She was tense and breathless with anxiety and repulsion by the time she wrestled her way clear.
“No, I couldn’t,” she answered. “And you know why, too. Heather matters to me even if she doesn’t matter to you.”
“She means nothing to me. Are you jealous? You’re the one I want,” he said. “If I kill your uncle we could rule and keep all the money, too. It would be great.”
He smiled cruelly and waited for her to fall into his arms. Isabelle knew it was true that he wanted her, but not because he had any affection for her. She was a realist and the logical part of her mind served her well. She knew he only wanted her to solidify his perception of his own power. She also was afraid she would die of nausea if she had to have sex with him. He didn’t care if a woman felt pleasure and he liked to hurt them, too.
“She’s pregnant and way too young, too. You should never have touched her,” Isabelle said.
He walked closer to her and sort of loomed over her. “She was just a way to pass the time. I care nothing for her and even less for the brat. Say the word and she’ll be history and I’ll be the one you marry tonight.”
He loomed over Isabelle, giving off heat and a sweaty odor. Isabelle forced herself to show no expression, though she was not one to hide what she thought. She had learned the hard way to guard her thoughts.
“No,” she said. “I don’t like you or your ways. Heather was the last straw. You hurt her over and over.”
He was a man who liked to hurt people, but he thought she was way too particular about men’s ways. “We live in a bad world. A woman needs a strong man,” he said.
He did have a talent for setting her temper on fire.
“Is a man strong if he regularly hurts those who are weaker, or is he just cruel to those he does not need to fear? It makes me wonder if he fears things irrationally,” she answered.
Luther could never quite keep up with her convoluted reasoning but he knew he’d been insulted. It was a dangerous game she played with him. He was stupid and she liked to prod him with her comments. It was like playing with any other predator, always risky, but she could not resist. He grasped her arm in a bruising grip and dragged her into the hall, and down the steps. He always touched more than she wanted. He took the opportunity to grope her breast as he held her with his other hand. She tried to present her most calm demeanor in spite of the fact that Luther was hurting her. Being with him was her worst nightmare. He was disgusting, but he thought he was a real love god. ‘What a prick,’ she thought. She longed to scream at him but she didn’t…couldn’t. Few people cared what he did and fewer still could do anything about it.
When they at last arrived in the great hall she was glad even though she feared what was happening there, too. Luther finally had to let her go and occupy his hands elsewhere. It surprised her a bit that he let go so completely. Often he didn’t, knowing few people would challenge him and her uncle just didn’t care.
Her uncle was dressed in his latest finery and his girlfriend was draped in a collection of colorful scarves that left most of her huge breasts bare.
He was speaking with a very tall man who towered over him, easily a head taller than her fat relative. It put him well over the height of any man she had ever seen. Uncle was taller than average, but the man he spoke with was as tall as many of the professional athletes that had existed before the wars changed everything. He might have influenced Luther’s decision to be more discreet.
He turned and looked toward her as Luther dragged her to the group, giving her arm an additional twisting squeeze as he presented her to the two men. “Isabelle, gentleman,” he announced as he finally let go of her arm.
She looked at the two people she considered enemies. The new man was unknown to her so she had no reason to trust him. She knew for sure she could not trust Uncle. Her uncle watched as Angela flirted with the man Isabelle assumed wanted her as his wife. His hair was black and straight, falling to his shoulder blades. It was tied back in a piece of string and his skin was dark, sort of a bronze color. His belly was flat and his chest, shoulders and legs were impressive. He was a bit hairy but not excessively so, rather like men used to be before all the radiation and chemicals had made many of them effeminate.
He wore clothing that looked like hides pieced together and tailored to his big frame. The clothing hung smoothly but it was not tight. His big feet were covered in black, knee high boots, also made of some animal skin. His beard was shaved clean and he was very attractive compared to most of the men she knew. He wasn’t pretty though. For one thing he had a big hooked nose, a high forehead, and a stubborn chin as well as very muscular arms and large calloused hands. He looked like a man who would never settle for less than he wanted. He looked tough and hardheaded and somehow dominant. He also did not smile.
“You’re the one?” she asked.
He nodded, but did not speak to her. He was covered in old style weapons. She could see several. But she thought there were likely others that were not in view. Albert usually removed most people’s weapons but this man had managed to keep his, somehow. He looked like he could handle almost anything, but he did not look like a fun guy. He looked too grim to take lightly and Isabelle knew it.
Angela giggled and reached for his arm, but he evaded her without seeming to move. Her hand dropped before she actually touched him.
