A little blankly, Gytha stared up at the young man who had gently tucked her arm through his. “The garden?” She slowly recognized him as Dennis. “To the garden, you say?”
“Aye.” He inexorably led her towards it. “You look so stricken. ’Tis not wise to reveal a weakness in this pit of vipers. Ah me, these things will happen, sad to say. One must learn to maintain one’s dignity.”
Dignity was the last thing Gytha thought about. Her mind was choked with images of Thayer and Elizabeth in a myriad of torrid embraces. She struggled and failed to expel those agonizing pictures. They sliced at her heart. They also made her feel alarmingly violent. She frightened herself with the path her thoughts took. Side by side with the picture of Thayer breaking his vows was the image of herself swooping down upon the lovers like some avenging angel—an angel who would leave the pair with very little worth embracing. She nursed the urge to kill, to maim, and that horrified her. It was so foreign to her nature.
“What things?” she snapped at Dennis, struggling to grasp some calm, to hide the hurt twisting her insides.
“Lovers, sweeting.” He stopped at a spot secluded from the other strollers in the garden.
Leaning against a tree, Gytha suddenly felt bone-weary and rather sick. “Give the sin its true name, sir. ’Tis adultery.” She wished she could creep away to her chambers unseen, yet dreaded acting like a whipped dog.
“’Tis common. Marriage is for the begetting of legitimate heirs. No more.” He placed a hand upon the tree by her head and edged closer to her.
“Marriage is a union of a man and a woman sanctified by God.” She wondered sadly why people found that so hard to understand.
“So that children may be legitimate and inherit without difficulty.” Placing his other hand against the tree on the other side of her head, he lightly cornered her. “Everyone understands that.”
“Everyone understands nothing.”
“Come, sweet, let me ease the hurt.” Cupping her chin in his hand, he kissed her.
It took Gytha a moment to overcome her shock. Then she swung at him. She put every ounce of the anger churning inside her behind the blow, and the sound of her hand connecting with his cheek echoed in the quiet garden. Dennis staggered back a little. One look into his eyes told her she had erred. A hasty retreat would have been far wiser. Dennis clearly took refusal as an insult. Fury narrowed his eyes and tightened his handsome features. She could not fully restrain a soft cry of panic when he roughly yanked her into his arms then slammed her up against the tree.
“Curse you, woman. Your husband is off merrily rutting with another, yet you play the nun.”
She struggled to escape the hard, somewhat feverish kisses he forced upon her face and neck, making her skin crawl. “I will not commit a sin to repay a sin. Leave me be. There are others who would welcome this. I do not.”
“I will have you begging it of me, my little nun.”
When he threw her to the ground, she was momentarily stunned. The breath was driven from her body by the force of the fall and she gasped to replace it, but by the time she regained enough to scream it was too late. He covered her mouth with his and kept her mouth covered with his brutal kisses or his hand. She tried biting him, but he gave her a cuff on the side of the head that had her reeling with dizziness. That was a state that could easily prove her downfall, so she discarded that ploy.
He kept her pinned to the ground as he struggled to undo her gown. She used his distraction with that to insinuate her leg between his. Her brothers had taught her of the vulnerability of a man’s groin, thinking it knowledge she might need. Now she concentrated on remembering all they had taught her as she fought to free her arms from where Dennis had them pinned to the ground. She felt herself near success when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Thayer, Lady Elizabeth, and Roger step into view.
Thayer had been smothering a laugh over Roger’s obvious guard, over the glares Roger and Lady Elizabeth had exchanged. He also found Lady Elizabeth’s shallow ploys to seduce him amusing. From the moment she had claimed faintness, he had known it for a lie, but he had been curious as to what game she played.
He felt nothing for the woman. He was finally, totally, free of her destructive hold. Thayer realized that Gytha had invaded every part of him, and there was nothing of his crippling fascination with Elizabeth left. He admitted to himself that Gytha had also restored his confidence. Elizabeth had none of that weakness in him to play upon. He found the woman amusing, somewhat irritating, but little else.
The heady delight that knowledge brought him vanished with a painful abruptness as they rounded a corner in the little-used path. Gytha was sprawled beneath a handsome young courtier. Her beautiful hair was loose, splayed out beneath her. Her fine clothes were in a revealing disarray. He halted in mid-step, stunned by the sight.
Suddenly, he was seeing another garden, seeing another time when all his illusions were shattered. Only this time the pain was much worse. He waited to hear the mocking laughter, waited for the stinging ridicule. Sensing Roger’s move to interfere, he held his friend back. Thayer meant to see just how big a fool he had been. Here was where the truth would be revealed. He meant to face it squarely. This time he would not continue to play the fool for a woman.
Slowly, the truth he saw revealed was that Gytha was not willing. Her movements were struggles, not ecstatic thrashings. He had been seeing what was not really there, confusing the past with the present.
Then her gaze met his. He saw the plea there, but was held still by his continued confusion. Her look became one of shock, of deep pain, when he made no move to come to her aid. He knew she saw his hesitancy as nothing less than utter betrayal, yet he did not move.
Gytha felt stunned when Thayer made no move to help her. He simply watched, even held Roger back when the man stepped forward to aid her. Her husband, who was honor-bound to defend her, was leaving her to her fate.
A cool breeze over her thighs pulled her out of her shocked stupor. She would have to secure herself and time was no longer on her side. Later she would deal with the added wound Thayer had inflicted through his indifference to her plight.
Moving her leg that final inch, she brought it directly between Dennis’ legs. Putting all her strength behind the blow, she brought her knee up into Dennis’ groin. He screamed, clutched himself, and tumbled off of her. Stumbling to her feet, Gytha used the tree to support herself.
With no effort to hide the hurt she felt over his betrayal, Gytha looked at Thayer as she fought to catch her breath. Then, suddenly, she knew she was going to be ill. She waved Thayer away when he finally stepped towards her. Even as she hurried towards some bushes, she saw Lady Elizabeth help a pale Dennis to his feet, Roger nearby watching them closely. The couple exchanged a few angry words before taking advantage of Thayer’s and Roger’s distraction to flee. Gytha began to suspect that a great deal of what had happened had been planned, but her illness consumed all her thoughts.
Falling to her knees, she saw Thayer reach out to help her. “Do not touch me,” she choked out before she succumbed to nausea.
Thayer jerked back, feeling slapped. He watched as Roger moved to Gytha’s side. Needing to do something, he went to dampen his handkerchief, a gift from Gytha which he had thought a little frivolous, in a small fountain. Crouching by her side, he began to wipe her face. Frantically he tried to think of an explanation even as, with a chilling certainty, he knew there was little he could say.
As her head cleared of the dizziness induced by her illness, Gytha realized who gently bathed her face. With a cry of fury, she swatted Thayer’s hands away. Nearly upsetting a concerned Roger, she struggled to her feet. A small part of her noticed that Bek now stood with them. Elizabeth and Dennis were nowhere to be seen. She knew it all meant something, but she was too distracted, too furious, to think straight. Her attention centered on the cause of the agony that ate at her.
