Page 8 of All the Sweet Tomorrows (O’Malley Saga #2)

“Already,”

the pastor oozed, “our new duchesse exerts a salubrious influence upon this family. It is a good sign,”

and he smiled his yellow-toothed smile at them all.

The duc led them into the main hall of the castle with its marvelous silk banners and tall windows now red with the sunset. There were two enormous fireplaces in the hall, but neither was lit this night; rather, they had been banked with flowering branches. Daisy had already disappeared, it not being seemly that she eat with her mistress, and so only Skye, the duc, Edmond, Robbie, Sean MacGuire, Bran Kelly, and the pastor sat at the high board. The duc sat to Skye’s right, Robbie to her left. The pastor was on the duc’s right, and next to him sat Edmond de Beaumont. Bran Kelly was on the other side of Robbie, and on Bran’s left was Captain MacGuire.

Immediately the servants in the duc’s azure and silver livery began to pour the lovely rose-colored wine that Edmond had told her was a favorite in Beaumont de Jaspre. An enormous mullet complete with its eyes, set upon a bed of greenery and surrounded with whole carved lemons, was presented as the first course. Skye declined the fish. Her stomach was churning nervously at the thought of what awaited her. She had never been to bed with a stranger, a man she had only just met. No! she amended the thought, and a small smile turned up the corners of her mouth. There was Adam!

She remembered back to the first time she had gone to bed with Adam de Marisco. She had come to Lundy to enlist his help, offering him two percent of her profit if he would aid her. He had asked instead for one percent of the profit—and a night with her. She had been horrified, but had agreed, for she needed his help. Without it she could not triumph over Elizabeth Tudor, who had insulted her unforgivably. But with Adam it had been different. He had been teasing and amusing from the beginning, and although she had been hesitant, she had not been afraid.

She glanced almost fearfully at the stern man by her side. He had not kissed her at the conclusion of their brief marriage ceremony, and although he apparently knew her name, he had only called her by it once.

The servants were now offering capon in gingered lemon sauce, baby lamb, artichokes in olive oil and tarragon vinegar, new peas, and fresh bread. Skye nibbled absently.

“Are you ill?”

The duc put his hand on hers.

She started, and looked up at him. His eyes were void of any emotion although his voice was kindly. “I am probably tired,”

she answered. “It has been a long trip.”

“Go prepare yourself for bed then, madame,”

he said quietly. “I will come to you shortly.”

She nodded and then, leaning over, said to Robbie, “I am going to retire now.”

“I won’t leave you, lass. Remember that I promised you. Tomorrow I shall spend the day looking for a house. Send to me when you want me.”

He leaned over and kissed her cheek.

With a sad little sigh she returned the kiss, and then rose and left the hall as discreetly as possible. How bleak this marriage already was, she thought, thinking of the gaiety of her previous nuptials. She easily found her way back to her apartment, where Daisy had prepared a bath for her.

“You’ve not had a freshwater bath in several weeks, m’lady,”

Daisy said, “and I know how you like yer bath.”

“I can’t tarry tonight,”

she replied.

“Nay,”

Daisy said in agreement. “I’ve laid out the dusky-rose silk gown for you to wear.”

“No,”

Skye said. “The duc is a conservative man. Perhaps it would be better if my nightclothes were more modest until we get to know one another better. Put the rose away and get the pale-blue silk.”

Skye allowed Daisy to strip her of her garments, and then while her faithful tiring woman put her gown away and sought the simpler nightrail, she quickly bathed, enjoying the soft warm water scented with damask rose oil and her damask rose soap that lathered so richly. The feel of the satin suds on her skin was almost sensual. She had, thanks to a surprise rainstorm the previous afternoon, been able to wash her long dark hair on the ship before they arrived at Beaumont de Jaspre. Clean hair always made her feel better. Rinsing herself off, she climbed from the tub. Then she took the large bath sheet that Daisy had laid out for her and dried herself off.

