by Anne Stuart
“There’s no need for you to provide an heir,” Gilles was continuing in his persuasive voice. “You’re barely thirty, and it’s my responsibility to keep you safe.”
“Do you really think,” Alistair said in a meditative voice, “that I need you safeguarding me?”
As always, it was his most gentle tone that had the strongest effect. He didn’t need to glance at Gilles to know his ruddy color had paled considerably. “Of course not, cousin. I would hope my efforts on your behalf would not go unappreciated. I enable you to concentrate on other things while I—”
“I’m quite able to concentrate on a great many things at one time, “ Alistair said softly. “It’s one of my gifts.”
Gilles was never a coward. “It has always been the case,” he agreed. “But I wonder about recently. This woman has unsettled you. I think you should get rid of her before she weakens you completely…” The words were strangled in his throat as Alistair hauled him up by his pale blue tunic and slammed him against the parapet.
“Your worry is misplaced, Gilles,” he said in a silken voice. “And I have no intention of disposing of my lady wife, at least not yet. She amuses me.”
“Alistair…” Gilles protested in a choked voice, and belatedly Alistair realized he was strangling him.
He released him abruptly, and Gilles put his small, strong hands to his throat, gasping for a moment.
“And if you think I might be likely to share her,” the sheriff continued, “then you fail to appreciate my deep respect for the sacrament of marriage.”
“You have no respect for anything, sacrament or not,” Gilles said in a raspy, sulky voice.
“True enough. But what’s mine, I keep. Until I’m ready to dispose of it. The girl belongs to me. Me alone. If you put your hands on her I will cut them off. Along with other parts of your anatomy if you feel like trespassing.”
Gilles flushed, but he managed a shaky grin. “I wish you a long and happy marriage, cousin,” he said.
“Better to wish me a short and fertile one.” His rage had subsided to a more manageable level. “Which reminds me, Gilles. Have you come any closer to finding out what happened to the girl? Jenna, I think her name was.”
Gilles’s handsome face settled into lines of sorrow. “I haven’t been able to discover a thing.”
“They assume I killed her,” Alistair thoughtfully.
Gilles didn’t bother to deny it. “Does that trouble you?”
“Not particularly. Having people afraid of me has its own special merit. Has my bride heard the rumors?”
“I imagine she has.”
“So presumably she believes me capable of cold-blooded murder if a female fails to please me. All the better. Mayhap she’ll lie there docilely enough when I take her virginity. I’m not in the mood for a battle,” he added, summoning forth a convincing yawn.
“When will that be, Alistair?”
He hesitated for only a moment. “I hardly think it any concern of yours, cousin. But I imagine the sooner I take care of that little issue the better. You aren’t, by any chance, enamored of the woman? Because I would find that extremely distressing. You’re a useful man to have around. You accomplish things quite easily, and you don’t bother me with petty details. I would be sorry to lose you.”
“But if it came to a choice between me and your wife?” Gilles asked, and there was no missing the intensity in his usually smooth, light voice.
Alistair gave his most charming, ironic smile. “There would be no choice whatsoever, dear boy. It’s simple enough to find a local bully, even one as deceptively charming as you are. A wife with an impeccable bloodline and Dunstan Woods is a great deal harder to come by. Besides, I think I might have developed a taste for pale virgins.”
“You never have before.”
Another man might have missed the fury burning beneath Gilles’s determinedly light voice. Alistair never missed a thing. “But I’ve become jaded in my old age,” he said. He moved away from the parapet. “There’s a full moon tonight. A witch’s moon, my mother used to call it.” And he saw in the corner of his eye that Gilles hurriedly crossed himself.
“I have quite an evening planned for you, Alistair. There’s a young woman in the kitchens, quite untried, but with the most spectacular set of—”
“I’m afraid I have other plans tonight, dear cousin,” Alistair said. “ You’ll have to avail yourself of the kitchen maid this time. Keep her warm for me.”
