ISOLDE PRESIDED OVER A MORNING MEAL UNLIKE ANY PREVIOUSLY served at Rosecliffe. There were no morning prayers preceding it, and no easy hum of conversation as the boiled oats, honey, and milk bread were served. At the high table she sat alone with a shifting cadre of rough Welsh men-at-arms lounging at the table nearest her. They were loud and boisterous, elated by their victory, and they ate and drank as if they’d never before had a completely filling meal.
Meanwhile, she sat there, sick at heart, unable to eat at all. Unable even to stomach the idea of food. The serving women scurried about, their shoulders hunched in fear. The cook’s helpers and the several pages performed their tasks as usual, albeit silently. But the absence of the male servants was unmistakable.
Rhys was taking no chances, she realized. But where had he put them all? They hadn’t been in the donjon. Were any of them wounded? The very thought made her chest hurt.
She spied Magda refilling ewers of ale and, when the girl glanced up, signaled her over. One of the soldiers leered and said something to the serving girl. He laughed uproariously when she shied away from him, but he did not prevent her passage.
Magda’s hand shook as she bent to refresh Isolde’s untouched ale, and Isolde glared at the oaf who’d deliberately terrified her. “Rest easy,” she whispered to the distraught maid. “I have seen George and he is unhurt. But he has been imprisoned along with the other men-at-arms.”
“He is not hurt? You are certain?” The girl’s eyes glistened with worried tears.
“Yes. They are held in the donjon, but otherwise they look unharmed.”
“Oh, thank you, miss.” She pressed Isolde’s hand fervently. “Thank you.”
Isolde gave her a bittersweet smile. “Does your young man love you as much as you love him?” The question slipped out before she could prevent it.
“Oh, yes,” Magda answered, bobbing her head. “He meant to speak to my father this Sunday coming, and then, upon Lord Rand’s return, to ask his permission for us to wed.”
It hurt to look into the maid’s brown eyes and see how deeply she loved, and was loved in return. For a short time, fleeting but intense, Isolde had thought she might find such a love. But it had all been a lie, a huge deception.
She smiled grimly, then looked away. “I know our plight appears hopeless, but when my father learns of this, he and my uncle will come to our rescue.”
“D‘you think so?” Magda asked hopefully. “D’you think they can chase these thugs away?” Then fear crept back into her voice. “What of the village? What of my mother and father and all the little ones?”
Isolde clasped the maid’s trembling hand, as worried as she. “I don’t know but I’ll try to find out. Meanwhile be very careful and try not to get caught alone with any of these—” She broke off when Rhys strode into the hall.
Spying him, Magda let out a squeak. “You be careful of that’un, miss. Be very careful.” Then she scurried away, leaving Isolde to face her enemy alone.
He saw her at once. Their gazes met with an unsettling jolt—at least it was unsettling for Isolde. For him it seemed of no particular moment, for his eyes moved on, scanning the hall with a proprietary air.
The unconscionable wretch!
She bent to her food, determined to conceal her distress. But every bite tasted like congealed lard. She had to force herself to swallow.
He wended his way through the hall, shaking hands, slapping backs, and exchanging congratulations with his men.
“Good work last night, Glyn. Good work.”
The other man laughed. “They didn’t put up any kind of a struggle.”
“They sure didn’t,” the man who’d accosted Magda interjected. “An’ you promised us a good fight.”
Rhys grinned and shrugged. “I expected a fight from them, Dafydd. But then the English have ever been a disappointment to me.”
Isolde’s nostrils flared with anger and the boiled oats stuck in her throat. Miserable cur. Lying snake. Unholy bastard! She shoved the food away and lurched to her feet. How dare he boast of his triumph in front of her!
He looked up when she stood, as did all his men. At once the hall went quiet, and for a long, frozen moment, their gazes clashed.
“Sit down,” he ordered. “I’ll be with you shortly.” Then he turned his attention back to his men.
Pitch kindling tossed upon glowing coals could not have been more incendiary than were those few dismissive words. Isolde did not consider how to react, she simply reacted. She pushed her chair aside, and with her back rigid and her chin jutting forward, she left. She marched across the wide hall toward the doors, holding her skirts high enough so that her strides were long and steady. He would not let her leave, she knew that much. But he would not cow her, either, and he would have to learn that lesson now.
She reached the doors and yanked one of them open. She crossed the threshold and stomped down the steps. Then across the bailey—to where? she wondered. The gate was closed but it was not barred, so she headed in that direction.
“You cannot leave the castle grounds,” a guard called down in Welsh. “No one can.”
“Go to the devil,” she muttered. Her heart had started to race. Was Rhys letting her escape? She was confused as she put her shoulder to the mammoth gate.
“You cannot leave,” the guard repeated as he exited the gate tower stairwell and hurried over to her.
“Touch me and I’ll have your hand sliced from your wrist,” she spat. Where such a vile threat came from she did not
know. But at that moment she meant it with every fiber of her being.
He wiped one dirty hand across his mouth. “I cannot let you go,” he insisted, shaking his head.
The gate shuddered open a crack. Emboldened, Isolde shoved harder, throwing her entire weight against the thick oak. The guard grabbed it and pulled back.
“Get away! Get away from me!” she screamed like a madwoman. A few more inches and she could slip through.
“Get back to your post, Tadd. I’ll handle this matter.”
Isolde flinched at the sound of that hated voice. When the guard released the gate, however, she did not look at Rhys, but instead renewed her efforts to push it open.
“Perhaps I should have the same conversation with you that I had with Osborn,” he said, his voice cool and controlled. Smug.
