The Viper (Highland Guard #4)(48)

But she couldn’t do it. It wasn’t just because every little thing about his person revolted her. The brown stains on his teeth. The white flakes in his greasy dark hair. The layer of sweat that made his face shine like the skin of a fish. Nay, submitting to him would be something she could never excuse. With her husband, she’d had a duty. With Lachlan, she’d foolishly believed there was something special between them. But with Simon, she would be selling herself. And she’d be damned if she’d give proof to the rumors. First about Robert, and then after her capture, thanks to Ross no doubt, about Lachlan.

She did not care that people called her a whore, but she would not make herself one.

So she’d endured cold, hunger, and two years of endless tormenting. Twice he’d gone too far and nearly killed her. Once the rotting food he’d given her had sickened her. Another time he’d punished her defiance by taking away her blankets on a night of cold and rain; she’d nearly frozen to death.

Like her former husband, Simon wanted to see her react. He looked for ways to break her. Many times over the past two years she’d wanted to give in. But one thing had kept her going: her daughter. She had to get through this for Joan.

“I hear the rooms are small and windowless,” he said snidely. She repressed a shiver. Though she’d hid her fear well, still he’d guessed it. “But you’re used to that, aren’t you, Countess?” He emphasized the last, then slapped his forehead with exaggerated affect. “Oh, that’s right. With Buchan dead, King Edward, the second by that name, has decided that you are no longer a countess.”

She held his gaze and smiled. “Aye, now I am merely the daughter and sister to the most ancient and powerful of all Scottish earldoms.”

Simon’s face turned florid. She might have been set aside by her husband, and her title stripped by a king, but she was still descended from Scotland’s most noble blood, and as such, far above a coarse brute like him.

When Margaret, her only source of outside events, had brought her news a few months back of her husband’s death, Bella had felt nothing. Not happiness that the man who’d fought for her death for two years had met his own, or even relief from the knowledge that she would never have to see him again. Her only thought was for her daughter. Joan was alone now. What would happen to her?

Buchan’s death had made her even more determined to get out of this nightmare and return to her daughter. Something she would never be able to do if she took her vows.

Simon crossed the small chamber in three strides. He tore the embroidery from her hands and harshly jerked her body up against him.

She hung there like a poppet of rags. Having grown used to such treatment, she didn’t resist or feel any fear. Simon was a mean, foul-tempered bully who would touch her and manhandle her whenever he got the chance, but the worst he dared was crude gropings and a few bruises.

He’d wanted to rape her—more times than she could count—but despite the barbarous treatment done to her by England’s kings, they apparently had not forsaken every last bond of civility. Her status protected her, and she never let him forget it.

His face drew so near, she could see every black-dotted pore on his ill-shapen nose. Used to his stench, rather than cringe, the staleness of his breath beating down on her merely caused her nose to wrinkle.

“You’re nothing but a haughty, worthless whore. For years you’ve been flaunting your wares, trying to tempt me from my duty. But look at you: a pale, skinny crow. I’ll be glad to be rid of you.” He gave her a violent shake. “But you’d better dull that sharp tongue of yours. The nuns will not be as tolerant as I am of your sinful pride.”

If she could summon the effort, she would laugh. She tempt him? He, tolerant? No doubt the buffoon actually believed it. But his words pricked the small streak of vanity she had left. Had the years of imprisonment taken as much of a toll on the outside as they had on the inside? Bella hadn’t seen her reflection in a looking glass in over two years.

But what would it matter in a convent?

She didn’t respond, merely meeting his anger with a mute, emotionless stare. He hated when she did that. And heaven help her, no matter how bad it got, something inside her couldn’t resist defying him.

It was the same flaw that had reared its ugly head with her husband.

He tossed her aside with an oath. “Be ready to leave in the morning. The constable will be here himself to see you gone.”

She picked up her mending as if the entire unpleasant episode had never happened. “I will go to the convent,” she said quietly. “But no one can force me to take the veil.”

Bella kept her eyes on the needle, poking in and out of the cloth. For a moment she thought he hadn’t heard her. But a surreptitious glance out from under her lashes told her he had. A shiver of trepidation ran down her spine. He was smiling.

Her heart pounded, knowing what was coming. The English held the one weapon that would always defeat her.

“That’s too bad,” he said. Despite the idleness of his tone, Bella sensed the shift in power. Her victories were always short-lived. “I believe Sir John was reconsidering your request.”

Her heart stilled. She tried not to react, but his words tortured her with hope. “The constable has agreed to let me see my daughter?”

Allowing her jailors to know of her desperation to see her daughter had been her biggest mistake. They controlled her behavior by dangling the promise of contact with Joan before her, as if she were a hare with a tasty carrot hanging above its nose.