A lump formed in Linnea’s throat. That was all he’d meant to do, fasten the jeweled chain around her waist. His wedding gift to her, she realized with an unwelcome rush of guilt. And she’d insulted him.
His head was bent as he fastened the chain and on impulse Linnea stroked his dark hair. He looked up sharply at her touch, and Linnea saw the anger in every hard line of his face.
“I … I didn’t realize …” she began, then trailed off. He was still her enemy. She should not apologize to him. Yet she did not like to be cruel when there was no reason for it, not even to him. She’d been on the opposite side of that coin often enough to know how it felt.
“Even if I’d meant to use you thus, and pay you in jewels, it would have been your duty to oblige me. Wife, whore, and everything in-between will you be to me, Beatrix. Best you remember that and never oppose me again.” Then he reached between her legs and drew another length of the chain around from the back to fasten at her waist.
Linnea looked down past the kirtle knotted in her left hand to see one gold and ruby chain circling her waist. From somewhere in the back a second chain looped down, passing over her derriere, between her legs, then up again and over her belly to fasten to the first chain. The second chain now dangled between her legs, a loop that hung half the way to her knees.
She raised her eyes back to his, confused and vaguely distressed. There was something disturbingly erotic about the feel of the cool metal and stones warming to the touch of her skin, and rubbing against the tender flesh of her inner thighs.
He met her gaze with eyes as dark and hard as obsidian. “You will wear my gift always, Beatrix. ’Tis but two matching necklaces. However, they are put to a far better use worn thus.”
One of his fingers began to trace the path of the first chain. Along her waist, slanting down across her hipbone and low on her belly it slid. Then he followed the other chain lower, past the tight golden curls and along her inner thigh.
Linnea had no breath left in her body when his fingertip stilled. How did he manage to do this to her? some fragment of her mind wailed. How? But the rest of her was too completely in thrall to the erotic spell he’d woven to care. He did it. That was enough for her to know.
When he suddenly stood up and yanked down the kirtle she was trembling like a green sapling in December’s gales.
“See to your brother. Put him wherever you would, but not in this keep. I’ll not have him here. And, Beatrix,” he added, staring hard at her, then letting his stone gray eyes roam slowly down, past her mouth and breasts and belly to stop at the place where the chain dangled beneath the cover of thin linen. “Think of me whenever you feel my chain upon you. It may chafe you at times, but it will also remind you of the pleasure I can bring you to.”
He met her wide-eyed stare again and there was challenge and seductive power and all the knowledge in the world in his face.
See to your brother, he’d said. And so she did. She snatched up gown and slippers and backed from the room. But she watched him as she went, watched the incredibly virile form that was now her husband.
Only in the antechamber, when she could no longer see him, did she begin to breathe again.
Dear God. Sweet Mary. St. Jude, but she was in serious trouble!
She managed somehow to don the gown and pull the laces tight. She thrust her feet into the soft dyed slippers without benefit of stockings. Her hair was an impossible tangle, and she was a sight in her wedding gown, come straight from her wedding bed. Servants would stare. People would talk.
But Linnea didn’t care. She didn’t spare even a thought for that. As she scurried down the stairs, across the hall, and straight for the barracks and her brother, she was aware of only one thing: the slender chain that swayed against her inner thighs with every step she took. The wedding gift that stroked and caressed her with every movement.
Oh, but she was the worst sort of sinner to be so aroused by such a thing—by such a man. She was the worst sinner that ever there was.
And she’d just been wed to the devil himself!
Chapter 9
Each day was proving to be more trying than the previous one, Linnea thought not an hour later. One day the castle fell to an invading army and she assumed the identity of her sister. The next day she succumbed to another sort of invasion, from a man who was also her enemy. It would seem nothing worse could happen to her. But Linnea had the distinct and uneasy feeling that her travails had only just begun.
