by Tamara Leigh
And Magnus would pay for sins not his own.
Helplessness beating through her, El closed her eyes. There was no way out. She would be made to suffer endless years of Bayard’s loathing, perhaps even his fists. With dread, she accepted her fate. With desperation, she prayed his lands would not be forfeit, for if King Edward did not accept their marriage, the long years with this man would go all the worse for her.
She looked up. “Then I must needs wed you.”
He inclined his head. “Father Crispin is in the chapel.”
How certain he had been! But it was not as if she had a choice. This day, and every day hereafter, she would be Elianor Boursier. Once again, unhappily married. Once again, reduced to chattel used and disposed of as a man saw fit.
Quintin Boursier was not pleased.
Her eyes sought to burn holes in El’s back as surely as the one caustic muttering she had been allowed had burned El’s ears.
Suppressing the impulse to return the glare, El forced herself to focus on the priest who seemed even less pleased than when he had first recited vows for Bayard and her. They repeated them, one after another until El feared the scream inside her would leap out and further desecrate the proceedings.
Finally, it was over. The ring she had returned to Bayard before the ceremony once more loose upon her finger, her husband turned her out of the chapel.
Thomasin fell first to El’s regard, her twinkling eyes unable to match the serious set of her mouth. Clearly, she was amused. And she could afford to be, for she was not the one made to suffer an unwanted marriage. But soon she would, for if King Edward accepted the vows spoken this day, Thomasin would wed Magnus. And a peculiar match that would be—the handsome, refined Baron of Emberly wed to the simple, misbegotten daughter of Griffin de Arell.
Enjoy your amusement whilst you can, El silently warned, for a proper lady Magnus will expect you to be.
Braving Quintin Boursier’s stare where she stood alongside Baron de Arell, El lifted her chin as Bayard guided her past his sister and wondered again how it was possible for a woman to be so lovely without benefit of long tresses. Her hair was much too short for a lady—
El swallowed. Her own had been shorter once, a rebellious gesture for which she had paid dearly.
Do not think there, she told herself as she descended the stairs alongside the man who was now, truly, her husband. This day has its own worries.
Shortly, she lowered beside Bayard at the lord’s table to settle into a semblance of a feast that seemed to mock the alliance between the Boursiers and the Verduns. Staring across the gathering, she wished she were not so alone and resented the powerlessness girding her head to toe.
“I have sent word of your marriage to your uncle, my lady,” Griffin de Arell announced.
She looked past Bayard.
The man raised his goblet. “Of course, such tidings will not likely give him ease.” He glanced at Bayard, smiled, and put the goblet to his mouth.
His words pricked, and before El could think better of her own, she retorted, “As it gives you ease to know you will soon wed a Boursier?”
Darkness crept across his face.
Two seats down, Lady Quintin gasped.
Beside El, Bayard stiffened.
“’Tis unfortunate for all, Lady Elianor,” De Arell rumbled, “that we are forced into such marriages.”
She narrowed her gaze on the Baron of Blackwood. “Marriages that would have been unnecessary had you not laid ruin to six months of peace by raiding and burning the village of Tyne.”
His nostrils flared. “Still, I maintain that was not the work of me or mine.”
It was as he had claimed in the missive sent to her uncle five months past, but she believed it no more now than she had then. She opened her mouth to respond, but Bayard leaned toward his host, blocking her view of De Arell.
“As you maintain you had naught to do with burning my crops last summer, De Arell?” he clipped.
The man sighed. “I did that—after you slaughtered a score of my cattle.”
El heard Bayard’s teeth grind. She had been told of the cattle found gutted, and that Bayard had denounced the accusation leveled at his family. Would he do so again?
With a breath that broadened his shoulders, he turned from De Arell.
But El was not done with their host. However, as she leaned forward to further prod him, Bayard’s grimly set face gave her pause.
“You would do well to put your mouth around food, rather than words, Wife,” he growled, then stabbed a chunk of venison in the trencher between them and thrust it in his mouth.
Do not say it! El counseled, but out it came. “And you would do well to chew your food in full.”
He stared at her, then swallowed and said low, “I am not Murdoch Farrow. It will take more than an ill-gotten bite for you to rid yourself of me.”
El feigned a sigh. “And for that, did I not steal you from your bed and imprison you?”
“Aye, and now Agatha suffers for your trespass.”
The reminder jolted her. Did Agatha still suffer? Might she have managed to escape? More likely, she was dead or near death. And that realization—the weight of its responsibility—caused her anger to ebb. She looked down and away, swept her gaze over the castle folk at the lower tables who were more intent upon their meals than the petty affairs of the nobility. They led a hard but simple life, and in that moment she wished hers was as simple.
An hour later, she followed the stiff-backed Father Crispin up the stairs to repeat the ritual of putting the bride to bed. And as he had discovered the first time, he would find her no more receptive now that she was Elianor Boursier.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“We leave at dawn,” Bayard said, closing the door behind him.
