Linnea glared her fury at the old woman. “What matter to you if it be Axton or this Sir Eustace who marries her? They are both Henry’s men—”
“Do you so easily forget your brother?” Lady Harriet spat back at her. “Are you that ungrateful to him who did sacrifice his very life for you?”
Not for me, Linnea wanted to say. She chose instead to ignore her grandmother and turn back to her sister. “Whatever shall come tomorrow, Beatrix, you shall not suffer for it. I do not know this Sir Eustace as do you, but I know Axton.”
Beatrix drew back, just enough to look into her sister’s face. Though the darkness shrouded them, there was yet that sense that they could see one another very well.
“Do not defend him to her,” Lady Harriet croaked. “She has experienced already his cruelty.” She moved nearer to them and fastened her bony hand on Beatrix’s arm. “Tell her how he mauled you just now. How he forced himself on you. Tell her!” The old woman shook with the vehemence of her emotions. “Tell her ’ere she conspires with him to destroy Eustace and your only remaining hope for happiness!”
“He would be a good husband to her,” Linnea countered, frowning at her grandmother. “You do not know him like I do.”
The old woman snorted at that. “No. You do have a particular knowledge of him that I do not. A carnal knowledge that I would save your sister from!” she finished shrilly.
Loyalty and selfishness fought a terrible battle in Linnea’s heart: loyalty to Axton and Beatrix—both of whom she loved better than herself—against a selfishness she could not defend. She did not want to share Axton with anyone, not even her sister. She wanted to keep Axton all for herself.
She let out a laugh that was half sob. Even if she could keep him, he would never agree. He hated her now. There was nothing she could do for Axton—save to help him retain this home he’d fought so long and hard to possess. And even that was not within her means.
She pressed her cheek to Beatrix’s damp one and felt her sister’s trembling fear. “Do not be afraid of him,” she whispered: “In time you will see that I am right in this.”
But Beatrix twisted away. “I will pray the whole night long that Eustace defeats him. I will keep vigil on my knees,” she swore with a fierceness Linnea had never seen in her mild-mannered sister. But when Beatrix spied Linnea’s stricken expression, her angry expression relented. “I do not wish him ill. But … but I cannot be wed to him. I cannot!”
She began once more to weep, but this time Linnea did not have the words to comfort her. How had this happened? How had it come to this between them, that one could want a man she could not have, while the other could spurn that same man who, meanwhile, was set on possessing her?
“If you love your sister,” Lady Harriet broke in, “you will do whatever it takes to ensure that man falls on the morrow. Weaken him with some potion. Sap his strength in another fashion, if it so suits you. But do not betray us now when you have almost succeeded.” Her voice had altered and now she reached out a hand to Linnea’s face.
Linnea flinched, but the old woman only made a grimace of a smile and patted her cheek. “You have done well, Linnea. Do you wish to prove your worthiness, you will not falter now.”
Linnea tried to swallow but something hard lodged in her throat, a lump of emotions that threatened to choke her no matter what answer she made. She stared at Beatrix who huddled now in her grandmother’s embrace, but she could not reply. Her heart was breaking; her world was collapsing in ruin about her. The future loomed forbidding and grim. But Linnea could not reply.
Distraught, she spun around, disoriented, but desperate to escape. But escape was no real solution to her plight, and anyway, even escape was denied her. For a sturdy figure blocked her way, a figure she recognized even in the dark. It was Peter and it was plain he’d come for her. It was equally plain the contempt he felt for her.
“Do the three of you meet still to plot against my family? Do you gather here to gloat and anticipate your triumph?” He advanced on them, his fists knotted, his expression cold.
Beatrix and Lady Harriet fell back a pace. But he looked so much like Axton that Linnea could do nothing but stare. When he stood just before her he sneered, “Are you indeed Linnea, brave but stupid, or are you the cowardly sister, Beatrix?”
“I … I am Linnea.”
He glared at her, then past her at Beatrix. His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Prove it. I have heard that the first sister is unmarked, but the second one sports the devil’s own mark.”
