The Captive Bride

Silence again, until he tucked her finished leg into the covers. “It is a grave sin for a man to love his wife, or for a woman to love her husband,”he told her. “Has not the church declared it so? We must give all our love to God. Perhaps I do you a kind service in forcing you to wed with me, rather than this Hanley, whom you appear to hold very dear. You love him?”

“Yes,”she lied. “With all my heart. And I find no sin in it, nor in anything so pure and abiding.”

He moved to wash her face. The cloth stroked gently over her forehead and cheeks, across her nose and lips and chin, then moved down to her neck.

“I once loved in such a manner,”he said at last, his voice soft and careful. Katharine couldn’t keep the surprise she felt at such words from her expression. “You think it impossible?”he asked at the sight of her raised eyebrows. “I assure you I speak the truth.”He turned to toss the cloth into the bucket. His voice, when he spoke again, was void of emotion. “I loved well and deeply, and with this same abiding passion of which you speak. The church would have found me a very great sinner.”

“Why did you not take her to wife?”Katharine asked. “If you loved her so well, surely you would not have given her up for the sake of Lomas?”

He shook his head, busying himself with picking up her torn clothes and making a pile of them. “Nay, not even for Lomas would I have given my Odelyn up. Nothing could have parted us, save death.”He turned to look at her. “She was foully murdered shortly before we were to marry, and I have grieved her every day these ten years past.”

Katharine touched her lips with her fingers, unable to find words to say for the pity she felt—for him, her basest enemy. Her weariness had surely robbed her of sanity, she thought, for her to feel any manner of sorrow for a man she so fully hated.

He stood with the clothes under one arm and the bucket in his hand.

“And so you see, Lady Katharine, that we are two of a kind, for our hearts have been given to ones forever lost to us. You may at least take comfort in the knowledge that I shall never attempt to win your love. Your devotion to Lord Hanley may remain hallowed and untouched, just as mine for Odelyn ever will.”

She gripped the blanket tightly about her shoulders. “It matters not,”she told him. “I will never wed you of my own free will.”

He began to walk toward the door.

“There is wine and food by your pallet, and a dry chemise that you may don. The pallet and fire should keep you warm enough through what remains of the mom.”

“I will not wed you!”she repeated fiercely.

He ignored her and unlocked the door. “Sleep,”he advised. “We will be wed this evening, when you have had sufficient time to rest.”

“We will not, sir,”she stated.

“Katharine,”he said, making her a mock bow at the open door, “we will.”

Chapter Five (#ulink_92f52a28-36e1-5e96-8920-3bf054999fe1)

“A wager,”said Sir Aric, “that she’ll not come of her own accord.”

“She’ll come,”Senet said, sitting calmly in the lord’s chair in the great hall. He was flanked on either side by Aric and Kayne. Farther away, in his finest robes, sat Lomas’s priest, Father Aelnoth, waiting in stony silence for

Lady Katharine to attend her own wedding. “She understood me well, I vow.”

“I fear Aric has the right of it,”Kayne murmured, his gaze moving slowly over the castlefolk who filled the hall, each and every one of them staring up at Senet with mute reproach. They clearly loved their lady, and had no wish to see her wed by force. “And I do not think it wise that you sent Clarise to tend her. You know what Lady Katharine thinks of her. You might have done better to let her own ladies help her to prepare.”

“It is best, I find, to give no importance to what Lady Katharine thinks,”Senet told him. “At least not until we’ve wed and she’s had time to reconcile herself to her new state. At the moment, she’s not capable of thinking rationally. As to her ladies—”he looked to where Mistresses Ariette and Magan were sitting, on the other side of Father Aelnoth, their faces and bodies rigidly held “—they are not to be trusted until they have made their allegiance to their new lord.”

“I cannot see Mistress Magan bowing to you for any reason,”Aric said irately. “She’s a stubborn, meantempered little wench. Put her elbow in my stomach when I merely tried to set her on my horse, so she did.”He rubbed the offended area and cast a look at the female in question. She took note and gazed back at him with narrowed eyes.

“Clarise returns,”Kayne said, drawing the attention of them all toward the stairs. “Alone.”

Concern was written on the delicate girl’s face as she hurriedly moved toward them. Senet didn’t wait for her to cross the great hall, where all those waiting had turned to watch her, but rose and strode to meet her halfway. He took her hand before she could speak and led her back toward the stairs.

“Lady Katharine will not come,”the girl said breathlessly, in French. “She would not even dress. When I tried to speak to her, she threatened to—”

“I’ll deal with her.”Senet cut her off in a low voice, striving to maintain his outward calm for the benefit of their avid audience. “You need never be afraid of Lady Katharine, Clarise. I promise you this on my honor.”

Kayne and Eric had joined them, and he set Clarise’s hand on Kayne’s arm. “Take Mistresses Ariette and Magan to the solar and wait for me there. I will bring Lady Katharine.”He began to ascend the stairs. “And bid Father Aelnoth to prepare himself. We will begin the ceremony shortly.”

