For nine days, and then once again nine more, William forbids his brother his husbandly rights to Hermione, claiming her firstborn as his. Until she has evidence that she breeds with the absence of her monthly, he holds her captive within her rooms and refuses her free access to the rest of the household.

Ronald is resentful of the decree, yet powerless, for 'tis the Baron Cranmere's right by law to demand thus, and he dare not risk his opportunities to squire for the Earl of Devon, who leaves in a fortnight.

At first, Hermione rallies against such treatment, demanding freedom, pounding the door with her fists. In her desperation, she even attempts to channel the energia, hoping to use its power to aid in her escape, but it is wild and unpredictable magic, and by God's truth, it terrifies her.

Still, she does manage to unlock the door with it once, but William quickly catches her and seals them back inside. He punishes her attempt to leave him by making wicked love to her all night, binding her to him so powerfully, she hardly notices when he removes the golden band from her marriage finger and tosses it aside.

The next day, bizarre, yet beautiful dried flowers brought back with William from the Far East burn in small metal bowls placed at the four corners of the room, filling the air with a sweet fragrance, and Hermione is made strangely docile by the scent. The flowers are called Blue Lotus, he tells her when she asks, and they grow only in the darkest tributary of the Nile.

"They were given in trade to a merchant at Acre while under Saladin's rule and taken as bounty by successful Crusaders under King Richard's authority," he tells her one afternoon when he visits her chambers again. "They calm the restless heart."

Indeed, she sleeps oft while inhaling their lovely perfume, and under the sway of such easy slumber, she dreams always of the sin of copulation.

In between bouts of rest and wakefulness, there is William. He comes to her, sometimes fiercely like a wolf, other times sweet as a lover, his sex e'er ready to penetrate her. He cajoles and coaxes her into discovering new delights, using his seductive power o'er her to bend her will to his lust.

To be expected, she denies his advances...at first. The aphrodisiac potency of the flowers weakens her, however, and all too soon, she succumbs to his temptations, falling into hedonism.

At first, he makes small requests: for her to trace the curves of her body with her hands, and to perform for him sensual dances as she undulates atop him. She delights in the wildness in his eyes and the eagerness she provokes from his staff during such moments. Next, he persuades her into taking the length of him into her mouth, and she suckles upon him like a yellow strumpet while on her knees at his feet. She paints her skin and mouth and tongue with his white seed, an odd sense of power o'ercoming her at how she can make him so desirous of her with such ease. Then, he binds her wrists and ankles, lashing her exposed body with sweet leather and the hard skin of his palms, and he places his mouth and cockpiece to all her sacred places, leaving no secret unknown, no matter the Church's edicts on such sin.

As her sexual talents develop, so too does the energia she is able to summon. Channelling it with concentration, she is able to change the shape of things: a belt into a whip, a tunic into a silk scarf, a headdress into a blindfold. She once even changes water into oil, which William then uses to coat his phallus and the lips of her sheathe and the ring of her ane for love play.

Oft, he requests her use this strange magic upon him, too, to make his hair blond or his eyes green. It cannot undo the scars at his cheek, she notes, but it can cover them in the glamour of the Tylwythe teg to make them smooth and perfect for a time.

Slowly, day by day, Hermione becomes enslaved to the pleasure her mate brings her...and to the exalted feeling of owning his pleasure as well. She changes from a shy village girl into a Moon Goddess, and when her courses stop flowing, she transcends again, this time into Mother Rhea.

As evidence of her successful breeding is known, William begins attending to her every need personally: he feeds her from his hand, bathes her without a maid's help, combs her hair, and shaves her body smooth from neck to toe, as he claims they do in Egypt. Unlike other men of breeding lovers, he forgoes custom and continues to love her at night in her bed.

Her Lord's kindness and the pleasure he brings her does not make Hermione forget her place as his prisoner. She is a wren in a gilt cage, and the outside world is lost to her...for now.

~.~.~.~.~

"Your marriage has been invalidated," William tells her one eve while settled deep within her. He has paused in their joining to tell her his news, and there is a wolfish gleam in his eye and a toothy grin upon his bearding face. "The Bishop has seen to it with an official writ. You are free in all ways to be mine forever now, Hermione."