El settled deeper into the chair and sank her chin into the coverlet she had taken from the bed as Father Crispin, tight-lipped and shaking his head, had withdrawn from the chamber.
Considering the night past when Bayard had unbalanced her by abandoning his seduction to give her time to become accustomed to him, she could not begin to guess what this night held for her. What she did know was that, however he went about consummating their marriage, this time he would. But though resigned to it, she had not been able to lie upon the bed as the priest had entreated her to do.
Hoping to delay the inevitable, she asked, “What of your sister?”
He came around the tub of chill water. “She has been returned to the tower. On that, De Arell will not be moved.”
And the fault was El’s. Telling herself it was of no use to wallow in regret, she said, “As neither would you be moved regardless of the reason for my transgression against you.”
He stepped nearer, and she tensed in anticipation of a show of intimidation, but something flickered across his face and he halted. “I know the reason you did what you did. I know why you transgressed.”
She clenched her hands beneath the coverlet “Why did I?”
“You took me from my bed for what you believe I did to your aunt. You did it for my death so that you and yours would be free of the Boursiers.”
She started to protest that last, but he continued, “You did it for Magnus Verdun so he would not be made to wed my sister. And you did it for yourself that you might more easily hold to your uncle through the young, simple Thomasin de Arell.”
The rumor. Until that moment, El had refused to allow it to more than bother her as if it were a fly pestering her shoulder. Now it mortified her that he believed her relationship with Magnus was of a carnal nature.
“I would not have thought you one to indulge in rumors, Bayard Boursier, especially one so far-fetched.”
He raised an eyebrow. “If a rumor is persistent enough, eventually it finds an audience. Naturally, as you are now my wife, I would like you to dispel it.”
Though part of her balked at accommodating him, she knew her silence would serve no good thing, that it might even make the night ahead more
difficult.
“’Tis true I seized and imprisoned you for what you did to my aunt, and that I did it so my uncle would not suffer marriage to your sister. But though I let you believe I sought your death, there is no truth in that, just as there is none in what is said of Magnus and me—”
“If it was not my death you sought, then what?”
“As told, forfeiture. I had only to imprison you past the day you were required to wed and the Boursiers would hold Godsmere no more.”
His head tilted. “You wish me to believe that afterward you would have released me?”
“That was my intention.”
“You did not worry about reprisal?”
She looked down. “’Twas not for you to know who had imprisoned you.”
“Then you were certain I would believe De Arell was responsible, he who did not wish his daughter to wed me.”
Regret washed over her. “I guessed you might.”
“Thus, not only would you remove the Boursiers, but possibly the De Arells.”
She pulled her teeth over her bottom lip. “After all these years of conflict and raids and burnings… I did not believe I would regret it much.”
His regard was so intense it felt as if his patched eye bore through her. “What of Agatha? You cannot tell me she was not of a mind for murder.”
She could not. And could there be any reason to dissuade him now that death was likely upon the woman and there was nothing from which to protect her? Though a bit of the lump on El’s head remained as a reminder of Agatha’s deception, she had to defend her. After all, Agatha would surely be far from Godsmere had she not agreed to her mistress’s scheme.
“Agatha but tried to aid me, to prevent happening what did happen.”
His lid narrowed. “You are certain that is all she aspired to do?” El’s hesitation raised a grim smile to his lips. “Even if you did not seek my death, and I would be more a fool to easily accept that, what of your uncle and you? ’Tis told you are lovers.”
She set her chin higher. “’Tis told you are a beast, but that does not make it so.”
“Does it not?” His lips thinned. “You say that, and yet this day you cowered for fear of this beast.”
El shook her head. “’Twas not fear of you that moved me. It was fear of—” She stopped her words, causing him to arch an eyebrow above the patch. She had already revealed enough of herself and her first marriage to allow him to guess Murdoch had abused her, but as there was too much to deal with in her present without reaching back into her past, she would reveal no more.
“There is no truth to that wagging of tongues about my uncle and me,” she returned to the topic from which she had veered.
He delved her face. “I am to believe you?”
“Lovers we are not, have never been, shall never be. I feel for him as one feels for a brother. For that, I wished to spare him marriage to Lady Quintin.”
“My unladylike, debauched sister? She who dared ride upon Castle Mathe and take a dagger to De Arell’s throat? Not quite as unsavory as one who imprisons a man to steal his lands, but still unworthy of your beloved Magnus.”
He was right. Who was she to judge Quintin Boursier? Though El’s encounter with the disagreeable woman gave her more reason to not wish her uncle to suffer marriage to a Boursier, what Bayard’s sister had done did not compare to what she, herself, had done.
“Now that we have come to the end of that—for now,” Bayard said, “tell me what you fear.”
His return to that of which she did not wish to speak stirred the memories. Lowering her chin, she struggled to find something with which to weigh them down. Anger always worked, but before she could draw upon it, Bayard stepped near, hooked a finger beneath her jaw, and raised it.
“What do you fear?” he asked again.
Feeling the ache of tears, she tried to drop her chin, but he drew it higher.