“He’s quite capable of taming you,” her uncle said to Isabelle, seeming pretty happy about what might happen to her.
She barely managed not to roll her eyes.
The man spoke up. “I was told we would meet to discuss marriage. That’s all.” His voice was dark and deep without being loud at all.
“Well, I never agreed to anything,” Isabelle said. “Uncle just told me a couple of hours ago that he had contracted a marriage for me and then he locked me in my room.”
“Did you know anything before that happened?” he asked, looking annoyed. Her uncle had deliberately told her something different from what Evan had requested and paid for, and he suspected he did it deliberately to make things difficult for him.
She shook her head but did not speak to him again.
It was not what Evan had hoped for when he bought the opportunity to meet with Isabelle. He cursed her uncle but not out loud. He was trying to be on his best behavior, after all.
Dinner was announced and they all moved toward the tables. Most of the furnishings in the castle had been salvaged from the debris that had been left when the fighting had ended on Earth. The room was filled with an amalgamation of furnishings that was meant to accommodate all the people who had to eat at meals. Little of it could be described as decorative, much less appropriate to the structure. Life was a large enough struggle for the people who were left that they made do with whatever they could find except for food, which was a priority. The nuclear explosions had caused a nuclear winter and made foods difficult to produce even for the small population that was left alive.
People could grow animals in shelters and some cool weather crops in the weak sunlight in glass houses, but everyone was tired of turnips and lettuce and craving meat and fat. Few people, aside from Uncle and Angela, got enough to eat to get heavy and most people were regularly starving.
Isabelle knew how to do things like grow food in less than ideal conditions, but many people who actually survived the wars were too ignorant about even basic survival to manage their lives well or to produce their own food. They desperately tried to take it from anyone who had it.
High levels of radiation worldwide had killed many people and made many more sick with cancer and other, newer diseases which seemed to involve rapid evolution into new diseases and life forms that had never been seen before the wars.
A good many creatures were totally new and very strange looking. Some seemed able to move about among the human population but some existed more like undomesticated animals, fighting each other and anyone else who got in their way for the necessities of life as they needed them.
Some forms of evolution were related to people’s brain activity and increasing abilities in psychic powers for some people, most of whom were viewed with extreme suspicion.
Isabelle knew she was one of the unlucky ones. She could see illness like an old X-ray machine, especially if someone was dying of some disease or cancer that had popped up from radiation.
They approached the head table. The perverted priest her uncle kept around was seated but he stood and approached them. He came to her new acquaintance’s side and reached out as though he planned to escort him to the table. His hand landed on the man’s hip and caressed him there.
He turned and told him, “You have not been invited to touch me. Do not do so again.” The priest stepped back as though he had been slapped.
“You are a fine specimen, but stand offish. We could entertain you here as you have never been entertained before,” he said coyly.
She glanced back at the man her uncle intended for her to marry. He was shaking his head and looking fierce. He certainly looked healthy, far healthier than most people even ones in her castle, but he also looked tough and intimidating. It worried her, especially if she ended up married to him. Living with him might not be easy. Running away was starting to look better and better, even as risky as it was.
People who lived outside or in fragile conventional housing or hand made huts got doses of radiation every day, while inside the castle many people were relatively protected. Not that anyone was perfectly safe. Radiation was everywhere, in the air, on the land, in the rain and maybe even in some places no one had considered.
Enough people in her area became ill that the population was still diminishing through cancer and other illnesses.
The only advantage was that lots of old stuff was available for reclamation to anyone who felt like gathering it up and hauling it home on their backs. Isabelle had set her people to gathering up useful stuff almost immediately. They had found good useable things everywhere until they had simply run out of room to store them. Later she had set people to building underground storage spaces and filled some of her dungeons with more important finds like paper they turned into fuel, metals, medical supplies, old vehicles that could serve as human or horse drawn wagons and weapons.
She had been the peaceful type before the wars, but a difficult life turned many people violent and life was very dangerous. She had learned to fight and fight well because everyone needed to if they wanted to survive.
Servers began to bring platters of food. The newcomer, who had not been introduced to her except as her future husband, took each plate from the servers and offered the food as he sat next to her. His courtesy surprised her. He didn’t look much like a sweet, accommodating guy.
She took some but didn’t feel much like eating. They exchanged only the most superficial words. Finally she finished and set her fork aside.
He continued to eat longer and then finished also. The priest, Uncle and Angela were obviously continuing to eat and she expected them to linger at the table for some time.
The man, her future husband leaned a bit and spoke quietly to her. She doubted anyone else could hear him his voice was so quiet. “Are you interested in marriage?” he asked.
