When Love Awaits

Chapter 28

AFIRE crackled in the great hearth as servants moved through the hall, setting the tables for dinner under Wilda's careful eye. Amelia worked her stitchery by the fire, deliberately ignoring what was going on around her. Sitting beside her, Sir Evarard was enjoying a mug of ale, his duties finished for the day.

When Leonie came downstairs from the lord's chamber, Amelia's eyes fastened on her. She watched intently as Leonie said a few words to her maid, then left the hall.

Amelia sat back with a smug smile. She had waited for the day when Rolfe would confront his wife with her crimes. Evarard had told her what Rolfe suspected, and whether or not it was true, he would surely send Leonie back to Pershwick now.

Amelia had kept out of the way when Rolfe was wounded, for if he had died and no one could prove that his wife was to blame, Amelia would have been sent packing. She could not have afforded to be enemies with Leonie.

But Rolfe was recovered now, and believed his wife had wanted him dead.

"Do you think he has told her to begin packing?" Amelia asked Evarard, who had also watched Leonie crossing the hall to the servants' stairs.

"Packing? Why?"

"To go back to Pershwick, of course."

"Why would he send her there?"

Amelia stared at her lover angrily. She was always having to explain every little thing to him because their minds did not run the same course.

She could never confide everything to Sir Evarard, for he was a man plagued with honor.

"Did you not tell me that he believes her responsible for the fire at the mill and the attack against him?" she whispered, exasperated.

"That was a mistake," Evarard said casually.

"A mistake? Whose mistake?"

Evarard shrugged. "Sir Rolfe knows now that he was wrong."

"How do you know that? Did he tell you so himself?"

"Sir Thorpe said so before he left. He has gone to begin the siege of Warling."

"But he was tending Rolfe."

"The lady Leonie will see to him now, so there is no reason for Sir Thorpe to remain here."

Amelia gritted her teeth. "Do you think she will still be tending him when he hears about poor Erneis?"

"Sir Rolfe will deal with that in his way, but I doubt he will put his wife from him simply because she overstepped her authority. He is most pleased with her in every other way. Why, look at all she has done since she came here."

Amelia suppressed a scream of fury, stabbing her needle into her embroidery instead. Evarard seemed not to notice her agitation.

It was not fair! Just when Amelia had begun to hope that she could drop her pretense of being pregnant, saying that she had miscarried.

Now she would have to continue her affair with Evarard, at least until he got her with child. That had to happen immediately. If she had her monthly flow again, she might as well give up, for Rolfe was not a stupid man. As it was, if she did have a child, she would have to pretend it was a delayed birth.

She tried to stop her mind from whirling. Yes, she would have to become pregnant. She might even be forced to allow the pregnancy to run its course, unless . . .

Leonie must be told about the child. Amelia could let it slip as though by accident, then step back and see what that news did to the relationship between the lord and his lady. Leonie's pride might have kept her from speaking to Rolfe about having a mistress living in his house, but it was another thing entirely for the mistress to bear him a child—especially a child conceivedafterthe marriage.

It would not matter if Leonie confronted Rolfe, for he could not deny the child. But Leonie might not even ask him about it, but simply leave.

Once she was gone, Amelia might still have time to get rid of the child, using the potion she'd learned about at court years ago.

As Amelia dreamed on, her smug smile returned.