WolfeLord by Kathryn Le Veque

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Isend my son out, dry, and he returns wet?” Lily said, a glimmer of mirth in her eyes. “Have you been trying to drown him again?”

Adria smiled weakly as she entered Lily’s enormous chamber, the blue tunic in her hands. “Of course I tried to drown him again,” she said. “I’ve been trying for years, but he is too clever and escapes me. Here – look at the embroidery and tell me if it is acceptable.”

She handed Lily the tunic, who took it eagerly. She inspected the gold stitching all around the neckline, looking like laurel leaves, but all the while she was feeling anxious. It had been a day since Adria had run weeping from her chamber and although she’d seen the woman since then, they hadn’t spoken of Lily’s predicament again or her request. Lily hadn’t wanted to stir up Adria’s hysteria again, at least not immediately, but time was of the essence. She’d been planning to bring it up to Adria again today at some point, gently done, and now seemed as good a time as any.

Knowing where to start was the difficult part.

“It is beautiful, Adria,” she said, appreciation in her tone. “Very beautiful. Well done.”

Adria smiled politely as she went to Lily’s enormous wardrobe and set her sewing kit down. But as she did so, she pulled out the scraps of dark blue fabric left over from the tunic.

“Do you still want me to make something for Lady Warenton?” she asked. “I think I can do something with these.”

Lily put her index finger to her lips. When Adria looked at her curiously, she pointed to the alcove where Jordan slept. The door was cracked open, but it was dark inside.

“Lady Warenton is resting in there,” she whispered. “I do not want her to hear.”

Adria understood. She brought the fabric over to the bed and lowered her voice. “I can make her something to match him,” she murmured. “Mayhap a kirtle?”

“If you have enough fabric.”

Adria inspected the fabric and tried to figure out how she would make Lady Warenton a full kirtle using only scraps. She wasn’t aware that Lily was watching her closely, wondering why the woman seemed so… hard. Not pleasant at all, which wasn’t like her.

She suspected she knew why.

“Did Will speak to you?” she finally asked.

Adria looked up from the material. “About what?”

“Marrying him.”

Adria sighed sharply when she realized the subject and looked back to the fabric. “He did.”

She didn’t elaborate and Lily reached out, grasping her hand. “I am sorry if I shocked you with my wish,” she said softly. “I truly am. But it is very important to me that Will and my children are happy when I am gone. Will you not do this for me, Adria? For them?”

Adria couldn’t help but feel that was an incredibly ironic statement. She tried not to think about Marcellus and Lily; God, she tried hard. It wasn’t her right, her battle, or her business but, somehow, with Lily asking her to marry Will, it was her business.

Lily had made it her business.

And now Lily was pretending that she cared deeply for Will. As if his happiness in a marriage mattered to her. Adria found that incredibly offensive and she struggled not to let her feelings show. She didn’t want to upset Lily because she didn’t want to exacerbate her illness, but her illness had nothing to do with her behavior.

It was that behavior that had Adria shaken.

Adria turned away from her, fabric in hand. “We did speak at length about it,” she said, going back to the wardrobe. “What you are asking, Lily… it is a great deal.”

Lily tossed back the coverlet over her. “I know it is,” she said. “But I have no one else to ask. You know Will and you know my children. Atticus loves you so. It would be so much better for my children to have a mother they know rather than one they do not. Don’t you think so?”

Adria put the fabric back in the wardrobe and absently picked up her sewing kit again. “I do,” she said. “Of course I care about your children. I have known them since they were born.”

Lily sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. “And Will,” she said. “You have known him almost as long as I have. He is a good man, Adria. He will make a good husband.”

“I know.”

“Then you’ll do it? You’ll marry him?”

Adria came back over to the bed. There was a chair beside it and she sat down, sewing kit in her lap. Her manner was pensive, even distant, which had Lily worried.

“Sir Will and I have discussed your request and we have decided to wait until after the child is born,” she said, opening up her sewing kit and pulling out a wooden spool with tangled thread. She started to untangle it. “There could be a miracle, Lily. You could come through perfectly well. Tarraby isn’t God – he does not know everything.”

Lily watched her lowered head. “Will’s father agrees with him,” she said, watching Adria’s head come up. Their eyes met and Lily smiled sadly. “Scott agrees with Tarraby. The diagnosis has not changed.”

“Who told you this?”

“Lady Warenton.”

