Chapter Thirteen
The first time he awoke, he found Lara draped over him, asleep. After offering up a short prayer of thanks, he fell back to sleep, for how long he did not know.
The second time he woke, it was to Margaret’s startled gasp at finding him and Lara still naked and entwined in their bed. With a shushing and a wave, he ordered her from the room. Although Lara mumbled a few words and shifted in his arms, she did not wake.
The third time he woke it was to the loud and not subtle presence of both Hugh and James in the next chamber.
The subject of their discussion was not clear, but their intent to rouse him from sleep was.
Sebastien eased Lara from his side and slipped from the bed.
Striding to the door, he opened it and quietly cursed them both, warning them of a challenge later that day.
He realized his mistake when Philippe, Malcolm and Margaret all met his gaze with incredulous stares.
His body’s condition was apparent even to the youngest of them.
He slammed the door just as the laughter began.
“What is going on out there?” Lara asked, rolling over and gifting him with the most wonderful view of her bare bottom and legs. His body responded to her voice and to the sight before him, but he knew he must leave her bed.
“Two men are asking for death,” he said, smiling at her.
“Do you leave with James this day?”
“Leave with him? Nay. Although I must leave on the king’s business soon, ’tis not now.”
She yawned loudly and stretched her arms out before pushing the hair from her face.
The movement was so stimulating Sebastien decided his friends would simply have to wait until he was ready to leave her.
When he lifted the blankets and climbed back in next to her, she moved immediately into his arms. And wonder of wonders, when she felt his hardness pressed against her hip, she rolled onto her back, opened her legs to him and pulled him on top of her.
Then, she startled him as he moved to accept her invitation and to fill her just once more.
He felt the walls of her core begin to convulse and shudder within moments.
Lara arched against him and it took barely a minute before his own release.
Nothing had ever felt so right to him before.
No woman had ever felt like this. Sebastien could only describe it in his mind as finding a home.
Not wanting to rush, but mindful of those waiting, he lifted himself from her and kissed her softly. The wince that passed over her face told him that he may have been too aggressive with her in their love play.
“I apologize if I’ve hurt you, Lara. I have wanted you for so long, waiting for you to give yourself to me, that I fear I could not be gentle. Mayhap now that the commitment has been made, we can go a bit more slowly in our pursuit of all things between men and women.”
She blushed, probably thinking about some of the actions and positions that he had shown her. “Commitment? What do you mean?” Lara slid up to the headboard and dragged the blankets with her.
“You made your first commitment to me when we exchanged vows. The second time was yesterday, when you agreed to try to be my wife and Lady of Dunstaffnage. The most important one so far was when you trusted me enough last night with your body. And trusted me to teach you what could be between us.”
“So far? Is there more then?”
“You’ve given me your word and your actions and your body. Only your heart is left.”
“My heart? You would want my heart?”
“Oh aye.” He sat up and climbed from the bed, searching for and finding a new pair of trews to put on.
Standing before her, he decided to tell her the truth of his life.
“I grew up with nothing—a bastard whose mother married and had another family and five more children with her husband. My stepfather believed I would train with him to be a blacksmith, but I had no skill with the fire and iron.”
“And your natural father? Do you know who he is?”
“Aye. My mother served in the public room of her father’s inn. One of their guests, a nobleman traveling on King Edward’s business, availed himself of her favors.”
“Oh, Sebastien! Was she forced to it? Was there no one to protect her?”
He laughed and shook his head. “Forced? Nay, she gave herself freely to him, hoping to serve as his mistress and gain some measure of security that can come from that.” She frowned again.
“Come, Lara. You know how that works. She caught and bore a bastard, one in a long line for my noble father. It happens wherever the noble class and those below are involved.”
“Like Margaret and Sir Hugh?”
“Just so, but he has made an honorable offer to her.”
“So, then, who is your father?” She had held the question within for an admirable length of time. Longer than most would. She looked at him with such an air of expectancy that he felt tempted to break his vow to never reveal his name.
