Not Magic Enough and Setting Boundaries - By Valerie Douglas Page 0,20
simpler. Far easier than this.
Staggering only a little, he came toward her. “Where’s my greeting, wife? Aren’t you happy to see me?”
“No,” she said and turned her head just enough to call over her shoulder, “Hallis, Petra, come welcome my husband home. My lord Kort needs a bath. Desperately.”
She evaded his reach, darting around him and back into the great room on nimble feet.
“A bath, Kort,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “You reek.”
“My lady?” Hallis said, coming down the hall.
“Don’t call her Lady,” Kort snarled, shifting as drunks can do from sweet to sour in an instant. “She’s no Lady - she’s nothing but a common peasant.”
It was only true and had no power to hurt her anymore.
“Would you draw my Lord Kort a bath, Hallis?” Delae said, “Petra, would you fetch Milord’s parents? They would be glad to see him, I’m certain. And then prepare his rooms?”
She needed time, desperately.
“Yes, Delae,” they both said, eyeing Kort with wary displeasure before hurrying off to their assignments.
“A bath would be good,” he muttered, wandering back out to the great room, looking around blearily.
Cana and Kolan hurried out from their quarters with Petra behind them looking concerned.
“A meal for my lord, Petra,” Delae said quietly, “with plenty of fortified wine. I’m certain he had a long journey from wherever he was.”
Eyes widening knowingly, Petra nodded and hurried off.
Glancing back at the family reunion taking place in the great room as Kort’s parents fawned over him, Delae sighed. She’d never felt more alone.
She could only hope he drowned in the tub, as wrong as that thought was. Not that she’d be so lucky. She fought the urge to weep.
Quietly she made her way down the hall to her own rooms. This might be her only and last chance to hide what coin they had and she would take it, before giving Hallis a hand tightening the ropes of Kort’s bed and with his bath water. That water must be warmer than tepid; she wanted it to make him relaxed and drowsy, too sleepy to bother her.
Kort’s room was better appointed by far than any other in the house, with heavy draperies on the windows, thick padding on the mattress and thicker carpets on the floors. As a young girl it had amazed her.
She no longer slept in these rooms and hadn’t since Kort had left the second time.
Only one room was better than this one, the guest room where Dorovan had slept.
Thankfully, on the rare occasions Kort returned, he hadn’t sought her out beyond berating her during the daylight hours, drinking his nights away before stealing off into the darkness. Along with whatever he thought he could sell.
It was with relief that she heard him stagger to his room and slosh into the tub.
She took herself off to her own bed, wearily.
Only to be awakened by rough hands and Kort’s body pressed down on top of her, his breath thick with wine. She fought but he punched her, his fist glancing off her cheekbone, his heavy frame pushing her into the mattress as he entered her despite her tears.
“No willing wench and so I came home,” he said, thrusting hard, grunting with evident pleasure at her distress, “to my wife, who owes me her wifely duties.”
Caught between fury and despair, her head ringing from his blow, Delae resigned herself to endure. She fought off the urge to weep, remembering all too well Dorovan’s gentle touch, the sweet pleasure of him even as her husband grunted his way to satisfaction like a pig, spilling his seed inside her.
His body went lax as his pleasure loosened him.
With a wrench of her body, she shoved him off to send him tumbling to the floor. His flesh hit with an ugly smack as his head bounced off the stone with a sound like a rap of knuckles upon a ripe melon.
Rolling off the bed, she raced for the sword behind the door as he staggered to his feet.
She looked him in the eye as she pointed the sword at him.
“Get out and keep out. That’s the last time you touch me, Kort, or the next time I’ll gut you.”
“You’re my wife,” he snapped.
“So, suddenly you’ve remembered?” she shouted furiously. “Get out of my room and keep to your own. Or by God the next time you awaken you’ll be shorter by a few inches.”
She let the blade of the sword drop just enough to indicate what she meant.
His face blanched and his eyes narrowed.
Delae lifted her chin.