Free The Black Lyon by Jude Deveraux Page B

but they had their own women and were content. He was anxious, and the constant pounding of the rain made him more so.
    He sat before the fire, another cup of strong wine in his hand. The house was silent, for it was late and the servants abed. He tried to remember the two days he had spent at Lorancourt but could not grasp a clear picture. Too long he had had no reason for laughter, too many years he had been haunted by the words of a dying woman.
    A flash of lightning lit the room briefly. It had been raining that night, too. She, the woman who was called his wife, had come home late, the little three-year-old Leah, her daughter, trying hard to keep pace with her mother.
    He had been married to her for three years and had never once bedded her. At first he had been awed by her, green young boy that he was and she years older. She’d laughed and said Ranulf might love her when he was worthy of her, when he had become the strongest knight in all of England.
    Men thought he trained now, but in those days he had rarely slept or eaten, so determined was he to please his wife. He had not protested when he knew a child was to be born, and later the little girl had been a joy to him, a balm against his evil, adulterous wife.
    By the time he realized she slept with other men—many other men—he was too attached to Leah to think of sending the child’s mother away.
    Ranulf stood and walked closer to the fire, his head on his hands against the stone mantel. He had not thought she hated him enough to kill the little girl he’d grown to love.
    When they’d returned home on that wet night, there had been a triumphant look on Isabel’s face as she’d watched Ranulf lift the shivering child. He never left Leah’s side during the three days that the fever consumed her. It was only after her death that he had heard of his wife’s illness, that she too lay on her deathbed.
    Her horrible dying words came to him. “I am glad she is dead, because I am dying also and I would take all from you that I could. I loved a man once, Leah’s father, but he was poor and my father would not have him. You were there with all your riches and all your men, and you took away the one I loved. Do you think I could ever bear your black ugliness, that any woman could? No, Ranulf de Warbrooke, no woman will ever love aught about you but your fine furs and gold cups. Go now and get a priest and never let me need to look on your devil’s blackness again.”
    He crumbled the silver cup he held, jewels flying about the room, blood-red wine covering his hand. He should not have betrothed himself again! There were too many likenesses between this marriage and the other—a father eager to have an earl for a son, a girl… He sat down again.
    No, there were no similarities between Isabel and Lyonene. But what of this young girl? She had seemed to feel the same for him as he for her, yet he had never felt so for another. For what he knew, she could have treated many men before him with the same eagerness, the same desire.
    The storm grew worse and his temper with it. It seemed that his every memory of his betrothed pointed to some falseness, some deceit.
    Hodder found his master asleep in the solar the next morn, and when he was awakened, the blackness of his mood matched his coloring. The thin valet watched his lord grow steadily worse in temper each day, eating little, drinking over much, remaining unwashed, unshaven.
    The rain continued, wetting everything, seeping into crevices and dulling moods. It was with joy that Corbet greeted the sun on the day they were to leave for Lorancourt. The seven men were ready and waiting in the courtyard for their master, but he did not come.
    Hugo Fitz Waren, oldest of the Black Guard, sought him out.
    “My lord, the sun is high. We must make haste to reach Lorancourt for the marriage.”
    “I do not go. I will send Sir William wagons of gold to repay him, but I do not marry again.”
    Hugo sat on a stool at Ranulf’s