Claudia Dain (40 page)

"Now and always," Ulrich answered him, his own grin thin and cold. He turned to Walter and said, "I am your man by the giving of St. Ives, my oath given to you. Give me leave to kill him. He is deserving of it."

Walter and even Conor started at that cold request.

"He is my uncle," Walter said. "I cannot grant that request, though he does deserve it."

"You know nothing of blood ties," Conor snarled at Ulrich. "Never would any of my kin lay hand to me or I to them. Your bastardy shows strong in such words."

Ulrich ignored Conor and said to Walter, "What of Juliane and your bond to her?"

"She is past saving now," Walter said, "her future hard in the hands of Nottingham. Think of your son. He may yet be saved."

Ulrich looked hard into Walter's eyes. "William is not my son."

"What?" Conor spat out, jolted from the comfort of arrogance for the first time in an hour. "He is your son. There can be no other."

"He is the son of William le Brouillard of Greneforde, given into my keeping for a time, as my son was left in Greneforde. My son, a bastard like his father, is a babe of toddling steps. Nay, the boy you took and thought to kill is the son of William, close upon the king and his counselors. A mighty enemy you have made should any harm befall his son. Though no harm will, not by Roger's hand."

"A fine enemy you have made for Stanora, Conor!" Walter roared.

"He is loose in the manner of choosing allies," Ulrich said.
"But I am not. Roger will not betray me and not with the blood of a child."

"He
is
your son! You lie to protect him!" Conor said, his throat gone hoarse with fear and doubt.

"Protect him? How does my speaking the truth protect him?" Ulrich asked, pressing his blade against the older man's throat. Conor's pulse jumped as he tried to slip from beneath the press of steel, but there was no escape from Ulrich's judgment. "Give me leave to kill him," he pleaded with Walter.

It was clear that Walter wanted to, yet Conor was blood kin and he could not betray him unto death.

"I cannot."

"Then do not," Ulrich said, swinging his blade sharply up with the words and slicing Conor's head nearly off his body. He fell in a bloody mass, his head hanging on by the bony ridge of his spine.

Ulrich knew he had lost all by his act. He did not care. He had killed the very man King Henry had sent him to find. He had betrayed his lord by defying Walter's will. He had lost St. Ives.

But he would not lose Juliane. All was cast down for the hope of having her. All was lost to save her, and it was sound bargaining. She was a woman worth having. She was a woman who merited the price of a life, a holding, a king's anger. For Juliane he would risk all, lose all. For Juliane he would abandon everything but the need to have her for his own.

"You have lost St. Ives by that," Walter said when the shock of seeing his uncle killed before his eyes had cleared.

Ulrich stood upon the stones, the blood from his kill dripping upon them, splattering all about him with sticky blood. He looked up at Walter, his blue eyes alight with a fire of passion and raw fierceness, like the eyes of a wolf before he sinks his mouth into the warm blood of a kill.

"Keep it, then," he said, turning from Walter with the swiftness of a hungry hunter. "'Tis Juliane I will not lose."

Chapter 22

Help did not come.

Ulrich did not come.

Thrust by thrust, Nicholas claimed his prize.

He lay between her legs, grunting like a boar, bruising her with his force and with his cold and battering seduction. Yet she endured. He rammed his way into her, stretching her wide, holding her knees up with his hands, ignoring her as she pushed against his shoulders.

He did not release her. Nay, he kept defeating her with every thrust, cold and deep and hard within her womb, casting her into ice more surely than any legend could.

Ulrich did not come.

Her legend was shattered. The very reason she had run from Ulrich and from marriage had been nullified upon the straw of an abandoned shed. She had refused Ulrich for no cause now. Nicholas and all the world would know the depth of her lie. She had lost Ulrich, and it was hard losing.

Even if he came, he would not want her now.

No man would want her now. The legend of Juliane was lost. Nicholas, far from falling, had risen hard and pulsing when he had seen her spread before him in the hay like a royal banquet.

Her legend was made a lie.

Her legend had ever been a lie.

"You are mine now," Nicholas said, his voice a rasping breath against her ear.

He had stopped his grinding thrusts into her. God be praised for even small mercies. She was covered in bruises, bleeding from the mouth, and her back felt broken into eight small pieces. Of her tears, seeping out in gentle drops from the corners of her eyes, she would not think. She would not honor them with acknowledgment.

She had been taken, beaten. She could not bear a life of this. Nay, she would not go to that without a fight. One more fight. One more, if she could summon the courage. There was still a fight left in her, some small remnant of heart and will that kept her chin up and her gaze frosty when her very bones shouted that she was lost. Lost and unfound. Lost and unsought.

Ulrich had not come.

That loss, that pain, was almost worse than the stinging ache that bled throughout her womb. She had been used hard. Ulrich would not want her now, even if he came. But he had not.

Walter would not object. Her future was secured in the hands of a man of means and title. What else mattered in the workings of this world? A marriage was made, the contracts could come later. None cared that her life would be bound by misery with Nicholas in her bed.

None cared and none came.

Tears flooded up, closing off her throat and blinding her eyes. Nay, nay, that was no way to face a final battle. She knew what form the fight would take. For this very reason she had been bound to refuse all men, for if she wed, if she was taken upon the marriage bed, then a man might know the lie that had shaped the life of Juliane.