She had found Maynard weak with fever again. A very bad sign. It made it only more urgent that she move him to more comfortable circumstances, a place where she could tend him continuously. Though there was no filial affection between her and her older brother, he had become a symbol for her. It was not enough that she had saved her sister from Axton. She must also save her brother. And today he did not look good.
She’d enlisted Frayne and Norma and two of the menservants to move him into Father Martin’s chamber just off the chapel. She’d cleaned his wounds and given instructions that he be fed a vegetable broth and bread soaked in goat’s milk, if he could swallow it.
But in the midst of her labors Linnea could not escape the ruby-studded chain.
Axton himself might have been there beside her, running the edge of his fingernail along her skin, so profound was the impact of the fragile length of jewelry. She wanted to forget about it and the husband she was bound to, and focus all her energy on Maynard. She wanted to yank it off, to break it into a hundred separate pieces and fling it into the moat.
No, she should disperse the fragments of it to the poorest of their people and let them reap at least some benefit of their new lord’s perversions. They could sell the gold links and the ruby stones, and buy new shoes or new pots from the itinerant merchants who occasionally came through Maidenstone village. Or they could visit the fair held at Romsey each spring. She smiled to think of the two young shepherds, Osborn and Siward, sporting sturdy new boots and sucking on hard candies as they watched jugglers and acrobats and fire-eaters perform.
But her pleasant fantasy could not hold. The fact was, she would not dare to remove her husband’s wedding gift, no matter how much she despised it. And she did despise it, she told herself as she carefully tucked a blanket around Maynard’s damaged arm.
“Don’t touch me!” he muttered in feverish complaint, then groaned at the pain speaking caused him. “Christ’s blood!”
“What is this?” Lady Harriet’s sharp voice caused Linnea to jump in alarm. “Why is Maynard put here, next the chapel?”
“’Tis warm here and more comfortable than the barracks,” Linnea began, backing away as she’d always done to keep out of her grandmother’s striking range. But if Linnea was forgetting her role as Beatrix now, Lady Harriet apparently was not.
“Why is he not in the keep?” the old woman demanded. “In his rightful chamber?”
Behind his mother, Linnea’s father stood, silent and shrunken. Though Lady Harriet glared at Linnea, her father refused to look at her at all.
’Tis because I am ruined, Linnea glumly realized. She was not honestly wed to Axton de la Manse, therefore she was a ruined woman. A fallen woman.
And if they but knew all the things that had passed between her and Axton … She shifted and felt the ruby and gold chain, like a thin streak of fire burning her leg.
“Well?” Lady Harriet stamped her stick imperiously. “What say you, girl? Is this the best you can coax of your husband? The priest’s chamber? Did you not please him as I told you to do?”
“Grandmother, please,” Linnea begged, humiliated to the depths of her being. She could not raise her eyes and face the curious stares of her family and their servants.
“Agh!” Lady Harriet limped up to Maynard’s pallet and stared down at him. “How fare you?”
“I … I am dying,” he croaked, then groaned in agony. Tears squeezed past his tightly clenched eyelids.
“Is this true?” This the old woman directed toward L
innea.
“No. No, I do not believe so,” Linnea answered, praying she was right. “But … well, he’ll be a long time healing.”
“And the arm?”
Linnea looked up at her father’s words. To a man of war, the loss of his sword arm was the cruelest blow that could befall him. To a knight, death on the field of honor was infinitely preferable to living as a useless cripple.
“I do not believe he shall ever wield a broad sword again.” She stared apologetically at her father and then down at her brother. It was not her fault. Rationally she knew that. But she was overwhelmed by guilt all the same. Perhaps if she’d been more careful, set the bones more accurately. But even now, despite the misshapen swelling of his arm, she could tell it would never heal straight. Nor strong.
Maynard had fought his last battle as a knight and lost it. It fell to Beatrix now to marry a man who could return the de Valcourt family to power at Maidenstone. And it fell to Linnea to sustain their deception long enough for that to happen.
“Could I cast that man to the devil, verily I would!” Lady Harriet raged. She began to pace the small chamber, scattering the several servants as she went.
