“Non!” Simone shrieked and beat a fist into the soft bedclothes. “He is vile and I hate him!”
“Ah, quel dommage, ma petite fille.” Too bad, my little girl. “Would that you had thought your plan through more fully, eh?”
“There was no plan,” Simone cried, frustration and panic causing her to feel nauseated. “I was merely trying to escape for a time—to gain a reprieve from being traded like an animal at market!”
“Have a care for your tongue, Simone,” Armand warned. “You seem to have forgotten that had you not convinced the Beauvilles of your madness, claiming my dead son spoke to you, we would have had no need to come to this barbaric city.”
Simone knew it was of no use arguing yet again over Didier. Truthfully, Armand was right—had Simone not trusted Charles Beauville with her grief-stricken confidences, she would most likely be his wife now, and Armand would be far away, on another leg of his grand quest. Didier may have frozen them all to death by now, but that fate seemed infinitely preferable to the future she now faced.
“Please, Papa,” Simone said, resorting to begging. “The baron will hate me for this. I will be miserable as his wife.”
“You’ll make the best of it, I am certain.” He stood, signaling that the discussion was over. He limped toward the bed. “I will make arrangements for your possessions to be delivered to the baron’s suite.”
“Why there?” Simone asked, thinking of the tens of trunks that held the precious belongings of her mother’s and Didier’s. She had begged her father to allow those most personal items to accompany her to England, at the sacrifice of leaving most of her own possessions behind. Armand had complied, although now, the impoverished estate could not afford the considerable added cost. The trunks were still being held at the docks for payment until the time Armand could sell her to the highest bidder.
“Because, enfant,” her father spoke to her as if she were once more a small child, “after you are wed, you will stay in your husband’s apartments before you journey to his home. You do wish to have your things with you, non?”
Simone nodded.
“Bon. Now, go to sleep.” Armand crossed the chamber and opened the door, pausing to speak to her once more over his shoulder. “For once, you have served me well, Simone.”
And then she was blessedly alone.
Simone knew ’twould be impossible to convince Nicholas that she’d had no intention whatsoever of trapping him into marriage. He had suspected it from the first, and although she’d thought she’d made it clear that she was resigned to wed the elderly Halbrook, these new circumstances would do much to persuade him to believe otherwise. She could only hope that the baron had not yet heard the rumors that had chased her from France.
’Twas as if fate were out to thwart her at every turn.
Simone let the candle gut out on its own as she lay alone in the early morning light and cried herself to sleep.
Chapter 4
A great pounding filled Nick’s skull, as if God’s own fist struck the earth, threatening to rattle his eyes from their sockets.
He rolled over with a groan and felt a yielding cushion of warm flesh against his bare knee. He raised a hand to cover his still-closed eyelids and his elbow brushed against more skin near his shoulder.
When the pounding began once more, he cracked open one eye and growled. Surely ’twas not yet dawn—
He heard a soft mewing to his right and gingerly turned his head to encounter the frowning, sleeping face of a comely blond woman. Apparently, Nick was not the only occupant of his bed unimpressed by the tremendous noise.
“What’n God’s name izzat?” a sleepy voice demanded, from his left this time, and he turned his head gently. A scowling brunette was raised up on her elbows from where she’d been slumbering on her belly, her heavy brown curls only partially concealing her nude breasts.
“Shhh,” Nick chastised, wincing. The sound of her voice so near his ear sent long, needle-like spikes into his head. While the two wenches’ boisterous voices had delighted him in their play last eve, Nick vowed he would sell his soul for a moment of perfect silence. “Do not trouble yourself—” he began through clenched teeth, each syllable increasing the length of the assumed crack in his skull.
But his words were unnecessary, as the wench had flopped back down onto her face and was now snoring softly.
“Nicholas! Open the door!”
Tristan.
Why must I have a brother? Nick wondered pitifully as he struggled to sit. He is good for naught but chastising me and stomping about. And he very obviously had not aided Nick’s plight with the king two eves past.
The banging on the chamber door began once more in earnest.
He must cease, was all Nicholas could manage to think. Anything to make that hellish din quit. He spied a clay jug amongst the tangled furs and drew it toward him with his foot. After grasping it carefully in one large palm, he hurled it at the door where it splintered into countless shards.
Only silence followed—blissful, empty silence. Nick sighed and sank back into the mattress, pulling the coverings high to shield his aching eyeballs.
The sound he heard next should have been barely audible, but Nick’s overly sensitive ears registered clearly each distinct click and scrape of a lock being breached.
He could not have obtained a key…
The sound of creaking hinges filled the room, and then a sharp, feminine gasp of outrage. Nick snapped the covers from his face and peered down the length of his body to discover not only Tristan but Haith as well, observing him from the end of the bed.
“Get. Out,” Nick growled, and dismissed the pair of them by raising the furs once more.
Tiny, tapping footsteps sounded around the bed, and then Haith spoke from somewhere over his head. “A fine idea, Lord Nicholas.”
A resounding slap and a female shriek followed her words, and Nick grudgingly peeked out of his warm—quiet—cocoon to see his brunette friend being dragged from the bed. Lady Haith had a rather impolite grip on the nude woman’s hair.
“Be gone from here, harlot,” she commanded, pushing the woman toward the open door.
“Ay!” the woman cried. “Who d’ye think ye are, ye fancy bitch, rousin’ me from me sleep?”
“I am the woman who will gladly wring your neck should you not be gone from my sight in the next instant,” Haith warned, skirting the bed once more.
The brunette woman must have seen the sincerity in Haith’s eyes, for she uttered not another word, only sent her a pouting glare. She spotted Tristan as she bent to collect her discarded garments.
“Good morn to ye, milord,” she cooed, trailing her wrinkled gown across the floor.
Had Nick been in his usual good humor, he would have laughed aloud at the expression of panic that crossed his brother’s face. Tristan was looking rapidly between the nude wench advancing on him and Haith, who was currently occupied with rousing the blonde from Nick’s bed.
“And you as well, you shameful tart,” she said, sending the woman from her rest in much the same manner as her friend.
“Lady Haith,” Nick offered, “I believe your husband requires your assistance.”
Haith spun around to behold the brunette stroking the front of Tristan’s tunic, he with his hands held out to his sides and a look of sheer horror on his face.
“Sweet Corra!” Haith swore with a stomp of her foot. She flung a hand toward the door, and suddenly the two women were tossed through