Prisoner of My Desire (10 page)

That first day in the lord’s solar continued endlessly for Rowena, despite the fact that de Chaville had left her the very moment he had finished with her—just as she had always done with him. Of course, she was to remain chained to the bed. Like for like. And if he kept exactly true to what he had endured at her hands, then he would not force her again that day. Verily, she was surprised he had not waited until the middle of the night to summon her to him, for that was when Gilbert had taken her to him that first time.

That first time…she had suffered terrible pain in giving him her maidenhead, made worse because of her ignorance. To be fair, however, he had caused himself pain each time he had fought her, only—he had suffered none today. And she had received no pleasure in taking him,
while he had received his man’s pleasure each time. Yet in order for him to rape her here, he would still receive his man’s pleasure, and there was naught fair in that. In fact, she resented it bitterly, that he would have his revenge
and
that pleasure.

Like for like. If he did keep true, she could expect to be chained to this bed for three nights, then to be released on the third morn. She could also expect him to force her three times the second night, and the third—if he could manage to do so without her caresses to coax him to it. If he could not manage it on his own…she refused to think of what he might do.

Hours passed with no sound to disturb her. Without realizing it had happened, she lost all feeling in her arms. ’Twas when she stretched that she noticed, and then the feeling rushed back with tingling discomfort. She carefully shook her arms periodically after that, and could only imagine what it would feel like after she had slept for long.

Sleep was a long way from coming, however. The chamber darkened with the approach of night, but she did not close her eyes. She had to relieve herself, but fought the feeling until it passed—and began to fret that she would shame herself on his bed if someone…Oh, God, she thought, he had never been released from his chains to relieve himself. Mildred had attended him, and when Rowena thought of how, her skin burned with mortification, and it had not even happened yet to her. But it had happened to him, another humiliation that he had suffered that she
had not even been aware of. Yet if she had considered it at the time, what could she have done to prevent it? Gilbert had not wanted anyone but her and Mildred to know of his presence in the keep, so she could not have sent a manservant to him to make it easier for him to bear.

’Twas almost as if he could read her mind, even through the thick stone walls, for the Lord of Fulkhurst returned then, and he had a maidservant with him, bearing a tray of food. He came directly to the foot of the bed. The woman stopped short as soon as she noticed Rowena, her dark eyes rounding in surprised horror. He had not even covered Rowena when he left her, while she had always drawn that bath sheet he had arrived with back over him before leaving him.

“Put that down, Enid, and go fetch what else is needed,” he told the woman.

Enid did not hesitate and left in a great hurry. Her lord did not notice, for he was watching Rowena. She would not return his look, however, until he ran a finger along the side of her foot, his way of demanding her attention. So she gave it, but with all the hate he was forcing her to feel.

“Oh, ho, what is this? Finally do you show other than a faint heart?” He smiled, but ’twas not true humor, was no more than a further indication of the triumph he was still gloating over. “Notice your antipathy does not displease me. Nay, I welcome it.”

She closed her eyes so he could not see the hatred that pleased him, one small retaliation on
her own part. He would not allow even that.

“Look at me,” he ordered harshly, and when she immediately complied, he said, “That is better. Whenever you are in my presence, wench, you will look at me unless I tell you otherwise. Do not make me repeat it.”

Another threat. He was so good at making them, without naming the consequences. This time she showed him how she felt about it with another baleful glare. Why not, when he
welcomed it?

But he was off on a new subject, the one that had brought him there. “’Twould seem I needs make still another allowance because of your gender. You sent a female to attend me. I would have sent you a male, make no mistake, but I could think of no man I could trust to see to just your needs and not his own as well, when the sight of you as you are would stir any man to lust. So Enid will see to you, as she is used to tending the wounded and bedridden, and without carrying tales, for she lost her tongue long ago when another held Fulkhurst for a time.”

His expression changed to the cruel visage she had seen earlier when he was in a high rage, the face of a man capable of committing any atrocity. Since she had done naught to cause it, she had to assume that it was that mention of Fulkhurst Castle being held by another. And she had thought only she and Gilbert had his enmity? She pitied that “other,” if he or she were not already dead.

But his black look did not last; it returned to that smile that was not a true smile. “I find,
however, that I will not be satisfied unless you have every humiliation that was mine. So I will lend you my own presence while Enid attends your needs, and as I have already warned you, you will keep your eyes on me. You will not try to ignore me or close your eyes against my presence. Do you understand?”

