“Very good, he said, “but my floor is dirty from the grease. I want you to lick it clean.”
“Oh, please, sir, I’d be happy to scour it properly.” She was nearly in tears.
“Your tongue will do for now. Noble ladies don’t scrub floors in my fortress, but they do obey their masters.”
Drago waited while she let the thought settle with her, then she finally used her tongue to wipe clean every bit of meat juice and butter that remained on the stone. She tasted the filth of boots along with the food and was finally finished without gagging, taking a deep breath, though his mouth remained contorted in a terrible grimace.
“Here,” Drago said, handing her a goblet of wine. “Wash your mouth.”
She gladly did.
Scenes like these became more common over the next several weeks—along with the pair’s intermittent sexual clashes.
Drago liked most to display her for small audiences of friends where the humiliation would sting deeper than all the exhibitions Duke Wilhem made of her. These were more personal moments, times when a Lady of nobility should behave to her station, when being Duke Ledo’s daughter meant something important. Yet not one of Drago’s high-born friends objected to the indignities he demanded of her. She polished the floor with her nose and a simple cloth; she lapped wine from a dish like a dog, and perhaps her greatest indignity was being forced to pleasure her body while several of his fellows watched as if they were critically appraising her technique. She knew that the behavior aroused the men—Drago in particular; she saw them squirm in their chairs, but not one salacious comment was made of the scene that took her from coldly nervous to outrageously roused, her body heaving from orgasm and her face in a blissful trance of climax.
“I think you’ve proved your point, General,” was the only comment she heard the men make. This she did not understand because she was immediately dismissed to her chambers after her performance. An hour after that exhibition, Drago was in her room, their bodies clashing like two opposing storm fronts.
There were numerous sexual clashes and wild moments of hard copulation; whether it was her mouth or arse or quim Drago demanded, she gave with little resistance, relishing each moment that their flesh joined, as if this were the only true passion of her life. In truth, it was.
“You looked flushed, milady,” Roslyn heard Celia remark one morning when the girl was in the master’s chambers and so was Roslyn—in his bed. The master had already left the room, and now Celia stood leaning into a bedpost, dreamily.
“He’s a fine lover, isn’t he?” she said.
“I suppose so.”
“Well, you should know,” Celia reminded her.
“I guess I would.”
“Not that you’re the only female in the castle the master uses for sport.” Celia sighed.
“He takes you often too?” Roslyn ventured carefully.
“Oh, my yes. He has a fondness for my arse. I do like him wiggling into me that way. Makes my nights with Geoffrey all the better.”
“And Geoffrey is not jealous?”
“Oh, I think he is,” Celia giggled. “But the master says that he will stop, just as soon as Geoffrey marries me.”
“You’re going to be married?”
“Oh, he hasn’t quite asked me yet. He’s shy, you know. But I think he will?” She smiled, but then she frowned on looking back at her lady. “I have fared well returning here. I’m just sorry that you have not, milady.”
“Oh, I have fared better too, Celia,” Roslyn said, but she refused to be specific. Privately, she recognized that returning to Dragon-Horn ended the whoring life she’d known in Duke Wilhem’s world. Although the master used her at his leisure—as well as any other woman he desired—and though he sometimes humiliated her before his friends, Drago gave her to no other man or woman. She was his and his alone. This meant something, but Roslyn was still uncertain what that was.
The sparring war between the Lady Roslyn and General Drago continued for nearly two months, until the day he unexpectedly left the fortress. No warning given, he was simply gone.
The night before, he’d been with Roslyn; at the time, quite restless and ill at ease. They made love as they often did, following a bruising spanking that seemed to surprise them both for its ferocity. Roslyn would decide much later that the spanking was one symptom of the man’s current disquiet; he whaled hard on her bare ass with his bare hand, not stopping until he’d thoroughly exhausted them both—although they were not too exhausted for sex. What followed was a rigorous battle of bodies that was no less passionate than the spanking had been. Giving her with little reservation, Roslyn had even nursed the idea that her vow to loath the man forever might be a foolish one. At the time, however, the notion was just a small seed of an idea that would soon have reason to grow.
Still, as Drago lay back in the bed recuperating from their long session, he asked the pertinent question again.
“So, you will never break this foolish resolve that makes me your enemy?”
“Of course not. I have no reason to,” she said without thinking, brisk as usual—as if she had every reply written in her thoughts and ready to pluck at a moment’s notice. This time, there was just a twinge of regret behind the hasty comment.
“I see,” was his immediate reply and then he quickly popped up from the bed.
Oddly, the agitation in him that normally would ease with good sex still seemed to simmer below the surface of his calm demeanor. And even stranger, after the man dressed, he moved back to the bed, bent over where Roslyn still lay, and put a hand on either side of her head. He stared at her for nearly a minute saying nothing, while Roslyn tried desperately to understand his unusual mood. Finally, he broke his silence saying with some force:
“Never have I met a woman who so earnestly refuses to be loved.” His eyes bore into hers coldly now, then he stood up and left the room.
The next morning, General Drago was gone from his fortress and Roslyn was left with his parting words repeating in her mind like the last refrain of a minstrel’s song.
