“Think I care?” Kristen snapped.
Eda left to inform Royce of Kristen’s preference. Kristen did not move until she heard the lock turn. It had been too much to hope Eda would forget that, for with Royce below, she could have laid hands on a weapon from his chamber, though what she would do with it she still was not sure.
Kristen stomped over to the far wall and sat down to wait.
Chapter Twenty-three
When Royce unlocked the door, Kristen was sitting with her back against the far wall, her knees bent before her to help her to rise quickly if necessary. She saw that he was not angry, yet. But he was certainly not pleased.
Coming straight from his bath, he wore only a long-sleeved white tunic and, over it, the type of robe that was given Kristen when she bathed, though his was of a fine quality, even to having an inch-deep border of green silk along every edge of the white linen that fell to his feet. The white became him with his dark hair and summer-tanned skin.
If she were not furious with him, she knew she would be waiting breathlessly to see a bare leg when the robe parted as he walked. But she stared only at his face, lit by the tallow candle he held aloft so the light reached across to her.
“Eda has confessed to me why you are here once again instead of where you should be. I want to know why you thought you had gained freedom of the hall, when I said naught of that to you.”
Kristen was proud of the way her voice did not falter, sounding calm even to her ears. “Tis simple, Saxon. You knewwhyI refused to share your bed this week past. Yet you took me to your bed yestereve. I was fool enough to assume that if you would do that, then you must have relented concerning my restraints.”
“You are correct,” he replied curtly. “’Twas a fool assumption indeed. I told you why you must be fettered. I also told you the alternatives.”
Kristen was no longer so calm, hearing him actually confirm what she had concluded. “I spit on your alternatives! I will wear your cursed fetters, but I want no more of you. I cannot bear your tender care and the chains too.”
He walked slowly toward her. Warily she rose to her feet, but he stopped short of her, two arms’ lengths away.
“I thought you stronger than this, wench.”
She gasped at the deliberate slur. “I am not without mettle, milord. My father was captured and imprisoned in his youth. My mother endured enslavement for a time as well. I am what my parents have made me, and I would not be a credit to them if I could not endure enslavement myself. For me ’tis a fit punishment for defying my parents to sail with my brother. I can endure, Royce. But there is a limit to what I will endure without a fight. Leave me be from now on and you will have no problem with me.”
“I cannot,” he replied simply. “And you do not really want me to ignore you, Kristen.”
“I do. I want you no more.”
He did not like what he was hearing at all, and it showed in the tight slant of his lips, the turbulent green of his eyes. “You can say that after last eve?”
“Aye.”
“Liar. You want me still and I will prove it.”
She snorted contemptuously at the challenge. “Stubbornness is one of my faults, inherited from my mother. She once refused to speak to my father because of an argument they had, and did not say one word to him for an entire month. And they are two people who love each other passionately. Mayhap I do still want you, Royce, because I am attracted to you and that cannot be helped. But you will never hear me admit it, nor will I accept you willingly again, because when you chain me, you show me that I am nothing to you, that you bear me no feelings at all. I need more than that from the man I give myself to. I need more than just passion.”
“So you will deny us both?”
Kristen closed her eyes for a moment as bitter disappointment washed over her. What had she expected him to reply?I care for you, Kristen. Of course I have feelings for you, strong feelings. How could you doubt it?Fool! She would never hear such things from him.
She opened her eyes to see that his expression was still tight-lipped. But now a muscle ticked along his jaw. The hand at his hip was clenched into a fist. The dark eyebrows had moved closer together and the eyes were mere slashes of green. He was angry at last. Good. At least he shared something with her.
“Answer me, wench!”
“Aye, milord. I will deny us both.”
“The devil you will! You have had your say. Now hear me. Whether I have you or not is my choice, not yours. I let the decision rest with you for a while, but ’twas a mistake, and I learn from my mistakes. Giving you the choice only served to make you think you had a right to choose. You do not, Kristen. I own you. Your life, your body, your mind, all belong to me.”
The callousness of that statement enraged her. “Never! You own me, true, for you can kill me, sell me, rape me, whatever pleases you. But ’twill not always be so, for if I am sold, or escape, or am taken from you, then you own me no more. Andbelongto you! Think it if you will, but unless I want it to be so, then the word has no meaning. I would have to love you to truly belong to you. I would have to want to never leave you, to want to return to you if I do.”
“I do not ask for your love,” he said harshly.
“Good!” she retorted in kind. “Because I will not give it. You speak of choices. Aye, whether you have me or not is your choice. Whether I am willing to have you ismychoice. I am not willing, Saxon.”
“So you will fight me?”
