Aldys and Gytha leaned in close, each taking her hand and squeezing it. ‘Hush now, lady,’ Aldys repeated. ‘Rest and gain your strength.’
Because you will need it later were the unspoken words in her warning. But later came much too soon.
‘Lady?’ a voice called from the hallway. Sybilla could not identify the person behind the call.
‘What do you want, boy?’ Aldys asked.
‘Lord Soren sends me to bid you make ready for him.’
‘He sends a boy to tell you such things?’ Gytha whispered.
‘Monsters such as him will use anyone they can to do their bidding—women, children, whoever!’ Aldys’s anger made her voice low and almost unrecognisable.
‘Lady?’ the boy asked.
‘Aye, lad. I heard your message.’ Sybilla nearly could not get the words out, but she asked one question. ‘Are you of Alston?’
‘Nay, lady. I am Raed of Shildon.’
‘Shildon?’ she asked. A village some days’ journey to the east from Alston.
‘Aye, lady. My lord Soren took me from there to serve him.’
Sybilla sank deeper onto the pallet, her head pounding now from the injury and from all that faced her. Dear God in Heaven, he was a monster! He stole children from their families and forced them into his service? She shook her head, unable to say or think anything more.
Agitated by this news of how Soren acted, Sybilla could find no rest. She tossed and shifted on the pallet, for both comfort and ease escaped her. Nothing eased the pain in her head or in her heart. She felt the tenuous control she’d managed begin to wane as the hours passed. When she heard the sound of heavy footsteps approaching down the corridor outside her doorway, she wished she could have fainted and not faced what would follow his arrival.
But the saints above and even the Almighty seemed to ignore her prayers and kept her from sinking into oblivion. Sybilla hoped only not to disgrace herself and her name when he touched her, but from the way the fear took hold, she knew any control she had would end the first moment he came close.
Chapter Five
Soren had tried not to think much on the coming night, he just wanted to accomplish as much as possible before the sun set. So, he’d focused his thoughts on how to hold so many prisoners, and how many of his own men had been killed, and how many villeins had fled his approach and how many yet remained to tend the fields, and other matters as weighty as those. It was only as he climbed the steps leading to the second floor of the corner tower of the keep that he realised he’d thought about her more than he wanted to admit … even to himself.
The scorn and scolding he saw in the gazes of his soldiers who stood guard stopped him in his steps. He was about to address their insubordination when Stephen called out his name. Since the man stopped at the end of the corridor and did not come to him, Soren walked back to hear his concerns.
‘Soren, is this wise?’ Stephen asked in a low voice.
‘What do you speak of?’
‘I know that a man’s blood runs hot after battle, but is this wise?’
Coming from this man, someone who had learned the hard lesson of misplaced lust after a battle, gave Soren pause. But, this was not of his concern.
‘If I was caught in the throes of bloodlust, you would be lying unconscious on the floor for asking such a thing and I would already be lying between the wench’s thighs halfway to satisfaction,’ he said. Soren glared at his friend. ‘So, ask me not such things and we will both be the better for it.’ Soren turned away, but was stopped by Stephen’s grasp on his arm. He shrugged it off easily.
‘She is your wife now, Soren.’
‘She is Durward’s get.’ The men who fought with him knew, had heard, his plans for any who carried the blood of Durward of Alston and who came under his control. In all the dark and painful detail. The change in her circumstances mattered not.
‘And now your wife. Different than what you had planned on. A different matter completely now.’
‘And my concern alone, Stephen. Do not make me regret accepting you into my service.’
The warrior looked as though he wanted to argue, but he controlled that urge and nodded. With only one more glance over his shoulder at Soren, Stephen left. Soren continued his path down to the doorway to her chamber. The guards stepped aside and waited for his orders.
‘Stay down there. I will call you if you are needed,’ he said, directing them to the place where he’d just spoken to Stephen. ‘No one comes further until I say so.’
He noticed the sweat on his palms as he reached for the latch and lifted it. He swore he felt no nervousness, but his heart raced and his chest tightened as he faced the next step in seeking vengeance against the man who had destroyed his life … and his body and soul. Soren pushed open the door and stepped inside.
Her servants, both the older, stout-figured one and the younger, lithe-bodied one, stood like statues next to the pallet. The wench lay nearly motionless on its surface—motionless but for the quick and shallow rise and fall of her chest and the curling of her fingers as though she tried to take hold of the bedcover and could not find purchase of it.
‘Can she see?’ he asked. The injury to her head did not necessarily mean blindness. ‘When the bandages were removed?’
With a stiff shake of her head, the older woman confirmed her condition and he let out his breath.
‘I told you to prepare her,’ he said, moving then and making his way slowly across the chamber. ‘Undress her and get out.’
‘My … lord …’ the younger one stuttered, bowing her head now in an unsuccessful attempt to placate him. ‘Twas too late for that.
He hesitated in spite of his intentions and watched as they helped her to stand next to the bed. Now in a clean gown and tunic—what did they call those, syrce and cyrtel?—with her injury tended to, Soren could see her loveliness. And he could see the terror that drained her face of any colour and made her body tremble with fear.
Her pale hair fell in waves over her shoulders, but it was her hands that caught his eye. Fine and graceful, like the curve of her neck as she whispered to her servants. Any trace of the earlier bravery she’d displayed had fled her and he could see that she was younger than he first thought … more beautiful as well. But it was her delicate features that struck him now. She was a well-born lady and he was.
He shook his head to clear his thoughts and to focus his intentions. ‘Either you undress her or I will see to it,’ he said, harsher than he needed to, but he made his point.
Soren turned away then, trying to ignore them, hearing them move to do his bidding rather than allow him to do it. Soren busied himself with removing his heavy leather belt and scabbard, and lifting the chain coif from his head and loosening the leather helm. Turning away, he positioned the leather patch to make certain it hid the stitched flesh that covered the place where his eye should be. When it grew silent behind him, he turned back to find the wench lying under the bedcovers and her garments in the hands of her maids.
Good. He let out a breath he did not realise he’d held. His task here would be done quickly and he could see to more important matters. If his seed did not take, he could visit her until it did and then not see her until the birth of his heir.
As he’d realised during his hours of toiling to make this place his, apathy would be a more fitting punishment than the hatred that simmered just below his skin, waiting to tear free of his control and wreak havoc on his enemies … on her. Though vengeance was key in his plans for her, he would