Christian mounted the stairs, leaving the men carousing below. Under normal circumstances, he would be attended by his personal squires, the young Giles and the grizzled Goubert. But the first was dead, struck down by the baroness, and he had just visited the second in the butlery, which had been turned into a sickroom for the knights, squires, and sergeants who bore wounds too grave to permit them to join the others in the hall. If his wounds did not become infected, Goubert was likely to recover, and Christian had lit a candle for both him and Giles and recited three Paternosters for them in the village church for him before returning to the manor house.
When Lady Steele had flaunted her killing of squire Giles in his face, he had almost lost control, possessed by an urge to wipe the sneer from her lips. But even at that moment, he was not sure whether he had wanted to strike her or to take that defiant mouth in his own and make it respond with all the need and fury that drummed in his veins.
Even now he wanted her—to complete his conquest of her, even to punish her, but also because she was like no other woman he had ever encountered, uniquely fascinating and desirable.
He muttered a curse against his carnal weakness. The decision he was about to make had to be based on a sounder foundation than a momentary lust.
And it was. He knew it was. But, oh, did that lust make it that much more tantalizing….
Christian nodded to the guard and opened the bailiff's chamber door. The baroness looked up from her seat on the bed. For an instant, she looked thin, tired, and painfully vulnerable, her soft face etched with lines of tension and her blue eyes dark with sorrow.
But the moment she saw him, all signs of weakness flowed from her face, replaced by the haughty defiance he found both irritating and compelling. Cool and indestructible, she transcended her desperate circumstances and looked down at him with a regal contempt. Christian frowned, thinking that his job might be harder than he had thought.
"You are dismissed, Lady Catherine," he said to her attendant. "The guard will take you to the barn and ensure that you are not molested."
Lady Catherine hesitated in the doorway. "My lady the baroness did not find herself hungry," she said, the words half-apology, though whether to him or to her mistress, he couldn't tell.
"Indeed," he said, frowning at the wood trencher upon the chest, her untouched supper upon it.
Lady Catherine left.
Christian crossed slowly to the stool and sat on it, facing Lady Steele squarely. Her expression did not change-if anything, it grew harder.
"Eat, my lady. I do not poison my guests," he ordered.
"Or your prisoners?" she returned.
"You may name yourself what you will, Lady Steele," he said.
She did not attempt to reject the name he gave her, but her lips drew into a hard line. "As I told Lady Catherine, I am not hungry."
Christian's exasperation was tempered by a contrary admiration. At first, she had tried to defeat him on the battlefield, then to kill him in an ambush. When both those ventures failed, she attempted to stab him with her eating knife and then to kill herself when there was no other escape. Did she now mean to use starvation to free herself from his control?
But he was not without inducements. "Well, then, I certainly pray your people whom we are keeping in the manor's great barn are not hungry, either, for if you do not touch your food, they will eat none."
The baroness stared at him, impotent fury written on her face. "You would not!"
"I would and I will," he said coldly, meaning every word. "Test me if you dare. I will take you down at every meal to hear their empty bellies rumble. I doubt that it will be long before you eat. I should hope that you love your people too much to starve them."
She sat, immovable and silent, for a long moment, but he met her gaze unflinching. Finally, she gave a tiny movement of she shoulders, something between a shudder and a shrug, and Christian knew it was an admission of defeat.
He took the wood trencher from the chest and thrust it at her, and she took it onto her lap without a word. For a second, Christian thought that he could see her pulse fluttering in her neck, but then she shifted minutely and the vision was gone, and he could not decide whether he had merely imagined it. She picked up the smallest piece of roast and brought it to her lips, her eyes never leaving his, and chewed it slowly before swallowing.
He sat back with satisfaction.
"Your little ambush cost the lives of several good men, Lady Steele," Christian began, his voice deliberately cold. "Yet if changed nothing in the end. Soon, my father will capture Rothbourne itself, for the north is falling as quickly as Astlingmead has here in the south."
The woman raised her chin, glaring at him. "My people will not give up simply because you have captured me. They will fight all the harder to rescue their lady from your grasp."