“’Tis not the devil’s mark,” Beatrix cried from behind Linnea.
“So you are Linnea!” Peter accused her.
“No, I am the one you seek,” Linnea countered. She stayed him with a hand on his arm when he would have advanced on Beatrix. “I am Linnea. See?” She raised her skirt to display the red welt on her calf. “I carry the mark, not she.”
He looked at her, then over at Beatrix. When his gaze came back to her, however, some of the belligerence had been replaced by confusion. He studied Linnea’s face as if searching for some other difference between them, some indication—the shape of her lips, the arch of a brow—that would set them apart. When he could not find one, he frowned at her.
“Come with me.”
To Henry, Linnea assumed. To Henry’s bed, for Henry’s pleasure. She thought she would be ill.
He grabbed her above the elbow and steered her back toward the hall. But Beatrix unexpectedly tore herself from her grandmother’s arms.
“No! You can’t take her. Hasn’t your family done enough! Haven’t you taken our home, our brother. Even my father—” Beatrix burst into tears. But even unfinished, her words seemed to affect Peter. Or perhaps it was because she’d been unable to finish, for Peter’s stern expression faltered and Linnea saw him swallow hard. Then he rallied and his grip on Linnea’s arm stiffened.
“You forget that I have lost two brothers and a father to your family. We owe you nothing.” Then with a rude jerk he hauled Linnea off. But Beatrix’s sobs were not silenced until the stout doors of the keep thudded closed behind them.
In the hall all was quiet save for the grumbles of sleeping servants. The hearth glowed but dully with embers of the banked fire. One torch yet gave a faint dying glow. There were no signs in the hall of the terrible tension that gripped the castle, only their own harsh breathing.
Peter’s fingers tightened even more as he steered her toward the stairs. Before Linnea had been too numb to object. Besides, she’d known it would be pointless: Now, though, pointless or not, she could not bring herself to cooperate. To be given over to Henry was unthinkable. Impossible. She dug her heels in and grabbed at a corner of the wall.
Peter swung around. “Bitch you may be, but don’t be a stupid bitch also,” he snapped. Then with a rough jerk he yanked her up the stairs.
“No! I won’t go! You can’t make me—”
“Shut up!” he hissed, clamping his hand over her mouth. “Do you want to wake up the whole castle?”
But Linnea was far beyond caring about waking up anyone. Instead she fought him as violently as if he did plan to murder her. For to her mind, sending her to Henry was tantamount to murder, for it would forever kill something in her soul.
“Bloody hell!” he swore when she bit his hand. He shoved her so hard against the wall that her head cracked painfully against it and the breath was knocked out of her. “Damn you!” he swore, shaking the hand she’d bitten. “I’m trying to help you! My mother is fool enough to wish to protect you—”
“That role is better filled by me,” a voice from behind them broke in.
Axton’s voice.
But no, Linnea could not believe it. It must be her imagination and the dizzying spin of her head.
But then another hand curved around her arm. A bigger hand, equally harsh, equally stern. Peter released her and stepped back.
“Mother instructed me to fetch her—”
“Her involvement in this matter will no
t be necessary,” Axton retorted. Without giving Linnea the time even to look up at him, he steered her ahead of him up the stairs.
Linnea was too confused to resist. Peter had been bringing her to the Lady Mildred, not the young duke? That was difficult enough to comprehend. But Axton’s appearance was even more difficult, for he’d said that protecting her was his responsibility.
“What do you intend to do with her?” Peter whispered as he followed behind them.
“Exactly as I please,” Axton bit back. His words were meant less for Peter though, and more for her, Linnea feared.
She balked as they came into the antechamber, but her lack of cooperation was of no moment to him at all. He merely clasped her to his side with one brawny arm, and pressed her face into his shoulder. Muffled against his wool tunic, Linnea could neither cry out nor object. He hustled her past the lord’s chamber where Henry waited, past the several sleeping men who made up Henry’s personal staff, and into the smaller chamber he was occupying. She vaguely spied Sir Reynold before Axton slammed the door shut. Only then did he release her.
