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“I do not love any woman, Hastings. You know that. I would have given my life for her at one time, but I was only a boy. I have not enjoyed her for many years. Aye, then she was a boy’s dream.”
He had joined to her when he had been just a boy? Before he had gone to the Holy Land? “Do not lie to me, Severin. There is no need. I merely wish to leave. You can seat her in my place and give her my gowns. She can sleep with you in my bed.”
“I can do that with you here. No. You will remain at Oxborough and see to your duties. When I decide we will go to Rosehaven, then we will go.”
He turned from her and walked back into the keep. She didn’t think, just picked up a stone that lay near her feet and hurled it at him. It missed him, but not by much, loudly striking the stone wall of the keep and cracking in two. He turned more quickly than she believed a man could move. He already held a knife poised in his hand. He stared at her, stared down at the stone that had come close to striking him in the back.
She was breathing hard. She hadn’t been aware before, but she was now. There were people about them, all staring now, even the chickens and dogs quiet.
He sheathed his knife again at his waist and slowly walked back to her.
He stopped just inches from her. She didn’t move. “Did you not believe me before, Hastings?”
She stared at his throat.
“You dared to threaten me again?”
“I wish I had struck you.”
He grabbed her arm and strode out of the inner bailey, walking so quickly he was dragging her. She pulled and jerked but it did no good. The sleeve of her gown ripped from the shoulder. He merely closed his hand around her bare upper arm and walked more quickly. When he reached the stable, he yelled for Tuggle to saddle his horse.
He stopped then, stared down at her, and shook his head. “I am going to take you down to the beach and beat you. I should beat you here, before all our people so they will know that I am the lord here, but I do not want to test their loyalties. MacDear might poison me.”
“You mean to beat me to death as my father did my mother? Go ahead, Severin. And what will you give as your reason? You know that my father found my mother in the falconer’s bed. In this case, it is you in Marjorie’s bed. It is I who should beat you to death.”
He actually growled deep in his throat. “You will not learn to keep your tongue behind your teeth, will you?”
Tuggle led out Severin’s huge warhorse, stamping and snorting.
He picked Hastings up and threw her over the horse’s saddle, then leapt up behind her. He forced her to remain facedown over his legs.
Gwent came running toward them, yelling, “My lord, do you wish me to accompany you? Where do you go?”
“I find it amazing that a man who owes me his loyalty tries to protect you.”
“I will vomit if you make me remain like this, Severin.”
“I am taking her to the beach to speak in private to her, Gwent. Leave go.” Severin flattened his palm against the small of her back and kicked his horse in its sides. The last person Hastings saw was Lady Marjorie, standing on the keep steps.
Hastings didn’t vomit. She became dizzy, but it passed when Severin pulled his stallion to a halt at the top of the cliff edge beside the path that led to the beach. He dragged her to the ground.
“Do not fight me,” he said, and shook her. “Come.”
He forced her before him down the narrow cliff path. She stumbled twice. Both times he caught her.
When she reached the sand beach, she pretended to crumble. He eased his hold. She jerked her arm free of his hand and ran. Her foot hit a piece of driftwood and pain shot through her toes. But she didn’t slow. It was then, of course, that she began to think clearly again. There was no other way back up the cliff save that single narrow path. She was running her heart out and there was nothing in front of her but barren rocks and smooth-faced cliff face. Rocks. She’d hit him with one this time.
She stopped abruptly and turned. He was walking slowly toward her, knowing she was trapped, not exerting himself. She picked up a rock and waited.
He saw what she had done. It didn’t slow him. Perhaps he even began to walk faster.
“Put down the rock, Hastings,” he called, his voice loud and strong over the gentle waves that washed onto the shore not more than a dozen feet from them. It was chilly here, the breeze off the sea tangling through her hair, pressing her gown against her legs. She was breathing hard.
She held the rock more tightly. Surely there must be something she could do, save stand here like a fool ready to hurl a rock at him that he would easily duck.
What to do?
She refused to wait here like a goat tethered to a stake, refused to let him so easily take her and beat her. She could see the anger in him, see it in the starkness of his eyes, see it in the cords that stood out in his neck. But he had never struck her, never. But now there was Marjorie. And there had been his saddle, hurled down on her.
