by Shana Abe
Ironstag had not been there for him! After what she had done, what she had thought would be such a noble thing to do, all her father's words had been rendered moot by Damon's impulsive bravery. Instead of supplying him with all the wonderful things he had promised her, Henry had allowed Damon to slip away with nothing, or, rather, next to nothing.
And Damon had survived. He had survived London, and the battles, and he had done all this alone. She shook her head at the thought.
The enormity of this new discovery left her almost breathless with a combination of emotions. Ridiculous, that it would make her laugh like this, but she had to laugh, because it was so ironic, and because if she did not laugh, she would surely crumple to pieces, or explode, or just start screaming.
She wanted to hate her father anew for this freshly discovered betrayal, but that wouldn't accomplish anything. That wouldn't help her deal with Damon right now, and her foremost concern had to be him. It was her responsibility to protect him. She couldn't let him know what his carelessly spoken words had just cost her. She needed something to tell him to satisfy his worried curiosity without upsetting him in turn.
But perhaps he had a right to know the truth. She had kept her silence to satisfy the terms of her father's requirements. She had done everything in her power to meet that deal. That faithfulness had been for naught; she couldn't be held responsible for breaking a bargain that had never even been met.
Damon was quiet with her now, just calmly stoking her back, her hair, waiting for her to decide. She reached a hand up to him, wanting to cup his cheek in her palm. His eyes caught the movement, then narrowed in on her wrist with the swiftness of a hawk.
Too late, she remembered. She tried to snatch her hand away, but he caught it before she could, holding her still as he pushed back the white sleeve.
"What," he asked in a terrible voice, "is this?"
She felt as helpless as a small creature might when captured by that hunting bird. Her heart filled her chest, and irrationally what she most felt was fear, a mindless fear brought on by his anger, and a strong desire to run away. It was instinctive in her now, a built-in reaction to the deep-voiced fury she heard. She tugged again at his grip, hard, but he wouldn't release her.
"Solange," he said, and then it was Damon with her again, Damon behind the anger, and Damon would not hurt her. But oh, she was so ashamed.
He pushed the fitted sleeve higher up her arm, following the marks all the way up to the inside of her elbow: narrow, straight lines, sometimes with pointed dots beside them, thin white scars making a ladder up her arm.
He hadn't noticed them the previous night, or that morning. He hadn't noticed them in the moonlight, or in the many days of travel he had spent with her. He hadn't noticed how she kept her clothing as close to her as she could, how, beginning that night in France, he had never seen her in anything that was not long-sleeved and concealing.
He hadn't noticed.
There was a blush stealing over her now, making the scars stand out further, thin dashes and dots of white against the rose of her arm. She let him take her other arm and examine it as well, no longer fighting him, but quiet, almost trembling in his grasp.
The other arm was marked almost identically. He wanted to see more, he wanted to follow the lines up her arm, but the sleeves of her gown wouldn't let him.
Her eyes were calm and light, detached as they met his. He couldn't think of what to say, the horror filled him up.
Solange ended the silence. "He had a very sharp knife," she said, and nothing more.
The rage that took him was like nothing he had known before. All the anger, all the frustration and hurt he was familiar with were now dwarfed by this new feeling, the blackest part of him he had never touched before. He wanted to kill, and kill and kill, he wanted to destroy the thing that had done this to her, and the fact that the thing was already dead left the anger growing wildly, without recourse.
He didn't know what he was doing; he was carrying her to the bed, pushing up her skirts around her ankles, and she was saying, no, no in a tearful voice, but he gently pushed her hands away and examined her legs, her thighs, for the marks, feeding the blackness with every new one he could find, a dot, a dash against the purity of her skin, thin, faded lines that marked him as permanently as they did her.
His own hands were broad and dark against her, tracing the lines, and a part of him noted this, the broad contrast between the rough, marked skin of his hands against the pearly, marked skin of her legs. She appeared so helpless, God, even next to his own hands.
Solange couldn't bear to watch his abhorrence of her, to see the disgust grow on his face, so she lay back against the feather mattress sedately, trying to remove herself from this awful moment, trying to imagine what she would do now, after he was going to make her leave. He wouldn't be able to bear to be with her after this, she knew.
She would find a convent, yes, just as she had planned. She would find a remote place to hide forever, and when the papal papers came announcing the annulment, she would be glad, and wish him wholeheartedly to the devil for throwing her away like this, for valuing her on just her looks alone, when looks were such a fragile thing and Solange was sure that the heart of her was not fragile at all.
Damon stood up and crossed to the door. She didn't watch him go but heard the click of the latch as he shut the door behind him. Part of her still expected to hear the sound of a lock turning after that, but all that reached her were his footsteps going away down the hall.
So that meant she was welcome to leave on her own. Fine. She sat up and brushed the white skirts down to their properly modest fall. She would change into her own clothing, gather what she needed, and then go, and no one would stop her, no one would dare enough or care enough to.
That's what she would do.