“What could you have that is more pressing?”
Alistair gave him his sweetest smile, the smile that made strong men cower, the smile that he was purported to have inherited from his father, the devil. “I thought that would be obvious, cousin,” he said gently. “I need to beget an heir.”
Helva hadn’t been best pleased with Elspeth’s escape three days ago. She’d expressed her displeasure with one or two extremely hard pinches, a general air of hostility, and by refusing to talk to Elspeth.
Elspeth could have accepted that with equanimity. She longed for a brief moment of peace, of serenity. But Helva never left her, not even for a moment. Not when, after much pleading and arguing, she’d managed to secure herself a shallow bath of lukewarm water and dried rose petals. Not when she stripped down to her fine linen undergarments and waited pointedly for Helva to absent herself. Not even during her prayers, which were allowed to take far too little of the day.
It was a beautiful evening, with a warm summer breeze dancing through the windows, a full moon silvering the inky dark sky, the cries of night birds echoing around the tower. The heavy white habit had grown uncomfortably warm, and Elspeth had unfastened part of the overdress in a vain effort to cool off. Her husband seemed to have forgotten her existence once more, including his orders to burn her clothes, and for that she could only be grateful. She’d never been overfond of the heavy white habits favored by the Sisters of the Everlasting Martyr, but since her sojourn at Huntingdon Keep, she found the familiar garments comforting.
She heard the sound of the key in her door with complete disinterest. It was doubtless the servant come to remove her empty bowl of gruel. It was a good thing she’d never paid much attention to the overrated pleasures of the flesh. But after a week, gruel was getting slightly wearisome, particularly when the scent of roast mutton drifted up to her window on the warm night air.
Or her visitor might be Gilles De Lancey. He’d come every night and stayed a decorous few minutes, asking after her welfare, kissing her hand, making sure the glowering Helva was always within hearing. But Helva didn’t see the burning promise in his undeniably beautiful blue eyes, didn’t feel the pressure of his soft lips against the back of her hand. Helva didn’t see what Elspeth could see full well: that all she had to do was ask and Gilles De Lancey would spirit her away from this place.
She still wasn’t sure what had kept her there. Certainly not fear of her husband’s revenge. Everyone had gone to great pains to inform her that Alistair was mad, dangerous, and evil. If even half the stories about him were true, her time on this earth was already nearing its end. Her only chance of survival was to escape.
But something kept her from taking that step. Perhaps it was her instinctive distrust of men who were too handsome. Perhaps it was the unsettling effect of Alistair’s kiss. Or perhaps she was simply going as mad as her new husband purportedly was.
She was standing in the window, staring out into the night air, when the door opened. She had come to a decision—if De Lancey offered a means of escape she would take it. To be sure, she’d been married in the eyes of God and her church. But she’d been miles away from the ceremony, completely oblivious, and while no one had ever suggested that a bride had to agree to being wed, it only seemed fair that she at least be consulted in the matter.
The Sisters of the Everlasting Martyr might offer her sanctuary from the sheriff’s rage and her father’s bullying, though they hadn’t been much help originally. Or perhaps De Lancey himself knew of a place where she migh
t hide until the sheriff forgot about his runaway bride.
She turned, plastering a welcoming smile on her face, one that froze when she saw the black figure of her husband filling the doorway.
“You there,” he said contemptuously, nodding at Helva. “Make yourself scarce.”
It was only slightly gratifying to see the sour-tempered Helva scurry to do her master’s bidding. Elspeth held herself very still, leaning against the stone casement, considering whether she had any reason to be frightened. The answer, unwelcome as it was, was definitely yes.
“I’ll wait outside,” Helva murmured deferentially.
“You’ll get your fat, useless carcass downstairs and out of the tower,” the sheriff of Huntingdon said in his cool, silvery voice. “I don’t wish to be interrupted.” And he started toward Elspeth, casually unfastening his doublet.