Rowena was too appalled even to nod, but she would have screamed invective at him if she could. And now she knew a further thing he had suffered, the frustration of being unable to answer back, with curse or otherwise.

Enid returned all too soon and began her new duties without being told. Rowena, cognizant of Warrick’s threat, kept her eyes only on him where he leaned against the bedpost. But she did not see him. She concentrated on Enid instead, and on the brief glance she had had of her, picturing the servant in her mind. Despite her gray hair, the woman was not really old, mayhap only two score in years. She had a slightly crooked nose, but otherwise her features were fair, her skin smooth and unlined. And she had gentle hands that were swift and efficient, for which Rowena would be forever grateful.

The worst was finally over, but that violation of her privacy had been worse than the rape. At least with the rape, he had been naked, too, and with her sense of fairness, she felt she deserved it. But not this. Warrick, through his twisted logic, had given her two people to witness her shame, when he had had only one.

She tried to remember that he had suffered the same thing, the same feelings, and that was why
he was forcing them on her. It made no difference. This she had not deserved. And the very moment her gag was removed, she cleared her vision of her self-induced blurring and told him what she thought of him, damn the consequences.

“You are the most despicable, cruel man alive, a thousand times worse than Gilbert!”

His answer was to tell the servant, “I do not care to listen to her, Enid, so keep the food in her mouth so she has no time to do aught but chew it.”

“Bast—”

She nearly choked on the food, there was such a large spoonful of it shoved in her mouth. And before she had half finished chewing it, another took its place. Enid—had she thought she could be grateful to her?—obeyed her lord to the letter. And before Rowena had a chance to say another word, a new gag was being tied in place.

The servant was summarily dismissed after that. And Warrick left the foot of the bed to come to the side and lean over her. His face was almost handsome again, it was so without emotion.

“Stupid wench,” he said blandly. “That was a clever trick, to distort your vision. But had you obeyed me, you would have seen that I lent only my presence, not my attention. Only now you have earned a punishment for your willfulness. Can you guess what it will be?”

His attention? Nay, more than that, for his hand went right to her loins, his fingers pushing painfully into her dry heat and staying there. Her lack of response did not bring a frown this time,
however, for he had the memory of her earlier yielding to assure him that she could resist no longer than he.

Slowly, with supreme confidence, he began to undo the ties on his chausses with his free hand, while the other remained tightly pressed between her legs. And by his order she had to watch him do it.

“Fight it, little thief,” he commanded softly. “Fight it as I did, and learn that the body cares naught about hate and rage and shame. It is but a simple vessel, with simple but powerful instincts, and one of the most basic is the age-old instinct to procreate.”

His flesh sprang loose beneath his tunic, and by the bulge against the black cloth, she knew it was already full-grown. That very knowledge flooded her insides to wet his fingers and she groaned, knowing now what the moisture signified, though his triumphant laugh told her as well.

He did not touch her anywhere else, and he mounted her immediately to slide so easily into her body. This was a punishment, not part of his revenge, not part of his like for like, for he was not supposed to have forced her again until the morrow. Her body did not care. It was providing the means to avoid pain, welcoming the means to procreate, despite the fact that she had already fulfilled that basic instinct. But it was also welcoming another thing, and although she fought it this time, denied it with her whole will, screamed in rage against it, there was pleasure in the deep thrusts rocking her that could not be
denied. And, God help her, Warrick was watching her when that pleasure culminated and burst into throbbing radiance, her total surrender to his mastery writ clearly for him to savor. But she was watching him this time, too, for the first time, and when the same pleasure took him, the cruel lines on his face vanished for an instant, showing her again the truly handsome man beneath the mask of hatred.

She did not want to see that, closed her eyes against it, and did not care if he killed her for it. All he did was collapse against her, his forehead to her pillow, his cheek against her temple, his labored breath ringing in her ears. Nor did he leave her as quickly as before.

When he did, his breath had returned to normal, and his mask was back in place. He made quick work of retying his laces, but with that done, he stared at her, letting his eyes rove down the length of her before coming back to her still flushed face, and his fingers trailed down the soft underside of her raised arm.