Daisy quickly powdered her lady, and then slipped the blue gown over her head. It slid down Skye’s lithe body with a hiss. It was a simple gown with long, full sleeves banded at the wrists with silk ribbon. Its neckline was low and scooped, but it was far more modest than the sheer rose-colored silk gown Daisy had originally chosen. That creation would have clung to her lush form as if it had been painted on, not at all like this full gown, which discreetly hid her shape.

At Daisy’s sharp command two serving men entered the room and carried the little wooden tub from the bedchamber.

“How on earth did you get them to do that?”

asked Skye, knowing full well that her Devon-born servant didn’t speak a word of French.

“Well, m’lady, it’s not so much the knowing of the words as it is the tone of voice you use, and your hand signals. Don’t worry about me. I’ll get on just fine. The words ain’t so hard to learn. I’ll be gabbing away in their own language in no time at all.”

“Oh, Daisy!”

Skye hugged the girl. “I probably shouldn’t have let you come along with me. You and Bran should be married now, and starting your own family.”

“Plenty of time for that,”

Daisy replied tartly. “You’re going to need me, m’lady. I can see that.”

The little door on the other side of the bed opened, and the duc, in a white nightshirt, entered the room. Daisy bobbed her mistress a quick curtsey and then one to the duc, and hurried from the room.

“You are not in bed,”

he said. “In Beaumont de Jaspre it is customary for a bride to await her husband in their nuptial bed.”

“I wanted a bath,”

she said. “I have not had a freshwater bath in weeks.”

“Pastor Lichault says bathing is a vanity.”

“Then surely he must be the most humble of men,”

Skye replied sharply. “One cannot be in the same room with him without smelling his body odor. It is distasteful. I have never particularly equated dirt with godliness.”

“I would be inclined to agree with you, madame,” he said.

There it was again, she thought. That faint touch of humor in his voice. He walked around to where she was standing and very gently began removing the pins from her hair, which Daisy had not gotten around to doing. Carefully he placed the pins on the mantel of the small fireplace, which, like those in the Great Hall, was banked in flowers. Her long hair tumbled down, and he ran his hands through it admiringly. Skye stood very still. He worried her yet, for although he was obviously attracted to her, she could see or feel no passion in him or his actions.

“You have beautiful hair,”

he said quietly. “A woman’s hair is her glory.”

He then turned her so that her back was to him, and to her surprise, he pushed her gown from her shoulders, baring her to the waist. Gently he cupped her small, full breasts briefly caressing them. “And so is her bosom. You have a lovely bosom, madame. I will enjoy seeing our children suckle upon those beautiful breasts, for that is why God gave them to you.”

Calmly he drew her gown back up again and, taking her by the hand, led her to the bed. “Now, madame, I want you to lie face down upon the bed,” he said.

She gasped and turned large frightened eyes to him. Her heart began to pound with certain, terrible memories. “Surely monseigneur, you are not going to make love to me in the Greek fashion?”

“How do you know of such things?”

he thundered angrily, grasping her upper arms so hard that she knew she would be bruised come morning. “What kind of a woman has England sent me? No respectable woman should know of such abomination! Answer me, madame!”

His black eyes blazed his outraged fury.

“My first husband,”

she cried, trying to loosen his grasp on her tender flesh. “He loved to humiliate me by doing…doing that.”

“You did not like it?”

His gaze searched her face anxiously.

“It disgusted me,”

she replied honestly.

He loosed his grip on her. “So it should have, madame, for God forbids such wickedness. You need not fear that I practice such depravity. However, you must trust me when I ask you to lie face down upon the bed, and you must obey me, madame, for I am your lord and master in both God’s eyes and man’s.”

Skye was distressed. He had assured her that he did not practice Dom’s particular perversion, yet why did he want her to lie face down upon the bed? The silence hung heavy between them. She wasn’t going to find out standing here, and surely he wasn’t going to harm her after he had said he wouldn’t. With a sigh she lay down upon the bed.

“Move into the center, madame,”

came the command, and she obeyed him.

