not give the command for his leech to do so unless Servanne paid heavily for the request.
“Please,” she grated through her teeth. “Help him.”
“Why should I? He is nothing to me.”
“if he was nothing, you would have killed him outright,” she said, her fear giving her more courage than was healthy or wise. Bracing herself for another blow, she felt the blood-slicked fingers curl around the whiteness of her throat.
“It seems the spirit has been bruised, but not yet broken,” he mused. “Admirable, but foolhardy. A word from me, and the boy dies; you alongside him.”
“Give that word,” she countered recklessly, “And see the lands you covet so fiercely slip out of your grasp and into Prince John’s coffers!”
The Dragon’s eyes gleamed with a speculative fury and Servanne could feel the anger ripple tautly through his body. An instant later she felt only agony as his fingers pinched her windpipe in a cruel stranglehold.
“I like ultimatums even less than I like stubbornness,” he snarled, “Especially ultimatums which have no foundation in threat or substance. As I have already told you, my dear, broken or upright, bleeding or whole, it makes no difference to me. Even with your tongue cut out and your eyes scorched black, I could still prop you at the altar and find a score of witnesses to say you repeated your vows willingly and eagerly. Moreover, I have no doubt a further examination would find sufficient evidence of a union having been recently consummated. So you see”—he released her throat with a disdainful sneer—“you really have no choice in the matter. Your fate and the fate of the lands that came into your hands by sheer mischance, was decided long ago. Long before your feeble old husband enjoyed a hearty feast of belladonna.”
Servanne’s wide blue gaze dared to climb to his level again.
“He was a tough old buzzard,” De Gournay added blithely. “I was told it took three times the normal dose to kill him.”
Nicolaa de la Haye’s surprise mirrored Servanne’s. “You clever bastard! You never told me.”
“There are a good many things I do not tell you, Nicolaa,” he sighed. “For my own sake, as well as—”
His words were cut off abruptly as Servanne threw herself at him, her fingers hooked and hungry for the sardonic grin. He had ordered the death of Sir Hubert de Briscourt! He had had the gentle old warrior poisoned so he could gain back the lands that had once been part of the De Gournay estates. The Wolf had been right again. He had been right in everything!
Servanne’s action was quick enough and violent enough to almost succeed. She had the satisfaction of feeling two sharp fingernails fill with scrapings of flesh before her arms were smashed aside and a hard-knuckled fist sent her careening into the side of the bed. Grasped from behind, she was struck again, and flung into a sprawl across the floor, her hands scraped raw in the skidding contact.
The Dragon stood over her, staring in amazement at the blood dabbed from his neck. He leaned over and with one brutish hand, yanked her upright, lifting her so that her face was only inches from his.
“I will kill you for that,” he promised. “Slowly. And with a great deal of pain. You and your lover both, side by side, screaming for mercy—”
Servanne reached back into the last reserves of her courage and spat contemptuously in the Dragon’s face. The spittle ran down his cheek and gathered into a silvery pendant on his chin, hanging there a moment like a diamond glittering in the candlelight. The same fingers that were dotted with his blood, reached slowly upward and wiped the wetness from his face. He stared at his fingers, then into Servanne’s eyes, silently pledging untold agony and cruelty before he smeared the pink stain across her exposed breasts.
“Nicolaa—methinks the lady could benefit from the comfort of her own solitude a while. Have the guards escort her … to the eagle’s eyrie. She will know, at least once before she dies, who is master here, and who is merely the whore.”
He flung her from his side as if she was a sackful of rotted meat. Servanne landed heavily enough to drive another gust of air from her lungs, but she was beyond feeling the pain. Her bruises screamed for mercy, but she never would, and there was no lessening of the revulsion in her eyes as she watched De Gournay stride out of the chamber.