Only then did she realize the danger she was in.
He bolted the door. For a moment he just stood there, facing the door. Breathing hard. Then he turned and without looking at her, he began to undress. Weapons he set carefully aside. His boots he placed beside a low table. His tunic and chainse, then stockings and braies, he laid across the table.
He was deliberate in every movement he made, as if she were not there, and he prepared for bed in the normal fashion. But she was there and he knew it, and Linnea turned cold inside.
She circled around him then backed up to the door, though she knew escape was not possible. He clearly knew it too, for though he straightened to face her, he did not advance on her. Instead he fixed her with his wintry gaze.
“Choose, Linnea. Will you warm Henry’s bed tonight or mine?” Like a double-edged blade, sunk to the hilt in her chest, those harsh, unfeeling words cut her. Linnea sucked in a hard breath. This was her punishment then—or the beginning of it. To choose Axton over Henry Plantagenet was not so hard. But to have him take her without any feeling whatsoever—it would be worse even than in his mother’s chamber. She did not think she could bear it.
He looked at her, a long, unendurable stare that stripped away all the layers of what they’d each done and why they’d done it. He faced her, naked, virile—a man who wanted no words or excuses from her, only the use of her body.
Linnea began to tremble.
“Take off your clothes.”
She must have shaken her head, or perhaps it was only her lack of response that revealed her opposition.
“Take them off, then come here and work your wiles on me.”
“Axton, no …”
“You played the whore when I did not recognize the role. The only difference now is that I know you for who you are. Take off your clothes,” he demanded in a deadly tone.
She pressed back into the door, but there was no relief there, only rough wood and the nubby protuberance of bolts and hinges keeping her inside with him. She tore her eyes from his unflinching gaze. But scanning the room brought no promise of escape. Simple furnishings and unadorned stone walls. And on a peg on the far wall hung the chain.
Her eyes froze on it. Its gold links and red stones winked in the erratic firelight. It was the sight of that chain that finally defeated her.
So it was come to this. She would be raped by the man she loved. The man who might have grown to love her had she not forced him to hate her.
She turned her face back to him, then slowly pushed off from the door.
First she removed her veil and the circlet that held it in place. Her hair came undone from its simple looping with little effort. She unlaced her sleeves, then the waist slits of her gown. But she kept her eyes on him and he kept his on her.
She removed the gown though her fingers shook with every task. She stepped out of her low-heeled shoes then stood before him, hesitant. Only her kirtle covered her and it was so thin as to be nearly transparent.
When Axton only stared at her, however, she knew it too must go. She slid it off her shoulders then freed her arms and pushed it past her hips until it fell to the floor.
He had not moved as she’d disrobed. He’d not even watched really, for his smoldering gaze had remained locked with hers. But now, as he waited for her to come to him, she saw one change in him. He was aroused. Fully and completely aroused.
That part of him she’d once feared, then grown to love, she now feared again.
She glanced away, toward the weapons he’d so casually discarded. Could she move fast enough to grab one of them? Could she then fight him off? She feared not.
Once before she’d tried to fight him when he’d begun to take her in anger. She’d fought back. Then … then somehow everything had turned around. A spark of sudden hope flared as she recalled what had happened. He’d pulled her on top of him and let her control everything.
Perhaps if she took charge … Perhaps if she made love to him, he would be unable to make it into something hateful and ugly.
Linnea took a steadying breath. When his eyes moved to her breasts and her bared, puckered nipples, she felt both chagrin and another tiny shiver of hope. She took another breath.
“Lie on the bed,” she ordered, forcing herself to stare straight at him. When he raised his gaze back to her face, his eyes narrowed.
“Lie on the bed,” she repeated, before he could reply. “’Tis what you want, is it not? For me to give you pleasure. For me to play the part you have assigned me,” she added bitterly.
“’Tis a part you willingly embraced,” he countered. But she saw his manhood stiffen further.
“Well, then. Let me perform my part. Lie on the bed.”
