Bronwyn rolled away from him, and he landed on his face in the soft mattress. She jumped from the bed and looked about for a weapon but could find none.
Roger stopped as he started after her. Damn, but she made a startling sight. Her black hair swirled about her like a demon cloud. Her proud, strong body taunted him. She was breathtaking, like an ancient primitive queen, arrogant, defiant, threatening him with her small strength.
Every word she’d said about her husband screamed at him. She knew men well, didn’t she? With each word he’d felt his passion shrink. What man could take her when he knew she laughed at him? If she feared him he would rape her, but this laughter of hers was too much.
“Guards!” he bellowed.
Bronwyn knew he planned to release her from the duty of his bed. She grabbed her clothes and by the time the door opened, she was wrapped in her plaid, the rest of her clothes under her arm.
“Take her to the east room,” Roger said tiredly. “And I will have the man’s head who lets her escape.”
Bronwyn did not breathe easily until she heard the bolt shoot home and she was alone in the room. The guards had released the man she’d locked in the room hours before.
She sank down on the bed and instantly began to tremble. Her body ached from having been tied in a wagon for three days. Her fear for Mary tormented her, and now the episode with Roger further weakened her.
Once when she was just a girl she’d gone riding with one of her father’s men. They’d stopped to rest the horses, and the man had tossed her to the ground and began to undress her. Bronwyn had been extremely innocent and very frightened. The man undressed himself, and when he stood over her he thrust his manhood out at her as if he were massively proud of the thing. Bronwyn, who’d only seen horses and bulls, began to laugh at the man, and before her very eyes he’d deflated. She’d learned several lessons that day. One, to never ride alone with just one man, and two, whereas fear seemed to excite the man, her laughter only crushed him.
She never told her father about the encounter, and three months later the man was killed in a cattle raid.
It should have been good to see Roger hurt as she’d hurt him, but it wasn’t. She fell down onto the covers of the bed, hiding her face, burying her head. She wanted Stephen so badly, needed him so much. He was the foundation of her being. He kept her from doing stupid, impulsive things. If he’d been with her, she would never have left Larenston. Rab would be alive and she wouldn’t be held prisoner by Roger Chatworth.
Stephen was with his king, pleading with the man to stop the raids on her country. Her country! Hadn’t Stephen proved he was a Scot? He deserved the title more than anyone else.
Bronwyn had no idea when she began to cry. The tears just began to flow silently at first, then with deep, wrenching sobs. She swore that if she ever managed to get herself out of this mess, she’d be honest with Stephen. She’d tell him how much she loved him and needed him. Oh, yes! How very, very much she needed him.
She cried for Mary, for Rab, for Stephen, and most of all for herself. She’d had something so beautiful and she’d thrown it away. “Stephen,” she whispered and cried some more.
When her body was dry and she could cry no more, she slept.
Chapter Eighteen
BRIANCHATWORTH WAS VERY QUIET AS HE MADE HIS WAYdown the stairs to the cellar. The Chatworth house had been built over an old castle, a place his grandfather had conquered and destroyed. Some people said it was bad to have built over the home of an enemy.
Brian thought of his brother’s words about a ghost and smiled. Roger was so protective of his little brother and sister. When they were children, they needed protection from their older brother. But now, since Edmund’s death, there was no need of hiding and lying. There was a woman crying, and Brian meant to find out about her. It was probably a kitchen maid who’d fallen in love with Roger and now cried because Roger didn’t return her love. Brian realized that Roger thought his little brother knew nothing that went on between men and women. To Roger, Brian was still a frightened, hiding little boy.
He paused at the bottom of the stairs. The cellars were dark, full of wine barrels and casks of salted fish. As he listened he heard a roll of ivory dice and a couple of guards laughing and cursing. He slipped between the barrels and went toward the back where he knew a locked cell was. He had no idea why he sneaked about except that he’d learned to be good at it when Edmund was alive. Besides, he’d rather Roger didn’t think Brian had no faith in his brother.
The crying became louder as he neared the cell door. It was a soft, wrenching sound that came from inside a woman’s heart. Now he knew why the guards moved to the far side of the cellar: they didn’t want to hear the constant crying.
Brian looked inside the cell. In a formless heap in one corner lay a woman in a nun’s habit.
Brian could only gasp as he grabbed the key from the nail by the door and unlocked the door. It swung open on well-oiled, silent hinges.
“Sister,” Brian whispered as he knelt beside her. “Please let me help you.”
Mary looked up at him with fear in her eyes. “Please release me,” she whispered. “My brothers will cause a war because of this. Please! I could not bear to see them hurt.”
Brian looked at her in bewilderment. “Your brothers? Who are you? What have you done to make Roger take you as his prisoner?”
“Roger?” Mary asked. “Is he the man who holds me? Where am I? Who are you?”
Brian stared at her. Her oval face was swollen, her soft brown eyes red and irritated. She suddenly reminded him of his sister, Elizabeth. Elizabeth was as perfectly lovely as an angel, and this woman looked like the Madonna. “I am Brian Chatworth and this is my home, the Chatworth estate. My brother Roger owns this house.”
“Chatworth?” Mary said, sitting up. “My brother was once in love with a lovely woman but she married a man named Chatworth.”
Brian sat back on his heels. He was beginning to see some link to this woman’s imprisonment. “You are a Montgomery!” he gasped. “I knew only of the four brothers. I had no idea there was a sister.”
“I am the eldest child, Mary Montgomery.”
