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“There was no other night save our wedding night, damn you. No more lies, Daria.”
“Then you won’t be gentle. You will take me without speaking a kind word to me. You will treat me like a slut who deserves nothing but your contempt.”
He leaned close to her, for her voice had risen. “Speak softly, wife. I have no wish for our host to wonder why you become the shrew.”
She rose, not waiting for him or one of the servants to assist her. She hissed down at him, “I won’t prepare myself, Roland, as you so sweetly say it. I don’t want you to come to me; I don’t want you to treat me like a convenient body to be used by you. Sleep with one of the castle wenches, I care not.”
She swept from the dais, leaving her husband to stare after her, half of him wanting to thrash her, the other half wanting to rip off her clothing and caress her and kiss her until she screamed for him to come into her.
Under his breath he said, “Damned unreasonable wench.”
“I believe I have told you before, Roland, that women are the very devil.”
Roland looked at the fierce warrior who sat on his right side and grinned reluctantly. “Your lady is sweet and guileless and tender as a ripe peach. You cannot be mean her.”
“No, but I did, at one time. It wasn’t too long ago. I misjudged her severely. I hurt her repeatedly. Now I would sever my arm before I would see her sprain her little finger.”
Roland had nothing to say to that. He merely raised an incredulous brow.
“You
r wife is upset—nay, she is but a bride. You are wedded less than a week. She isn’t at all uncomely, Roland, and I assume that you found her much to your liking, since she is with child. So—”
“I don’t wish to speak of the babe or of her.”
“Ah, you simply wish to bend her to your will?”
“It is a beginning. I begin to believe her well-broken, then she flings her sarcasm at my head. I don’t like it.”
“The problem, Roland, is that a man’s will seems to shift and change with the passing minutes and hours, particularly if the lady resides in his mind or in his spirit.”
“I simply desire her, that is all. She resides nowhere, certainly not within any part of me. Any female would do just as well. Any female would probably do better, since Daria is so ignorant, she must be instructed to—well—”
To Roland’s relief, Graelam de Moreton held his peace. Indeed, he turned to speak to his steward, a craggy-faced man named Blount.
Roland drank another flagon of ale in splendid silence, left to himself by his host. He chewed over his own feelings of ill use at the hands of a female who should be babbling with gratitude, who should be fully aware that she would be lying dead in a ditch if it weren’t for his generosity. By all the saints, he’d tended her with compassion whenever she’d been ill. And here was Graelam quoting pithy words that were likely from some minstrel’s lay. At last he bade his lord and lady a good night and strode from the great hall, his destination his wife’s bed.
There would be no sarcasm from her mouth when he covered her.
14
Daria sat on a narrow chair close to one of the window slits. The night was clear, a sliver of moon glowing through an occasional cloud. A breeze cooled her brow. There was a lone dog in the inner bailey below. He occasionally raised his head and barked when a soldier strode by on his way to the Wolffeton barracks. Time passed.
Daria knew he would come to her eventually, so she wasn’t startled when the chamber door opened and then quietly closed. Nor did she move.
She didn’t wait for him to command her, but said only, not turning to face him, “I mean it, Roland. You will not shame me again.” She was pleased her voice sounded firm in the silent chamber. She desperately wanted to look at him, to see if the expression on his face had gentled. His words told her of his expression as he said calmly, “I will do just as I please with you, Daria. You are my wife, my chattel, my possession. And what I please to do with you now is come into you.”
She was glad that she wasn’t facing him. She felt the night breeze flutter through the tendrils of hair on her forehead, felt the softness of the night on her face. “I remember the first time—I loved you so very much, you see, and there was nothing on this earth I wouldn’t have done for you. I was terrified that you would die, terrified that you would be gone from me when I’d just found you. I wanted you, all of you, and that night I knew that you would teach me what it was like to be joined to the man I loved, and I was happy. When you were fevered and wanted me—”
“Nay, I have never wanted you,” he said, and was thankful she hadn’t turned, for she would see the lie in his eyes.
“Very well, you wanted that woman Lila. You didn’t hurt me overly, even in your urgency, and I remember those feelings that were building deep inside me, low in my belly, I think, but then when you came into me, there was pain and the feelings left me.” Now she turned to face him, her head cocked to one side in question.
“Were those feelings real, Roland? This woman’s pleasure you speak about, is it real? I have wondered.”
“When you take a lover, perhaps you will learn the answer.”
She continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “Then, just as you were about to spill your seed inside me, you stared up at me and your hands tightened about my waist, and in that instant I thought you recognized me, knew me, knew that you were joined to me, not that woman Lila.”
