She returned her gaze to his. “What?”
“Let me kiss you, and you kiss me back. If you do not like it, I will let you go and bother you no more. We shall just be…friends.”
Not after this, Laura thought. “You would have me betray my betrothed?”
“He need never know, and ’twill hardly matter, for you will like my kiss. ’Tis me you shall wed, Laura Middleton.”
Perhaps she could wait him out, but what would he do? Strike her? She felt that violence in his hands. And the scream she held in was so forceful she could hardly breathe past it.
“Agreed?” he said.
It was a mistake, but his grip was so hard there seemed no other means of escape. “You promise you will let me go if I allow you to kiss me?”
“If you kiss me back.”
Though her stomach twisted at the thought of his lips where Lothaire’s had been, she said, “I agree.”
The tension in his face eased, and in his seemingly genuine smile she saw her old friend.
He released one of her arms, drew her to the wall, and settled her back against it. “I love you,” he said and tipped up her chin.
With the first touch of his lips, she had to swallow to keep her stomach from emptying itself.
He drew slightly back. “Our agreement is that you return my kiss.”
She leaned up, set her mouth on his, and tried to kiss him as she kissed Lothaire. But even with her eyes closed there was no pretending she was not revolted. And no denying it was wrong.
She dropped onto her heels, shook her head, and staring at Simon’s throat said, “I am sorry, but I do not feel what you wish me to feel. ’Tis the same as…when I kiss Michael’s cheek. Brotherly.”
His hands gripped her hard again, and she looked up. “The bargain struck is completed, Simon. I do not love you as I love Lothaire. I do not want you for a husband as I want him.”
His eyes moistened, lips trembled, and she thought he would cry, but he shook her, causing the back of her head to strike the wall.
“You are hurting me!”
“If you will not love me, I will not love you,” he spat, and once more she saw the boy in him—this time the one who had not liked that she could run faster and swim farther. “Hence, I shall simply desire you.”
Desire. Somehow he made the word Lothaire had also spoken sound foul. But Simon’s intentions were far different. Lothaire had used it to explain why he suddenly ended a kiss that had progressed to an embrace and tested the boundaries of their garments. Simon used it to tell what was to come. And moments later she found herself on the floor.
“Cease, Simon! You cannot—”
“’Tis my right!” She tried to turn from him, but he thrust her onto her back. “Lie still. That is all I require of you.”
She dragged her nails down his cheek, and he slapped her so hard her opposite cheek struck the floor.
“Be still!”
She punched and slapped and writhed, and he cursed and punched and slapped back. And when she lost her breath, his hands were all over her and she heard the tearing of cloth.
Then he howled and collapsed atop her.
Guessing her knee had struck him between the legs, she wriggled out from beneath him, but he kept hold of her—until she bit his hand.
She made it to her knees, sprang upright, stumbled toward the doorway, and stopped when she heard him sob, “Forgive me! I did not mean to do it. You know I did not!”
Leave him to his regret, instinct shrilled, and she meant to run as far as she could get, but her heart that had adored the boy would not allow her to distance herself. Peering over her shoulder, she saw he was on his knees, bowed back convulsing, head hung between his arms.
Thinking it strange only now she felt the true depth of the pain dealt by his blows and how in need of breath she was, she leaned forward and braced her hands on her thighs.
“Why did you do that?” she croaked. “Why, Simon? We grew up together. Were friends. Told our secrets to no others. We—”
“Because you promised,” he said, just above and behind her. Then he had her again, this time facedown, the grit of the floor raking at her face, his calloused palm capturing her scream and undeterred by the teeth she sank into it, even when his blood sprang onto her tongue.
As he did what he did to her, beyond struggling that proved as futile as prayer for the Lord to deliver her, she told herself she was asleep—only dreaming a terrible dream from which she would soon awaken.
Chapter 32
Barony of Lexeter, England
July, 1163
“Forgive me.” The moment he said it, he wanted the words back. They were the same with which Simon had fooled Laura when she had but to keep running to save herself. And even were they not the same, they were so inadequate they offended.
“Forgive you?” she whispered in a voice weary from the telling, throughout which she had several times paused to cry quietly. “For what have you to be sorry? You did naught but believe as you were meant to.”
The anger tempting him to seek hell over heaven so he might hunt down Simon D’Arci began to shift toward Laura. And he heard it in his voice when he said, “Why did you not tell me the truth? Why did you allow me to believe you cuckolded me?”
She drew back, and even by moonlight he could see how red and swollen her eyes were. “I am sorry you are angry, but there are many reasons it was for the best.”
“Or so Lady Maude persuaded you.” He grimaced over that woman’s name.
“I was not yet ten and six, Lothaire. She knew the world better than I. And she was right.”
“How could she be? Ten years, Laura! Ten years I believed you a—”
She pressed fingers to his lips. “But now you know I am not, aye?”
He did not doubt his glower was ugly, but he could not temper it. Drawing his head back and lips off her fingers, he said, “Why do you make that a question? Of course I believe you, as I would have had—”
“I think you might have, but Lady Maude reasoned the truth would not change that I was ruined, and with proof of that ruin growing in my belly, your mother would reject me regardless if my babe was conceived through ravishment or consent.”
Seeking to calm himself, he momentarily closed his eyes. “You said many reasons. What other reasons bought your silence, allowing me to believe as I did the day you revealed you bore another man’s child?”