She turned to look at Alaric and he found his breath catching. This was the woman from the forest clearing, the one who had appeared just when he had been yearning for the glimpse of a woman from home, the vision that had brought him to a standstill. This was the woman who had melted against him with a single touch, telling him of a potential for passion that he had unconsciously been searching for signs of ever since but until now had not realized it.
She was here, now, and she was his.
Alaric wasn’t aware of crossing the room but he found himself standing next to her. She gazed up at him calmly, her eyes in the moonlight the only thing about her that remained unlit. It made her seem wise beyond her years.
Alaric reached out to her and saw his hands were trembling. He slowly slid them around her waist once more, marveling at the pliant warmth of her skin and the inadequate span of her waist. At his touch, he saw her breasts lift, as if she had drawn in a quick shallow breath. But she remained very still, challenging him just as she had challenged him all through this long night.
Giving into a long-held desire, Alaric lowered his head and gently tasted her warm naked flesh just above the bodice of her dress, on the upper slope of her breast. Ah, ambrosia! He both felt and heard her heart thudding frantically and the sound encouraged him.
His hands moved of their own accord, pulling her against him. He slid one hand down to the back of her hips, liking the feel of the curve there. He pressed her against him with that hand, feeling the pressure of her against his already inflamed body and exalting in it. It was a sweeter sensation than he had ever imagined it might be.
The internal rhythm, the drive to hurry, increased. Alaric recognized and was surprised by the realization that his body was responding too fast, too soon. He was too close to the edge.
His hands were working of their own accord now, moving ahead of his mind, anticipating his desires. One pushed the shoulder and sleeve of her dress down over her upper arm, revealing for the second time the tender flesh of her shoulder and the delicate crease between arm and chest, where the breast began. His lips tasted her skin again.
He slowly drew her toward the bed, bringing her with him, not willing to give up a moment of having her pressed against him. With his thighs against the bed, his hands gathered up bunches of the dress, lifting it, preparing to draw it over her head and off her body. The need to have her free of encumbrances spoke loudly. He wanted to see and stroke her skin, to marvel over it and taste it, to see her respond to his touch.
Suddenly she gave a cry of abject protest, twisted away from him and was gone, leaving him with only the memory of her touch. She reeled across to the far corner of the room.
Alaric followed her, unsure of what was wrong but trying to stay close.
She came to a stop up against the wall, one shoulder pressed against it and her other hand splayed flat against the daub, as if she wanted to push right through the wall into the space beyond.
He grasped her arm but she wrenched it out of his grip. “Don’t!” The word was gasped out. He saw that she was trembling. Shuddering.
She feared him.
The realization jolted Alaric back a pace. She feared him?
“Diana?”
She groaned. “I can’t,” she whispered. “I thought…with you it would be all right but I can’t forget him. His hands on me.” She turned her face in toward the wall but not before Alaric saw a small tear drop from her lashes.
A deep wave of disgust washed over him, wiping out the lingering dregs of physical need. Why hadn’t he anticipated this possibility? He’d walked in here with no more consideration than his own driving desires. It hadn’t even occurred to him…
Fear wasn’t a feeling that sprang fully formed from a single moment. Diana must have been battling the growth of it for some time. Yes, she had been fighting fear—only he had confused it for something else. Dazzled by her appearance and the spell of the moonlight, he had thought her bearing and demeanor proud and regal, while in truth she had been nearly rigid with fear.
He recalled her step backward out of his hands when they had arrived here and saw it for what it was—she had been avoiding his touch.
He remembered what he had done to her since entering the room. Saw it from her perspective. The knowledge was a condemnation. He had acted no better than the Saxon bastard who had conceived this fear in her in the first place.
His disgust turned to a sickening, raging contempt. He could think of no words to justify his actions, or soothe her fears. So he settled for removing the immediate source of her terror. Wordlessly, he left the room.
* * * * *
“No, I will not consider it!” Diana pushed away the gilded mantle Florentina held out for her inspection. “I wear neither mantle nor ornament. Nothing. I don’t want my hair pinned up either.” She pulled a handful of her hair from Octavia’s capable hands. “I will do nothing to please my master, do you hear?”
The quartet of women standing around her stared with slack-jawed amazement. Diana could truly tolerate no more of their fluttering ministrations. “Where are my tunic and trews?” she demanded.
They all shifted uneasily and glanced at Sosia, standing by the door.
“We burned them,” Sosia replied calmly.
“You burned good cloth?”
“You are a matron now. You have a position to uphold.”
But she wasn’t a matron. Not yet. Not ever, if she could manage it.
Sosia’s calm facade goaded her. “Out! All of you! I refuse to pander to this idea that I have somehow changed. I have not and neither does anything else. Out, I say!”
For a moment Diana thought they would not leave. Then Florentina dropped the mantle she was holding and tugged silently on Octavia’s arm, all the while shooting Diana sidelong glances. The four women left. Only Sosia remained.
“You can leave too.”
