I scrambled for a response. I didn’t want to hurt him any more than he obviously was already, but I was afraid that in his state of intoxication whatever I said would do little to discourage him.
Part of me hoped that if I waited to answer he would simply pass out on my shoulder, and I could leave him snoring in the hallway and make a quick escape back down the hall.
Instead he seemed to take my silence as surrender.
“God, Blaire! I knew it was no only me. I want ye so badly. I’ll burn in hell for it I know, but I canna stop myself any longer.”
His lips met mine with a heartbreaking sense of desperation. There was such an ardent sense of longing in the way he moved against me, I couldn’t bring myself to stop him. It seemed too cruel to push him away. He wasn’t assaulting me. He thought I was someone else, someone he loved. And he obviously believed Blaire would have matched his fervor with her own.
I found myself surrendering to him, responding and matching his affection with a sort of mind-body detachment that felt more dreamlike than the dream I was having now.
A roar to my right brought me back, just as a fist pulled Arran’s lips from mine and sent him flying to the floor, unconscious.
Stunned, I let my dress slip below my breasts before I scrambled to put it back on.
Seeing that his brother was not to rise for some time, Eoin whirled on me, grabbing me around the middle as he threw me over his shoulder with far too little effort.
I assumed he was returning me to his bedchamber, but he took off in the other direction. He didn’t say a word as my head jostled up and down against his back, and as he descended two different sets of stairs, dread settled in my gut.
I could tell he was angry. His face had been blood red when he’d spun on me, and I could feel his anger rising in the form of heat off his back.
I couldn’t imagine what he would say or do. I’d seen him angry once before and that had been over nothing compared to this. And what could I say in defense of myself? It wasn’t me he was kissing. I was sure that wouldn’t cut it.
Dread turned to fear as the dank and dirty smell of some place far below ground reached my nostrils. I turned my head to see a row of dark cells, as empty and foreboding as the look on my husband’s face. He carried me down to the last cell in the farthest corner of the room, which could only be described as a dungeon, and roughly threw me onto a stone seat that was part of the back wall. My back hit with a force that sent pain shooting up through my head, and tears unwillingly filled my eyes.
“Don’t ye dare cry, ye wee bitch! Ye have no one to blame but yerself. What do ye expect me to do? Ye let me take you naked to me bed, and then the same night I find ye in my brother’s arms! Ye are a liar and a whore, Blaire! I’ll continue to protect yer father’s territory for my own father’s memory, but I will never lay eyes on ye again. I will not have a wretch like ye as lady of my keep!”
His hands were trembling and his face was deep red as he took in a deep, shaky breath and turned away. He threw the door shut and locked it in place, leaving me shaking and gasping as I tried to stop sobbing.
*
Hours turned into days, and I started to fear that my placement here was not a temporary arrangement made out of his initial anger at finding me in Arran’s embrace. By my count at least four days had passed. A total of eight meals, two a day, had been brought, as well as plenty of blankets. Someone had come to empty my chamber pot three times daily, and I always had plenty of water to drink.
It could have been much worse, and I was certain that for anyone else who had ever been placed here, it had been. Still, I was accustomed to central heating and air, at least three meals a day, and regular showers. Not to mention a daily dose of television…and toilet paper. As far as I was concerned, my pleasant, fantastical coma dream had turned to the worst kind of nightmare. A nightmare that I now firmly believed was not a dream at all, but a state of reality I couldn’t begin to understand.
Always an over-thinker, I had learned through the years that it was best if I kept busy. Limiting my time spent analyzing and thinking about things too much helped me to stay content with work and a home life spent entirely alone.
Once the initial shock of being tossed into the dungeon had worn off and I realized that Eoin wasn’t coming back to get me, I was left with nothing else to do but think. The dizzying emotional highs and lows, the elusive mentions of Blaire that I didn’t understand, everything was far too complicated for me to dream up on my own.