That changed things a bit. Will hadn’t told her that his father had agreed with diagnosis. Adria remembered hearing that Scott de Wolfe was a great healer in his own right, now with a dying daughter-in-law. If he agreed with Tarraby, then that meant Lily was in a dire situation, indeed, and she knew it.

“I see,” Adria finally said. “I did not know that.”

Lily nodded. “You see that it is more important than ever for you to promise me to take care of Will and the children,” she said. “Must I beg you, Adie?”

Adria didn’t say anything for a moment. She returned her focus to the tangled thread, something to occupy herself with, anything but look at Lily and think how much she disapproved of her and what she had done. When she should only be thinking about Lily’s health, she was thinking about Lily’s morals or lack thereof. Perhaps it wasn’t the right time, but she couldn’t help it.

It was a struggle to stay on an even keel.

“Nay,” she finally said. “You do not have to beg me.”

“Then you will do it?”

“I will.”

Lily put her feet on the floor, stood up, and put her arms around Adria, hugging her tightly. “Thank you,” she said sincerely. “I knew you would do the right thing. I feel so much better knowing that you will make Will and my children happy. Someday, you will be the Countess of Warenton.”

“I do not care about that,” Adria said, almost offended that Lily would say such a thing. “I do not yearn for titles. But I do love your children and Will is a good man. He deserves to finally be happy.”

The word “finally” had been a slip, an accident, but not one missed by Lily. She sat back down on the edge of the bed as she thought on Adria’s statement.

The joy between them cooled.

“Will and I have not been unhappy,” she said after a moment. “I will not say anything more about it because there is no need. You know the state of our marriage so I will not elaborate, but given the circumstances, I did the best I could, I think.”

That statement set Adria on edge. She’d heard it before. She’d heard Lily explain away the state of her marriage many times before and it had never bothered her until now. Now, she knew why the marriage had gone sour, with poor Will being duped and thinking he was equally to blame in the situation. But he wasn’t. Now, Lily was going to go to her grave with a secret she had kept from her husband all of these years and Adria simply didn’t think it was fair.

Those feelings of being protective over Will were starting to stir. In fact, they were starting to boil over. She couldn’t stand the fact that Lily was going to play the innocent until the end.

When she was anything but innocent.

“Did you?” she muttered before she could stop herself. “Did you really do the best you could?”

Lily’s brow furrowed. “Why would you say that?”

Adria sighed sharply and stopped fussing with the thread. “This morning, I came back up here to retrieve Atticus’ cap because the morning was cold,” she said, lifting accusing eyes to look at Lily. “I was coming up the stairs when I heard voices. I thought it was Will but I realized it was Marcellus.”

She let that hang in the air, watching emotions of shock and fear ripple across Lily’s face. “And?” Lily managed to ask.

“And I heard everything.”

So there it was. Out in the open. Lily and Marcellus’ dark secret, something they’d managed to hide for years was no longer hidden. Someone else knew. Lily swallowed hard, pausing a moment before sliding back on the bed and leaning against the pillows.

She couldn’t even look at Adria.

Now, the woman’s hardness was making some sense.

“I see,” she said, but her voice was shaking. “Did you tell Will?”

That set Adria off. “How can you ask me that?” she hissed. “It is not my secret to tell, Lily. It is your secret that you have kept from him since the beginning of your marriage. It is not my place to say anything but, God knows, you and Marcellus have put on an astonishing act of deceit. I would have never guessed the two of you have been carrying on behind Will’s back for the entirety of the marriage. How could you do such a thing?”

Lily was pale, looking at Adria with an expression of guilt and defiance that had become every line in her face, every pore. She was the living embodiment of the sorrow and rebelliousness she felt.

Her breathing was beginning to quicken.

“I have often asked myself that,” she said, her voice weak. “All I can tell you is that we never meant to be deliberately deceitful. I loved Marcellus before I ever loved Will, but my father forced me to marry Will. Can you not understand that?”

“Nay!” Adria snapped. “I do not understand it. When you marry a man, you vow to be faithful to him. Marriage is about faith and loyalty. I could never understand why you and Will did not have a marriage like others who are fond of one another, and now I know. It was because you loved another man.”

“And he loved me,” Lily said softly. “I am sorry you do not understand what real love is, Adria. Mayhap you will someday.”

It was a rebuke and Adria’s head snapped back as if Lily had reached out and struck her. Astonished at the arrogance, she shook her head in wonder.