"Perhaps," Christian said. "Or perhaps not. I have not been called to fight by my father without greater incentive than mere filial loyalty."
"You were promised Astlingmead itself," the baroness said flatly, her eyes glittering with anger that she did not even seem to try to hide.
"Indeed. Even when vassal's daughter has her inheritance recognized by the king, it rarely takes much persuasion for another to be recognized in her place."
He could tell from her expression of repressed fury that the baroness knew his words to be true. An heiress was rare, and she was always in great danger of kidnapping or disinheritance, unless she was safely married off to a man with enough power to protect her interests….
"There is another way," he said. "One with less bloodshed. A way that allows you to keep your title and all its honors."
All at once, the color drained from Lady Steele's face as realization dawned in her eyes. "No," she whispered, a morsel of meat dropping nervelessly from her fingers. "Never."
Her virulent horror stung him. "My lady, I do not have to ask for your hand. There are many priests who would perform a ceremony and for but a little silver would hear the woman's 'yes' even as she screams 'no.'"
"Then it will be a farce of a marriage, a rape in all but name," she spat.
"I doubt that I will have to resort to such measures," he returned.
"Why you are so sure that I shall give my consent?" she demanded. "Do you threaten my life? In your grasp, I value it so little that you cannot frighten me with specters of death. Will you take my title? I would not keep it, if you are the one to usurp my father's lands. Will you take from me my virtue? Then it will be your shame and not mine."
"I will force no woman," Christian said bluntly.
"If she is not your wife." It was both a question and a statement, full of unconcealed disgust that provoked him further.
"If she agrees to be my wife, she agrees to have me, and that I may have her." And how he wanted to have her, right there, thrown back into the coverlets as he drove into her, again and again….
Something of his hunger must have been transmitted in his gaze, for a slow flush burned in Lady Steele's cheeks.
"No, my lady, I have no need to force you," he said. "I will use the same inducement as I did to make you eat. If you do not wed me, your people will suffer, and I will keep you alive to see their grief. The prisoners will not be fed, and I must win your castle by siege or by storm. All your villages and fields will be destroyed in the fighting, and in such battles, not even women and children are fully spared."
Denial, fear, and revulsion flickered across her face. Christian forged ahead, determined to make her face the truth. "The few able-bodied men you can still muster will be slaughtered, and there will be no one but women and boys to bring in what harvest survives, and no one to plow and sow next spring."
"No," she said, shaking her head.
Christian pressed on. "You will go to sleep each night with the cries of orphans in your ears, living in the castle as a servant to see what you have wrought through your stubbornness."
"No," she repeated. She was trembling visibly now, but still she stood firm against his onslaught. Christian weighed his words to wrench away the last of her illusions.
"I know you hate me for what I have done. Do you hate your people, too? Would you see innocents die senselessly to feed your pride? I pray you are a better woman than that. You have lost already. Surrender."
Lady Steele shuddered convulsively, her half-eaten meal sliding to the floor as she stumbled to her feet. "I cannot."
She spun away from him, poised on the balls of her feet as if to flee. But there was nowhere for her to go. She started toward the door then stopped, frozen in the center of the room.
Christian stood and closed the distance between them. She gave ground slowly, backing up toward the wall until she fetched up against it. He was standing so close to her that the front of her kirtle brushed against his legs, her breasts scant inches from his chest. He put his arms on either side of her body, barring her in.
She was out of room. Christian needed her to understand that she was out of options, as well.
"It is the best for your people, Anastasia le Steele. It is the best for you, as well," he said sternly.
"I would rather die," she retorted, her chin rising again in that defiant way.
Christian had no doubt that she meant it. But why such vehemence? "I had not thought my features nor my manners so repulsive, my lady, that you should regard the prospect with such horror."
"You are a Greyholm," she said bleakly. "You have invaded my home without provocation and stolen my birthright. You father murdered mine, and the supposed accident that claimed by brother's life was almost certainly devised by him, as well. Now you want me to give myself to you, to legitimize your illegitimate claim upon my family's lands. If I were to accede, how long after the wedding would I survive? A night? A week? A month? Then I, too, will have an accident. No. I will not let you have this, too."