“A maiden does not go through her wedding night without changing, my lady. You should have too. Don’t you want to please your husband?”
Anger shot through Diana, coming from nowhere, driving her to her feet. “Stars above, Sosia! You dare question me? I said to leave. I won’t say it again.”
Sosia’s gaze was level. She nodded. “There are final preparations for the feast. I will go and complete them.”
She shut the door behind her, leaving Diana alone for the first time since she had awoken in the large, much too comfortable bed at the inn that morning.
Diana focused on Sosia’s departing words. Feast. They were preparing a wedding feast.
She sighed. Would this nonsense never end? She felt like an impostor. Did all women emerge from their wedding night with a profoundly changed outlook upon life? How could she possibly tell anyone she had not? They would all of them be shocked to the core. They would condemn her and their condemnation would be just.
She was not a real woman. She did not find the ways of men and women joyful. She had made a mistake the size of which she would still be measuring on her deathbed.
She had woken to pale dawn light coming from an unfamiliar window and lying in her solitary bed, knowing she had earned the disgust she had seen cross Alaric’s face that night, just as she deserved the denunciation of the women if they knew of her failure. She lacked the courage to face that final censure. She already felt bowed over by the weight of disapproval coming from Alaric.
He had spoken barely a word to her all day. She had emerged from the room, dressed and ready for the journey back to the estate, to find a late breakfast waiting for her in the main room. Alaric had already eaten and gone to see to the horses. He had returned just as she was finishing her meager meal, shaking fat water drops from his hair and shoulders.
“Are you ready?”
Diana nodded.
“I have dealt with the innkeeper. We’re free to leave. Let us leave now.”
Throughout the slow, cold journey home Alaric spoke not a single word. He remained withdrawn behind his cloak and hood. Diana spent t
he journey trying to accustom herself to Alaric’s disapproval. She missed his normal companionship and knew it was another toll she paid for her foolishness the night before.
They arrived back at the estate late in the afternoon and at the sight of the sturdy, ugly gates, Diana could have wept with relief. She longed for the sanctuary of her library, where she could bar the door and curl up next to the air vent and be alone.
But she was denied that comfort. As soon as they entered the villa, she was surrounded by people calling greetings and congratulations. They stood around her, babbling words that Diana could not fathom, so great was her surprise.
She hadn’t expected the household members to be so happy about her wedding. She hadn’t expected they would want to celebrate something she wanted quietly buried. Confused, she had been escorted inside by an entourage of women, who had begun the preparations that she had just terminated.
She hadn’t seen Alaric since.
Diana heard herself sigh again. She rose and gathered up the beautifully sewn tunic she was expected to wear tonight. For lack of any other garment, she would wear it but that was all.
Now, where was her old belt? And her hair thongs?
* * * * *
The toll for her mistake rose steadily after that.
Alaric tapped on the door just on sunset. When Diana opened it, he stepped back and ran his gaze over her. His jaw rippled as he clenched his jaw.
Diana resisted the temptation to drop her gaze from his direct one. She had best get used to whatever looks he sent her way as quickly as possible.
“It is time for supper,” he said.
“Yes, I know.” Diana was puzzled. Why was he here?
Alaric sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “It is a wedding feast. They will expect us to arrive together.”
Of course. Diana felt a sigh building in her too. “Then we had better arrive together,” she said stiffly.
Their entrance was loudly hailed by the assembled household. Sosia, as manager of her household supplies, and Rhys, as Alaric’s second, stood waiting at the doorway to escort them to their seats.
Diana was too distracted by the abundance laid out upon the tables to notice where Sosia was leading her but when Sosia pulled out the chair at the bottom end of the main table and waited for her to sit, she stopped short.
Here?
Diana looked over the table toward her customary couch, the one that had been her father’s.
Alaric was stretching himself out awkwardly along its length, as Rhys slapped his captain’s arm in encouragement.
A white-hot poker thrust into her chest. Diana’s heart seized.
To please your master, they’d told her. Alaric was her master now. The head of the table was his rightful place. Her role was to obey him in all things and to concede to his wishes.
Diana had to will her body to draw in another breath. The air she breathed was hot, miasmic. She had known that this would be part of it and had bargained with Alaric to alleviate herself of that price but she had not reckoned with the rest of the world. The household, the law, everything, for the rest of her life, would enforce this insidious hierarchy upon her.
“My lady, they await you,” Sosia whispered.
The entire room stood waiting for her to seat herself before they could do the same. She could not demand her couch back now, in front of them all. That would be declaring herself for the impostor she was and she was too much the coward to face the consequences. Silently, she sat.
With a relieved murmur, everyone followed her example and the meal began.
Diana found herself unable to look directly toward Alaric. She was afraid to learn what his reaction would be if he could see into her eyes and recognize her anger and misery. There was a chance that he would gloat and Diana knew she could withstand anything but that. So she ate tasteless morsels and kept her gaze cast down at the table, barely stirring to answer anyone who spoke to her.