He took her left wrist, and she felt him sliding something about it, something soft and yet strong. As she moved her head to look he moved around the bed to grasp her right arm and bind it as well to the carved posts of the bed with a woven silken cord.

She gasped again, this time with shock. “Monseigneur!”

she cried, “what are you doing?”

Her fear was beginning to rise again. She struggled to control it, trying to draw a calming breath. His actions, however, were not reassuring.

He was now spreading her legs and binding them also to the lower posts of the bed. “I am binding you to the bed, madame. I would have thought that that was obvious to you.”

He had finished, and moving up by her head, he pulled the pillows from beneath it. Then lifting her with a surprisingly strong hand, he stuffed the pillows beneath her belly so that her hips were well elevated.

“Why are you doing this?”

Her voice bordered on the hysterical. Dear Heaven, what terrible perversion was he going to practice upon her helpless form? If he killed her what would happen to her children?

“Because,”

he said, as he carefully raised her silk nightgown up, fully exposing her buttocks and legs, “I am going to beat you.”

“What?!”

Her voice was a shriek. He was a madman!

“I am going to beat you,”

he repeated calmly.

“But why? What have I done? We do not even know each other! How can I have displeased you so in the short time since I arrived that you would do something so awful as to beat me?!”

Fabron de Beaumont sat by her side, and in a calm voice began to explain. “My beautiful bride,”

he said in a voice laced with patience, “you are a woman, and women are weak vessels who must be constantly corrected in order to give them true strength. Pastor Lichault advocates the daily beating of a wife until she conforms perfectly, instantly, and without questions to her husband’s will. He and I spoke at great length tonight before I came to you. He feels that you are much too independent a woman at present to make me a dutiful wife. Nonetheless we are now wed, and so he felt that I must begin on this our wedding night a program of correction so that I may mold you into the kind of woman that my wife should be. If you are to bear my children you must raise them as I desire, without question, and with instant obedience. Women are inferior to men, and yet you have dared to raise yourself above your humble station, to put yourself on a level with men. You are overproud, Skye, but I am going to save you from yourself. This I promise you.”

She was horrified. “How can you judge me so quickly, my lord Fabron?”

she asked him pleadingly. “If women are so inferior then why has God chosen a queen for England, a queen who reigns without the aid of a husband? And what of France’s Catherine de Medici, a queen mother who has reigned for her minor children with God’s blessing?”

“You ask too many questions, Skye,”

he said. “That is one way I am able to judge you. Women should not ask questions, for Pastor Lichault says they were born to obey without question. As to those two queens you have mentioned, who is to say that it is God who keeps them in power? More likely it is the Devil!”

“Monseigneur, I beg of you, do not beat me!”

Skye was becoming extremely frightened. Was her husband a madman? Did he really believe the foolish nonsense that he had been spouting? Pastor Lichault was obviously one of those awful Calvinists who believed that any joy in living was sinful. They were such fools, the Calvinists. She had known some in England, and they were as dangerous as the fanatics among the Catholics. She shuddered with her fright.

“Madame, I do this for your own good. In time, when you have been properly schooled and seen the errors of your past attitude, you will be grateful to me for my perseverance.”

“H-how long will you continue to do this?”

her voice was shaking. Dear God, she prayed silently, don’t let him kill me in his zeal. Let me live to win him over for both our sakes, and the sake of my children.

“When the day comes, my dear, that you admit to your faults, admit that a woman is incapable of running a business—and I suspect that your business partner does it all for you, despite your claim; when the day comes that you admit that you are not suited to running the vast estates that you claim to run, and entrust such things to me, then I will know that you have become the kind of wife I seek, and want. Until that time I will beat you each night before we retire.”

He stood up and moved where she could not see him, only to return a moment later. In his hand he now had a birch switch the thickness of her finger. He placed it before her lips and commanded her, “You will kiss the rod of correction, madame. When I am through you will kiss it again and remember to thank me for your punishment.”

Skye turned her head aside. In this she would defy him. It mattered not what she did, he was going to hurt her anyway. At least she would not grovel.