As now Nicholas knew.

Upon that point, she would need to skewer Nicholas. This would be her final battle against a man and his pride. Kill her he might well do, only let her, please, God, let her fight stoutly and with honor. Let her name stand for more than deceit.

"You are mine," he said, his dark eyes glowing with conquest and the joy of victory.

"Am I?" she said, squirming beneath him, wanting the protection of her skirts about her.

He grabbed her fist and crushed it in his hand. She flinched but did not cry out. She had learned to live with pain since knowing Nicholas.

"Why fight on?" he said, releasing her hand slowly as he slipped from her, leaving her wet and sticky and smelling of him. She pushed her skirts down, masking the smell. "You belong to me. No man will have you now."

"I am still married to Ulrich, unless you have forgot," she said, trying to squeeze out from under him, wanting him away from her.

"I have not forgot, but that is legal wrangling, soon made right when you are fat with my child in you."

"Such poetry," she said, spitting into the hay and leaving a bloody mark.

Nicholas did not seem to hear her. He was looking at his cock. And now the game began in earnest.

"Where is your blood? Where is the mark that I have taken you and been your first?"

"Look upon my face," she said, slowly standing. Every joint ached. "You will see blood enough."

He grabbed her by the back of her hair and pulled her face down to his cock. "Look! There is no stain upon me. You were no virgin!"

"Did I ever say I was?" she asked, looking up at him from her forced obeisance.

He shoved her then with a roar of frustration, and she fell back against the wall, stumbling on a buried rake. A poor weapon against a knight, yet it might slow her death. She would not be taken without some blood of his to mark her fight.

The high, long cry of a hawk came from the sky, piercing and wild, and her soul lifted to hear it. She knew that cry. 'Twas Morgause.

And then the sound of horses, and the answering call of Nicholas's mount, and Juliane knew she was not as lost as she had been.

Nicholas heard the same and grabbed up his sword. He would have grabbed Juliane to him, but she scrambled back, tripping on the hidden rake again and snatching it up to hold him off.

Ulrich had come.

"Say nothing," Nicholas whispered to her as he looked between the wide cracks in the planking.

Say nothing? She would scream out her need though he kill her for it. Ulrich had come. He had come after all.

"Stanora," she called out through cracked lips. "Mercy and aid. Stanora, to me."

Her eyes stayed on Nicholas as she said it, knowing he would take some action against her if he could. He moved toward her with speed and put his hand over her mouth and much of her nose. She could not breathe and began to fight and gag for air.

"Mercy is upon you," she heard over the roaring in her ears. Nicholas's hand dropped away from her to grab up his sword.

Ulrich stood in the low doorway, filling it. Behind him stood Edward, but her eyes were all for Ulrich. He had come.

He had come too late.

"You have used my wife most hard," Ulrich said softly, his eyes a flame of vengeance that warmed her. She began to shake, her teeth to chatter. "You will die for it," he said and licked his lips in predatory hunger.

"I used her as she demanded," Nicholas said, holding his sword at the ready. "I took her and made her mine. She will be my wife now, if I still choose to keep her. She was no virgin. She had known a man before me, making a lie of her legend."

Ulrich looked at her, and, trembling in relief and fear, she tried to return his look, but gave way before the questions in his eyes. She could not bear to watch as realization sparked to life. She had been no virgin. Nicholas had no cause to lie. Where, then, the lie?

Where else but between Juliane's thighs and upon Juliane's lips?

Ulrich had not touched her. She was legendary for not having been touched. Yet here was Nicholas, proudly crowing of his rape and declaring her to have been used before he fought his way into her. What was Ulrich to think?

What could he think?

That she had known a man before, before Ulrich and before Nicholas.

And what was it but the truth?

All she ever had to offer a man was a lie with the gloss of legend to cover it.

Did Ulrich see that now? Did Ulrich see the lady behind the false legend she had made for herself? A legend built solidly upon a lie, a legend to give her power and renown. A lie to set her free. A lie to please her father. A lie that trapped her within a legend she had come to hate.

The legend of Juliane. Without it, she would have been like any other woman, a pawn in the game of power with no power of her own. Without it, she was nothing. With it, she could win at every game. So her father had promised her, and so it had been.

Did Ulrich see that now? Broken, her beauty beaten into bruises, she was defenseless. Would he let her fall to Nicholas? Did he want her now that her legend was a wisp of nothing churned into the mud?

Ulrich searched her eyes, and she could not shelter herself from the blazing heat of his look. In truth, she did not want to. Let him see her as she was in truth. Let him cast aside the legend built around her name and see only Juliane. The Juliane she had been before the lie of legend.

* * *

He saw the lie of legend, saw what it was she had done, though why she had done it he could not answer.

That first marriage had been true. It had not broken upon her chill. She had not defeated a man with ice and frost, beating back his seduction with her cold blue eyes. She was a woman, and if a man wanted to find his way into her, he would find his way. She had no power beyond her tears to stop him, and few men were stopped by tears when lust was hard upon them.

So it had been with him when he had taken gentle, trusting Mariam.