Finally, the room drank to their good fortune, calling upon a dozen different gods for blessings of health, longevity and fertility, among sly grins and winks and wine-sodden laughter. Diana felt her stomach clamp tightly in protest against the little food she had eaten and her spirits sink another notch or two.
Immediately after the toasts, Sosia and Florentina appeared beside Diana. “It is time, my lady,” Sosia said, while Florentina smiled broadly.
“Time?”
“For you to retire.”
Diana knew the ritual from her sister’s wedding and others that had taken place in this house. After the feast, the bride was escorted to the bedchamber, to await her husband, who would be back at the feast drinking and laughing with the other men about the joys to come.
“I had forgotten,” she said by way of apology and stood up.
As they walked from the room into the cool night air, numbness took hold of her. She could prevent none of this. She would do better to simply accept everything and let it pass on. Then life would return to normal. The numbness stayed with her until they reached their destination.
Diana stared at the door, horror bursting through the numbness, as Sosia pushed open the door to her parent’s bedchamber with a smile. “Here?”
Florentina laughed. “We turned out the other occupants. Don’t worry, we found them beds. Alaric’s men have worked all day building frames and the women stuffing mattresses and preparing the chamber for you.” She sounded pleased.
Sosia took her arm to draw her into the room and Diana resisted, digging in her feet. She could see into the room, see the place where the Saxon lay after she had killed him. The doorframe where Florentina rested her hand was where the drunken guard had rested his head.
Sosia frowned. “My lady?”
“Is something wrong?” Florentina asked.
“This was my parent’s chamber.” She forced her lips to form the words.
“It is right and proper that you and the master use it, now. You’re a married woman, after all.” Florentina beamed.
Sosia was much taller and heavier than Diana and her tug on Diana’s arm sent Diana staggering into the room. “You will not offend the ghosts of your parents, my lady. To spurn this gift would, however.” Her voice was sharp.
Surprised at Sosia’s rare disapproval, Diana allowed herself to be drawn farther into the room. The bed was as Diana last saw it. The covers were straightened. There was no blood on the floor.
I can pass through this.
Her body began to tremble. The two women were stripping off her clothes, lifting her arms, shifting her head.
“Mother of god!” Florentina murmured breathlessly. “I’ve heard of reluctant brides but this…”
Sosia’s hands were in Diana’s hair, removing the thongs, loosening it. Diana was naked now.
I will get through this. I will get through this.
“She’s freezing! Get her under the covers, quickly. This room was always too far from the furnace for my liking.”
She was being pushed toward the bed. The covers were pulled aside and she was cajoled onto the high bed. The covers were settled over her. The women left.
I will. I will see the morning, just like before.
Her head fell to one side and she found her gaze on a part of the wall, a section of the multicolored mural, where the red was brighter than all the rest. Perhaps it had been repainted since the others but it caught the eye for part of the red paint had run and a small permanent drip hung from the bottom of the curve.
This was the mistake that she had focused on during those moments when he had been on top of her. Diana’s breath stopped.
From outside, she heard Alaric’s voice. He was coming.
Working entirely by instinct, Diana found strength enough to surge out of the bed, lunge across the room and lift the thick timber bar and drop it into the catches in what felt like one smooth movement.
She rested with her back against the cold wall next to the door, feeling in her mind the galloping approach of the red c
loud.
“What room is this?” Alaric’s voice again. “I thought there was no room to spare?”
“This is the great chamber, my lord.” Octavia.
The door was tested, thumping up hard against the barring beam and Diana staggered away, sliding the length of the wall. The corner she reached was the corner that Minna had curled up in, hiding her face, her hands over her ears.
Diana felt her own knees give way. She slid down the wall until she was folded up in the corner. The images were pressing in, the memory of those nights. She needed only to look up to see the room where it all happened.
She hugged her knees to her chest, feeling the bone-ache of deep cold, yet the sweat that fell from her temples was hot.
She saw again the hot, salty blood that leaped out from his neck and smeared her sight in red and the cloud of blood washing away in the river…coldness…
Outside, she heard Alaric shouting. The words did not register in her mind, only the depth of his anger.
And the relentless images continued to play.
Chapter Nineteen
The furnace died in the early hours, while the villa slept. Diana rose stiffly from the cold corner of the great chamber, moving as slowly and carefully as an old woman and dressed in the wedding feast clothes. She made her silent way through the moonlit villa to the furnace, her feet finding their own way as they had countless times before. She began stoking the fires, her limbs gradually loosening as she worked.
Once the fires were burning fiercely again, Diana crept back to the library. There was no one in the room—it was too crowded with stacks of books to allow a bed.
Diana found a set of her brother’s tunic and trews tucked away in the chest next to her comfortable chair and changed into them, shrugging off the long tunic for the last time. Then she curled up in the chair and rested her head on her arm on the curved wooden frame. She wondered if she would sleep, for the images had not let her be the entire time she had been in the great chamber. They had played themselves out, over and over again and her body thrummed from the constant surges of fear and horror that swept through her in response.
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