Chapter 3 #2
Encouraging that twinge of irritation to drive out the softer and far more dangerous feelings that had crept in, Damien remained in place for but a moment more before he turned and nodded his leave-taking to the others in the room.
Then he trained his gaze on the door through which Alissende had gone, clenching his jaw as he set off to follow her.
He was no lord, but he was no serving lad, either, and she had just dismissed him as if he was, taking it upon herself to conclude their meeting without a by-your-leave.
It was the kind of treatment he’d vowed never to accept willingly from anyone, from the time he’d been old enough to use a blade or even his fists in commanding respect; it was one of the reasons he’d sweated and bled, driving himself to be the best in everything he did.
He had scratched his way up from almost nothing—he and his brother Alex, both of them becoming swordsmen of great skill and, eventually, both Templar Knights of the most elite inner circle of the Brotherhood.
Yet it did not change the fact that common blood ran in his veins, and he was well aware of just how much that had cost him in his past.
Having to endure snubs and rejection for lack of family pedigree was a truth of this world; he could not alter that any more than he could make himself into a noble lord of a castle, despite the farce of this proxy arrangement.
That didn’t mean he had to like it.
The thought burned deeper with every step he took down the darkened corridor.
It underscored his resolve to do whatever was necessary to reclaim his integrity, his honor—and his masculine pride as well, the precepts of the Templar Brotherhood be damned.
He would begin that process with the woman he had just promised to champion for the next six months…
for apparently the cool and imperial Lady Alissende didn’t understand that he wasn’t finished with her yet. Nay, not by half.
But she was about to find out.
Somehow, Alissende managed to maintain her composure in the moments after leaving Damien in the solar, but a jumble of feelings still roiled inside her. Chief among them was indignation. It gave her a kind of strength, though, and so she clung to it.
Her heart ached with what had just happened—with the realization that the man she’d met today was no longer the man she had once loved.
This Damien was callous and unfeeling. By heaven, he had looked straight at her and pretended that the tender, magnificent lovemaking they’d once known with each other had never happened.
Her own pride had prevented her from refuting him, but she had felt the pain of it nonetheless.
Brushing her hand across her eyes, Alissende finally approached her destination; pushing open the door, she entered the chamber that had formerly been the private domain of her late husband, Godfrey Claremont, Earl of Denton.
The windows were shuttered, still, as they had been since his death.
Surrounded by the gray atmosphere inside the chamber, she pressed her back against the wall and tried to slow her racing thoughts.
As she allowed her eyes to adjust in the paucity of light, her attention settled on the vast and ornate contours of the bed.
It sent a pang through her, and she drew in a shaky breath, glad that she was alone now, as she confronted the old ghosts here.
It was her first time in this chamber in nearly a year, and though she had hoped for time to have erased them, she could not deny that this place still brimmed with memories of Godfrey.
The thorough cleaning and changing of all the linens, draperies, and bed hangings she’d ordered a few weeks ago before her return to Glenheim had helped, but the images in her mind refused to fade.
Pursing her lips, Alissende crossed the chamber and pulled away the lengths of cloth covering one of the mullion panes Godfrey had ordered fitted into the arched window holes.
The glass had been an extravagant expense, but Godfrey had never favored denying himself anything he’d desired; in that respect he had been very similar to Hugh.
It was one of the traits, Alissende imagined, that had drawn the two men to each other as friends…
and one of the shared qualities that might well have led to Godfrey’s demise on the hunting excursion they’d taken together that fateful day last summer.
Stepping back from the window and the brighter light filtering through the milky panes, Alissende surveyed the chamber.
As opulently furnished as it was, she hated this room more than any other in the castle, and since Godfrey’s death, she had taken to sleeping in one of the guest chambers just down the corridor.
This was the chamber where she had spent her first night with Godfrey after the marriage her sire had arranged for them…
where she had endured the painful consummation of their union—made more so by her own fear and by his careless, drunken groping.
She’d been relieved, afterward, that he’d been too deeply into his cups to notice much beyond the fulfillment of his own pleasure. The smear of blood she’d produced on the sheet by poking the tips of two fingers with her tapestry needle had satisfied him in regard to her virginity, come morn.
But it hadn’t changed the reality, for her at least.
For the bitter truth was that more than a year prior to her disastrous wedding night, Damien had made love to her for the first time.
Over the course of the weeks that had followed, he had awakened her to unimagined bliss.
In those secret, stolen moments, she had learned of seduction, of the give and take of sensual pleasure along with him; she had reveled in the breathtaking intimacies they’d shared, savoring the way Damien had played her body with all the skill and sacred concentration of an artist stroking free a masterpiece from his blank canvas.
Aye, Damien had learned to make her rise to the mere whisper of her name on his breath. What she had known with Godfrey could not help but pale by comparison.
That state of affairs had never improved throughout the four years of their marriage.
Nay, if anything, much had declined with each month that had passed without the signs of a babe growing within her.
Godfrey had become increasingly resentful and sometimes cruel, for it was common knowledge that childlessness was the fault of the woman—another curse to be traced back to the sins of Eve.
She could still see her husband’s face, red with disappointment and anger, as he’d accused her of her failings in the matter.
If only she desired him more, if only she would remove all other thought but the hope of blessed fruitfulness each time they coupled, then a babe could not help but grow within her.
God was punishing her for her shortcomings by giving her a barren womb.
And so Godfrey had taken matters into his own hands, during that last year of his life, insisting that she couple with him nightly; she’d only been released of that duty through the week of her courses each month, regardless of how her body had hurt from such constant and uninvited use.
It had been awful, demeaning, and painful. But as much as she’d come to resent the man she had married willingly and with her family’s blessing, she’d known that she couldn’t truly blame him.
He had been right.
She had not enjoyed the fumbled rutting that had comprised the lovemaking in their marriage bed.
She had not desired him. Oh, at the beginning she had felt a kind of affection for Godfrey, and certainly she had tried to do her duty to him as his wife.
But there had never been any passion. She hadn’t been able to love him, for the bitter truth was that she’d still loved Damien de Ashby; she always had and likely always would.
Now Damien was back in her life, despising her as much if not more than Godfrey had, though for very different reasons—and she wanted none of it, ever again.
She was sick unto death of men, with their demands, their needs, and their arrogant pride.
It was why she had yearned to enter a nunnery.
She wanted to live the rest of her life as she saw fit, not answering any longer to the will of those, like Hugh or the other lords at court, who prized her for naught but her wealth or her cursed beauty.
Her mouth tightened, and she subdued the last of her disturbing memories as she moved to another set of windows.
Pulling down their cloth coverings with a snap, she wiped away from the glass the fine layer of dust before crossing to the hearth to lay the makings of a fire.
The hearth appeared to be fairly clean, but from a certain angle she could see what looked to be an old piece of charred wood near the back wall; it was just visible in the slant of shadow, and she paused, trying to decide if it would be wise, dressed as she was, to attempt to remove it herself as should be done before laying the new fire.
The alternative, of course, was to wait and call for one of the servants. It seemed unnecessary, though; if she was careful not to touch her hands to her gown when she was done, then completing the task should be simple enough.
Resolved to the action, Alissende threw down one of the window cloths to kneel upon and had just bent over, reaching into the recess of the sooty fireplace, when she felt a sneeze coming on.
But she was interrupted by a noise at the doorway, followed by a low, masculine voice that, despite her best intentions, sent a not entirely unpleasant shiver through her.
“I did not realize you were so desperate to escape my company.”
Rocking back onto her heels, Alissende scrambled to stand, at the same time pinching her nose in an effort to make the tickling sensation go away. Then she turned to face Damien.