“Mayhap you will obey my commands more closely in the future—or mayhap not.” And then his cruel lips curled to sneer contemptuously. “You will admit I never yielded as easily as you, wench. I wonder what the thought of how many times I will come to you in the next days does to you. And I will not wait upon the night, for I do not intend to lose sleep as you did. Are you in dread, little thief, or do you no longer find my revenge quite so distasteful?”

She would have spit in his face if she were not gagged. Her eyes told him so and he laughed.

“Excellent. I would not like to think you await my visits eagerly when I so detested yours, when all I thought about was getting my hands around this soft throat and squeezing the last breath from your little body.”

That his hand came to that area now and squeezed did not cause Rowena alarm. He would never settle for anything as quick and final as her death when he was so cruel and merciless. But he saw her lack of fear, and his hand moved down to squeeze her breast instead of her throat.

“Think you you know me, do you?” he bit out, clearly displeased with her now. “Think again, wench, for you will
never
know me well enough to guess what I am capable of, never know what demons have shaped me and made me into what I am. Best you pray I find revenge against you satisfying, for if it palls, you may well wish for death.”

If he thought merely to frighten her with those words, he was diabolically ingenious.

When Rowena thought of Warrick de Chaville coming to her again, she would begin to tremble, so she did not think of it. But he came.

She was not even awake when he came the next morn, the darkness of the night only just receding. But when she finally became aware of him, she was also aware that he had already coaxed her body to receive him. And he made quick work of it, so quick that she was almost more bitter about having her sleep disturbed than about having her body invaded, for the one was over and done with before she felt much of anything, but as exhausted as she was, she still could not get back to sleep after he left her.

Enid came not long after, but Warrick did not come with the servant this time. And Rowena was in no mood for the sympathetic looks she was receiving from the older woman, yet she
again found herself grateful to her. She had not even known her shoulders were aching from the forced restraint until Enid started to massage the area, and although it was not necessary that she do so, she thoroughly washed the smell of that monster from Rowena’s skin.

But he came again at midday. And he came again at dusk. Rowena’s only compensation was that he had had to work hard to caress that shameful moisture from her the third time. And so it went the next day also, except the third time that day, the last time she should have to suffer his body into hers, was the worst of them all.

The man was not interested in merely preparing her to receive him, he was after something else, and she would not be surprised if it was to drive her mad. He touched her long after he knew she was ready for him, caressed her more than she could bear. He stirred lust in her until she would have begged him to take her, but all she could do was take what he gave, a new knowledge of her own body, a knowledge of her weakness of spirit as well as flesh. The bastard made her want him. And he knew it. ’Twas his final triumph.

The only thing that sustained Rowena was her certainty that she would be released on the third morn, to satisfy his like for like. Yet she dreaded what further revenge he had planned for her, for she did not think for a minute that he would be satisfied merely with what he had already done. He had said her life now belonged to him in payment for Gilbert’s intention of killing him, and that he placed little value on it. He had said
she was now his to do with as he would.

Nay, he would not let her go as she had him—at least not until the child was born. If he meant to keep it, and keep her from it, then he would have to let her go—or merely send her to another of his properties. She still could not let that happen, though she knew not what she could do about it now, when she did not even know what the next day would bring.

It brought Enid with the key to her chains. Rowena had expected Warrick to come himself so he could tell her what further humiliations were to be hers. Enid, of course, could tell her naught. But she had brought food that Rowena was able to feed herself, and she had brought clothes.

The clothes gave Rowena her first suspicions of what was now to be her lot. Her own clothes had long since been taken away, but these new ones were nowise like them. The chemise and outer bliaut were both homespun wool in a drab dun, not overly coarse, but naught that could be considered of a fine quality. They were clothes for a castle servant, the bliaut shorter than any lady would wear it, new, clean, and now Rowena’s. For a girdle there was a strip of braided leather. Thick woolen hose were included, as well as plain cloth shoes, but no soft braies or shift for underwear. She was to be naked under these garments, likely as one more humiliating reminder of her changed circumstance.

And she was to leave the lord’s chamber.

As soon as Rowena had worked the stiffness out of her arms, and dressed and rebraided her
hair, Enid beckoned her to follow. The woman could not tell her what was to be done with her, but she obviously knew where Rowena was to go. And no sooner had they entered the Great Hall than she felt the stare that drew her eyes to the lord’s table.

