Susan Paul - The Captive Bride

“Please,”she whispered.

He swung her up into his arms and carried her to the fire, setting her before it and saying, “Can you sit while I fetch a blanket?”

She nodded. But her muscles were not as convinced. The moment he let go of her she rolled down to the floor and lay there, helpless and weak as a babe, until he returned and pulled her up to sit.

“Sleep will do you good,”he muttered, setting the blanket about her shoulders. “Now you shall have your modesty while I rid you of this foul garment. Don’t squawk at me, woman. I’m not the one who sent you out into the mud and rain, whatever you see fit to tell yourself. Hold still.”He took the back of her chemise and, with an easy motion, tore it apart. Katharine made a sound of protest, but he ignored it and pulled the garment from her body.

“Now,”he said, tossing the ruined chemise away, “to wash you.”

She was too weary to argue when he lay her down once more, still wrapped in her blanket and near the warmth of the fire. He rose and brought back a bucket and cloth, then knelt and drew out one of her arms.

“What have you done with my ladies?”she murmured as he dipped the cloth in the bucket. “Ariette and M-Magan?”

He glanced at her as he began to wash the mud away. The water, to Katharine’s surprise, had been heated. She closed her eyes and murmured with utter pleasure as the warmth soothed her chilled flesh.

“I gave them over to Sir Aric and bid him do as he pleased. By now I imagine he’s beaten them both senseless.”

Katharine’s eyes grew wide and she tugged to free her arm. “No…”

“What? You’re not troubled for them, are you? Not when you took them out into the night for such adventure? What did you think to do, Katharine?”He drew her other arm out to give it the same cleansing as the first.”You knew you could not run from me forever.”

She was silent, and gave him a stubborn glare.

“It is no matter,”he told her. “I shall have Aric persuade Mistress Magan to give me the truth. It should not take long. She’s terrified of him.”He shoved her arm back beneath the blanket and moved down to wash her legs.

“How did you attain knighthood, Senet Gaillard?”she asked with all the hatred she felt for him. “Beating in-nocent women to your own purpose? You’re an animal, and no better, I vow.”

The warm, damp cloth in his hand slid slowly upward from her foot across the curve of her calf, to her knee. The touch was so pleasurable that Katharine had to bite her tongue, hard, to keep from murmuring with it. All the while, the man held her gaze.

“An animal,”he repeated thoughtfully, drawing the cloth back toward her foot in a slow, gentle caress. His other hand, holding her ankle, spread its fingers wide over her flesh, pressing soothingly against the aching muscles there. He dipped the cloth into the water again, then brought it back, hot and new, to bathe her frozen toes. The pleasure was so intense it was nearly painful. Katharine drew in a slow, steadying breath.

“Aye,”she said unevenly. “To treat w-women so.”

He set her leg on the floor, beneath the cover, and drew out the other. Dipping the cloth into the heated water again, he said, solemnly, “One day, Katharine, I vow, you shall say otherwise.”

They were silent again. Her eyes drifted shut with the tingling sensation of warmth returning to her limbs, and weariness tugged mightily, but she murmured, “I meant to find Lord Hanley. To wed him before I might be forced to marry you.”

“Lord Hanley?”he said with a measure of surprise. “Did you think to go all the way to the Holy Land?”

“No,”she said wearily.

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.”

“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.”