“Aye, I understand,” she said, her head still bowed. “He is a man, and thus far superior to me. I am not to annoy him with my silly questions and demands.”
“You understand well,” he said sharply. “See that that sarcastic tongue of yours stays quiet in your mouth.”
Her hand balled into a fist in her lap.
“Aye,” he added softly, “and watch Blanche. I find her . . . attitude and demeanor much to my liking.”
“As you wish, my lord. It will be just as you say, my lord. May I now be excused now, my lord? I wish to retire.”
Even though her words reeked with meekness, Graelam knew that she was mocking him. Her subm
issiveness was feigned. It both pleased him and angered him. She was unlike any woman in his experience. She was gently bred, and yet he had treated her cruelly. He sighed. “You may go.”
Kassia endured Etta’s worried frowns and clucking advice all during her bath.
“Please, leave off, Etta,” she said finally, wrapping her bedrobe securely about her.
“But, my baby, you cannot continue to challenge your lord!”
“I did not say that I had,” Kassia said sharply.
Etta shook her head sadly. “There is no need. I know you.”
“Would you prefer that I lie down upon the floor and let him tread over me like a rug?”
“He is not your father, my baby. He is a man who is used to command, a man who—”
“Odd,” Kassia said in a low voice, cutting Etta off, “until this day I had begun to believe him as kind and gentle as my father. I was a fool.”
“He owns you!”
“Aye, what a joy to be owned by a man who hates me!”
Graelam paused a moment, her words searing through his mind, then pushed the bedchamber door open. “Go,” he said to Etta, his eyes upon Kassia.
Etta cast her mistress a pleading look, and took herself off.
Kassia could not look at him. She felt utterly vulnerable, clothed only in the flimsy bedrobe, and alone with him. He took a step toward her, and she flinched, stepping back.
“Get into bed,” he said, standing motionless before her. “And take off that robe. You will wear nothing unless it is your monthly flux.”
She did not move. She saw herself as she had been today, lying helplessly beneath him. She winced anew at the memory of the pain.
“Is that order so difficult for you to understand?”
Even as the words flew from her mouth, she knew that she was a fool to try to bargain with him. “Only if you swear to me that you will not force me again.”
“Damn!” he swore. “I will take you whenever it pleases me to do so!”
“No!”
The small defiant word held him frozen for an instant. He took another step toward her, only to halt again when he saw tears swimming in her eyes.
“Go to bed, Kassia,” he said shortly, and turned away from her.
He heard no sound or movement. “Do as I tell you,” he said over his shoulder.
“I . . . I am afraid of you.”