Warrick sat there, a sunbeam slanting through one of the high windows giving bright gold highlights to his dark blond head. Though the hour had long since passed for breaking his fast, a trencher and a tankard of ale still sat before him. He stared at her without expression, just stared, which made her recall the last time he had seen her, naked on his bed.

But that was over, she reminded herself. She could endure anything else that he intended for her—as long as that was over. However, he did not summon her to him. He had no intention of giving her warning of what was to come. So be it. It could not be so bad if he did not want to witness her horror upon learning of it.

A movement behind him caught her eye before she continued on. She glanced toward the hearth to see a group of women sitting there, all stopped in what they had been doing and staring avidly at her. She had not noticed them sooner because the brightness at the lord’s table did not extend back to the hearth. In fact, the sunbeam was so bright, all around it seemed almost in shadow. But her eyes adjusted now and noted that most of the women were ladies, several of them very young. And the two youngest were frowning at her, frowns so similar…

God’s mercy, Warrick had daughters nigh full-
grown! They did not closely resemble him, except for those frowns that marked them clearly de Chavilles. Then he must have a wife, too. Nay, what lady wife would give up her solar so her husband could rape another woman in it? Then again, any wife of Warrick de Chaville’s would have no say in whatever he did, whether he kept mistresses or raped women in his bed. And Rowena could only pity a woman with such a husband as he.

And then she gasped as one of the women stood up from her stool so Rowena could see her clearly. Mildred! How was it possible?

Joy burst in Rowena’s breast, lit up her face, and she took a step forward. Mildred turned away from her to look toward Warrick, then sat back down, hidden again by the women sitting in front of her. Without a word? Without even an expression of greeting? Rowena did not understand. But then her gaze came back to Warrick to see his smile, and she did understand. In some way this was another revenge on his part. Could he have somehow turned Mildred completely against her? Nay, she did not think that possible, but obviously Mildred was not to talk to her.

The anger burst on her as swiftly as the joy of a moment ago. She had already been disturbed that she was to be allowed naught up her skirts but stockings and skin, already suspicious of the next step of Warrick’s plot to break her, but this, to deny her the woman who was like a second mother to her? She forgot her tenuous position, forgot that he could throw her back in his dungeon, beat her, kill her.

She ignored Enid’s hand pulling on hers and marched up the raised dais to the front of his table until she stood across from him. He did no more than raise his brows in question, as if he could not see that she was enraged.

She leaned forward to hiss for only his hearing, “You can deny me every last thing that I hold dear, but I can and will pray every day for the rest of my life that you rot in hell, Warrick.”

He gave her that cruel smile that she was coming to know so well. “Am I supposed to fear for a soul that is already damned, wench? And I did not give you leave to be so familiar in your address.”

She leaned back, incredulous. She had just cursed him to everlasting hell, and he was only concerned with her use of his first name? She was seething, and he continued to merely smile at her?

“I beg your pardon,” she sneered. “What I should have called you was bastard.”

He stood up so fast, he startled the anger out of her. And before she even thought to run, he leaned completely across the table to grab her wrist.

Rowena gasped, his hold was so tight, but all she heard him say was, “My lord.”

“What?”

“You did not end that statement with the proper address due me. Say ‘my lord.’”

He was not going to kill her for calling him bastard? “But you are not my lord.”

“I am now, wench, and henceforth I will hear
you say so—often. And I will hear you say it now.”

She would rather cut out her tongue. He must have seen that in her stubborn expression, because he jerked her close to warn in a soft but menacing tone, “You will say it, or I will have a whip fetched and mete out the standard punishment due for such insolence.”

’Twas no bluff. He had said it, so he would do it, whether he wanted to do it or not. A man such as he did not give idle threats. And she liked it better when she did not know the consequences.

But she waited several pounding heartbeats before she gritted out, “My lord.”

He released her immediately. She rubbed her wrist while he sat back down, his expression no different from what it had been before she had challenged him—and lost. But this time his look was deceiving, for he was in fact annoyed that the first thing she had done upon her release was to castigate him, when after the past three days she should have been too intimidated to don any mantle of noble outrage.

“Mayhap you are not as bereft in wisdom as you are in intelligence,” he said in response to her capitulation, but then added in a growl, “Get you from my sight ere I take exception to what you
did
call me.”

