Riggs shrugged. “At some point, you would send de Lohr to Colesborne and make sure he was either unprotected or alone,or both,” he said. “It would be a simple thing for your ally to ambush de Lohr and make sure he was quite dead. Men die in battle all the time. Once he is dead, the ally would simply pack up and go home, leaving you with a widowed daughter who would bring de Lohr wealth and property with her to a new marriage. But, as I said, I’m simply thinking aloud. It must be the wine talking.”
He chuckled, taking a big swallow of wine, when they both knew he wasn’t drunk enough to concoct such a wine-nightmare story like that. What he’d suggested had been very calculated.
He knew exactly what he was saying.
“That is a fine story,” Robin said, grinning. “One I like very much. Let de Lohr marry her, then. I do not care. But it would be a fine thing for you to send your army to Colesborne sometime very soon. Roi will surely come to defend my lands, and then my daughter shall marry your son by the autumn. Will he wait that long?”
Riggs’ smile was nothing short of pure evil. “He will wait as long as it takes,” he said. “But the sooner, the better. I should like your daughter to start providing me with grandsons to carry on the Fairford name.”
“She would be honored.”
Riggs lifted his cup to salute their scheme, causing Robin to loosen up quite a bit. He’d been drunk and distressed when the man arrived, but now… now, he was far more at ease. Happy, even. Control was returning to him, and that was all that mattered. Roi used to be a friend, but he’d outlived his usefulness when he stopped bending to Robin’s will. Now, the man was on borrowed time.
The loss of another de Lohr was in Robin’s future.
And Diara’s.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lioncross Abbey
Beckett’s funeral wassurreal.
That was the only way Roi could describe it.
Upon their arrival to his ancestral home, Roi immediately went to the abbey in the sub-levels beneath the keep. It was in the dark recesses of the abbey portion of the castle where they stored things, mostly foodstuffs or other things in need of cold spaces. But the truth was that they also stored bodies down there, if needed, because it was the perfect environment. It was cold and surprisingly dry.
This was where Roi found his only son.
He left Diara and her cousin in the great hall of Lioncross and proceeded to visit his son alone, something Diara had encouraged him to do from the onset. He was coming to see, if nothing else, that she was a very understanding and compassionate individual, more than likely because she’d received none of those things whilst fostering during her formative years. In fact, Diara seemed to be quite sensitive to what he was feeling or what his needs might be, as she had demonstrated on the entire journey from Cheltenham.
It had been a two-day journey that passed pleasantly enough in spite of what they had left behind and what they were moving toward. They had only discussed Robin twice, and that was shortly after they left Cicadia. Roi was half expecting the man to send his knights out after him, but no army and no knights were forthcoming. That was both a relief and a concern to Roi, who was more than certain Robin had not completely surrendered. At least he could see the knights and fight them accordingly, but he worried about what he couldn’t see. He suspected the worst was yet to come where Robin le Bec was concerned.
And then there was Diara.
Taking her away from her father and her home, Roi presumed that he would begin to see what she was truly made of. The past two days had been spent in the comfort of her own home, a place that she was familiar with, so taking her on the road with him was a big change for her. He wondered if it would be a dose of reality for them both about this marriage and what they were truly about to face, but over the course of those two days of travel, he saw nothing that indicated any kind of change in heart with her.
In fact, he saw quite the opposite.
Diara seemed to blossom away from her father. Astride a small gray palfrey and with her cousin at her side, she kept up a running stream of chatter that was quite enchanting. It passed the time beautifully, so much so that Roi was sorry when the day of travel ended and they had to find shelter for the night. They found it in a small tavern on the edge of Hereford, a place he had been to before, since it was within his father’s lands, but he quickly discovered that Diara had never been to a tavern in her life.
He quite enjoyed watching the situation through her eyes.
She was someone who was truly interested in people. She didn’t look at them and see the rich and the poor, theslovenly and the well dressed, but rather she looked at them as individuals. As she had commented to Roi more than once, everyone had a story, and she liked to hear of other people’s perspectives and their experiences. Even when they were sitting at the table in the tavern, enjoying their supper, she ended up talking to a merchant at the next table because the man was wearing exotic robes that were quite lovely, and she was curious about them. The man ended up at their table, buying their entire meal for them, as he told her about his travels from the Holy Land.
It was enough to nearly keep her up all night, but just after midnight, long after most people had gone to bed, Roi finally forced her to end the conversation so she could get some sleep. He had done it in a kind way, and she was very sweet about it, but she had been sad for the evening to end. He was coming to see that she was simply naturally curious about everything, and hearing of the merchant’s travels had given her more perspective of the world in general. For someone who had spent her life at essentially only two locations—and one of them had not exactly been pleasant—Roi could see that she hungered for knowledge and the world at large.
And that had given him an idea.
Since he didn’t have anything terribly pressing in the near future, he decided that he would take her on a wedding trip after they were married. He had traveled to many places over the course of his lifetime, so the thought of travel wasn’t of great interest to him—but he knew it would be to her. He wanted to take her to France, and he wanted to take her to a beautiful lake known asLac du Lausannethat was surrounded by soaring mountains and beautiful scenery. Knowing how much she seemed to like new and interesting things, he decided she would love such a place.
If she was by his side, so would he.
Spending time with her had given him some respite from his grief over the loss of Beckett. When he was with her, she lightened his heart in so many ways. It was only when he was alone that he thought about his son and the future that would never be. When they arrived at Lioncross and he went straight into the undercroft, he sat next to Beckett’s casket for a full hour before he even made any attempt to look at his son inside. He sat there and thought about the young man that he’d never fully come to know, or the more mature man that he would never witness, the great knight and the husband and the father that would never be.
He missed those things he would never know.
He knew his son was young and arrogant and had dreams of grandeur. That had never been a question. Beckett had been heavily trained at Selbourne Castle in the laws of the land, hoping that he would follow in his father’s footsteps. Beckett seemed to think that his knowledge of the law would set him aside from other men, and, in truth, it did to a certain extent. He assumed that there was no reason that he would not be as great as his father and grandfather, and that had reflected in his manner. Lord de Nerra, his liege and mentor, had commented on that fact to Roi more than once. They both knew that they were dealing with an extremely bright and extremely prideful young man, and they both assumed that age and wisdom would temper his pride somewhat.
