At Her Service (Swords of Passion) by Cerise Deland Read Free Book Online Page A

enclosed her. “Not I.”
    “Of course, you will. This way you will earn what you have needed from your birth. A fortune, eh?” she taunted him.
    He captured her face between his hands. “What I have needed from the day I walked into your father’s counting room and saw the smiling six-year-old who laughed and smiled at me is you.”
    “Yet you made this filthy bargain? To have me for lucre?”
    “Aye!”
    “A fairytale. A filthy tale. You want only me, but you will bed me for silver.”
    “I. Have. No. Choice!”
    The two of them paused, toe to toe.
    In a whisper, she ventured for another truth which she feared might strike her heart more violently than the last she’d heard. “Why is that?”
    He hesitated, but his brooding eyes gave him away. “I owe King John my compliance in this matter. He is devoted to keeping Alphonse and his heirs in power in these upper marches. The Scots do harry John and his allies all along the border, and Alphonse is wealthy enough with sufficient retainers to fight the savages back into their lands. John knows of your intelligence and the fealty Alphonse’s men show you.”
    “Nay!” she scoffed. “No fealty will be left if they learn I have been tupped by the legendary Knight Divine and thus soiled my husband’s honour as well as mine!”
    “No one will know.”
    “Do not be blind. My maid knows. Cleve knows.” She pointed towards the door. “Your…your little man knows!”
    “Katani has no tongue and cannot tell anyone anything. Your maid, however, I leave you to secure. Both she and Cleve can be bought.”
    “Cleve? Bought? You think he may not be welded to my husband’s cause?”
    “Best not to trust someone like Cleve beyond where you may see him. But in this case, Alphonse’s cause can benefit Cleve even after the old man is dead.”
    “How?” she taunted him. “I see no one with the power.”
    “You do not credit me with much beyond raw brutality,” Simon mourned.
    “You mean to say you can pay Cleve? Ha! How is that? You have some of your new-found gain on your person now, do you?”
    “Alphonse has given Cleve orders that I am to run the estate. My word is law.”
    Her heart pounded at the betrayal of her husband to her power. She stepped back. “Is that so? I am superceded in my own house? By a lover? By my husband’s cuckold while he lies on his death bed?”
    “Nay. You are superior here. But I am second.”
    “Fine and well then.” This was small recompense, but she would use it. “Leave me.”
    “Elise, I warn you—”
    “Aye, warn me well, my Knight Divine. I see what is at stake here. At first, I thought it was only my virtue. Only my body given to you for him. But now I see, it is my country, my king, my kinsmen who can die if I do not lie abed with you and make a child. Interesting that the reasons given to me to betroth me to my husband are the same as those that now demand I spread my legs for you.” A sob rose in her throat, and she caught back its sorrow with a hand to her lips. “Leave me. We will resume our sport when I am ready. When I am willing. When I can do this with full mind to the cause.”
    She watched him back away towards her husband’s room. There Simon picked up his tunics, his braies and his slippers. He yanked them on and strode towards the back stairs which led down to the smaller room beneath hers where he was lodged. He turned, fury lining his brow.
    “I take my leave of you for my own quarters below where you may join me at your leisure. But heed me, do not let your anger simmer long, my lovely. The world is waiting for your baby. And we must be about making him, before your husband dies, and no one who lives in these climes can still claim their country is England .”

Chapter Four

    Snowflakes obliterated her view, but Elise trudged onward, a hand to her forehead. Ulred’s hut had never seemed so far from the castle walls as it did on this day when she needed to see her old friend—and do it