The hot, dangerous flare in Lord Adrian's eyes showed that he was equally aware. For a moment his grip on her shoulders tightened, his fingers digging deep.
Abruptly he released her. "If you don't change into one of the gowns I gave you, I will tear your shift off also, and I will make no promises about what would happen next." He turned away and headed for the door. "I will return soon, and I expect that you will be decently clothed."
Meriel was left to wonder if she should stand her ground defiantly and refuse to obey, or quietly submit. At length she decided to obey, partly because her own clothing was no longer fit to be worn, but more because his gifts were only symbols, unimportant in themselves. In his present black mood, she would be a fool to anger him needlessly over something trivial.
Once she had decided, she changed quickly, fearful that he would return at any moment. She slipped into the plain shift, unable to repress a shiver of pleasure at how deliciously smooth it was against her skin. Then she pulled on the simplest of the bliauts, the blue one, which had only a narrow band of embroidery edging the neckline and sleeves. The seamstress had guessed well, for the upper part of the garment hugged her figure as closely as if it had been fitted to her.
The girdle must have been intended for a larger woman, for she had to wrap it around her slim waist an extra turn or the fringed ends would have trailed on the floor. She refused to weave the ribbons into her hair, but on impulse she donned the veil and the circlet. Perhaps if she looked more like a lady, he would be less likely to treat her like a round-heeled serf.
Meriel had just finished putting all the clothing, old and new, into the chest when the earl returned. Once more he stopped in the doorway, but this time his expression was so admiring that she blushed and looked down, self-conscious about the close fit of her gown.
"This is how you deserve to look," Lord Adrian said. He crossed to Meriel and put a finger under her chin, lifting it so that she was looking at him. "Why do you fight me, ma petite?" he asked softly. "I want to do well by you, but time and again, your actions bring out the devil in me."
Meriel stared at him, unable to believe his words. "How dare you!" she exploded, batting his hand away from her chin. "You have abducted, imprisoned, bullied, and threatened me, yet you have the audacity to blame me for your behavior?"
So much for her resolution not to anger him unnecessarily! As Lord Adrian rocked back on his heels, Meriel braced herself, expecting that his temper would dissolve in flames.
Instead, he gave a ruefully enchanting smile that took the shadows from his eyes. "Of course I blame you. That is far more comfortable than admitting that I have been behaving like a perfect ass, which is the only other alternative."
His reaction was so unexpected that Meriel laughed, as much from tension as amusement. "Oh, no one is perfect."
"Very true," he said, his expression serious again, but with humor lingering in his eyes. He was about to say more when Kestrel shot out from under the bed, pounced on an invisible enemy in the rushes, somersaulted over her tail, then skidded to a stop by the earl.
Startled, he looked down, then leaned over and scooped up the cat. Suddenly fearful for the cat's safety, Meriel exclaimed, "Please don't hurt Kestrel!"
Lord Adrian examined his captive, and was rewarded by a raspy pink tongue licking his wrist. Meriel watched with exasperation, The cat had no judgment at all. Not only was Kestrel too foolish to stay safely under the bed, she had to hurl herself at the earl and try to befriend him.
But perhaps Meriel maligned the cat's wisdom, for the earl's dry humor was still in evidence when he said, "I have the lowering feeling that you value this foolish beast more than you do me or anything I might offer you. Don't answer that," he added as he set the cat on the floor. "I would rather not know your true opinion just now. It's a beautiful day. Let us go for a walk on the walls."
"Will you force me to go if I do not wish to?" Meriel asked, reckless in her relief.
He regarded her thoughtfully. "No, if you would rather not, I shall not insist."
"Very well. In that case I accept." She walked past him to the door.
He grinned. "You are not entirely a reasonable person yourself, little falcon."
"I never claimed to be. In fact, our parish priest once said that no woman is capable of true reasoning."
"That is the problem with a celibate clergy," Lord Adrian murmured as he opened the door for her. "They forget what the world is really like."
