Edlingham.
He’d leave in an hour. First he wanted to check in on someone who was here with him. He looked toward the stairs that led below, to the large prison cell he’d had built for her. Would she speak to him today? He used to listen to her screaming from the deep pit. He was a child. He thought it might have driven him a little mad. He knew what it had done to her—and he didn’t care. She deserved it.
He lit a torch and descended, calling her as he went. “Leigh! Leigh, I have returned!” He laughed when he heard her anxious pacing. “Your savior, the Viscount of Bamburgh may have cut ties with me and stolen my damned wife. If he has, I no longer need you up here and you can return to the pit where you belong.” He looked for a reaction from her but she didn’t seem to care. “You bore me. We will see how quiet you are when I return with my prize!”
He thought of his wife on the way to Edlingham, hoping he wasn’t wasting time going there. Julianna. She was a defiant hellcat who had more scars on her back than many men he knew. He laughed softly to himself. She was seemingly unafraid of the whip and was caught breaking his rules often.
He had never been all too fond of her. He had known about her keeping company with servants. He thought it was deplorable. What did the poor and deprived have in common with the fortunate? Nothing. Julianna’s father should have used a firmer hand.
Phillip had often wanted to tame her. He’d even fought his brothers for her once. He’d won, of course. He thought marriage would tame her, tie her down. But she fought back with every means at her disposal, her teeth, her fingernails, her sharp tongue, and finally with poison in his ale. She had run away, escaped him, but he’d found her. Just as he would find her now.
The next day he did just that.
He expected more of a fight from Bamburgh’s men, but he knew that when he was angry, his strength and stamina increased. He killed many of Edlingham’s men on his own, plowing a bloody path to his wife.
“Julianna?” he called out, entering the castle. “Come out, Jezebel. Come to your husband.”
He kicked his way into every room, calling her.
He heard a sound and looked down the hall. There was Bamburgh standing at the end of the corridor. His long limbs at the ready for a fight. Legs braced. Arms up, sword pointed.
“You have my wife,” Phillip accused while he turned to him.
“I protect her from you,” the viscount dared to say.
Phillip wanted to kill him slowly. He thought to come between a man and his wife! “Who will protect her when you are dead, Pratt?”
“You have ten breaths to leave my castle or I will kill you.”
Phillip grinned at him. He had ballocks. Pity. While holding his hilt in one hand, he reached his other hand into a pocket of his coat and produced a much smaller blade. He tossed it quickly at Bamburgh and watched it sink into his opponent’s belly. He watched Bamburgh go down and went to him. When he reached Bamburgh, he pulled out his blade and then stabbed him three more times.
Without waiting to see what damage he’d caused, he climbed over Bamburgh’s body and stepped into a large room.
“Julianna?” he called out, looking toward the tall window. “If you make me wait another moment, I will…” he paused and hurried back into the hall. Pratt had been protecting her. Who knows what she’d told him. It didn’t matter now. He had her. And he knew how to lure her out.
He grabbed Pratt’s collar and dragged him back into the room. There, he yanked his knife free of Pratt’s belly and held it up to his throat. “Come out or he dies.”
He didn’t have to wait long. He heard her boots clicking across the wooden floors and he turned to look at her.
Damn him, but she was beautiful. He’d always thought she was, with her fiery red tresses defying her clips and moving around her face like a flame. She stole his breath—as, he suspected, she did to every man who came upon her. He didn’t blame William Stone for his forbidden love. The Governor of Berwick should have sent his servant away when he was a child—before he became as vital to his daughter as the air she breathed. And, it seemed, no amount of beating could rid her of her need of him.
“Phillip, what do you want?” she asked him, sounding brave. He knew better.
“I want you,” he told her. “My wife, bound to me until death. I will teach you who you belong to.”
“I belong to no one, Phillip! Especially not you! Careful or ’twill be me teaching the lessons.”
Oh, but she was fiery. She didn’t know but when she fought with him it made him even hungrier for her. “Was your Reverend Mother trying to break our bond?”
“Bond?” she laughed. “There is no bond between us, Phillip. I have always loved him. Never you.”
“Perhaps that was the first dent in our marriage.”
“That is not a dent,” she said. “’Tis a break. ’Twas doomed before it ever began. And then when you proved to be a monster—”
“Stop it, Jules,” he warned.
She straightened her spine and squared her shoulders and stared him in the eyes. “You never had a chance!”
