Page 70 of The Saxon Lord's Unwanted Bride
He opened his mouth to protest, but saw the anger in her expression. The maidservant couldn’t be ignorant of how he’d treated his wife, and her disapproval mirrored his guilt.
Some hours later, she’d not sent for him, but he ventured to her chamber. Low voices told him she had regained consciousness. He opened the door and saw her propped up in her bed, Jeanette feeding her spoonfuls of broth.
“May I come in?”
Jeanette shook her head, but Eloise placed a hand on her arm and nodded.
“I shall be outside, mistress,” Jeanette said. “Call if you have need of me.”
Giving Harald a look of distaste, she swept out of the chamber.
Harald approached his wife. A stab of pain penetrated his heart at the look in her eyes—the same look the deer had given him in the forest before he’d speared it. Some of her color had returned, but dark shadows circled her eyes.
She turned her head to one side, blinked, and a tear splashed onto the linen. The pain in his heart only grew when she flinched at his touch. Cradling her hand in his, he caressed her palm with his thumb. He said nothing, waiting for her to make the first move. At length she turned her head and met his gaze, her beautiful blue eyes dulled by despair.
“Why did you not struggle in the water?” he asked. “Why didn’t you fight to live?”
“My Lord...” She spoke in a strained whisper, then a violent cough overcame her.
“Forgive me,” she repeated. “I know I have a duty to you and to our people.”
He squeezed her hand. “What about your duty to yourself?”
She looked away but he waited, patiently, until she returned to him.
“May I ask you something, wife?”
She nodded and cast her eyes down, but not before he caught the flash of fear.
“That child you saved, not long after we wed—you jumped into the river knowing you couldn’t swim. Didn’t you realize the danger?”
“Aye,” she replied quietly. “But the child would have died if I hadn’t.”
“You’d risk your life for a child—a peasant?”
“A child is everything to her mother,” she said. “If—if a child of mine were in danger I’d want someone to keep her safe from harm.”
How could she be capable of such courage? To risk her life for another?
I would risk my life for her.
Aye, he would. Even though she had deceived him—borne another’s child…
Of course! She’d told him that her child had died. Eloise had saved another’s child, because she’d been unable to save her own.
For a brief moment an image shone in his mind—his wife propped up in her bed as she was now, but her expression rosy and animated, not pale and drawn, smiling over the newborn child she cradled in her arms.
A knock on the door broke the spell.
“What is it?” he called out.
Collin opened the door. “Beauvisage is in need of you,” he said. “He’s had news of another uprising and is mustering the men. He asks that you ready yourself and your men immediately—on the king’s orders. He tells me it’s several days’ ride away.”
“Can’t you see I’m tending to my wife?”
Eloise withdrew her hand. “Go to him.”
She looked up at him, her expression shuttered.