Linnea waved the servants away. Once the chamber was shed of all but immediate family, she faced her grandmother. “Tell me about Bea—” She broke off and glanced down at Maynard. He appeared to have fallen into a fitful sleep, but she nevertheless did not want to reveal anything to him that he might repeat in feverish ramblings. “Tell me what news you have of … her.”
Lady Harriet gave her a searching look. “She is safe; ’tis enough for you to know that. As for our other plans, suffice it to say that we have begun the steps necessary to find an appropriate husband for her. Now, you tell me. How fared you in your marriage bed? Did he use you roughly or no?”
“I … he …” Linnea stammered then stumbled to a halt, her face scarlet under her grandmother’s avid stare. “I …” she began again, only to falter when she met her father’s pained expression.
“Leave us, Edgar,” barked Lady Harriet. “This is women’s talk.” Then Maynard groaned aloud in his fitful sleep, and the old woman relented. “No, you stay here with your dying son whilst my granddaughter and I speak privately. Come along,” she added, yanking Linnea’s sleeve.
They sat in the chapel of all places, with Jesus on his cross and the Holy Mother in her wall niche staring down at them. “Well?” Lady Harriet demanded. “Tell me what has passed between you. What have you learned of him? Where is his weakness?”
“He … he has no weaknesses,” Linnea mumbled, unable to meet her grandmother’s sharp gaze.
“Was he cruel?”
“No. Well, partly.” Linnea swallowed hard. Must she describe what happened in complete detail?
“Did he hurt you?”
There was an odd tone in the older woman’s voice, almost a note of empathy. Linnea could hardly believe it. She lifted her head. “He does not like to be opposed. He does not like me to say him nay. So long as I was agreeable, he was not … unkind.”
The older woman digested that for a moment. Then her expression grew cunning. “Is he a good lover? Big, strong bull he may be, but there are men who do not, shall we say, measure up.”
Linnea stared at her blankly. Measure up?
Oh!
Her eyes grew round. She wanted to know about that? “He … he is a … a big man,” she stammered, blushing furiously.
“Aha.” Lady Harriet nodded. “And did he take pleasure of you? Did he enjoy it—Did he do the deed more than once?”
Linnea could bear no more. She lurched to her feet. “I cannot speak of this. It is not … proper.”
Lady Harriet did not stir from the priest’s bench. “Your marriage is not proper either. Remember that, girl. ’Tis all part of our plan, as is the way he feels for you. I say again to you. Did he enjoy it?”
“Yes!” Linnea cried. “Yes! He enjoyed it three times!”
And so, God help me, did I!
The length of gold and bloodred stone burned against Linnea’s skin, and she was consumed by the mad notion that her grandmother knew all about the wedding gift he’d given her—where it lay, how he’d put it there, and precisely how it affected her. When the old woman began to laugh, a harsh, knowing cackle, Linnea feared she would be sick from the shame of it.
“Three times! ’Tis a wonder he has allowed you to escape him this morning if he is so smitten. What does he now?”
Linnea felt naked before the woman’s probing, and resigned too. She stared at the bare wooden floor. It needed to be swept. “I left him in his chamber.”
“I see. And where go you from here?”
Linnea’s voice grew very small. “Back to him.”
The cackling laughter rose again, filling the chapel with a sound surely foreign to so hallowed a place. “Then go to him, girl. Spread your legs for him and make him forget everything but the pleasure he may have of you.”
Then as abruptly as her laughter had begun, it stopped. She grabbed Linnea’s chin in a brutal grip that brought them face-to-face. “Give him what he wants, Linnea, but do not forget what it is that you want. Prove you are more than the worthless soul we have known you to be. Prove your value to your family.”
She released Linnea’s chin then stood up and leaned upon her stick. “Go to him and make him believe you are his in all ways. But never forget the truth of who you are.”