Rowena needed no further prompting, did not even spare him a parting glare. She hurried over to Enid, who was waiting anxiously below the dais, and followed her out of the hall and down one floor to the kitchen.

The kitchen could usually be found in a separate building out in the bailey, but it was becoming popular in recent years to have the kitchen moved right into the keep, particularly in areas that received a great deal of rain and foul weather. Fulkhurst’s kitchen was one such new addition, having taken the large area where the castle garrison used to be quartered.

There were at least twenty people busy at different tasks in the large room. Preparation of the evening meal was already under way. A huge fire pit was being stoked under a roasting side of beef. Cooks surrounded a long table where vegetables were being peeled, pastries made, meat chopped. The wardrober was doling out spices. Two men-at-arms were eating a hasty meal standing up while a pretty maid flirted with them. A dairymaid was cuffed for spilling a bit of milk from her bucket when she tripped over one of several dogs underfoot. She in turn kicked the dog, which only yelped, but did not relinquish its seat near the butcher’s block. A scullion was washing out tankards from the morning meal. The baker was sliding new loaves into his oven. Two hefty serfs were coming up from the basement with heavy sacks of grain.

Because of the room’s size, it was not oppressively hot, but it was exceedingly warm and smoky with so many fires going and so many wall sconces burning. Rowena took it all in with dread. The steward was there, just leaving the clerk’s office up on a higher level above a store area. But it was not to him that Enid took her. It was to the large woman who had cuffed the
dairymaid. Blond, florid-faced, and quite tall for a woman, at slightly over five and a half feet, she was not a serf but a freewoman, and wife to the head cook.

“So yer the other one from Kirkburough,” Mary Blouet said as she looked Rowena over from head to foot, as just about everyone else in the room was also doing, though not so openly as Mary. “’Twas rumored it were a lady kept in the dungeon, but yer being sent to me puts the lie to that right quickly. Ye will call me Mistress Blouet, and give me no airs or back talk. I have had right well enough of that from that haughty Mildred, and her having the lord’s favor, I cannot give her the back of my hand. But ye be not so favored, are ye, wench?”

“Indeed,” Rowena replied, unable to keep the dejection from her tone, “I am so ill-favored ’tis my lot to be eternally punished.”

“Punished?” Mary frowned. “Nay, not unless it be needful. Well, come along, then. I have to make my rounds, or naught will ever get done, not with the lazy sluts I have in my charge. I will explain yer duties on the way.”

Rowena was surprised. “I am not to work in the kitchen, then?”

“Here?” Mary laughed with genuine humor. “They have enough hands down here to not need more, and my husband does not like my wenches in his domain. He cannot abide laziness in his workers, whereas I am cursed with naught else, and can find no cure for it, not when that bitch Celia belittles my authority the moment my back be turned. And she gets away with it be
cause she be Lord Warrick’s favorite slut, and everyone knows it. How I wish…”

The thought was left unfinished as Mary mounted the stairs back to the Great Hall. Rowena dragged her feet, dreading another encounter with Warrick, but he was no longer in the hall. Not as many ladies remained by the hearth either. And there was no sign of Mildred.

“I have no say over the ladies’ maids,” Mary said when she noticed the direction Rowena was looking toward. “But yer not so lucky as that Mildred was, to be getting such an easy job as that.”

“Has Mildred been here long?”

“Nay, she came with the lord. Why? Do ye know her?”

“Aye.”

“Well, stay away from her. There be levels of hierarchy amongst the castlefolk here as in any keep, and her having the care of the lord’s daughters puts her higher up even than the other ladies’ maids, which be all higher than ye. But yer higher than those kitchen lackeys, so stay away from them, too. Ye will have enough wenches to choose yer friends from that be under my care, but do ye take my advice, ye will not make that Celia one of them.”

Rowena was not interested in “that Celia,” even if she was Warrick’s favorite. She was more concerned with her own predicament. She knew she was to be one of Mary’s “wenches,” but she had yet to be told what that entailed.

Her shock over her new servant status was only mild, for she had already suspected that her
fate would be something of that nature by the clothes she had been given. And one of the first things Warrick had said to her, back in Kirkburough, was that she was lady no longer. The irony was that she could remember wishing for this very thing, that she were no more than a lowly serf with naught to her name that could be coveted and fought over. Verily, she would have to be more careful of her damn wishing in future.