When the door was secured, he turned to his captive on the bed. She was in a perfect position for him to have his way with her but he didn’t; something was holding him back although he wasn’t sure what. Perhaps it was the fact that she’d asked him not to brutalize her anymore. As much as he hated to admit it, perhaps he was actually bending to her request. She was very compliant when he coaxed her enough. That was the Emllyn he wanted. But she gazed back at him with an expression between fear and outrage.
“Untie my hands,” she demanded.
He put his hands on his hips. “I will not because you will only try to kick me again.”
“I kick you to defend myself,” she fired back.
He continued to face her, fists on his hips, and an odd expression on his face. Emllyn kept waiting for him to pounce on her but he remained standing. She watched him warily because he seemed rather pensive. After several long moments, he broke his stance and shifted towards the bed.
“Tomorrow we embark on a journey that, in order to be successful, must see some measure of trust between us,” he said quietly. “You and I are not comrades. We are not family nor are we even remotely kin. You are the sister of my enemy, a man I am rebelling against because he claims my lands as his own and holds my people as slaves. Did it ever occur to you that I am treating you the way your brother treats my people?”
He was being somewhat deliberate and calm in his delivery, a far cry from the lustful man from moments before. It was difficult not to take him seriously because his expression and words were sincere. Emllyn gazed back at him as she pondered the different responses she could give him. She settled on one.
“My brother does not force himself upon women as you do,” she said, trying not to sound angry or accusing. “I fail to see the similarities.”
Devlin cocked his head thoughtfully. “Your family has raped Irish lands for decades,” he said. “Our women have been taken back to England as concubines or worse. You know this to be true because you have Irish women working for you at Llansteffan.”
“How would you know that?”
“There is a great deal I know.”
He was, in fact, correct. Emllyn watched him a moment, studying his handsome face, before relaxing somewhat. The conversation was strangely civil and her terror from moments earlier was gone. “I asked you this once before,” she said. “Are you to punish me for the sins of my brother and father, and all of my male relatives before them that have staked a claim in Ireland?”
Devlin shook his head. “Punish you?” he said. “Nay, not punish. But I have made it clear that you belong to me. I will never, ever return you to your brother and it is my intention tobreed strong sons from you. If this is distasteful, then I am sorry for you. But it is the way of things.”
Emllyn could feel the familiar sting of tears but she resisted. It would do no good to cry, anyway. She had learned that much about him.
“What would you have me say to all of that?” she whispered. “There is nothing I can say and nothing I can do. But you and I have a bargain and I will hold you to it; you want to discover what de Cleveley’s plans are for you. I want to know if Trevor is among the captured. I told you that I would discover what I can and I have no intention of going back on my word. You have mentioned that there must be some trust between us– my word is my bond and I would assume the same with you, as a knight. You told me I could see the English captives once our task is finished. I am trusting your word just as you are trusting mine. What more do you want?”
Devlin listened to her reasonable words. She made sense. After a moment, he shook his head. “I told you I believed you when you swore not to betray me,” he said. “I still believe you. That has not changed. But… but I do not want to be fighting with you the entire time. We must have some level of cooperation or I fear we will fail, and that will mean death for us both.”
Emllyn tried not to give him an expression of total disbelief. “It is a simple thing to gain cooperation if that is what you truly want,” she said. “Untie my hands. Treat me with respect and you shall gain mine in return. Mayhap it is foolish to tell the man who took my innocence that I will show him a measure of respect, but I sense in you a man of honor, Devlin de Bermingham. I am not sure how or why, but I can see it in you. You are indeed a paradox; brutal and barbaric one moment and then civil and intelligent the next. I should hate you with every drop of my blood but I cannot seem to manage it because if I admit it to myself, you indeed have a grievance. I cannot say Iwould not behave the same way if a family that had no right to my lands or property claimed it for their own. But what you’ve done to me… I had nothing to do with my brother or father or grandfather’s claim in Ireland, yet you have indeed punished me for their sins. The barbarian in you ruined me but the warrior in you… he is a different man, one who is trying to save his people. I can understand that. But the barbarian… I hate him as much as he hates me.”
Devlin was stunned by her words. But along with that sensation came a sense of regret and guilt so powerful that he actually had to lower his gaze. He couldn’t look her in the eye. He had sworn all along that he would not be sorry for how he had treated her but at this moment, he was. Odd how this one moment in time and the lady’s gentle statement had turned the tides in his heart. His remorse was overwhelming, but not enough to let her go completely. She was still his and he intended to keep her, but not simply because she was his captive. There was something about her, as a woman of spirit, that he didn’t want to be without.
Silently, he went to the bed and untied the belt, letting her hands go free.
Emllyn sat up, rubbing her wrists and watching him as he went to the hearth and stoked the fire, throwing a few chunks of peat on it. He seemed very subdued and she wondered if her words had any impact on him. With de Bermingham, it was difficult to tell. She couldn’t read the man’s moods by any means.
“We will leave early on the morrow so I would suggest you pull together what possessions you plan to bring,” he said, giving the fire a final poke before rising. “When I leave this chamber, bolt the door behind me but know I will return.”
Emllyn simply nodded, watching the man make his way to the door, catching a glimpse of his big hands as he moved pasther and thinking those same heated thoughts she’d had before– hands that had made her feel things she had never felt in her life, sensations of such pleasure that even the mere thought of them was enough to cause her breathing to quicken. She was almost sorry that he was leaving. Part of her wanted him to stay, part of her wanted him to go.
It was a very strange conflict.
Devlin quit the room and Emllyn got up out of the bed to throw the bolt behind him. There was such an odd mood between them, something she pondered deeply as she went in search of her meager possessions as Devlin had instructed. Even as she packed, she thought of him, of their conversation, and how he had seemed rather vulnerable at times.
She knew there was a sensitive man beneath the warrior façade. She could sense it. A barbarian with a poet’s soul, a brute with a soft heart he kept hidden. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did. As she finished tying off her possessions that she had wrapped up in one of the hides, she lifted her hands to smell them. She could smell Devlin’s scent upon them from where she had fought with him.
The scent made her heart flutter.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Ithought yousaid we were going alone,” Emllyn said, looking at the escort around them. “Don’t you think an escort of this size will attract attention?”
The voyage into enemy territory had begun. It was just past sunrise on a misty spring morning and they were still within sight of Black Castle as they moved south. Wrapped up in the heavy brown cloak that had belonged to Devlin’s mother and seated behind him on a fat brown courser, Emllyn was referring to the other horses surrounding them. For a mission that would depend upon secrecy and a tentative lie at best, they were starting out rather boldly about it. There was a whole gang of escorts for allegedly escaped prisoners.
A knight who had been introduced to her as Sir Iver rode point on his shaggy white courser while to their right was another knight known as Sir Shain. They were dressed in traditional Irishleintes, or long padded tunics, not armor as English knights would have been. They had shown Emllyn complete indifference, to which she was grateful. Big Irish knights frightened her. There were also several men on foot, blending in with the foggy landscape. They were the eyes and ears of the escort party, protecting them from danger. But most of all, there was a smelly old woman smoking an equally smelly pipe plodding along behind them.
