Reckless (Age of Conquest #5) - Tamara Leigh Page 0,132

would no longer suffer abuse of their bodies.

“’Tis ready,” the Lady of Wulfen said after opening a door onto a sizable chamber, at the center of which was a postered bed whose sheer curtains had likely been added this day.

Nicola’s heart leapt that here, at every day’s end, she could be alone with her husband after long days of training. Here they could talk and laugh, touch and kiss, and make love.

Beginning this eve, she hoped, though were she to settle on the feather-stuffed mattress before Vitalis joined her, it might be the morrow ere she awakened.

“I am happy, Hawisa. Better than I, you know this to be an ugly world, but with love…” She looked to the babe in her arms, saw his lids had lowered. “…beauty can be found and made.”

“More for some than others. For those others, we must not become too content with our own happiness.” The lady sighed. “But that is not for thinking on now, Vitalis’s bride. Now is for preparing you to begin life at Wulfen.”

What had not seemed possible when he climbed the stairs seemed very possible now. He should have come sooner when Nicola, awake and properly belted in her robe, would have been somewhat less tempting than Nicola, asleep and improperly belted.

Restlessness having loosened the garment, she lay face down near the mattress edge as if she had perched there a time before yielding to sleep.

The robe, which should have covered her ankles, was high up the calf of one leg, higher up the thigh of the other, and one shoulder was bared.

He closed the door quietly and, attempting to distract himself from the woman whose silvered hair fell over the side of the mattress, began to recount the hours spent becoming familiar with a changed Wulfen Castle he had not believed could be improved upon.

The training fields were twice the size and twice as numerous both inside and outside the walls. Equipment he had not thought wanting was of greater quantity and quality. And the underground passage from castle to wood that had collapsed two years past was rerouted, reinforced, and iron gates placed at intervals to ensure it remained a weapon of defense and offense exclusive to those of Wulfen.

With the exception of Eberhard, those in training would learn of the passage’s existence only were it needed to deliver them to safety. Though one must be deemed worthy to train here, it did not mean he would not reveal to a potential enemy what could become more vulnerability than strength.

Nicola murmured something and turned to her side, so near the edge that if her body determined greater comfort would be had on her back, she would drop to the floor.

As he strode forward, the creak of a board made her speak his name and brought her chin around. Blinking him to focus, she leaned back.

He reached her, clapped a hand to her shoulder and one to her back, and returned her to her side. “You are at the edge,” he said when she peered wide-eyed across her shoulder.

“Oh.” She wiggled opposite and dropped onto her back. “I did not intend to sleep. Is it late?”

As her robe now slanted across the top of one breast, he looked to the window through which dusk shone. “It is not long ere the supper hour. Not that we shall eat with your family.”

“Now they are your family as well,” she reminded.

He returned his gaze to hers. “I must become accustomed to that. As for not joining them at table, Lady Hawisa says food and drink will be left outside our door.”

A smile moved her lips. “As this is not Red Castle, and I believe this shall be your chamber henceforth—our chamber—I am glad of it. Are you not?”

Glancing around the room, pausing on his brooch upon the bedside table, he said, “It is good to be home,” and was struck by how true those words, then that it seemed they had never been more true. “I see you no longer wear my brooch.”

“Now that I am as near you as can be and shall remain thus, and I certainly do not wish to fasten this robe closed, I am thinking I ought to return it to you.”

His eyes drawn to that robe—rather, what could be seen beneath—he started to pull back.

Nicola caught his arm. “You are still angry with me for besmirching our reputations?”

As more and more it seemed a petty thing, he said, “Very little, and I believe that little