Her mouth dropped open. She was so stunned, for a moment she forgot to control her reaction. She tried to tamp down the reflexive burst of hope. She couldn’t have heard him right. “Leaving?” she echoed.
“Aye.” He was watching her, toying with her, knowing exactly the effect his words would have.
She sat down on a stool and picked up her mending as if he hadn’t spoken, forcing her trembling fingers to work the needle through the linen tunic. She spoke with as little care as she could manage. “Where am I to go?”
Was the war over? Had her freedom been negotiated? Could she finally be going home?
“A convent.”
The twinge of disappointment was minor. If she wasn’t going home, a convent was certainly preferable to an armed fortress like Berwick. A convent would give her hope of escape.
But Simon had known the direction her thoughts would take and had only sought to torment her. He smiled before adding, “There’s a Carmelite convent of nuns on the outskirts of Berwick. You are to be sent there, where you will immediately take your vows.”
Vows? Good God!Every instinct rose in immediate rebellion. She wanted to shout out her refusal, to cringe at the mere suggestion. Vows were a prison she could never escape. Once taken, there would be no going back. She’d be locked away forever. The solitude…the monotony…the confinement would never end. Oh God, she should have guessed there would be some cruel twist.
But the years of controlling her emotions with Buchan had served her well during her imprisonment at Berwick. Her expression betrayed none of her horror.
Still, he knew. “It should make you happy,” he taunted. His dark eyes ran over her shapeless woolen gown. The fine gown she’d been imprisoned in was long gone, replaced by plain, serviceable cast-offs from the castle servants. The roughly spun wool was thick and scratchy, but that didn’t matter. It waswarm. “You’ve been acting like a nun for years,” he sneered with a crude glance between her legs. Her thighs tightened instinctively. “Now you can be one.”
She heard the bitter reproach in his voice. How much easier it would have been had she just given in to his demands! Let him use her body as Buchan had done for years. She might have had more coal for the brazier, more blankets for her crude pallet, better food, a host of small luxuries to make her imprisonment if not comfortable, at least bearable.
But she couldn’t do it. It wasn’t just because every little thing about his person revolted her. The brown stains on his teeth. The white flakes in his greasy dark hair. The layer of sweat that made his face shine like the skin of a fish. Nay, submitting to him would be something she could never excuse. With her husband, she’d had a duty. With Lachlan, she’d foolishly believed there was something special between them. But with Simon, she would be selling herself. And she’d be damned if she’d give proof to the rumors. First about Robert, and then after her capture, thanks to Ross no doubt, about Lachlan.
She did not care that people called her a whore, but she would not make herself one.
So she’d endured cold, hunger, and two years of endless tormenting. Twice he’d gone too far and nearly killed her. Once the rotting food he’d given her had sickened her. Another time he’d punished her defiance by taking away her blankets on a night of cold and rain; she’d nearly frozen to death.
Like her former husband, Simon wanted to see her react. He looked for ways to break her. Many times over the past two years she’d wanted to give in. But one thing had kept her going: her daughter. She had to get through this for Joan.
“I hear the rooms are small and windowless,” he said snidely. She repressed a shiver. Though she’d hid her fear well, still he’d guessed it. “But you’re used to that, aren’t you, Countess?” He emphasized the last, then slapped his forehead with exaggerated affect. “Oh, that’s right. With Buchan dead, King Edward, the second by that name, has decided that you are no longer a countess.”
She held his gaze and smiled. “Aye, now I am merely the daughter and sister to the most ancient and powerful of all Scottish earldoms.”
Simon’s face turned florid. She might have been set aside by her husband, and her title stripped by a king, but she was still descended from Scotland’s most noble blood, and as such, far above a coarse brute like him.
When Margaret, her only source of outside events, had brought her news a few months back of her husband’s death, Bella had felt nothing. Not happiness that the man who’d fought for her death for two years had met his own, or even relief from the knowledge that she would never have to see him again. Her only thought was for her daughter. Joan was alone now. What would happen to her?
Buchan’s death had made her even more determined to get out of this nightmare and return to her daughter. Something she would never be able to do if she took her vows.
Simon crossed the small chamber in three strides. He tore the embroidery from her hands and harshly jerked her body up against him.
She hung there like a poppet of rags. Having grown used to such treatment, she didn’t resist or feel any fear. Simon was a mean, foul-tempered bully who would touch her and manhandle her whenever he got the chance, but the worst he dared was crude gropings and a few bruises.
He’d wanted to rape her—more times than she could count—but despite the barbarous treatment done to her by England’s kings, they apparently had not forsaken every last bond of civility. Her status protected her, and she never let him forget it.
His face drew so near, she could see every black-dotted pore on his ill-shapen nose. Used to his stench, rather than cringe, the staleness of his breath beating down on her merely caused her nose to wrinkle.
“You’re nothing but a haughty, worthless whore. For years you’ve been flaunting your wares, trying to tempt me from my duty. But look at you: a pale, skinny crow. I’ll be glad to be rid of you.” He gave her a violent shake. “But you’d better dull that sharp tongue of yours. The nuns will not be as tolerant as I am of your sinful pride.”
If she could summon the effort, she would laugh.Shetempthim? He, tolerant? No doubt the buffoon actually believed it. But his words pricked the small streak of vanity she had left. Had the years of imprisonment taken as much of a toll on the outside as they had on the inside? Bella hadn’t seen her reflection in a looking glass in over two years.
But what would it matter in a convent?
She didn’t respond, merely meeting his anger with a mute, emotionless stare. He hated when she did that. And heaven help her, no matter how bad it got, something inside her couldn’t resist defying him.
It was the same flaw that had reared its ugly head with her husband.
He tossed her aside with an oath. “Be ready to leave in the morning. The constable will be here himself to see you gone.”