Linnea did not linger. She fled the chapel on legs that trembled, only to halt just past the door, unsure where she should go. Her husband awaited her and duty to her family demanded that she return to him. But she needed to be somewhere else, away from everyone, at least for a little while. She needed to reflect on the staggering changes in her life, and to gather her meager resources around her.
She stared at the steps that descended to the bailey, then up a nearby ladder that led to the wall-walk. Perhaps she could find a place on the wall where no one would bother her, at least for a little while. If she could just turn her face up to the sky, close her eyes, and let the wind blow over her, she might be able to think and find a tiny piece of calm amid the tumult that swirled around her.
In the bailey the everyday tasks of castle life had resumed as if no takeover had ever occurred. Three knights practiced with backswords in the tilting yard. Two children lugged a heavily laden basket toward the kitchen. A dog barked at a wood cart pulled by a solid pony and led by a man bent over with kindling. An ordinary scene, but today it seemed unreal.
She slipped down the steps, then scurried up the ladder, hoping she would not be unduly noticed. As Linnea she would not have been. But she was Beatrix now. She still wore the magnificent gown she’d been wed in. Her hair waved in hip-length streamers of gold across her shoulders and down her back. Not a soul in the yard did not pause to mark her passage. By the time she reached the wall-walk, the bailey was silent and she felt the touch of every eye.
Dear God, was she never to know a moment of privacy again? Not that she’d known much before. But this feeling of being forever scrutinized … It was worse than being ignored, and almost as bad as being despised.
She found a place in the southwest corner between two merlons. The embrasure formed between them was narrower on the inner side of the wall, but it broadened along the outer edge, creating a precarious perch that nonetheless was just her size. She squeezed into the irregularly shaped spot and sat with her back to one stone merlon. Then she wrapped her arms around her bent knees and stared out at the land that spread south to the sea.
Forests and fields as far as she could see. Sky of heavy, lowering clouds. It was an immense world, and she knew little of it. But still, it appeared far safer to her than did this new world she now inhabited.
She closed her eyes to the view and lowered her head to her knees. She would not cry; that was not her intent. But tears stung her eyes anyway and she had to fight them back.
What was she to do?
The answer was as obvious to h
er as was the rough stone at her back. She must play the role she’d assumed and wait for Beatrix’s return.
But how was she to manage? How was she to retain her wits when Axton de la Manse unnerved her so? How was she to function at all with that damnable chain reminding her with every movement of the things he’d done to her—and would do again? She could feel it even now, though she sat as still as if she were a part of the castle wall. Its delicate length was alive against her skin, as if it were his hand resting there, just pausing a moment before it caressed her again.
It moved along her thigh in a slow, sultry pattern—
With a panicked cry Linnea jerked her head up. It was him, not her imagination! No chain at all, but his finger touching her in places and ways that would have seen him flogged but one day ago. But this was a new day, and she was his to do with what he would.
Their eyes locked. If the look on his face was any indication, he meant to do it here and now.
Her heart pounded frantically against her ribs, for fear, shame, and anticipation battled for dominance inside her. Worst of all, anticipation was winning …
Axton could not tear his gaze away from his wife’s flushed, upturned face. Her eyes were wide with fear, and dark with emotion. Her lips were parted and her breath came in short, shallow breaths.
As it had when she’d lain beneath him.
On impulse he leaned farther into the embrasure. He’d found her only because one of his men had pointed mutely toward the ladder. Had it been so obvious that he was searching for her? He’d planned to make a noisy scene when he found her, to order her back to their chamber in a manner designed to ensure that the entire population of the castle would take note. He needed, in some perverse way that he did not rightly understand, to prove his mastery over her. He needed her at his beck and call, and completely in thrall to him. And he needed everyone to know that she was his—that everything at Maidenstone was his.
But he had not expected to find her huddled on the precipice of the castle wall, a sheer drop below her to the foul waters of the moat. Her dejection was a blow to his pride that he had not anticipated. Hadn’t he made certain she found her pleasure? Hadn’t he heard her cries of rapture and felt her spasms of passion unleashed?
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