and great-grandchildren, and Dorian had spent all of her time in the stable.
Roi had mentioned that the lass was mad for horses and the stable was her favorite place in the world, so rather than force the girls to get to know their future stepmother, he’d simply left them where they were the happiest. They’d just lost a brother, and he wanted them to remain where they were most comfortable for now.
Time with Diara would come later, when they were ready.