Chapter Eighteen
A Dragon On His Shield
An old woman came in out of the dark, late on a turbulent windswept night. Her clothes were drenched and she was speaking in riddles. Celia had been in the kitchen when the woman arrived at the back door begging, though she hardly noticed her at first.
The cook was rather brusque with her, and would have sent her on her way if Celia hadn’t stopped, just briefly, in her preparations of the next day’s meal to listen to the oddly familiar voice.
“Tevi? Is that you!” she suddenly ran to the woman.
“Ya, ya, ya,” the old lady started to babble.
“She’s talking in riddles, I can make no sense of it,” the cook reported.
“We must let her in,” Celia insisted. “This is the Lady Roslyn’s old nurse.”
“Well, is she now! Don’t look like much of a nurse now. She’s a crazy old fool.”
“I’m sure. But may I call my mistress?”
The cook nodded her agreement, hands firmly on her hips. “Do what you like. I’m sure the master wouldn’t turn her out on a night like this. She can sleep in the stable, or with you, if you like.”
“Oh, thank you!” And after sitting Tevi in a chair with a blanket about her shoulders, Celia rushed off toward Roslyn’s chambers, glad to see that the door had not been locked. Since the master left, no one had bothered to keep her locked inside the room.
“Milady Roslyn you must come quick! Your old Tevi is in the master’s kitchen.”
“What?” She was roused from her needlework and peered up through the darkness.
“Tevi. It’s Tevi. She’s in the kitchen.”
“You swear, girl?”
“Oh, I’d know her anywhere.”
***
Roslyn borrowed a small salon that Drago had occasionally used for conferences with his aides. Once she’d stripped old Tevi of her wet clothes and found a dry gown for
her to wear, she led the woman into the room and stoked the fire.
“They was in the castle…” the woman had been babbling non-stop… “I was there… I saw them take the lady first, for the Duke, for Draydon, shouting like demons…I tried, oh! How I tried,” the old lady shook her head. Her eyes were closed and she was speaking to no one, at least no there. Perhaps, plead her case before the judges residing in her confused mind; judges who condemned her for the folly of hiding safely out of the way when Ledo’s castle was destroyed. “The man, he was no good, a bad seed in a good family,” she shook her head morosely. “I’s not gonna tell anything, nothing to tell,” she whimpered now as if someone had threatened her, “a bad bad time of it… if only the girl was saved. The monsters, the brother born under the bad sign, evil was he, so bad he could have no children. Oh, I cried for him,” she sobbed, “oh, the eyes… what eyes he died with… oh, and her so badly broken,” the woman sobbed and kept on talking until with a brief pause, Roslyn interjected:
“Tevi, was this when Duke Ledo was murdered?”
“Yes, yes yes,” she rocked in her chair repeating the word until Roslyn asked another question.
“Was General Drago there, Tevi? Please tell me?”
The woman’s eyes shot open. Then she cocked her head and peered closely at the pale face in front of her. “Why ye me girl, me pretty red girl,” she reached out and touched Roslyn’s hand. “Pretty, pretty girl…Rosie, little rosie, like the rose…”
“Yes, Tevi, I am your pretty rosie…” she wanted to cry, but she forcefully stopped the tears, “Tell me, Tevi…the General, General Drago, was he there when my father was murdered?” Roslyn pressed
She shook her head. “Drago. No. No Drago. It was his foul kin, I know that. They screamed his name, they did, sticking their blades to the master’s heart for Draydon.”
“Then Drago wasn’t there the day the castle was stormed?”
She shook her head and started rocking. A mat of thin grey hair covered her head and as she rocked, her head moved back and forth in exaggerated movements, like a crazy woman.
“You’ve been speaking of Rosie’s father and mother. Isn’t that right, Tevi,” Roslyn continued.
Tevi kept nodding, almost smiling, eerily so.
“The great man stopped it all…”
“What man, Tevi?”
“Comes with a Dragon on ‘is shield. But late, too late. Dead all dead but me. Rosie gone…” The woman mumbled on making little sense.
Celia gave the woman some spirits to soothe her and warm her body, then they put her to bed in Celia’s small bedchamber just off the kitchen.
Chapter Nineteen
Freedom
One could sense when the master of Dragon-Horn stalked his fortress. The stones rumbled and he left a wake. On the skin like a breeze, against the palm of the hand a small vibration, and in the belly that certain knowingness—if you listened carefully. Roslyn had felt it all day, but Drago was still a ghost in his own home, and Roslyn was still restless when the sun finally set.
Another dawn had already crept into the sky before Roslyn’s feelings of dis-ease vanished. He’d come back at last, and with Drago’s return, the house bustled, fears were eased and much was set at peace.
Although not in Lady Roslyn.
It was late in that day before Roslyn finally crept down the stone steps and moved toward Drago’s great hall. The door was open and she could hear the master conferring with Geoffrey, and Titus, perhaps, though she couldn’t be sure.
Buoyed by an unexpected bout of courage, she suddenly rushed into the room and bowed humbly at the master’s feet.
