Widow in White

Chapter Twenty-Six: All in the Past

When the shock of Elizabeth's news wore off, Laura surprised herself by laughing at it. She had spent the past month assuming Elizabeth had come to Albroke for the purpose of dividing her from Richard, and had hated her for it. To hear now that there was no reason to hate, to realize that she had wronged Elizabeth in all her assumptions, amused her. Elizabeth was so pompous and self-assured that it could never seem a very great fault to wrong her. She thought very briefly about what Elizabeth had said and then cheerfully dismissed it: Richard deserved more fondness than she or anybody else gave him, and Elizabeth was a fool if she could not see it.

It was that night, lingering in bed, that she and Richard discussed it.

"Are you happy about her baby?" Laura asked, idly stroking his bad knee as she lay against his chest.

"Mmm." He nuzzled at her hair. "I love all my nephews and nieces really."

"Even Catherine."

"Even Catherine." He nibbled at her earlobe. "She's stopped screaming when she sees you."

"I found her crying in a cupboard a week ago with half a pot of jam all down her white dress," Laura said smugly. "I cleaned her up and told her no one ever has to find out."

"Bribery and blackmail in the one shot." He kissed her neck lightly. "You're a resourceful woman."

"She's only a child really," Laura said. "I wish Elizabeth would let them be."

"She does what she thinks is best."

Laura was silent a moment. "I think she's very often wrong."

"Perhaps." Richard pulled her closer against him. "I wish I had the chance to be wrong."

Laura closed her hand over his. Sorrow swelled at the back of her throat, for both Richard and herself. She swallowed it back down.

"I didn't use to want to," Richard continued, no longer playing with her body but simply holding her, his hands clasped over her waist. "When I was younger, all I thought about it was that Neil would have to be the one to sire an heir. It wasn't personal. And then I got older and Elizabeth had her children — she does love them, in her own way — and Neil had his and he loves them very much. And then it started to be personal. Then I started to want it."

"Because of your nieces and nephews?"

He nodded, his chin bumping the back of her head. "I think when Annie was born, that changed me. I was there that very day. She's still my favourite, and I think she knows."

Laura smiled faintly. "You're not supposed to have favourites."

"Well I do and she's it. Besides," he added, "I'm only the uncle. Uncles can have favourites."

The sadness grew. Laura turned over onto Richard's chest, burying her hands in the pillows behind him and pressing her face into the hollow of his sternum. Once, she had thought herself protected by his infertility. There would be no child to bind her to him. Now, she felt only a strange, impotent anger that there could not be. She raised her head to find him watching her with an inutterably sad expression in his eyes.

"You never speak of it," she said softly.

"There's nothing to speak of. It is what it is."

"So many things are as they should not be."

"Yes." He tried and failed to give her a smile. "There's three things I wish I never did in my life: I wish I'd never got on that horse the day I broke my leg. I wish I'd never told my father that Neil had remarried. I wish I'd never gone to my aunt's place the day I caught that fever from my cousin."