"We Greyholms had nothing to do with your brother's death, and your father's was a true accident," Christian said.
"Were you there, my lord?" Lady Steele asked. "Did you see your father's lance drive through the slits of my father's helm?"
"No," Christian admitted. "I was not."
She laughed, a peculiarly melodious sound despite the bitterness in it. "Then you may be just a fool and not a liar."
He raised one hand, brushing his knuckles across her soft, pale cheek. She flinched, her eyes going wide and her lips parting slightly as her breathing rate increased.
Christian softened his voice. "Whatever you believe of my father, believe this of me: my wife will be under my protection even as she is under my authority, both of which are far from trivial."
"Why do you want me so fiercely?" she whispered. Her eyes were luminous, shining with the unnatural brightness of unshed tears. "I saw it in your eyes when you first brought me down in the woods—I thought that certainly, you would attack me then. You didn't, yet you still want the same thing, but now you dress it up in terms of a surrender, a truce, a marriage. But the truth is that you just want me, however you can assuage your guilty conscience into believing that your desire is just. Why?"
The words struck true—too true. But Christian would not admit that to her. Not now, and perhaps not ever. "Do not flatter yourself," he said.
And yet there she was, only inches away, so brave and so vulnerable, reckless and desirable, and for once, he could not stop himself. He caught the nape of her neck in his hand, and even as she gasped in alarm, he covered her mouth with his.
For an instant, her entire body went stiff with outrage, but then she made a small noise against his lips and kissed him back, hard, her body pressed against his as her hands fisted in his surcoat. Her mouth was sweet and hot, and he took it as he wanted to take her, possessing it thoroughly. Hot need lanced through him, down into his groin—
And she shoved him away with a cry, twisting out of his arms.
"You devil!" she said. Her braids were mussed, her eyes wide and flashing. "Stay away from me."
"Perhaps you do not fear marriage because you hate me so much," Christian said. "Perhaps it is because you are afraid that you won't hate me at all."
"Bring back my father," Lady Steele said. "Bring back my brother, and then I might not hate you."
"As you well know, that is beyond mortal powers," Christian said.
"Then wooing me is fruitless, for affection is beyond mine."
"I don't ask for your love," Christian said. "I only ask for your hand. Will you give it?"
Her face twisted, and she spoke the words as if they hurt her. "Yes. I must. For my people, I must."
Christian's heart gave a painful contraction. She had agreed, but with such horror and reluctance. Though he could not have hoped for more, her unwillingness still burned him. Nonetheless, she would be his, irrevocably his, for he knew that her promise was as binding to her as any sacrament. He reached for her, whether to comfort or embrace her he did not know, but he saw her shudder and automatically recoil from him, so he aborted the motion mid-gesture.
"Will you give me your parole? Your oath that you will not try to harm yourself?" He forced his tone to be cool.
"You have my word," the baroness replied. The tremble in her voice was so slight that he almost missed it, and it made his heart clench. "I will do myself no harm. But, my lord, if you have any mercy, do not make me eat any more tonight. I could not."
"No, my lady," he agreed softly. "You may eat tomorrow. Go to sleep. My army will not march to attack your castle in tomorrow. Instead, we will be wed." He left, shutting the door quietly behind him.
Christian stood outside the door for several seconds, trying to order his thoughts. 'Sblood! Being around her muddles me more than wine.He still could feel her presence burning through the thin door that separated them, and the phantom image of her anguished face haunted his mind. Her revulsion had hit him like a blow, but it did nothing to make him want her any less. And her humiliation, which in his anger he had desired, had only roused a protectiveness that he had not anticipated.
"My lord?" One of the guards at the door was looking at him questioningly.
Christian came to himself with a start. "Fetch a quill and parchment," he ordered.
He would send a messenger that night to his father's camp, for he needed the permission of his liege to be wed.