The Captive Bride. Susan Paul Spencer
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.”
“Are you well, Lady Katharine?”Ariette asked. “Oh, here, please—”She began to pull the hair covering from her head, in order to set it over Katharine’s shoulders.
“Nay, Ariette.”Katharine stopped her. “Senet Gaillard wishes to humiliate me openly. Let him do so and prove what manner of lord he intends to be.”She gave that man a defiant glare.
“Lady Katharine, you are overset,”Sir Kayne said gently, untying the elegant cape about his massive shoulders. “None of us would ever allow such a thing.”Keeping his eyes lowered, he quickly set the garment about her. No sooner had he done so than Senet grasped it and tossed it back to his friend.
“Lady Katharine chooses to humiliate herself, Kayne, and you’ll not save her from such rash foolishness. She will wear my cloak when we wed.”
“How many times must I speak the words?”Katharine demanded. “I will not—”
“Quiet, woman.”Senet cut her off impatiently. “I can scarce think with all your noise.”
Noise? Katharine thought with complete outrage. She’d acquaint him with noise. She opened her mouth, only to have him dismissively turn away.
“Aric.”He said to that man, who was standing by the door, watching the scene with clear amusement.
“Aye?”
“Which of these women do you prefer? Mistress Magan or Mistress Ariette?”
“Senet,”Sir Kayne said uncomfortably, moving nearer to the women as if to protect them.
“Which one?”Senet demanded.
Sir Aric’s lazy gaze fell on Magan, and she pressed more closely to her mistress. Katharine set an arm about her, feeling the younger woman’s violent trembling. She realized, with sudden clarity, what Senet Gaillard meant to do.
“You will not,” she said.
He looked at her, his blue eyes cold, his handsome countenance as inflexible as stone. “I will.”
Their gazes held for a long, silent moment, with only Magan’s soft whimpering filling the room.
“She is my ward,”Katharine said at last, striving to keep her tone even. “I have sworn to keep her beneath my protection until she marries.”
“Then perhaps Aric had best take her to wife, rather than as a whore.”
“You ask much of me,”Sir Aric said over Magan’s sudden wails. “I don’t want a wife.”
“There are compensations,”Senet told him. “She comes with property and monies, a small but prosperous estate in Somerset, and full rights to several acres of forested land. All of it yours for the bedding of her.”
Magan gripped Katharine with both arms, with fingers and nails, weeping violently, pleading for safety.
“You cannot do this!”Katharine shouted. “To violate one so innocent—and a lady born. She would be ruined forever, with no chance of gaining a respectable husband.”
Senet turned to look at her. “She is in your keeping, Katharine. Think of the way to make certain of her safety, for I assure you it is very simple.”
She couldn’t. God help her. She couldn’t say the words to put herself into his keeping forever. He wouldn’t do this horrible thing to Magan. It was impossible.
“Take her, Aric,”Senet said, his voice hard and unyielding. “You may use my chamber if you desire privacy for bedding your newly betrothed bride.”
“Very