But instead, she sat on the bed. The room was surprisingly warm, cozy even, with bright diamonds of sunlight falling through the window, and a very pleasant scent wafting about. It smelled like—Solange frowned, trying to place it. Like roses, perhaps. Like lavender. Something sweet and summery, something out of place in this winter season.
A drowsy feeling stole over her. She decided to rest a little before leaving, they wouldn't begrudge her that, and so she lay down on the bed with her face to the sunlight, letting the rays warm her body and the smell of summer surround her.
From far away she heard low feminine voices, kind, not talking to her, but still comforting somehow, almost indistinguishable from the regular sounds of castle life. They were familiar in some indescribable way, familiar enough to tease the back of her mind yet not be worrisome. Soft, loving voices that were well matched with the warmth of the room, the perfumed air . . .
Probably some women in a sewing circle, talking about life and the weather. Something normal and sane, Solange thought languidly; they would be discussing something women were supposed to discuss, something happy and light and trivial. The color of thread, the taste of a pudding, the toddling steps of their children . . .
The steps grew louder outside, then paused. She heard the door open and shut again.
Damon came and knelt beside her, bowing his head to her on the bed, placing an arm around her waist to pull her into him slightly. The sunlight picked out the rainbows of black in his hair, melting into the fall of curls that escaped the queue.
She extended her hand and placed it on his head lightly, still in a drowse, wanting to feel what he thought if she could. He kept his head bowed but reached up and grabbed her hand, pulling it beneath him to his lips.
She felt his tears. A singular solace came over her. He still cared. If he was sad, then he did still care. If he cared, then she could stay. It might work.
"What did you mean when you said you were misled?" He kept his head down. She felt the words against her hand.
"Father promised me that he would support you in front of Edward if I married Redmond. That's what he told me that morning."
> He held her hand tighter.
"He also told me he would throw you out with nothing if I didn't marry him. He said he would do it that very morning." She took a deep breath of the summer air in the room. "And a storm was coming, you see."
"Aye, the storm came and went, and I made it safe out in spite of your father."
"I know. I know that now."
She didn't seem inclined to speak further to him, and it was just as well. He wasn't ready to handle much more. The emotions in him were tearing him apart, and he didn't know what to do about it.
She hadn't wanted to leave him! She hadn't wanted to marry Redmond, and that night before the wedding when they had planned to be together had not been a sham after all! He couldn't seem to take it in, this new reality that laid waste to the old one that had tormented him all those years.
But what he felt right now, more than any other thing, was relief.
He was half ashamed that this would be his first reaction, but there it was, the relief that coursed through him that he had not been wrong all this time, that his love for her had not been some simpleton's dream, or some madman's folly. For years he had held her close to him in spite of the deep, festering wound she had created, and now he saw the wound had been false, his anger at her had been based on a horrible misconception.
She had made the choice to abandon him because she had thought it would save him; she had not wanted him to suffer. It had been a sacrifice, an act so generous he could scarcely believe it. This new knowledge soaked up that old anger, transformed it into a humbleness that brought him to his knees.
And yes, what he felt was relief.
He struggled to focus on that, because he knew now what lay behind that selfish feeling was a black pit, and Damon could not see the bottom of it. That pit threatened to suck the rest of him down into it, and he didn't honestly know if he could climb back up.
She hadn't wanted to leave him, but she still did. What had happened to her after that, after he had allowed her to go so easily, was what created the pit.
Retribution, whispered the blackness, you must pay for the consequences of your pride. . . .
He fought that voice by speaking again.
"Henry sent me to you, after all that. Maybe he felt remorse."
"I don't know."
Damon lifted his head. "He said he tried to reach you, every year. He said you turned away his men at the gate."
Of course, Redmond would see to that, she thought sadly. "I never knew. I thought—I thought he no longer cared about me."
"I am trying," Damon said through a locked jaw, "to understand something. I am trying to understand how you could stay with a man who did these things to you."
"I didn't stay with him," she pointed out soberly. "I'm not with him now."
"But you were with him until he died."
"All of that is the past. In truth, after that first year at Wellburn, I hardly saw him at all. He sent me to France after I—"
"Stop. I don't want to hear anymore." The string that held him together was about to break; he couldn't stop it from breaking if she told him one more thing. He thought he wanted to know the whole of it, but he had been mistaken, he didn't really want to. He couldn't bear knowing more right now than what he had already discovered.
The pit yawned beneath him, mocking him. Retribution . . .
Solange, his beautiful, sensitive Solange, had been brutalized in a way he would not have allowed the most base of animals to be treated. He couldn't stop the images now, and they left him gagging in the blackness, a deep wound in his heart that screamed and screamed in pain.
He was appalled for her, he was in a fury for her, but underneath all that was the guilt. Aye, there was his punishment.
The guilt told him he should have sought her out, he should have made an effort to find out what happened to her. He should never have let her go as he did, nor been so late to help her. The guilt said he could have stopped this atrocity somehow, that he had been honor bound to do so, but all he really did was fail her, when she had given everything to help him—
Solange read him again, easily guessing where his thoughts were going. "Damon, it's over. There's nothing to be done about it."