Isolde swallowed hard but kept pushing. The gate eased open. One inch. Another. The space was nearly wide enough. Then he reached over her shoulder and shoved it wider still. “I told him your safety depended on his good behavior,” he said, practically in her ear.
Isolde froze. Beyond the gate the bridge was open. The road led down the rocky hill to the town square. She could see the well and the small green. The thatched roofs of the half-timbered crackwork houses looked as they always did with the morning sun gleaming on them. Smoke puffed from twoscore chimneys. It was all reassuringly familiar, and the temptation to flee was overwhelming. But his words stopped her, for the threat they implied was unmistakable.
“Are you saying you would punish him for something I might do?”
“I would. ’Tis the nature of hostage-taking,” he added. He pushed the gate all the way open. “Your choice.”
“My choice?” Slowly she turned her gaze away from the village until she was staring at him, this man who had tricked her and used her and stolen her innocence. “’Tis plain I have no choices here. You have no intention of allowing me free passage from Rosecliffe.”
He waited a moment before responding. “You mistake me, Isolde. I will indeed allow you to choose, if only to satisfy
my curiosity. Will you stay and suffer the same fate as your people? Or will you flee and leave Osborn and the others to bear the extra burden of your desertion?” He gestured with his hand. “Go. Go, if that is your will.”
How she wanted to do just that! How desperately she wanted to flee his presence. But she did not trust him, and anyway, something in her could not abandon Osborn to any additional cruelties beyond those he already suffered.
“What will you do to him?”
He smiled. His teeth were straight and white in his shadowed face. His eyes were black as sin. “Why should you care?” His eyes slipped lower and moved over her with casual insolence, and her resolve nearly broke. She almost ran. His look was so possessive, so knowing, that she shivered with the most perverse awareness. This was the same man she’d lain with last night, the minstrel she’d been so enamored of. The man she’d sacrificed her innocence to. But he was a Welsh rebel, someone she’d always hated. Now she hated him more than she ever had before.
She turned away, away from the village and its beckoning freedom, and faced instead the castle yard. For the first time in her life it was a strange place to her, her home and yet her prison.
Drawing a steadying breath, she cast him a sidelong look. “I am no coward to abandon my responsibilities. Besides,” she added in a bitter tone, “you have no intention of letting me go. I am too important a hostage, too important to this mad plan of yours.”
He shrugged, and half of his mouth turned up in a smug smile. “Perhaps you are right. But now you will never know.”
She did not want to hear anything further of his hateful words, so she started back to the keep. But he caught her by the arm and swung her around to face him.
“I want life in this castle to continue in its normal manner.”
“Normal? ’Tis hardly normal to—”
He cut her off with a hard shake. “Everything is to proceed as it did before. The kitchen work. The gardening. The laundry and candlemaking and alehouse.”
“You are mad to believe that
anything
can go on as it did before!”
“You will do as I say, Isolde. I saw how you managed this place. You did it before. You will do it again.”
“Without any menservants? Who is to check the fish traps and clean the catch? Who is to chop wood and carry in water? What of the fowler? And the stablemaster?”
“You will have them again, soon enough.”
“When?” She glared furiously at him.
“When they swear fealty to me.”
“Hah! That will never happen.” She tried to twist out of his hold but his powerful hands tightened on her arms.
“It will happen,” he vowed, his voice low and menacing. “When the people see your calm acceptance of me, they too will grow calmer. One by one they will come around.”
“Then it will never happen,” she repeated. “For I will never accept your presence here.”
He met her furious glare with a confident grin. “So you say. My experience with you tells me otherwise. It seems you can be persuaded to just about anything. Surely you have not forgotten last night.”
She wanted to scratch his eyes out! She wanted to hang her head in shame. Yes, she remembered last night. If only she could forget.
Though her face had gone hot with color, she met his mocking gaze. “Last night I made a fatal error in judgment about you. Last night I believed what I saw on the surface, and was too foolish to look any deeper. But now I have discovered your true self, and I will never,
never
be persuaded to make that same mistake again.”
His left hand clenched, just a little. For a moment she thought she had wounded him with her words, for something flickered in his eyes, some emotion too fleeting for her to decipher. But then he grinned, the cold half-grin of a predator, and she knew she was wrong. Her words had meant nothing to him. Less than nothing. For words did not count with men of his ilk. He was a man of war. He’d thrived on hatred his whole life; he was glutted on it now.
He released her arms, but before she could gather her wits to back away, he caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Do not judge yourself too harshly, Isolde. You would like to hate me. I know that. The day will come, however,
when your natural passions will overcome that hatred.”
“Never!” She flinched away from his touch.
“Soon,” he contradicted as she hurried back through the bailey.
Soon.
She had escaped his presence for now. But that single word haunted her as she fled. Soon.
But he was wrong about that, she vowed. Completely wrong.
Rhys watched as Isolde fled across the yard, her hair long and tangled, streaming like a pennant in her wake. He frowned as she disappeared into the keep.
He was enjoying this far too much.
To taunt a FitzHugh and take pleasure in it—on the surface there was nothing wrong with that. It was one of the rights of victory. But she roused more in him than he wanted.
He rubbed one hand across his chin, startled at first by his missing beard. To lust after the enemy’s womenfolk was also a right of victory, he reminded himself. He’d taken his pleasure of many an English noblewoman in the past ten years. There was no great novelty in that. But something about this particular woman made it different from all those other times.
It was because she was a FitzHugh, he told himself. That made her different in his eyes, more contemptible.