She was on her feet now, cowering back against the wall with her dress clutched against her chest. Kevin faced her honestly.
“I would not lie to you,” he said. “Do you think I would humiliate myself by lying to you about this? My lady, this has nothing to do with a man’s desire for you. Clearly, there is no desire involved on either the duke’s part or mine. He has ordered me to consummate this marriage and that is what I intend to do. Like it or not, I have my orders and so do you. Therefore, you will take your clothes off and get into that bed. Let us make quick work of this and be done with it.”
Annavieve was horrified. She slumped against the wall, feeling humiliation beyond measure. Her heart was pounding against her ribs and tears threatened.This can’t be happening!
“I willnotget into bed,” she said, shaking her head. “None of this is true! You will find the duke and bring him here so that he may tell me his directives!”
Kevin was trying not to become irritated with her. He knew she was outraged and mortified. He could see it in her face. But like it or not, it was the way of things.
“The duke has gone away,” he said, firmly. “Listen to me and listen well, lady; I do not tell you this for my own pleasure. I want no part of you. But your husband has an aversion to this marriage and to you in general, so I have been assigned the unhappy duty of taking over his husbandly duties. Think about it. Did he show any interest in you tonight? Nay, he did not. He was never kind to you and certainly the marriage ceremony was anything but pleasant. The man was forced into this marriage and he wants no part of you, so remove your clothing and get into that bed before I remove your clothing for you. If that is the case, then this unpleasant situation is about to turn much, much worse. It is your choice.”
He may as well have hit her for all of the terrible impact his words had.Did he show any interest in you tonight?Thosewords rattled around in Annavieve’s head. Nay, of course the man hadn’t. He had been as rude and disinterested as he could have possibly been. Somehow, when Kevin put it that way, she could see that, indeed, he might have been ordered to take over the duke’s husbandly duties. It had been wildly clear to everyone that the duke had no interest in her.
As the realization struck, all of the fight went out of her. Like a candle blowing out, the light was quenched and Annavieve was left in darkness. But in that darkness came a sense of distress of the deepest magnitude. She had no choice. She could not fight this. All she could do was obey.
Her eyes never left him as she dropped the blue brocade dress. She had been humiliated beyond repair but there was still some dignity left in her, a sense of self-worth that no man could take away. So no man wanted her, did they? Everything about this marriage was just as cold and sorrowful as she knew it would be, now having to submit to her husband’s knight on the night of their wedding. It was the ultimate humiliation for the half-Welsh daughter of a bereft Welsh house.
There was nothing left for her to lose, no pride left to be destroyed. As the blue brocade dress fell on the ground, she reached over her head and pulled off her shift. She was naked underneath but it didn’t matter; nothing mattered any longer. She was doing as she had been told in a life where she had been caged and ordered about, always. This was no different. The shift fell to the floor in the final act of obedience as she stood naked before him. She wanted to make sure he saw her body and understood that she was not resisting him. It was a horribly painful moment, but a necessary one.Look at me and see what you are about to take!Averting her gaze from Kevin, she went to the bed and crawled beneath the covers to await what was to come.
Truth be told, Kevin was still reeling from the sight of her exquisite nude body. Since he’d spent his entire life hoping to marry the woman he’d lost, he had saved himself for her. But when that love died, he’d found sexual solace in the women of the Holy Land who were paid to do such things. Kevin had lost his virginity at a rather advanced age to a woman named Yasmina who had been older, although beautiful, and quite skilled. He’d experienced all manner of sexual arousal and satisfaction under her tutelage and was therefore very experienced in the art of lovemaking. But her body was nothing compared to the one he had just witnessed. He knew that for a fact.
As the years went on, he’d sampled other women, paid women, throughout his travels but in all that time, he had still been left wanting. Sex was a need and a pleasure, but there was something missing for him. He suspected it had something to do with feelings and emotions, things he kept deeply suppressed, but he wouldn’t let himself explore that part of it. He didn’t want to feel emotion when he took his clothes off and buried his manhood in a woman. He simply wanted the physical pleasure it gave him.