He is a man possessed when he takes her all that night, and she is a woman torn asunder as she both grieves at the knowledge that Ronald is lost to her forever, while reveling in her body's indulgence with his Lord brother many times.

~.~.~.~.~

"He has gone with the old Earl, my finch," Madam Weasley explains, when Hermione is finally allowed out of her bed chambers for the first time in a three month. "'Twas better for you both, given the Bishop's edict."

She looks to the floor as she speaks, and there is sorrow etched into the crags of her aging face.

To Hermione's surprise, her mother approaches her from across the hall. She is a woman transformed by wealth, wearing sumptuous clothing and gold upon her hands and neck. Are these, then, the gifts from her wedding, enjoyed by her mother during her absence?

"Do you breed yet, child?" she asks with some measure of anxiousness.

Hermione is flustered. She has finally come out of seclusion after three full turnings of the moon, and that is all her mother has to say to her?

"Well?"

There is eagerness and greed in her mother's dark eyes as she presses for an answer.

"Yes, Lady Mother. I am three of nine-days and three, and three times more along, bred upon my wedding night." She says this with a tight throat and a pounding heart.

There is triumph in her mother's face and relief in Madam Weasley's wan countenance.

Ronald's mother takes her hand and pats it gently. "Praise all the angels and saints! You will be well cared for now. My eldest treasures his relations. He will see to you."

It is a moment before Hermione comprehends the woman's meaning, but when she understands at last, the revelation is something of a shock to her humours. "Do you say, Madam, that should I not have bred, I would have been ejected from the castle?"

Madam Weasley trades a nervous glance with Hermione's mother. "Sweet child, y-you must understand–"

Her mother tuts once and that cue silences the other woman's tongue. She addresses Hermione directly when she says, "If you had not bred true, daughter mine, we would all of us three—your father, you and I—be out of the castle, and you would further have been exiled from the village to prevent temptation to married men."

Her mother un-gently cups her chin and meets her eye.

"A woman despoiled has no value to an honest man seeking a wife or to an honest trade either, and can only earn her living on her back. Cranmere is a pious village, and does not allow paid fornicators amongst its number. There is no 'stew' here. Do you understand?"

Hermione removes her mother's hand and steps away, casting her eyes downward in shame and humiliation. Her good marriage to Ronald was destroyed on a gamble, and she has been cast forth like the bones before a roaring fire, her fate random and ultimately, inconsequential. "I believe so, Lady Mother." She glances back up, anger burning a hole into her heart and making acid of her tongue. "Although I must ask why such a 'noble' tradition as droit du seigneur would be allowed continuance given thus, as it makes a whore of a good woman in the end. Or is there enjoyment to be found in such ruin of innocence?"

Eleanora Granger's smile dies on the vine.

Hermione looks upon her with disdain, forgetting her filial piety. "Tell me true," she presses, "many Lords are known to have bastards with no care for their mothers, yes? Will you still smile so if the Baron decides to cast me out, child or no?"

She gathers her skirts in hand for a quick escape to her rooms once she delivers the fatal blow:

"After all, I am now no more than a mistress, thanks to your insistence on tradition, with no tie to title and no promise of marriage to protect our family from exile from these lands. And who knows what tomorrow may bring for you, should I displease my lord."

With that, she turns and walks away with false pride in her spine and step. It is only when she is safely behind locked door that she allows her fears freedom.

Dear Father in Heaven, what will she do once William tires of her? For he will, assuredly. No man stays faithful to his wife, and she cannot claim even that protection. He comes to her bed every night, true, but he has vowed not to marry again, so as not to rob his children from his first marriage of their inheritance. He wishes only to adopt Hermione's child, should it be male. There has been no mention of her fate, however, except words spoken in passion—which are as unreliable from men's mouths as wedding vows.

Like a thunderbolt hurled from Zeus' hand, driven into her skull, Hermione realises in that moment that she will never be a wife again. William has stolen that chance from her in his desire to have her. Now, the best she can hope for is to be his winter mistress for every season, until she has amassed enough fortune to guarantee her own protection should he pass.

Her lover has ruined her life.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Author's Notes:

And darker...

Also, I refer you to chapter 1's notes if you are confused by the archaic and foreign terms in this fic.

Please review!