Meriel laughed again as they went down the hall. "Monks who never see women might forget, but priests do not. All those sermons admonishing women to be obedient are examples of priestly wishful thinking."
"Not just priestly, but masculine wishful thinking," he remarked. "Many men sometimes wish that women did not have minds of their own."
"Woman was created from man's rib, to stand next to him, not from his feet, to lie under them," she retorted, calling a saying of Mother Rohese's.
He chuckled again and they proceeded amiably to a stairwell that led to the roof. At moments like this, the earl was such pleasant company that it was easy to forget his dark, dangerous side. As she went first up the narrow spiraling steps, she slanted a quick glance back at him and was struck by a startling new thought.
As the daughter of a poor knight, early destined for the nunnery, Meriel had never looked at men as potential mates because she knew she would never marry. Even after leaving Lambourn, marriage was still a distant, unlikely prospect, for it would be years, if ever, before Alan could afford to dower her, and she was by no means sure she wanted a husband.
But now she found herself wondering how she would feel about her captor under different circumstances. What if Adrian de Lancey was a knight with a single manor rather than an earl, and he had asked for her hand rather than demanded her body? If she had never seen his dark side, might she have considered him as a husband?
The answer was a surprising "yes," for Lord Adrian was the most fascinating man she had ever met. Apart from his strange and threatening obsession with her, he was intelligent and reasonable, with unexpected humor and undeniable charm. He had even been amused by Kestrel.
And though she feared his ardor and loathed what he was doing to her, there was something secretly satisfying about his interest. Men had always treated Meriel like a little sister in need of protection or a lady too virtuous to insult with passion. The earl made her feel, for the first time in her life, that she was a desirable woman.
She sighed and concentrated on climbing the steps, knowing that such speculation was singularly profitless. She was the earl's prisoner, not his guest, and his intentions were strictly—and dangerously—dishonorable.
Even if he knew her as Lady Meriel de Vere, they would have been hopelessly divided by circumstances as well as politics. Her family was at the bottom of the Norman social scale; in worldly terms, the de Veres were much closer to their own English villeins than to the great Norman barons. Lord Adrian's bride was already chosen, and she came from a family whose wealth and power equaled his.
As they stepped out onto the parapet that circled the edge of the keep, she set aside her bleak thoughts, wanting to appreciate every moment in the open air. A brisk wind was blowing and her veil billowed up, the swirling silk temporarily blinding her. Lord Adrian came to her rescue and neatly caught the veil, twisted it loosely, then tucked the rolled fabric under the back of her girdle.
Meriel thanked him, amused that his hand hadn't even lingered on her backside. He was certainly on his good behavior today!
With the veil out of her way, she could study her surroundings. The castle was set on a high thrust of rock, and the top of the keep commanded a magnificent view over the castle wards, the village, and the rolling Shropshire hills.
How many miles was it to Avonleigh? She suppressed the thought. "What a marvelous view you have from here. I have never been so high above the earth."
"Beautiful," he agreed, "and also practical. A lookout can see a very long w
ay."
Meriel glanced about and saw that there was indeed a guard. The young man nodded respectfully to his lord, then withdrew beyond earshot to the other end of the roof.
They strolled around the perimeter of the keep until they came to the side facing the river. Meriel leaned between the crenellations to peer over the edge of the wall, then gasped at how sheer the descent was. "If I dropped a pebble, I think it would go straight down into the river."
The earl nodded. "Very likely. The cliff below here is almost as steep as the castle wall."
She knit her brows, calculating. "We must be just above your chamber. Why did you build the keep on the very edge of the cliff rather than in the center of the peninsula? Is there some good defensive reason?"
"No." He leaned on top of one of the upthrust merlons, his arms crossed as he gazed at the river. "I just liked the idea that I could look this way and not see walls and men-at-arms."
