Apparently, his lady wife was too despondent over the prince’s departure to show her face at supper. She sent word down that she was not well and would not join them in the hall. The surreptitious looks his men exchanged when they thought he was not looking only confirmed his fears.
William began to drink in earnest.
Irritated by the sight of the empty seat beside him, he grabbed a full pitcher of wine from the table and stomped out of the hall. He was well into his cups when Edmund found him on the outer curtain wall, perched on the lower ledge of the crenellated parapet.
He gazed out at the countryside in the fading light of the summer evening. “I have my own land now, Edmund,” he said, swinging his arm in a wide arc. “And by God, isn’t it fair!”
Edmund grabbed William’s other arm. “This may not be the best choice of seats for serious drinking.”
“ ’Tis a fine spot,” William countered. “I’ve never seen better.” He tilted his head back and took another long drink from the pitcher, ignoring how it spilt down his chin and neck.
Edmund leaned against the parapet. “Are you sharing?”
William turned the empty pitcher upside down. “We shall have to get more. I, for one, have not drunk nearly enough.”
Edmund let out a long sigh and shook his head. “William, William, William. You are not looking at how the situation is to your advantage. If you consider it properly, you will see you have much to gain here.”
Even drunk as he was, William understood the direction of Edmund’s remarks.
Edmund held up his hands. “Do not get angry with me. I am just looking out for your interests.”
He should stop Edmund now. Instead, he waited to hear Edmund confirm the ugly suspicions that had been playing in his head since the prince’s arrival.
“Young Harry is not the first royal to find himself desperate to have another man’s wife in his bed,” Edmund said. “Kings have been known to provide titles and riches to a husband who will turn his head and forgo his rights for a time.”
Edmund took his lack of response as permission to go on.
“From the hungry way he looks at her, I don’t believe he’s had her yet,” Edmund said in a thoughtful tone. “The arrangement will be worth a good deal more to you when he is king. Rumor has it the king is ill, and Harry may be on the throne before the year is out. It would be best to make him wait, if she can manage it, but I would not count on it.”
He should encourage his wife to manage the prince’s “interest” to his own advantage?The rage that roared through him was so great he could not speak. He feared he might lose his reason and murder Edmund on the spot.
“You cannot expect the prince’s interest to last long once he has had her, especially with all the great families thrusting their daughters under his nose,” Edmund continued, oblivious to the danger he was in. “When he is done with her, you can take her back… or not.”
Blithely, he gave William his final word of advice. “If you want to be sure your heir is your own blood, you’d better get her with child now, before the prince takes her to his bed.”
In one motion, William surged up, lifted Edmund off his feet by the front of his tunic, and threw him hard against the parapet. The man was lucky William did not toss him over it. Without looking back, he stormed down the walkway and took the steps down the side of the wall two at a time.
He would see this wife of his, and he would see her now.
She played her first husband false. Why did he think she would not do the same with him? What had made him so ready to believe the tale of Rayburn’s violence against her? She had played him for a fool, all the while saving herself for her lover.
She acted like a frightened, untouched virgin with him. But she’d shown no fear with Harry. Even through the haze of drink, he knew what bothered him most was her obvious affection for the prince. He thought of how she stood so close to the prince, smiled at him, touched his face. It tore him apart.
He would show her what a man could give her, and she would never want that boy again.
As he made his way up the stairs to their rooms, the steps seemed to shift under him several times. He found the solar dark and empty, but there was a dim light under her bedchamber door. When he pushed it open, it made a very satisfying bang against the stone wall.
Catherine and her maid sat up straight in their beds, staring at him. With the single word “Out!” he sent the maid scurrying from her pallet. He barred the door behind her.
When he turned to face his wife again, she was standing beside the bed. Her hair fell in a tumble of golden waves over her shoulders. With the candlelight behind her, he could see the outline of her body through the thin night shift.
God, but she was beautiful. And she was his.
Catherine jumped from the bed but got no farther. The drunken madman towered over her, huge and menacing. She struggled to breathe against the rising hysteria closing her throat. Covering her face with her arms, she turned and cowered against the bed.
Suddenly, he was behind her, his heavy weight pinning her against the bed. The hot breath on her neck, the smell of sour wine, sent memories of Rayburn flashing through her head. She closed her ears to the man’s drunken mutterings so she would not hear the vile things he said.
His hands were everywhere, rubbing up and down her sides and moving over her breasts. When he lifted her shift and moved his hands over her bare buttocks and thighs, panic nearly paralyzed her. Desperation gave her the strength to pull herself along the side of the bed to reach for the blade under her pillow. When she moved, he fell against the bed. Then he slowly slid to the floor.
