[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

who proceeded to undress her and put her into her nightclothes, then tuck her under the covers of their
marriage bed. The bridegroom was conveyed to the chamber door on the shoulders of his comrades, who
didn t bother to knock before they opened the door and threw him in, singing bawdy songs of sexual
conquest at the top of their collective, drunken lungs.
Brietta was quite sure that Tredan would also be completely soused, but she was wrong. He
appeared completely sober  not bobbing or weaving once  as he divested himself of his clothes and
joined her under the warm skins.
She had already determined that she wasn t going to stop him from claiming his husbandly rights.
What difference did it make now? She would lie there, as she had under the Centurion s heaving,
sweating body, and endure it as her penalty in this life for having been born female.
But Tredan had his own ideas on the subject of their wedding night. He scooted over close to
her and pulled her to his side, positioning her head on his shoulder as if she was a doll, and keeping his
arm loose around her back. With an almost fatherly kiss on the top of her head, he whispered,  Go to
sleep.
Brietta was stunned, and she couldn t stop herself from asking incredulously,  Don t you want to 
to - but she couldn t quite finish the sentence.
 To kiss you? To touch your breasts and the rest of your body and have you touch mine? To
eventually slide gently into you and bring you to the heights of ecstasy? His voice had just a touch of a
hard edge to it, and his body was stiff, as if he was trying to control himself and keep himself from doing
exactly what he d described to her.  Yes, I do. But you re not ready for it. You need some time to recover
from what happened to you that our parents didn t see fit to give you. But I m going to let you get used to
us before we come together that way.
She lay her head back down on his shoulders, and despite her surprise, she was asleep in seconds,
the events of the day having exhausted her.
He was as good as his word. Tredan didn t touch her in a sexual manner at all for the first four
weeks they were married. He did touch her, in a husbandly and intimate manner. But he wanted to win
her over, and he was going to do everything in his power that he could to get her to accept him as more
than just her husband. He wanted to be her love.
The first thing he did the next morning was what no one had been expecting  least of all Brietta.
When he saw she was awake, he pulled the rough blanket out from under them then pricked his finger
with the knife he always kept close to him, bleeding red droplets onto the blanket.
Brietta s cheeks became rosy as she realized what he was doing for her.
When the stain was of what he considered to be a reasonable size, he hung the blanket out the
window. He was faking proof of her virginity, trying to help her save face.
When he met her inquiring eyes, he shrugged.  I hate gossip. This ll make  em wonder, he
grinned at her devilishly.
Brietta didn t know quite what to do with the way her new husband was behaving. He was
taking part in the negotiations with the Romans, such as they were, and was gone all day almost every day.
But when he was home, he was with her. Sometimes he caught the tail end of her training with her
Grandfather, who, although he grumbled a lot about why she bothered to continue doing it, still managed
to make it to the field where she practiced almost every day. He often put his hand on hers at dinner, or
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his arm around her waist while they were walking, employing very small, casual intimacies to tame her to
his hand.
One habit he had developed a distinct taste for was attending her weekly bath, which was an
unusual tendency in itself  the villagers considered that the Lady Brietta spent entirely too much time on
her own cleanliness, especially considering how dirty she got when she was doing the outrageous  sword
fighting with the men. But Brietta had adopted the habit young, spurred on by Ula who had fastidious
personal habits.
Three men had to lift the specially made oak cask to their room and then turn around and drag up
a cauldron of heated water, to which Ula would pour room temperature water from the cistern until it
reached a reasonable temperature. Tredan liked to stretch out in a chair in front of the fireplace and
watch her from beneath lowered lids, grimacing at the sight  every time  of her backside as it healed.
In bed at night, when the only light for miles was that of their fire, he would always hold her to
him at first, talking quietly about how things were going. He marveled at the fact that he bothered to do
that  most women in his experience wouldn t understand, nor would they even want to hear about
anything that didn t directly affect them. But he knew Brietta would understand, and she even became a
valuable resource, since she had actually been in one of their camps.
Sometimes he let his hands drift over her in a completely undemanding manner  sometimes
almost in a friendly way. Occasionally, when she appeared sore from the day s work, he massaged her, and
she allowed it, which he considered to be a small victory. The welts on her bottom and legs had faded,
but he would always remember them. There wasn t much left of the Centurion by the time they handed
him back to his people after finally reaching an agreement about becoming the proxy government for
Rome. As far as Tredan was concerned, it was less than he deserved.
One night after they had been married almost two months, and he had kept his hands largely to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]