each time they had brushed a pelt or blanket. As for the relentless aches elsewhere in her body … they did not bear thinking about. Most certainly not now, not when her tormentor was but a few paces away, grinning like the predator whose name he bore, making her acutely aware of each flicker and stroke of the tanned, tapered fingers.
“How long do you plan to keep us prisoner?” she demanded.
“Ah, rebuffed again,” he murmured. “Perhaps in a week or two, you will have a change of heart.”
“A week!” she gasped. “Two! Have you not delivered your outrageous ransom demands to Lord Lucien?”
“I have delivered my demands to the man who calls himself Lord Lucien,” he countered smoothly. “I have also offered to relieve him of the task of disposing of you should he be entertaining second thoughts on the marriage. It is a great deal to contemplate in the short time since we plucked you from the road; the choices too tempting to deliberate in haste.”
The tint in Servanne’s cheeks burned darker. “There is no choice, m’sieur. You will hear from my lord within the week.”
“Really?” He folded his arms across his chest. “May I ask why you sound so confident?”
Servanne lifted her eyes from the forest of dark hairs that covered the hard, banded muscles bulging through the opened shirt … and almost forgot the question.
“Th-the wedding,” she said lamely. “The preparations have all been made.”
“Have they, indeed. What an inconvenience not to have the bride present for the service. Perhaps I could offer yet another compromise: a marriage by proxy. I could take the place of the groom here, in the forest, while some equally affable damosel stands your place at the castle. In this way, he could carry on with the feasts and entertainments he has undoubtedly already paid for in good coin, while we”—the wolfish smile stole across the insolently handsome face again —“we could find some way to celebrate the union in our own fashion. As I mentioned before, the Dragon and I are much alike in countenance and bearing. Not so much so as Mutter and Stutter, but near enough to give you a healthy idea of what to expect when you draw back the sheets in the bridal bed.”
Servanne’s belly turned a slow, sluggish somersault. Beside her, Biddy’s mouth gaped open in shock and she sucked in enough air to have stirred the leaves overhead.
“On the other hand,” he continued blithely, bending over to pull on his boots. “There are some things we do quite differently, and I should hate to think your pending days of wedded bliss might suffer from an unfavourable contrast.”
Servanne’s face, throat, and breasts were now burning. The Wolf, seeing her discomfort, stood up and walked slowly toward her, stopping close enough for her to detect the scent of leather and greenwood that was a part of his overwhelming maleness. He had shaved earlier in the morning, and the reason for sharpening the edge of his knife was evidenced by the two clotted cuts beneath his chin.
At that precise moment, Servanne would have rejoiced in seeing ribbons of blood flowing from ear to ear; a greater ecstasy would be to carve them there herself.
At the same time, she felt a sudden shifting in the weight of her emotions. If this verbal jousting was the best he could do—and would he not have done his worst last night if it had been his intent?—surely she had little to fear for all his arrogant boasting. A man who had kissed a woman the way he had kissed her, yet had done nothing to carry the threat further, was likely to be no threat at all! If any of a dozen knights of her past aquaintance had found her in their arms and won half the liberties this rogue had stolen, neither pleas nor beating fists, nor gouging knives would have deterred them from taking what they wanted then and there. And not one in a score of knights of her aquaintance had a tenth of the motive for revenge this Black Wolf declared himself to have.
Perhaps he should have raped her. She might have begun to believe his claim to be Lucien Wardieu.
Expressing her newfound indifference to his petty vulgarities, Servanne sighed and turned to Biddy. “Now I understand what you mean when you say all men judge all things in life by the size of the brain they carry between their thighs. The smaller the brain, the dimmer their