The greasy mixture of the anger and guilt clogged his throat. He was falling, falling down forever into the blackness.
He had failed her. Not the other way around. He had failed her.
Everything he had built himself to become had hinged upon his honor, the one thing that he had thought he could never lose. But now it seemed that base was a false one, something that had been tainted by his pride and carelessness from the beginning without his even knowing it.
The misery was so great, it blinded him. He was unable to stop his descent into the darkness. But then Solange sat up and pulled him up to sit beside her, and he felt a tremulous hope.
This time it was she who held him close, rocking him peacefully, warm in the sunlight, tasting fragrant lavender on her tongue. She pressed her lips to his temple. "There's only the present now, and the future to nourish."
The hope quivered and sustained, a single cord to pull him to safety. She had sacrificed herself for him, but now she was with him again. Whether he deserved her or not, she was there.
Her arms around him were sure and strong. And so perhaps the pit could wait.
Chapter Eleven
And this, my lady, is the second buttery."
"A second one?"
Godwin nodded. "This one is used primarily for the preparation of cold foodstuffs in the winter and warm in the summer, since it was attached at a later date than the original castle keep, and therefore is prone to, er . . ."
"Drafts," contributed the cook, a blunt woman with flour dusting her face. She was surrounded by a gaggle of kitchen maids who nodded enthusiastically at the assessment. "The whole room is as windy as an open sea in a storm come winter."
Solange glanced around the room, which was admittedly colder than any other part of Wolfhaven she had visited, even with a fire roaring in the enormous hearth. "Well, then, perhaps I could speak with the marquess about shoring up some of those chinks in the stone—"
"Oh, nay, my lady," interrupted the cook. "For this is the most pleasant room of all come summertime, what with the nice breeze ablowing in."
Since this was the longest sentence any of the inhabitants of Wolfhaven had spoken to her yet, save Damon and a few of his men, Solange merely smiled and nodded her agreement, then allowed Godwin to lead her out to the next chamber, or hall or wherever the tour led next. Even into her second week as the new marchioness, Solange had not seen the entire castle. This was mainly due to the fact that Damon insisted she not go exploring alone, since more than a few areas of Wolfhaven had not yet been entirely restored, and also to the fact that the man he had assigned to escort her had been busy all week.
And indeed, whenever Godwin did manage to find time for her, they were inevitably interrupted by some-one seeking him to tally up a harvest payment, or supervise a masonry dispute, or something else that only the castle steward could work the kinks out of.
It had meant she was left to her own devices for a goodly portion of her time, even though Damon would have had it otherwise. He had seemed truly torn: wanting to be with her more but knowing his duties had been neglected for over a full month already, and there was much to prepare for the winter stretch. If Godwin was busy, then Damon was ten times that as the overlord, even though for the first time since taking over Wolfhaven he wished it otherwise.
Solange had insisted he go do what he needed to do, she would be fine, she would meet a few of the women, she would begin her wifely chores, whatever those may be.
But it appeared she had no chores. Wolfhaven had a very capable chatelaine, a brisk, harried woman who commanded the legion of servants in cooking and cleaning. Although she listened courteously to Solange's request to help, and had even gone over the list of duties she fulfilled, neither of them could th
ink of what the marchioness could do that was not already being done. The cook, also, had made it quite clear she needed no guidance from the new mistress.
Her attempts at befriending the scattering of noblewomen residing at Wolfhaven had not gone well, and although it was most likely her fault, Solange couldn't help but feel annoyed at the entire scenario.
She had maintained a casual contact with at least their maids, since many of the ladies had been kind enough to send over a selection of their gowns to their lord's new wife. No one had said one word to her face about traveling to Wolfhaven with nothing more than the clothing on her back. It made her remotely anxious to clear herself, to show them she was not so odd as her arrival must have seemed.
She had found the sewing circle one lazy afternoon, a cluster of quietly chatting women working on a tapestry together in a corner room of the main tower. To Solange, hesitating by the doorway, they appeared to be a group of delicately nodding flowers, dressed all in genteel pale colors, blondes and brunettes and a redhead with flashing needles and comet tails of thread floating between them.
Instantly she was back at Du Clar, seeing the group of women there who had betrayed her, who had never looked her quite in the eyes yet followed her relentlessly with their own, a spying party paid by Redmond, who wanted to control her even a continent away. Sweet-voiced, false-faced women who feigned care for her even though they locked her up at night.
But that was ridiculous. This was Wolfhaven, and the ladies here were now looking up at her in polite inquiry. She saw no wicked designs among them, and they greeted her with murmured welcome.
However, to her dismay, Solange discovered she couldn't judge their sincerity. It was her own judgment that was impaired, she realized. She found she couldn't sift through the intricate layers of meaning around her in the room, the steadfastness of their gazes, the width of their smiles, the subtle tones in their voices.
In response to her uncertain inquiry, all of them denied with gentle bewilderment any knowledge of the identities of the two women who had brought the white gown to her, whom Solange had wished to thank. Were they telling the truth? Why should they wish to lie to her?