This time he complied. He lay on his back on the bearskin, his strong body framed by the black fur. He was like the bear, she fancied. Dangerous to approach. Deadly to touch. Yet she was too ensnared by his fearful beauty to be careful.
She came to the bed and for a moment she simply stared down at him. He was all muscle and smooth skin, marred occasionally by the scars of his profession. But that only magnified his appeal. He was like a battle-scarred bear that had fought many times to protect its territory. Even the hair on his legs and chest and loins was the black of the bear.
A frisson of erotic heat shivered its way up from her belly. If only he loved her …
His viselike grip trapped her wrist, then pulled her hand rudely to his groin. She felt the hard heat of him, the angry demand, and she almost faltered. He hated her. She did not think she could bear to make love to him when he despised her so.
He moved her hand up and down on him and she had to steel herself not to snatch it away. When she glanced wildly at his face, however, her near panic vanished. There was such torture in his eyes. His face was impassive, but his eyes …
Without pausing to think, Linnea bent down and kissed him fully on the mouth. She felt him stiffen; he had not expected that. But that only prodded her on. She kissed him again, so fervently that she feared he would sense all her emotions. All her love.
Of all the intimacies they’d shared, kissing seemed somehow the most personal. Other than their wedding kiss, he’d not kissed her until that day in the woods alongside the river. She’d taken it, if not a declaration of love, then a declaration of caring. And now, she was declaring the depths of her caring to him—of her love, if he was listening.
She heard a growl, as if he objected. But when she ran the tip of her tongue along the seam of his lips, he parted them. And when she delved deeper, and he met her tongue with his own, she felt the bittersweet pang of her triumph.
She kissed him and he kissed her back, and suddenly he tumbled her onto the bed. Onto him.
It was a frantic coupling, hasty and intense, marked as fiercely by the melding of their mouths and tongues as by the joining of their bodies. She rode him and possessed him, and in some subtle way, she kne
w that he was aware of it. He’d thought to possess her, but she possessed him.
When it was over—when he grabbed her and pumped all he had into her, and she clenched and seemed to die upon him—they lay in one sweaty heap, a sprawl of trembling limbs and tangled hair and exhausted bodies.
Only then did Linnea end their kiss and turn her face into the strong curve of his neck.
They gasped for breath in unison. One of his hands clasped her bottom. The other spread across the small of her back. As they calmed, he began to move it, sliding it up her spine, letting his fingertips trace the rhythmic bumps of her spine.
Linnea would happily have died just then, sated by their lovemaking, held yet in the warm embrace of the man she loved.
But then his light stroking stopped and Linnea felt the change in him. It was as if he’d just surfaced from a fog and realized where he was. And with whom. A north wind blowing icy across their overheated bodies could not have chilled her so swiftly as did the renewed tension that filled his body.
She rolled off him at once, but he did not let her escape. Instead he caught her hair in his fist and forced her to face him. What she saw in his eyes tore her heart to shreds.
“What is it you have, that you can so easily bewitch me? What sorcerer’s spell? What devil’s evil?” His darkened gaze bored into hers. “Is it the devil who has taught you these tricks? Is it he who has given you this dark magic, this ability to seduce a man’s body and his soul?”
With his free hand he grabbed her leg and roughly thumbed her birthmark. “Is this his mark? Has he sent you here to torment me with a living hell?”
“And what of you?” she cried out in despair. “Are you no less cruel to me?”
But he was too angry to listen. With a curse he drew back from her. “Begone from here, witch! Get out of my sight!” That there was a bleakness in his eyes as he said it was no salve to Linnea’s pain.
Burying any show of emotion, she snatched up her kirtle and gown. “Now that you are sated, shall I go to Henry? ’Tis said the sign of a good lord is ever to please his liege. To share your whore with him is only good manners.” She had struggled into her clothes. Now she faced him with blazing eyes. “But tell me this, my lord. Shall I clean away the leavings of our joining before I go to him—or does he prefer a woman wet from the man before him?”
The Maiden Bride Page 30