“Well, I can believe that.” Halldor smiled, though his eyes held a curtain of sorrow. “But that is the problem, you see. Torquil MacDowylt is no longer a man.”
Their conversation was cut short by a banging on the door.
Her stomach twisted with the unwelcome punch of fear, but she rose to her feet. If the MacDowylt had changed his mind regarding her fate, she wouldn’t make it easy for him.
Halldor stood too, a deep sigh escaping his lips as he leaned in toward her. “My deepest apologies, Shield Maiden, but I do this for your own good.”
Before she could ask what he meant, he gripped the neck of her beautiful colored gown and jerked down, ripping through the layers of cloth to expose her entire body to just below her waist.
She screamed, clasping her arms in front of her in a paltry attempt to cover herself.
“On the floor,” he hissed, pulling his shirt off over his head as he made his way to the door. One look around and he quickly but silently overturned the bench by the wall before answering the insistent hammering.
She nodded and dropped to her knees. If he thought to set a proper scene, she would do her part.
“What?” he bellowed, throwing open the door. “Can you not leave a man to his pleasures?”
One of the guards Brie remembered seeing inside the hall waited there, craning his neck to cast a leer in her direction.
“Our lord Torquil would have you attend him in his solar after midday meal on the morrow.”
Halldor nodded, holding the door open much farther than he needed to do, supporting her suspicion.
“You may tell him I’ll be honored to be there. And now, if that’s all you have for me, I’ve a meal of another kind what wants attending to, eh?”
Both men laughed like drunken fools sharing a vile secret, until Halldor slammed the door shut in the other’s face, dropping the bar down to ensure it stayed shut.
When he returned to her side, he dropped a woolen blanket over her shoulders, covering her nakedness before he sat.
She looked up at him, trying to find a grateful smile but failing miserably.
“The good news is, by sunrise, word of your deflowering will have spread to every willing ear on the castle grounds.”
“That’s the good news?” She could hardly believe how her voice shook. “What, then, could possibly be the bad?”
He reached for her hand, lifting it to his face. “If we’re to do this in a way that might be convincing enough to save your life, we must do it right. That means you must be strong enough and clever enough to play your part as well.”
Trickles of fear curled in Brie’s chest at the look he gave her. She tugged at her hand, feeling a need to put distance between the two of them, but he wouldn’t let go.
“Can you do that? Can you be strong enough for what’s to come?”
She nodded, and nearly screamed again as he crushed her fingernails into the skin beside his eye, dragging them down the length of face, leaving four ragged trails of blood in their wake.
OceanofPDF.com
Twenty-six
THERE ARETINKLERSat Tordenet?” Christiana could hardly believe her eyes. “And you dinna speak of this, Ulfr?”
“There seemed to be no reason to do so. They’re no allowed entry through the gates, so it’s no as though you’ll have any contact with them.”
The knowledge struck home painfully. For the first time in many years, she was so close to her mother’s people, yet they might as well have been across an ocean for her inability to speak to them.
“You want to visit their camp?” Chase asked quietly from his seat beside her. “Just say the word.”
As badly as she wanted to speak with them, to see if they had known her mother, it wasn’t a word she would say. Torquil would never allow it, and she wouldn’t risk what her brother might do to Chase if he tried to help her.
She caressed the wagons with her eyes as they rolled past, surprised when a woman jumped down from one of those wagons and started toward them.