“I swore a vow not to speak of him.”
Her lips thinned to a line much as Malcolm’s did when the lad was faced with something he did not like.
Sebastien reached out to run his finger over them, hoping they would soften beneath his touch as her body had.
When they did, his own body hardened once more.
He must leave now or he would never escape the chamber this morn.
“I did not begin this tale of woe to gain your sympathy,” he said, pulling a shirt and then a shorter tunic over his head.
“I did it to explain that I want it all.” He wrapped the thick leather belt around his waist and buckled it.
Sebastien reached under the bed to retrieve his sword and slid it into the scabbard on his belt.
“For so long, I denied that anything about this kind of life—” he waved his hand around the room to show her what he meant “—was appealing. I had the life I wanted—I was a warrior on the good side of the battle, giving my talent with the sword to a man I believe in. I owned my horse, my armor and anything I could carry with me. All I needed.”
She nodded, but he could read her expression and knew she did not understand. She was trying, though, and that touched his heart.
“You have lived all your life with family around you, in one place—a home—with everything you need provided to you. With Robert’s orders to wed you—”
“Or kill me. Forget not that part of your orders,” she added, wagging her finger at him.
“When we wed and he made me warden here with his plans for Dunstaffnage, I discovered that I do indeed want everything I missed. A home. Marriage. Even, God willing, children someday.” His boots were in the next room, so he stood before her, dressed and barefoot.
“As I have come to know you, I discovered the woman I want as my wife.”
“But that is a given here, Sebastien. We are wed. You have a wife.”
“I want more,” he said with a sigh. “There is so much within you, but for some reason or for many, you have not shared it with me.” Turning to the door, he shook his head.
“You will know, as will I, when that moment happens. When you give your heart to me, I will have everything I have ever wanted.”
His words stunned her into silence for a moment. He walked to the door and lifted the latch.
“And you? Are you willing to give me all? Will you give me your heart?”
There was no reason to lie now, or to avoid the question.
“My heart has been yours from the moment I spoke my vows to you. I may not have known it then, but I do now.”
Whatever he’d imagined would happen when he shared the knowledge of his love with her, the bewilderment and disbelief in her gaze was not it. “But I have been hostile and hateful and rebellious and dishonest with you from the beginning. How could you love me?”
Sebastien released the latch, walked back to the bed and held out his hand to her. She took it and he entwined their fingers together.
“I have seen a woman who is brave in spite of the dangers around her, trusting in spite of her fears, loving to those she calls family and stubborn in her resistance to a man who was her enemy. All traits I admire, lady.”
A knock came on the door, reminding him of those waiting in the yard. “Now I must go and teach both Hugh and James a very important lesson in manners.”
He leaned over for a quick kiss and then left the room.
Lara still sat in the same position with the same stunned expression as he strode past Malcolm and Philippe and ordered them to follow.
As he made his way down the steps, through the hall and out into the yard, with the boys at his heels, he realized that she’d admitted to dishonesty.
It did not surprise him, for he would do the same to protect those in his care and would excuse it on those grounds.
But, when would it stop? When would she trust him enough to come to him with whatever still haunted her and kept her from being completely his? He answered the question with the same words he’d spoken to her—when she gave him her heart.
Lara drifted through the day in a kind of haze. Sebastien had revealed so much to her, a glimpse of his childhood and of his heart. Astonished by his revelations, she struggled to think on it the rest of the day.
Had he truly said he loved her? Well, not in so many words, but he said he’d given her his heart, and what else could that mean? Lara sat in the solar, working on the tapestry again, and not having much success in figuring out her husband or in completing the section on which she toiled.
But, something was different this day. By the time she rose and dressed, Callum had asked to see her in the hall about the meals and about some household arrangements, Etienne had sent word about the newly completed storage rooms and Margaret approached her over the matter of marriage to Sir Hugh.
The morning turned into a glimpse of what could be.