At least, that had been his view in the past. But in the brief few seconds of observing Annavieve’s supple, nude form, he felt a jolt of pure lust and attraction as he had never felt in his life. There was an odd longing there, too. Her limbs were long and shapely, her torso curved as a woman’s body should be, and her breasts were full and perfect. Such perfection was very rare, one of God’s most exquisite creations, and when she disappeared beneath the coverlet on the bed and his view of her nakedness was blocked, he began to feel some compassion for the woman on many levels.
Men would pay with their lives for a woman such as her, yet she found herself married to man who did not want her andnow being faced with a cold, unfeeling thing that would take what was most precious to a woman– her virginity. Kevin was treating it like a business transaction because that’s how Victor was treating it.
But the truth was that Annavieve wasn’t a transaction; she was the most beautiful woman Kevin had ever seen. She was the only woman he even considered beautiful since the days of Penelope. His compassion was based on Annavieve’s physical qualities alone, a superficial reaction, but one he couldn’t help. He was afraid if he got to know her, and find her pleasant, then what needed to be a cold and unfeeling business matter might no longer be. He might start to get emotional about it and that terrified him.
“Do you have sisters, my lord?”
The question came from Annavieve as Kevin stood there and pondered his unhealthy thoughts. “I do,” he replied.
“How many?”
“Three.”
Annavieve had the coverlet pulled up to her neck, clutching it nervously as Kevin began to undress. “I would like to know how you would feel if one of your sisters had a husband that treated her as you and the duke are treating me?”
Kevin thought on her question as he pulled off his gloves. “It does not matter how I feel about it,” he said. “Her husband could do what he pleased with her.”
“And you would not find it offensive if he had someone else consummate her marriage?”
Kevin shrugged. “As I said, it does not matter how I feel.”
Annavieve watched him toss his gloves onto the nearby table and go to work on his heavy over-tunic, dark blue in color, without a crest. “Are you married, my lord?”
Kevin came to a halt and looked at her. “That is none of your affair.”
Annavieve didn’t back down. “I wonder how your wife would feel if she knew you were about to bed another woman.”
Kevin struggled to keep his cool, returning his focus to his tunic. “You are not very bright,” he said, meaning to insult her because her questions irritated him. “I have just returned from six years in the Levant. Do you really think I would have left a wife here in England for six year whilst I went off to fight? Your attempts to make me feel guilty about what I must do are not working. I suggest you quiet your tongue and accept your fate.”
Rebuked, Annavieve shut her mouth purely because she was afraid of what he would do if she didn’t. She’d pushed him far enough. So she sat there and gazed at him, steadily, as he stripped off his tunic and bent over, shirking his mail coat. Beneath the coat he was wearing a very dirty padded linen tunic, which he yanked off and tossed onto the table. His magnificent torso was illuminated by the firelight; thick neck, enormous shoulders, broad chest, and muscular arms. Annavieve, having never seen a naked man before, found herself staring at him until he glanced up and caught her. Cheeks flaming red, she lay down in the bed and pulled the coverlet up to her ears.
“My entire life leads to this,” she whispered, although it was loud enough for him to hear. “I am raised by nuns behind the walls of an abbey because my father is a Welsh prince. Edward cages me, keeps me, and then uses me to barter a marriage. I do not understand how men can be so… so callous. I do not understand how a living, breathing person can be treated no better than an animal.”
Kevin sat on the edge of the bed to remove his boots, which was something of an undertaking considering he didn’t often remove them. He tended to sleep with them on. When he pulled the first one off, his foot stank so badly that he actually made a face. He listened to Annavieve’s rhetoric but did not provide her with an answer, mostly because he didn’t know what to say. Hewas coming to think she felt much as if she were going to the executioner, as if her life were about to be taken away from her somehow. As he went to remove his other boot, he heard her voice behind him, softly.