Guards stood at the door of the chamber in which he’d locked his bride. At the sight of him, they stood aside and let him enter. The first thing Senet saw, apart from Katharine standing by the room’s small, lone window, yet dressed in her chemise, was the expensive gown he’d brought her as a wedding gift—lying on the floor.

“We will have an understanding regarding Mademoiselle Clarise,”he said, shutting the door behind him.

Katharine lifted her chin and folded her arms. “Will we?”she asked insolently.

“Indeed, my lady, we will. She is to be treated as an honored guest at Lomas, by yourself, as my wife, and by every other person who bides on my lands, including your ladies. I will not tolerate the least slight toward her, and if she should even once be driven to tears—”

“Never have I met such a hypocrite,”Katharine said, sneering. “Only a few hours ago you spoke so sweetly of the eternal love you bear for your departed betrothed, yet now you trumpet openly an even sweeter concern for your French whore. If you love her so well, Senet Gaillard, then pray, marry her.”

He moved toward her slowly. She stood her ground, eyeing him with defiance. She was, he thought, a beautiful creature, with her long red—gold hair unbound, flowing down the length of her shapely body and past her hips. The chemise she wore was thin enough to tease and entice. He felt a shocking, overwhelming lust for hersomething he’d not felt with the myriad other women who’d tempted him before. But just as he’d not let other women rule him during the past ten years, with passion or lust or anything so foolish, he would not let her do so either. He would be master at Lomas, and the sooner she learned that, the better for all concerned. Especially for her.

“If Mademoiselle Clarise should shed even one tear because of you, Katharine,”he repeated, moving until he stood directly in front of her, “I will turn you over my knee and punish you.”

She pressed her face closer to his, unafraid and daring. “If you think I should deign to waste my time in tormenting your witless little whore, then you greatly mistake the character of my mind. I would rather labor in the kitchens, on my knees, yet, than lower myself to so much as countenance her existence. Keep her away from me, and we shall have no quarrel.”

He shook his head. “Such a sharp tongue you possess, Katharine.”Setting a finger beneath her chin, he lifted it even higher. “No soft and gentle wife will you be, I vow.”

She slapped his hand away. “No wife will I be. I will not wed you!”

“I will give you a choice,”he continued in the same calm tone. “You may don the wedding gown I have brought—”he nodded at the heap on the floor “—or you may be married as you are, in your chemise.”

“You are deaf, dumb, blind and senseless!”she shouted furiously, her hands balling into fists at her sides. “I will not wed you!”

“I give you the span of a minute to make your decision.”

“You would not humiliate me so,”she said with disdain. “You, a knight of the realm? You would not parade any woman before her own people so nearly undressed. And certainly not the woman you mean to have as a wife.”

Senet felt the sharp truth of her words deeply, as if they were knives striking a wound. It would be the meanest manner of torment, especially for a proud woman like Katharine.

“Nay, I would not subject you to such a humiliation, but if you are determined, so be it. You are the one who will conclude the outcome. Quickly, now, Katharine, for we will be wed, even if 1 must carry you naked before all those assembled below.”

“So be it,”she said in a low, heated tone. “I take no responsibility for what you have forced me to, and my people will know the full of it. You may carry me naked before them and stand me in front of a priest, but I will not say the words, Senet Gaillard. I will not.”

He didn’t think he had ever admired a woman so completely before now—certainly not since Odelyn had died, and never in this manner. Katharine was fierce as any warrior, her spirit strong and her determination true. The knowledge that she would be his filled him with exultation. Bending, he looped an arm about her legs and, ignoring her cry of surprise, lifted her over his shoulder. Senet walked out of the chamber and toward the stairs, deaf to his bride’s loud fury and the ungentle blows she struck upon his back.

The great hall was filled to overflowing, Katharine saw as she descended the stairs carried like a sack of grain over Senet Gaillard’s shoulder. And every single person present watched as he made his way, with her all but naked save for the thin chemise she wore. Gritting her teeth she put every ounce of strength she possessed into the fists she flung at him.

“Bastard!”she shouted furiously. “Bastard! Bastard! Oh, God.”She gave up when they reached the bottom of the stairs, and sank her aching fingers into her unbound hair, letting herself go limp against the bouncing rhythm of his stride, wishing that she could somehow disappear. That her people should witness her shame was beyond repair. She would never forgive him. A loud murmuring rose up, and from somewhere to her left she could hear Father Aelnoth making a feeble protest. Katharine shut her eyes tightly against all of it.

He carried her to the small garden solar just off the hall, where her ladies spent many hours plying their needles in the greater sunlight that the chamber’s tall paned windows provided. He set her on the floor, and Katharine barely had a moment to collect herself and push her hair from her face before Ariette and Magan threw themselves at her.

“Oh, my lady!”Magan cried. “We’ve been so worried for you.”