"I see what you mean," Meriel said, feasting her eyes on the peaceful flowing river. At the far right a water gate led from the castle postern to the smooth water, and in the distance she saw two fishermen in a small boat, but there was no other sign of man or his works. It was very different from the bustling view in the other direction.
She glanced at the earl's still profile. He wore his quiet, ascetic face again, his thoughts turned inward, his danger leashed, his hair bright as pale polished gold in the sunshine. Except for his height, which was only moderate, he exactly fulfilled the fair, gray-eyed Norman ideal of beauty. Perhaps someday he would have daughters lucky enough to inherit his good looks.
After a lazy, comfortable interval, Meriel remarked. "No one could ever attack Warfield from this side."
"Not true." Lord Adrian gestured toward the cliff. "To prove to my men that no castle is impregnable, I once climbed up from the river. If I can, others can as well."
Startled, she looked at the water far below, then back at her companion. "You're joking!"
"God's own truth," he assured her. "I did it at night, without alerting anyone to expect attack. I didn't try to come all the way up here, though. I chose a spot under the curtain wall, which was much easier to breach."
"Sweet Mary!" she exclaimed, appalled. "You could have been killed. Why did you do such a thing?"
"I probably would have survived a fall to the river. As to why"—he smiled faintly—"when the guard who had been careless in his watching found my dagger at his throat, it impressed him—and all his fellows—much more than words ever could have."
"You didn't kill the man, did you?"
"Of course not. That would have wasted the lesson."
Meriel studied the earl uncertainly, unsure whether his words were proof of ice-cold blood or desert-dry humor. Perhaps both. "In spite of your assurances, I still have trouble believing that anyone could climb up here."
He shrugged. "Even the sheerest of cliffs has cracks and projections. If you have climbed to find eyases in their nests, you should know that."
She shook her head. "I've never climbed such a cliff. When we were taking eyases, my brother would lower me from the top with a rope." Thinking of the distance to the river, she shivered. "Much easier that way.''
The golden brows arched. "Your brother permitted you to risk your life like that?''
"I was quite safe. And it was necessary, since I was hardly strong enough to lower him down the cliff."
His expression was bemused. "Apparently the stories about the wild Welsh are true.''
"Indeed they are, my lord, as wild as they are free." She looked beyond the river, toward the distant Welsh mountains. "Wales will never bow to the Normans."
"You are wrong. No matter how brave your people are—and they are brave, insanely so—in the long run they will lose, because they are a nation divided, too independent to accept one king as their overlord." He shook his head. "Too much of Wales's courage, too many precious lives, are spent by petty princelings fighting their brothers for greater shares of their inheritance."
"It is more just that all of a man's sons inherit equally," Meriel said sharply, thinking of her own two brothers. "Where is the justice in the Norman way, where the eldest inherits everything and his younger brothers are scarcely more than beggars?"
"Dividing the patrimony equally may be more just," he conceded, "but less wise. There is no war more bitter than that among brothers. The Norman custom creates strength for everyone. Look how England has suffered under a weak ruler. And who suffers most? The common people, who have no stone walls to hide behind. Yet they are the wealth of the land. Without men to till the soil, the whole society is beggared."
Lord Adrian's expression was grim, perhaps in memory of what he had seen in the years of civil war. "When England has a strong king again, northern Wales will be conquered as the south already has been. It is only the wildness of the mountains that has enabled the north to remain unvanquished for this long. And though you will not agree with me, Wales will be better for Norman rule."
"Never, my lord. Freedom is in our blood." Meriel was infuriated by his words. She had always admired the spirit of her mother's kinfolk, and as the earl spoke she forgot that she herself was half-Norman—for the moment, she was pure Celt. "A true child of Wales would rather die than live in chains."
He studied her gravely. "Has the conversation just moved from the political to the personal?"
"Very discerning of you." His assertion that her mother's people would be better for being ruled by the Normans was as arrogant as his belief that she would benefit from being ruled by him. The anger that had been building since her capture erupted.