She was determined not to flinch, though she was suddenly very cold. This was her husband. It was her duty and God’s will that she submit to him. Despite the disturbing power of his kiss, she had a hard time remembering that. “I wouldn’t think anyone would dare interrupt you,” she said in an admirably calm voice.
He didn’t even bother to check to make sure that Helva had left. “People are surprisingly foolhardy,” he said, watching her with his strange golden eyes. He glanced around him. “Is there any wine in this place?”
She shook her head. “I’ve been kept on a ration of cold gruel and brackish water since I’ve been here.”
“And you haven’t liked that one bit, have you?” he murmured, stripping off the heavy velvet tunic. He was wearing a loose black shirt beneath, and black hose, and his long black hair was a mane around his face. “You must been used to more luxurious treatment in the convent.”
“The accommodations were a slight improvement.”
“I’ll see to it that you’re better fed,” he said, not moving any closer. “You’re far too thin for my taste. I prefer my women with curves.”
Elspeth thought back to the various women in their states of undress, clinging to his arm. “So I’ve observed,” she said dryly. “Why don’t you come back in a few weeks and see if I measure up to your standards then?”
The silence in the room was ice cold, and Elspeth would have given anything to call back her mocking words. She’d always been a bit too free with her tongue, speaking her mind when she should have been meekly, dutifully silent, but now was the worst time of all to be flippant. Alone in a tower room with a purported madman who had total power over her body and her life, she ought to be quiet, subservient, and totally docile.
“Your mistake, my lady wife,” he said in a soft, menacing voice. “There’s only one thing I despise above all others in this world, and that is being bored. You’ve just made the fatal error of piquing my interest.”
“Fatal.” Her voice shook as she echoed that word.
His smile was scarcely reassuring, “So you’ve heard the rumors about me? That I’m the son of the devil, that I eat little children, that I murder anyone who displeases me.”
“Actually I hadn’t heard the one about the children.” She slapped a restraining hand across her mouth, horrified at her own indiscretion.
His eyes gleamed in the evening light. “I might suggest that you shouldn’t believe everything you hear,” he said. “But I think I prefer you quivering in terror at the thought of my unregenerate evil. However, you don’t appear to be quivering yet. I suppose I ought to do something about that.” He started toward her.
There was no place to run. The thick stone wall of the castle was hard at her back, and not even to escape a madman would she throw herself from the battlement. She never had much use for melodramatic gestures, and life was far too interesting to be dispensed with so lightly. She pressed against the wall, feeling like a cornered doe as the ravening wolf advanced on her.
The touch of his hand against her neck made her flinch. Slowly, he began to unfasten the neck bindings of her habit, his golden eyes impaling hers, and she could feel the sudden, terrified pounding of her heart.
“I’ve never been interested in taking virgins,” he said in a dreamy, almost abstracted voice as the overdress came apart beneath his deft hand, exposing the white column of her neck, the pale skin of her breasts. “But in your case it might prove entertaining.” And he put his mouth against her neck, tasting the pulse that beat wildly there, teeth sharp against the tender skin. The heavy white overdress fell to the floor at their feet, leaving her clad only in her light linen chemise.
She shivered, both hot and cold. She didn’t dare move, afraid that if she did, it would bring her body closer to his. His other hand slid up the thin material, moving between her small breasts, pressing against her heart. She could feel the outline of his hand burning against her flesh as her heart clamored for something she couldn’t begin to understand.
He lifted his head, looking down into her bewildered face with cool satisfaction. “Your heart is pounding, bride. Is it because you’re frightened? Or is there some other reason why your pulse is racing?”
She tried to shake her head, to deny the evidence of her body, but his mouth caught hers, silencing her argument. He kissed her, deep and full and hard, allowing no escape. Indeed, she wasn’t sure she wanted to escape. Her arms came up of their own accord, around his waist, and she held on, suddenly afraid she might faint. He was overwhelming, devouring, taking her mouth with a fierce hunger that stirred an answering, slumbering fire within her. She was no longer able to think. Even if her body was still within the tower room, trapped against the strong, powerful body of her stranger husband, her mind had taken that flying leap out onto the battlements. She made a helpless, longing little sound, half of panic, half of desire, and when he lifted his head this time there was no disguising the triumph in his amber eyes.