“That is the defense of every selfish person,” she said, her voice hoarse. “No one understands you, so you justify your lies and deceit by trying to push the blame on others. Well, there is no blame to cast except on you and Marcellus. Nay, I will not tell Will, but I will not marry him unless you do. I will not let you take that secret to your grave.”

Lily’s eyes filled with tears. “To tell him now would only hurt him.”

“So you will let him live the rest of his life with your lies?” Adria said. “Believing Atticus is his son? Believing the child you carry is his child? Worse still, he believes Marcellus is his friend. Is that fair to Will to let him believe that? You insult him by keeping him ignorant of your truth.”

Lily blinked and tears streamed down her face. “Ignorance will give him peace.”

Adria was infuriated with Lily’s resistance. “What you and Marcellus did is disgusting,” she hissed at her. “You’re both selfish fools. You have been lying to Will and even to me, telling me that you want Will to be happy and your children to be loved. If you loved them the way you think you do, then you never would have done this. But since you have, the least you can do is tell Will everything. If the worst happens and you do not survive, then at least you have gone to your grave with a clear conscience. And at least Will will know the truth and he is not a man who has been lied to by his philandering wife.”

They were such harsh words, but nothing she said was untrue. That was the only thing that kept Lily from flaring at her, but more and more, she was being beaten down by Adria’s rage. She thought the woman was her ally, but she was evidently wrong and that realization was a distinct blow.

Still, Lily was resistant.

“What if there is a miracle, like you’ve said?” she said. “Then I have confessed something that he did not need to know. Our lives will be in chaos.”

“That will be your fault,” Adria said. Lily couldn’t take any more of Adria’s anger and she lowered her head, sobbing softly. Adria watched the woman, struggling to compose herself. “Lily, I am sure Will feels that he is partially to blame for the state of your marriage. How can you let him go through life thinking you are innocent in all of this? How can you do that to him?”

Lily simply shook her head, sobbing into her hand. “I cannot help that Marcellus and I love one another,” she said. “What you have never had, you cannot understand.”

“I understand that what you are doing is wrong.”

“I will not explain myself to you!”

“Then I have nothing more to say to you, either.”

With that, she turned away, preparing to leave, but Lily stopped her. “Wait,” she said, tears and mucus running down her face. “Do not leave, Adie, please. It’s just that… do you know that Marcellus begged my father for my hand but he refused? He wanted to marry me badly, but my father wouldn’t hear of it. He only wanted a de Wolfe. It did not matter what I wanted or what Marcellus wanted. Only my father’s wishes mattered.”

Adria was trying to see her side; she really was. But she simply couldn’t. “I am sorry for you, truly, but poor Will is married to a woman who refused to give up her former lover,” she said quietly. “And she lies to him about it. She bears the children of this man and lets Will believe they are his children. Don’t you see how wrong that is?”

“You do not understand!”

Adria could see that Lily was becoming increasingly worked up, which probably wasn’t good for her. Adria may have been furious, but she wasn’t cruel. She didn’t want Lily to become ill and that was where they were headed.

Perhaps it was time for her to show a little compassion.

With a heavy sigh, she went in search of a bowl and a kerchief. She found the little bowl on the table with a few other things, like cups and knives, and filled it with cool water from the basin. Bringing it back over to the bed, she dipped the kerchief in it and put her hand under Lily’s chin, tilting her head back and wiping her hot, tear-stained face with the cool water.

“Quiet, now,” she said in a low tone. “Quiet yourself and rest. I will say no more about this, but you know how I feel.”

Lily sniffled, letting Adria wipe her face off. “Please do not hate me, Adria,” she said. “I could not bear it if you did.”

Adria put the kerchief back in the bowl. “I do not hate you,” she said. “But I am disappointed. So very disappointed. Just… rest now. I will tend to Atticus and the evening meal, so you rest.”

Lifting up the coverlet, she helped Lily slide down into the bed and covered her up. Lily rolled onto her side, closing her eyes, as Adria gazed at the woman and felt a good deal of bewilderment and disenchantment. She had hoped that Lily might see the need to be truthful, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

Time would tell if she changed her mind.

Quietly, Adria quit the chamber, heading out to go about her duties, trying to forget about the conversation, at least for the moment.

She had to clear her head.

When the chamber was still and Lily was dozing, the door to the alcove slowly opened. The panel swung back to reveal a rather stunned old woman.

Jordan had heard everything.