of protecting you against being sold or traded away in another marriage of someone else’s convenience. Surely Sir Hubert was aware of his shortcomings. He should have contrived to keep you from falling victim to a king’s greed again—especially if he was as gentle, considerate, and loving as you say he was. Had it been me,” he added intently, “I would have gone to whatever lengths necessary to protect you, even to finding a stud to breed you … even to binding you hand and foot to the bed and overseeing the deed myself.”
Servanne had no rebuttal, for indeed there was none. She would not have been in this predicament if she had given Sir Hubert an heir. Both she and the child would have become wards of the king until the heir came of age, but she would have been well within her rights to refuse any proposed unions which she did not favour.
What the rogue’s theory failed to consider, however, was that up until a few short hours ago, she had been more than content with the future arrangements made for her. She had been looking forward to her marriage to Lucien Wardieu with a naive eagerness that bordered on childish glee. There again, content in her ignorance, she had not been aware of any other choice available to her.
But was there any other choice? She had only his word he was come to England on a secretive, honourable mission for Eleanor of Aquitaine. She had only his word the golden-haired knight known throughout England as the Baron de Gournay was a cheat and an impostor. This man had bedded her, had introduced her to the wonders of her woman’s body, but was passion and pleasure any way to measure the truth from the lie?
The chill within her deepened and spread. Despite claiming revenge had played no part in this, would he not, when clearer, calmer reasoning prevailed, consider it a minor triumph to have bedded his brother’s intended bride beforehand? Men were all vainglorious creatures when it came to testing and proving their prowess; why should the Wolf’s motives prove to be any purer?
Fear, conscience, uncertainty … and a sudden awareness of where she was—sprawled naked and wildly disheveled in a cave hissing with the ghostly voices of pagan rituals —caused Servanne to tense noticeably. She lowered her hands from where they rested on his shoulders and placed them like a subtle barrier between his flesh and hers.
“Please, I …”
“What is it? What is wrong? Surely you still do not fear me as a demon with horns and a forked tail?”
“Devilish,” she admitted softly, her fingers curling involuntarily into the crisp pelt of hair on his chest. “But no devil, although it does confuse me profoundly to try to find a difference.”
He smiled crookedly. “Confusion is a woman’s normal state of mind, so I neither take nor lay blame for causing it in you.”
Servanne watched as he bowed his head and caught one of her slim, delicate fingers between his lips.
“You have done what your brother will have expected you to do,” she said matter-of-factly, and reclaimed her hand.
His gaze lifted slowly to hers. “That was not why I did it.”
“Nevertheless”—she spoke slowly, searching his eyes for the truth before she continued—“the deed is done and he will know.”
A long pause—long enough for a future of loneliness, regret, and despair to flash before Servanne’s eyes—ended on a faintly snarled oath. “You will be safe enough. The Dragon will not take his anger out on you.”
“But … he will be angry.”
“He will be angry,” the Wolf conceded.
“And … knowing this … you are still determined to sell me back to him as planned?”
“Your choice of terms leaves much to be desired,” he answered with a frown. “I am not selling you back to him. I am sending you on ahead to Bloodmoor Keep because, for the time being anyway, it is the safest place for you to be until the matter is resolved.”
“Safe?” she gasped. “How can you expect me to feel safe when you have said and done everything in your power to warn me away from Bloodmoor Keep?”
“I have only endeavoured to warn you away from the man who resides there as its master. Bloodmoor itself cannot be held to account for the taint he has brought to it. You will be safe,” he repeated. “The castle is full of wedding guests— important guests—and the Dragon will do nothing to rouse anyone’s suspicions until the halls