The Vexing by Tamara Leigh

Author:Tamara Leigh [Leigh, Tamara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Medieval
Published: 2017-05-11T18:30:00+00:00

“Daughter!”

Beata looked around. “Father?”

He shot his gaze to Emmerich. “I would speak with your sister in private.”

“In private?” her brother drawled.

“Already I have asked much of one whose first duty is to the Church. I do not wish to sully you further, Brother Emmerich.”

“Of course not.” His son rose from the chess table over which Beata and he had settled. “I pray you well, Sister.” He inclined his head and strode to the stairs.

As the baron lowered into the chair Beata preferred filled by her brother she said, “That is your son. ’Tis wrong for you to be dismissive of him.”

He stilled. “You take your father to task?”

“If I think it necessary, aye.”

His brow lowered. “The tales of The Vestal Wife are not all exaggeration. Too much license you had in expressing yourself on the matters of men. Perhaps I did not choose a good husband for you after all.”

The anger pricking her skin began crawling across it. “You did not. But a good father? Aye, that Conrad Fauvel was. That you chose well.”

He blinked, and what seemed regret replaced displeasure. “When I heard what they were calling you, I guessed he was unable to do his husband’s duty. Much it aggrieved me.”

“He was not unable!” She loosed her frustration over the common assumption Conrad had been too old for relations. “Honorable is what he was. Though he wished to consummate the marriage, when he saw how afeared was the girl in his bed, he determined to seek the favors of women. By the time I was a woman myself, I was too much a daughter for him to think there.”

“Only because he already had an heir,” her father said, defensively.

That she would not argue. Though she did not wish to believe it of Conrad, he might not have waited had he lacked a son. Certes, when she had come of age, he would have exercised his husband’s rights and rectified what others viewed as a deficiency.

“Regardless,” she said, “I could not have loved a father more than I loved him.”

The Baron of Wiltford caught his breath. “Beata!”

She stood. “I am sorry you are so changed. I may have been a girl when you sent me to play a woman, but this I know—in the absence of power, a better man you were.”

He grasped her arm as she started past. “You cannot know what these years have wrought for me.”

“I know what they have wrought for Lady Winifred and Emmerich, and if not that I might set aright what is wrong, I would regret answering your summons.”

Tears wetting his eyes, he released her and lowered his face. “Forgive me, but I am desperate to do what is right and best for our family.”

Though Beata longed to distance herself, compassion rose as she stared at his bent head.

“Only that, Daughter,” he rasped, “without interference from those who call themselves our king and queen, yet reside on the continent.”

“Their French lands are vast and oft suffer more turmoil than these,” she surprised herself in defending Henry and Eleanor.

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