“Whom do you fear?” His deep voice, no longer hoarse from days in the underground, caused something strange to sing through her.
She swallowed the tightness in her throat, only to wish she had not, for the next draw of breath she spent upon the words, “Not you.” And unlike the other times she had tried to convince him he did not make her heart aspire to flee her chest, there was nothing defiant or challenging in her speaking of them.
His eyelid flickered, mouth softened. “What did Farrow do to you?”
Say no more! she silently commanded, and yet…
“Not what you do to me,” she whispered to the one who, despite being much too near, did not alarm her as much as he should.
He drew closer, slid a thumb across her lower lip. “And what is that, Elianor?”
As with each time he called her by name since learning she was not Thomasin, something fluttered in her breast. From childhood, she had preferred the simpler, affectionate El when propriety did not require her name in full. But how she had come to loathe Elianor while wed to Murdoch!
Not only had there been no one in his household with whom she could draw close enough to be called El, but Murdoch had taken all the beauty out of her given name by placing more emphasis than was necessary on the first part of it, most notably when displeased. In contrast, Bayard made four notes of her name rather than three. Stranger yet, the first was mostly breath, emphasis placed on the second note such that her name upon his lips sounded more like Lianor.
“Tell me,” he pressed.
She did not know what he did to her, only that it made her speak what she should not and stay when she should flee. And that did make her fear him, though not in any way to which she was accustomed.
“Naught,” she lied. “You do naught to me, and that is not a bad thing.”
She could not be certain, but she thought he flinched. “You compare me to Farrow.”
“I will not discuss him with you.”
He drew a deep breath of what she hoped was patience, released her chin, and straightened.
Gathering her courage, El pushed the coverlet off her shoulders and stood. “I know the debt that must be paid this night.” As she peered up at him and he peered down at her, she struggled against the longing to clasp her arms over her chest. “Let us be done with it.”
Annoyance lit his face. “It,” he growled. “Hardly the way to rouse a man to passion. Is that how you kept Farrow from your bed?”
If only it had been that easy. Clenching her teeth, she sidestepped and started toward the bed.
Bayard pulled her back around. “I would know about Farrow.”
She wished his gaze did not reflect concern he should not feel.
And surely does not, she told herself. He but seeks to know your vulnerable places that he might exploit them for the humiliation you visited upon him.
“Elianor,” he pressed.
Hating that her tongue tensed and lips quivered as if to form the words, she drove her fingernails into her palms.
“What did that miscreant do?”
Miscreant… As if, in spite of the ill she had worked upon Bayard, he had determined she was the victim. As if she were worthy of championing. As if she were precious to him.
She was not. Still, a longing to be more than chattel pierced her, and it so confused her that she once again spoke what she should not. “You make it sound as if you care.”
His gaze narrowed.
“But as that cannot be,” she hastened to add, “I can only conclude you wish to know how broken I am. Unfortunate for both of us, now that we are bound one to the other, it can serve no good to know the state of my first marriage. And as already told, I will not speak of it.”
“Then I must needs discover the truth myself,” he said. “Now to bed, Elianor.”
She suppressed the instinct to defy him and tried to ease the tension that came so naturally to her. Though she knew he had abused her aunt, her experience with Bayard these past nights indicated his abuse was not of the ilk to which Murdoch had subjected her. Thus, until she knew whom, exactly, she had w
ed, it was best to let him do with her as he would.
She turned away and, consoling herself that whatever awaited her would aid in teaching her how to battle him for however many years she must suffer his attentions, crossed to the bed.
As she slid beneath the coverlet, Bayard moved around the chamber extinguishing candles.
Once the room was draped in darkness with only the far corner vaguely lit by moonlight hard-pressed to penetrate the oilcloth covering the window, she heard Bayard’s feet upon the rushes on the opposite side of the bed. Then came the sound of a buckle sliding off leather, followed by the rustle of garments.
Dear Lord, she sent heavenward, grant me courage.
Amid the silence that evidenced Elianor held her breath, Bayard tossed his tunic to the foot of the bed. Next, he dragged off his boots and left them where they fell.
Though he knew he ought to set about seducing his fair wife, his instincts once more prevailed as he settled into the mattress.
It was no good thing for a woman not to want the man to whom she was wed. It was something much worse for her to so revile his touch that the air vibrated with her dread. Still, he should at least pull her close as he had done on the night past. And he would have if not that the thought of being so near her called to mind this morn when, beneath the spell of sleep, she had held to him and sighed as if content. It had made something clenched inside him begin to loosen.
He knew it was foolish and weak to care that a woman wished to be in his arms—that in spite of all, he wanted what Constance had refused him. However, as Elianor had said, they were bound to each other for life, and even if Boursier lands were declared forfeit, this woman and he would likely remain together until their end days. Thus, since the lie of consummation was far preferable to the truth of seduction that might make her regard him as not much better than her first husband, he would leave her be.
“Bayard?” she whispered. “What do you?”
“I would think it obvious.” He despised the resentment in his voice. “Good eve.”