His voice grew cold with anger. “I had meant to go easily with you tonight,”

he said, “but I can see that the pastor is right. You are arrogant beyond reason. You will be given the full measure of your punishment.”

She tried a last time. “Monseigneur, I beg you do not do this. If you do I shall complain to my queen who sent me here! She will not be pleased to learn that you are abusing me.”

“You will complain to no one, madame. It is my right as your husband to chastise you. Even your corrupt church will not deny me that right! You wished to get to know me better, and I am granting you that privilege. For the next month you will not leave these rooms, and I shall leave them only when necessary. I intend mating with you as often as possible in that time so that you will bear me a child as quickly as possible. I need an heir! We will spend the next month mating, and struggling through prayer and punishment to change your behavior.”

He raised the switch and brought it down sharply upon her bare buttocks.

Skye screamed with surprise. She had not been expecting the blow so soon, and he gave her no time to recover. His arm rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell again in ceaseless motion as he began to beat her in earnest. She cried out again and again with pain as the switch cut sharply and cruelly into her tender bottom.

This was a nightmare! It could not be happening! “Please,”

she wept, “please, monseigneur, I beg you! Stop! Stop!”

Skye felt very ashamed of herself to beg, but she could not stand the awful pain.

His answer was to lash her harder, this time cutting into her legs. She felt the warm trickle of blood as he broke the skin. Skye struggled against her silken bonds, but she could not escape him, and the pillows he had placed beneath her had only served to raise her hips up higher so he might get at them easier. His arm did not seem to tire easily of the punishment; rather, he seemed to be gaining strength from her struggles.

“Bitch!”

he hissed at her, and he cut viciously at her writhing bottom. “Admit to your faults! Admit that you are nothing! That man is the master! Admit that you are mindless softness made only for man’s pleasure, the cracked vessel for the spilling of his seed! A beast to bear his sons! It is God’s law, and you defy that law!”

“No! No!”

she sobbed as the switch laid white-hot pain upon white-hot pain. “Women are not beasts! They have minds, too!”

“You are stubborn,”

he again hissed at her, his arm never flagging in its punishment of her helpless flesh, “but in the end I will prevail, and I will save you from the snares of the Devil, who has so obviously gained possession of your soul!”

She could not stand much more of this torture, and her mind began to drift away into a blessed and quiet darkness. She no longer felt the switch’s heat, or heard the duc’s voice. Adam , she cried out within her mind, and then she felt him loving her as he had so often loved her. She struggled to open her eyes, feeling her desire for him rising, wanting to see his dear face, to feel his caress.

Her black lashes fluttered against her pale cheeks, and she finally managed to raise them to unveil her eyes. To her horror, it was the duc who was upon her, preparing to insert his long, swollen male organ within her helpless body. “No!”

she shrieked, seeking to force him off her, but though she was now lying upon her back, her buttocks burning like fire beneath her, to her dismay her arms were still bound to the bedposts.

He seemed not to notice her resistance. Instead he moaned with open desire, pushing her nightgown up to her neck and fumbling with her breasts again. “Beautiful, beautiful,”

he murmured, “such beautiful little tits!”

He lowered his head and sucked each one in turn, then rolled the tight nipples between his thumb and his forefinger, pinching them gently again and again until she thought she would scream. His hand roamed over her belly, fondling it, murmuring of the babes she would give him, and then, despite her protests, he was pushing himself into her. He thrust deeply, moving rhythmically as he muttered, “Fuck! You were made to be fucked, Skye! Ah, God! You were born to be fucked!”

She stared at him with horror. She could have been a dead body for all he cared! It made no difference to him whether she was conscious or unconscious as long as he could feel, and touch, and fuck her. What was worse for her was the terrible realization that she felt nothing herself. She, the most passionate and sensuous of women, felt nothing except an awful invasion of her mind and her soul and her body.