"How long do you intend to hold me prisoner, Lord Adrian?" Meriel challenged. "I have been charged with no crime, tried in no court. I swear that I will not change my mind about being your mistress, any more than my Welsh brethren will concede that the Normans are destined to conquer them and hand over their swords without a fight."
His gray eyes were as inexorable as cold steel. "I will hold you for as long as necessary to persuade you to stay of your own free will."
"Outrageous!" she exclaimed, then reined her temper in a little, hoping that logic might work where fury would not. "You seem to be an intelligent man, Lord Adrian, and a learned one. You very nearly became a monk, and by your own testimony left the cloister only from necessity." Her eyes narrowed. "Where is your morality? More than that, where is your pride? How can you bear to let yourself be ruled by lust? I am an insignificant female, without wealth or birth or beauty. Ravishing me will not add to your reputation as a lover, nor have I a courtesan's skills to drown your senses in passion."
The air between them pulsed with tension. "What I feel for you is nothing so simple as lust," he said softly. "To me you are unique and irreplaceable, and I will not let you go. I have said as much before, but apparently you did not believe me." His voice hardened. "The sooner you accept that I mean what I say, the sooner you can come to terms with your future."
Meriel stared, aghast. "If I truly believed that you intend to imprison me forever, I would throw myself over that wall."
He stepped forward swiftly and grasped her upper arm. "I trust that you do not mean that, but I will take no chances. It is time you returned to your room."
"My dungeon," she snapped, flinging the words over her shoulder as the earl shepherded her down the twisting stone stairs. "If I were to submit because of your threats, would it be any less rape than submitting because of your sword?"
He did not reply and there was no more speech until they arrived back in her chamber. When they were inside and he had shut the door behind them, he released her and she whirled to face him again.
"Even if I were fool enough to want to be your mistress, what kind of future would I have? Will your wife be so compliant that she will let you keep your leman under the same roof? Or would you imprison me elsewhere in the castle, to spare her pride? What would you do about your bastard children?" Meriel threw her hands up in exasperation. "You are a practical
man, my lord earl. What are the answers to these practical questions?"
She saw shame and guilt in his eyes and guessed that beneath his arrogance there was still some honesty, perhaps even a trace of conscience. In a low voice, he said, "You would always be honored and protected, as would any children."
"A whore's wages," she said with contempt. "I will never come to you willingly, my lord! The sooner you accept that, the sooner you will be able to think about your future, about the suitable Norman heiress you will take to wife."
His mouth twisted with wry admiration. "You have the mad courage of a goshawk. Most women would be quaking in fear."
"What good would fear do?" Meriel said bitterly. "You are a lord in your own castle and can do anything you wish, but rape will not make me any more willing than I am now. Quite the contrary."
"As I said before, I have no interest in forcing you." He stared at her with the intensity he might have used on an opponent in battle, "You are stubborn, but so am I, and I will wait as long as necessary. In time, you will change your mind."
Meriel met his stare with equal intensity. "Mark my words, my lord earl. You can rape me, you can murder me, you can break my body in a thousand ways, but I will be of no value to you broken."
Her voice dropped to a chilling whisper. "And I vow on my mother's grave that you will never make me bend."
Chapter 8
From the moment Adrian had met Meriel, unruly desire had frayed his hard-won control. Now, as she cried her defiance, standing straight and proud and infinitely desirable, the last frail threads of restraint snapped and the dark demons of violence raced through his veins. ''Damn you!" he swore, "if you will not bend, then I have no choice but to break you."
Meriel was no longer a woman to be won, but an enemy to be vanquished. Beyond thought, beyond conscience, beyond everything but the overwhelming need to conquer, Adrian closed the distance between them with one long step and lifted her in his arms, then hurled her into the middle of the feather mattress. He followed her down, pinning her slim body beneath him. With rough, impatient hands, he tore open a seam of her bliaut, then ripped the shift beneath.