It took a moment for the man to realize what had happened and he finally looked down, saying: “What have we here?”
Roslyn looked up, preparing to give the speech she had rehearsed, but something made her pause. She stared about seeing that by Drago’s side was a lovely dark-haired woman, dressed in finery that signified a woman of some means.
“No need to bow before me, anymore, Lady Roslyn,” Drago said. “I no longer require such devotion, you will be happy to learn.” He leaned down and taking her arm made her stand.
“What is this?” she wondered.
“You’re free, free to go, free of me, free as you wish.” He smiled as if this should make her happy.
“Sir?” She was too puzzled to make sense of his glib speech.
“Yes, you heard me right.”
Her stunned body quaked with fear and loss. “But I have no place to go!”
He looked at her oddly.
“Is that so?”
“That is most certainly so.”
“Then perhaps you can stay a while, perhaps return to your Uncle?”
“No! Never my Uncle!” All this was wrong, dreadfully wrong. And the woman, who was this woman?
“Then stay until you choose. I simply thought you’d be overjoyed to at last have your precious freedom.”
“But no, that is not right!” she declared, flustered, even angry.
Drago looked at her grimly. “What is this you say?”
Roslyn looked at the dark-haired woman again, seeing the truth behind her presence, and the force behind her own well-laid plans vanish. The two had been intimate, very intimate, no one could miss that fact.
Now ashamed of her display, she bowed her head respectfully, “I should leave.”
But Drago came back quickly, “No you should not leave until you state why you’re in such a stew.”
“You have released me, milord. What more could I desire?”
He waited, as if he hoped she would speak more, then he finally replied, quietly, “Yes, what more could you desire?”
“I’ll excuse myself then.”
He nodded.
She turned to leave, stopping at the door; the room behind her was silent and she feared that all eyes were on her. No courage left at all, she hustled from the room.
***
Despite the trials of her last year, the Lady Roslyn was still a young woman, and young ones from time to time givethemselves up to foolish plans. Thus, it was not unlike a night some months before when in panic Roslyn tried to flee Drago’s stronghold in a rash and dangerous move.
She awakened now, drawn from sleep by the sounds of sex coming from the direction of Drago’s chambers. Although she tried to cover her ears, the sound kept on and on—the cries of a woman and Drago’s familiar deep-throated grunts. Finally rising from bed, she left her room and tiptoed down the corridor, knowing now for sure that the dark-haired beauty was the master’s next lover. She herself had been thrown off for another woman—all for good reason, of course, at least in the master’ mind. Roslyn could tolerate Drago sexually using the female servants in his fortress while he still used her, but she could not take being dethroned from a position that she proudly held as the object of his affection—even if she had spurned it with great passion.
Yes, she would leave and now! She had no other choice.
Turning away from the sounds of Drago with his woman, she returned to her room and gathered the few things that were genuinely hers. Then with desperate speed, she made her way down the stairs toward the same side door she exited months ago. This time, she would not be foolish and flee through the woods, but make her way toward the main road. She thought of a cousin, a child of her father’s younger brother. The man was kin and would certainly take her in… was her first thought. Or perhaps she could join one of the traveling caravans and live her life as a traveling gypsy.
And yet, just as the Lady’s plan was set, but before she could make her hasty exit, Roslyn was stopped.
“You think you’re leaving at this hour?”
Drago!
She stopped abruptly.
“I must forbid it,” he added.
She turned. “Am I not free to go as you said?”
“No you are not free to go.”
“Then you lied to me.”
“No. You’re free to be sensible. But if you
take one more step to leave this house tonight, I will string you up naked before the entire household and whip you!”
First, the thought chilled her, although there was something in the imperious manner that roused every nerve.
“Why do you care if you’ve replaced me in your bed?”
His eyes lit with recognition. “Ah, do I hear jealousy speaking? Has Lady Miriam made you jealous?”
Roslyn could not stop her blush.
“No answer?” he asked.
Her breath was short and the room in which they stood so close that she began to feel light-headed.
“Oh, I can’t breathe!” she slumped against the door behind her, then in desperation turned and opened the latch. If only she could leave this place, draw in a breath of fresh air…
But she was pulled back before she could move into the cool air, and was then hoisted on Drago’s shoulder and carried through the kitchen to the receiving hall where he plopped her down—carefully so, and she landed on the floor, sprawled out in a most unladylike pose, legs spread, hair askew.
The master stared down at her, his eyes were filled with fire. “Now, girl, tell me what you wouldn’t say before and be done with it!”
She looked up, truly frightened. Her face was red and hot and she managed to spit out: “I have nothing to say.”
“And I say you lie!” Drago countered.
“And I say you’re an arrogant bastard!”
He merely laughed, “A bastard I am, arrogant to boot.” He pulled her from the floor and tossed her toward the wall behind her, a scant two feet. There he held, taking her hands in his and pressing them to either side of her face. “Now say something nice to me, milady or I will call the servants out and we will whip the life, the sense back into you.”
“I don’t know what you’re saying.”
He lightly slapped her face.
She cringed and almost spat at him.
He slapped her face again, harder this time.
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