“Not really, but I doubt if Uncle will give me the option of refusing,” she told him.
“I will not force you to marriage and I won’t let him do it, either. I would prefer a happy bride,” he said.
“I don’t know you,” she snarled. “Why would I want to marry someone I don’t even know? I hadn’t planned to marry at all.”
“Is the problem marriage?’ he asked, “or is it marriage to me?”
“It’s marriage to anyone. I hate being used and taken for granted. I also don’t need to be told what needs doing. I can figure it out better than most people I know, especially men.”
He sort of grunted as though she had confirmed something he knew and nodded his head.
“Where can we talk privately?” he asked.
“My room maybe,” she suggested. “I trust you won’t try to take advantage of me,” she said dryly. “You don’t seem entirely stupid or violent, unlike some of Uncle’s cronies.”
His mouth firmed and he said, “You are safe with me. If you don’t want something to happen, it won’t.”
She rose from the table and he accompanied her to her room with the laughing approval of her relative.
Chapter 6
Behind the closed door she invited him to sit with her at a table with two chairs, and waited for him to speak.
“When did you hear about me?” he asked.
“Just a few hours ago, from Uncle,” she said. “I don’t even know your name.”
“I wanted you to be my wife, but I wanted to meet before we decided whether we would suit. Marriage lasts a long time. It can be bad between people who are incompatible. I paid your uncle a sum of precious metals just to meet you.”
“You bought me?” she asked.
“No,” he said, his deep voice infused with some annoyance, “I paid money to meet you. Whether we marry is your choice, but I think you should consider it.”
She got up and stomped away from the table and then came back. He sat and watched her. He was nearly as tall sitting as she was standing up. It occurred to her that he could make her do anything he wanted, but she wasn’t going to just let it happen. She planned to show him that she couldn’t be intimidated into a forced marriage.
“I’ve known people who were happily married, but I’ve known many more who wanted nothing to do with it. Running this place has made me dislike and distrust men,” she told him. “Uncle sold me without my knowledge or consent, which only confirms what I’ve come to believe. He didn’t even have the courtesy to introduce us.”
She looked angry…and quite beautiful with high color in her face and a confrontational posture. He made a strategic decision to agree with her and did the grunt and nod thing again but she had more to say. “On the other hand my place here is becoming more insecure by the day. I’ve always been afraid my uncle would force me to work the bedrooms at some point. Marriage might be better even if the man was unattractive or obnoxious.”
“Do you find me unattractive?” he asked.
“You’re OK, I guess, but I’m more worried about your personality and your habits than I am about your looks. There are some habits men have that I cannot abide.”
“I think I’m a pretty normal man. I don’t have any real perversions,” he told her.
“I have only your word on that,” she said. “It’s not very reassuring…but still…I know what Uncle is like and he does not care for me at all.”
“So you had no idea about your uncle’s plans for you and us?”
“I suspected some plot. I could feel it in the air, but he took me by surprise…again.”
“Again?” he questioned.
“When the wars started my father and I and some others took refuge here. It was a family property my father inherited. We were able to get by here until the largest fighting passed. Peace, such as it was, came after there were too few people to fight and no more governments to make them do it.”
“Now people here only fight for personal survival,” he agreed. “Where’s your father?”
“Dead now,” she replied. “I believe by poison, but there was little I could do to get rid of the person who did it. I also have no real proof he did it, just a feeling.”
“Your uncle, of course,” he said.
“It is pretty much an open secret. Everyone knows what happened to my father. It made people afraid to oppose Uncle and there is no such thing as law enforcement anymore. In fact whoever has the strength and the weapons rules, and can do whatever they want to us.”
“He is of your family?” he asked.
“Uncle is related to my mother’s family. He was actually her uncle…I suppose my great uncle. I don’t like to claim him. He and my mother were not close. There was some kind of falling out with their family and I think he spe
nt time in jail years ago. Nothing he’s done since I met him would make me happy to know him or trust him.”
Isabelle did not say anything else. She was waiting for something, some sign about the man’s thoughts and intentions. At least he hadn’t raped her, so he was capable of some self-control, which made him unique in her experience.
“So have you even considered marriage?” he asked.
She smiled with more than a hint of irony. “I was engaged before the wars but my fiancé died in the fighting. Since then no, never until today, but this place under my uncle’s authority is like Hell on Earth. It’s not safe for anyone and it’s pretty miserable for everyone here. It’s been getting steadily worse. Plus most of the men are perverts.”
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