When Love Awaits by Johanna Lindsey Read Free Book Online

ladies were silly creatures, good only for sewing and gossiping and making trouble. His mother and her ladies had taught him that. All women used sex to get what they wanted. He had watched his mother work her wiles on his father for years. He had seen the same in every court he had been to. He made it a rule, usually, never to grant a woman anything she asked if she asked it in the bedchamber.
    When Rolfe finished with Amelia, she was forgotten. Without the distraction of Amelia, his mind returned to what was troubling him so badly. In a rage, he had decided he wanted Leonie of Montwyn. Another rage had taken him to the king to secure her. Now that the rages were past, he was filled with dread.
    He did not want a wife he could feel no pride in and would never love. He planned to confine her to Pershwick, and he told himself it was because of the ills she had caused him, but it was really her reputed ugliness that worried him. Already he was feeling guilty over that. It was not her fault she was ugly. Perhaps her appearance was what caused her to be such a spiteful woman.
    Rolfe was sick at heart for what his fool temper had gotten him into. His honor would not let him try to squirm out of the situation, and his guilt mounted each day, thinking of the girl and her expectations. The poor creature was more than likely overjoyed to finally have a suitor, even one she had been doing battle with. Why shouldn’t she be pleased? What prospects had she ever had before this one?
    His guilt rose to choke him. Perhaps he wouldn’t send her away. There was an old tower at Crewel. She could have that for herself. He would not have to see her, and she would not have to bear the disgrace of being sent from her husband’s home. Still, her expectations for a child, for a normal married life, would be crushed. He came back to wondering again if he could bed her, whether the sight of her would turn him cold. Every man wanted an heir and he was no different in that. But if the sight of her made it impossible…
    For a man whose nerves were usually like steel, these were very uncomfortable feelings. On the morrow, he would have to bed her, at least for that onetime, for her parents and the other guests would inspect the wedding sheets the morning after, as was customary. He might choose to forgo some of the customs, such as the bedding ceremony, but there was no way he could avoid the inspecting of the sheets which confirmed the girl’s virginity. There was no way to escape it. He would have to bed her or face more jesting taunts than his temper would stand for.

Chapter 8
    L EONIE came to at the sound of Wilda’s startled cry. She could have cursed the girl for rousing her to the pain.
    “What they did to you, my lady!” Wilda wailed. “Your face is black and swollen. May they roast in the fires of hell! May the hand that dared touch you rot and fall off! May—”
    “Oh, hush, Wilda!” Leonie snapped, trying to move her jaw as little as possible. “You know how easily I bruise. I am sure I look worse than I feel.”
    “Truly, my lady?”
    “Bring me my mirror.”
    Leonie tried to grin to ease the girl’s anxiety, but her jaw and her cracked and bloodied lips hurt too much to manage it. The polished steel mirror handed her confirmed that she looked like something trampled under the hooves of a great war-horse.
    One of her eyes was swollen tightly shut, the other was a mere slit. Blood had dried on her lips and chin and beneath her nose, but it was hardly noticeable against the deep blue-black bruises surrounding the whole of her face. She was loath to imagine what her chest and arms looked like, for Richer had not confined his blows to her head.
    She was clothed as fully as she had been when Richer left her. And someone had kept Wilda fromcoming to her last evening, so she had not disrobed at all. She had, she guessed, lapsed into unconsciousness soon after Richer left, and not wakened since.
    “I think I have looked better,”