The man atop her shuddered with his own release, and then fell over to one side. Within minutes he was snoring and she lay next to him, numb with shock and with shame. Even with Dom, God assoil his black soul, it had never been so dreadful. Dom, for all of his crudity, had loved her in his own fashion, had been proud of her, and jealous of her. This man wanted nothing but to break her, to possess her very soul, to make her a mindless creature fit for nothing more than bearing babies until she finally died of too many children in too few years. She had seen it happen to other women. It might even have happened to her with Dom had she not had her sister, Eibhlin, to help her.

He had not taken the time to unbind her arms before he had fallen asleep, and so she lay uncomfortable and chilled as the night slowly progressed. Her bottom and the tender backs of her thighs ached with the beating that he had given her. She could feel the welts that had been raised on her skin burning like hot embers. Never before had she been subjected to such treatment. Her mind rebelled at the words that he had thrown at her this night. So he believed his warped pastor. He believed that women were nothing but mindless softness. Her bridegroom was in for a shock when he learned that this woman was rock-hard!

She wondered if he would eventually untie her, or if he intended to keep her bound to the bed for the entire month.

Was Fabron de Beaumont truly mad, or was he simply a crazed fanatic? Had he been like this with his other wives? No.

It was not possible.

She did not think that Edmond had lied to her, and he had always spoken of his uncle with genuine affection.

No.

The duc was obviously not a strong man, and had somehow come under the influence of this terrible creature, Pastor Lichault.

Perhaps he felt guilt for the deaths of his two previous wives.

Or perhaps he had secretly wanted to be a priest, as Edmond had suggested, and he could not because of his family obligations.

The Huguenot had seen the duc’s weaknesses and wielded his evil influence upon Fabron when he was bereft of all his family.

But it could not, must not continue! Skye knew she could not stand many more beatings like the one the duc had administered to her this night.

God’s foot, but he was a cold man! Her genuine, piteous cries should have wrung his heart, but instead they had only driven him to apply his switch harder.

She shuddered, remembering how terribly it had hurt.

Then afterward, when she lay barely conscious, to have taken her body, uncaring of how she felt, of whether he gave her pleasure as well as took it! Suddenly a picture of women in war came to her mind, and she realized for all that the duc was her husband, she had been raped.

She shuddered again.

The man was a monster!

“Are you cold?”

His voice, calm now, asked her.

“You have not untied me, monseigneur.”

“Forgive me, madame.”

He was solicitous, and reaching up, he loosened her bonds. Then he drew her into his arms and began stroking her breasts through her nightgown. “I find that I cannot get enough of you.”

He pushed up her nightgown again and mounted her. Skye stiffened and he noticed. “You do not like it when I fuck you?” he asked.

“No,”

she answered, honestly not caring if she hurt him. Men were vain about such things.

“Good,”

he said. “It is not meant that a woman gain pleasure from a man’s labor. It is the man’s pleasure that is paramount.”

He thrust into her again and again until he once more spilled his seed. Then the duc slept again.

Thank God, thought Skye, that I have taken Eibhlin’s potion. I’ll not give this beast children! I am not certain that this family should be perpetuated. They produce dwarfs, idiots, and madmen. Better the French come and take the duchy.

I will write to the Queen, she vowed. No, I will write to Lord Burghley! I will explain to him how it is. This marriage is not valid in the eyes of my own Church, and I suspect it is also invalid in the eyes of the Church of England. I must lull the duc into thinking that I am becoming more biddable so that I can speak with Robbie. Bess Tudor has asked many hard things of me, but even she will be shocked to learn of my plight, I know. She will not make me stay here. She cannot!

Skye turned onto her side, away from her new husband who was snoring once again, and gingerly felt the weals he had raised on her skin.

She would be revenged for each welt that he had marked on her flesh.

That she promised herself.

She had no intention of allowing him to further abuse her, even if she had to slit his throat.

She could do it, too.

Right now he lay helpless next to her, convinced of his own superiority, unbelieving that a woman could wield the power of life and death over any man.

She smiled softly in the darkness.

Fabron de Beaumont would very shortly learn, much to his distress, what it was like to have Skye O’Malley for an enemy.

She didn’t think that he was going to like it.

Smiling, Skye fell asleep.