Nicolaa murmured. “So there was some spirit in you after all. Sadly misplaced, I must say. Did he put it there?”
When there was no answer, Nicolaa reached down and took hold of a fistful of blonde hair, tilting Servanne’s face roughly up to hers. There were ugly swellings already rising on both cheeks and threads of blood trickling from cuts to her nose and mouth.
“You should have waited. You would have found your thighs just as slippery for a Dragon as for a Wolf. I know I did. Anh, but then … you never would have been strong enough to match him. This”—she waved a hand in a scornful gesture over the blonde hair and creamy white breasts—-“would never have held his attention through the wedding night. He would have had to come to me to find satisfaction.”
Nicolaa thrust the pale face away again and, still laughing, walked out to the tower landing to call for more guards.
Servanne, her face and body an excruciating mass of bruised flesh, groped blindly around to see if Biddy was still concealed behind the curtains. A chalk-white face with owlish eyes gaped back at her, stricken with terror, her throat working frantically to contain the nausea churning in her belly.
“Biddy, no!” Servanne gasped, seeing the maid about to rush to her aid. “No, you must go and find Sir Roger. You must tell him what has happened. Tell him … tell him to seek out the Black Wolf and warn him. Biddy—”
“There!” Nicolaa commanded imperiously, directing four burly guards to where Servanne lay curled on the floor. “Your liege has dispatched orders for her to be taken to the eyrie and left there to await his further pleasure. Treat her as you would the lowest form of vermin, for if there is any undue comfort or mercy shown her, each of you will suffer tenfold for it.”
The guards bent over and pulled Servanne to her feet. One of them accidentally tangled a leg in her frothing skirts and, aware of Nicolaa’s venomous gaze, cursed and kicked out viciously with his mail-clad boots. Servanne’s leg buckled with the pain and a slipper was lost as she was dragged forward on one knee. Her head lolled and she sagged limply into the coarse hands—hands that were quick to prop her up by breast or thigh as they carried her down the narrow, winding staircase.
Biddy, too horror-struck to move, waited several minutes in oppressive silence, her ears ringing with the echo of her mistress’s fading sobs of pain. When she was reasonably certain the chambers were vacant, she gingerly stepped out from behind the tapestry and promptly sagged onto the low seat in the window embrasure. Her heart was pounding frantically and her left arm felt as if a frenzied mob of seamstresses were using it as a pincushion. She rubbed it and cradled it against her breast, but the pain only grew in intensity, spreading up her arm into her chest and flaring into a brilliant starburst of agony.
She slipped helplessly onto the floor, her back scraping against the wall as she slid down. Her neck was arched and rigid as she fought the waves of pain, and her tongue seemed to swell in her throat, making it difficult to breathe, let alone find the air to scream.
She could not afford to be weak or ill right now! Sir Roger de Chesnai would be waiting at the postern gate, and it was Biddy’s duty to get to him, tell him all that had happened, and send him to the Wolf for help. The Wolf, who was really La Seyne Sur Mer, who was really Lucien Wardieu …
Biddy groaned and clutched at her chest. Her vision clouded and began to fill with exploding black spots. Her heart pounded so fiercely she could feel it slamming against her hands, but then the pain and the blackness overtook her and she felt nothing else. Her eyes fluttered open one last time and she was dazzled by the glitter of gold and jewels … dazzled until she saw it was Servanne’s treasure box, and the contents were spilling from the window seat onto the floor beside her …
Prince John’s moneylender dropped the last gold coin into the small mahogany chest just as a disturbance out in the corridor brought a crashing end to the tension-filled silence. The door to the chamber swung violently open and there, in glorious splendour, stood the Baron de Gournay.