No denying the smug sound of his laughter, either, as he released her, moving back across the room and untying the laces of his shirt. “Get on the bed,” he ordered casually. “This won’t take long.”
The haze of confusion vanished as abruptly as if someone one had thrown a bucket of cold water over her. She leaned back against the stone wall, staring at him, her breasts rising and falling with a sudden burst of rage. He glanced over his shoulder, clearly impatient, and his cynical, dark beauty made him look like the son of Lucifer himself. “What are you waiting for?” he demanded in a bored voice. “Take off the rest of your clothes and spread your legs.”
He turned away from her, stripping off the black shirt and tossing it on the table. She took several silent, barefoot steps toward her husband, admiring the smooth, muscled line of his back, the sweep of shoulder, the elegant, wiry strength of him. Then she picked up the almost empty jug of water and slammed it over his head.
He went down hard. The rough crockery was in shards around him, and there was blood pouring from a gash in his cheek. His eyes were closed, and Elspeth stood over him, wondering whether she’d killed him. Widowhood might have a great deal to offer.
However, she didn’t want to have killed him. She leaned down, putting a careful hand to his neck, feeling for a pulse. Within seconds her wrist was grabbed as his hand wrapped around the fragile bones like a manacle, hauling her down so that she was sprawled halfway across him, her face inches from his. “Bitch,” he said. And he pulled her down so that her mouth met his.
She kissed him then. Inexpertly, furiously, with full abandon, opening her mouth to his, pressing her hands against his shoulders, pushing him down against the broken crockery and spilled water. When her tongue touched his, the shock almost made her veer away, but his hands were too strong, too determined, holding her in place as she felt the dampness seep into her thin linen skirts, felt the sharp bite of broken pottery beneath her knee.
She wanted to sink down against him, to drown in the spilled water and the heat of his mouth. It took every last ounce of pride, of self-preservation, to yank herself away from him before he could pull her back. And this time, when she coshed him on
the head with a second pottery jug, he stayed down.
She didn’t dare check to see if he still lived. The man was incredible—if she put her hands on him again, he’d probably have her spread-eagled beneath him. She scrambled away, eyeing him warily, terrified he might once again surge forward and capture her. But this time he was still, motionless.
She struggled to her feet as new panic swept over her. Her only chance was to escape before anyone saw her, before her bridegroom returned to his senses and demanded her blood. Huntingdon Keep was on the edge of Dunstan Woods—surely on a warm summer night she could find a place to hide. The woods were ancient, haunted, inhabited by demons and witches and sylvan creatures. She’d have to trust in the God who seemed to have deserted her lately to carry her safely through the dangers of the woods.
She reached for her discarded overdress, then let her hand drop. Pure white was not the best choice for someone who was trying to be inconspicuous. Instead she picked up the sheriff’s rich black cloak and draped it around her slender body. With one last worrying glance at Alistair’s comatose body, she turned to slip through the tower door, only to come smack up against Helva’s solid body.
“He’s not dead,” the old woman said, more a statement than a question. “It would take more than the likes of you to stop him. He’s got protection from his mother, the witch, and from his father, the devil. No puny little weakling like you could harm him.”
“I haven’t done badly so far,” she said, her unrepentant tongue getting the best of her once more.
“He’ll kill you. He’ll cut out your heart and feed it to the crows,” she hissed. “He’ll slash your throat from ear to ear, just like poor Jenna, and the stones will grow red with your blood.”
Elspeth controlled her queasy reaction to such an image with a strong effort. “Then I’d better get out of here,” she said in a practical voice, wondering whether Helva would try to stop her. Wondering whether she stood a chance in hell of overpowering such a mountainous woman.