Taming the Beast

Roul snorted. “She’s just being dramatic and ungrateful. I bet she’ll start to cry soon. Females.”

I bit my lip and sniffed so that I didn’t cry. He’d stolen me away from my husband. I hated to leave Marceau, but I couldn’t deny that I looked forward to seeing my father again. He’d been so sick when I left. If he’d sent Roul on a rescue mission, he must have been extremely desperate. If he hadn’t come himself, it meant that he was too sick. I knew he loved me.

I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep so that I wouldn’t have to d

eal with Roul. Pretending to sleep actually made me sleepy. I’d had an eventful day, running around and being kidnapped back from my husband. I was exhausted.

I woke up when the carriage stopped at an inn. I couldn’t recognize it, but I’d been to only one inn in my entire life, the one that the coachman had taken me to when he had retrieved me.

Roul was shoving me out of the carriage, even though I’d clearly just been asleep.

“Idiot female,” he muttered. I didn’t say anything. Maybe I’d be able to convince one of the stable boys to help me get back to my husband. I just had to wait for Roul and his friends to fall asleep.

We went into the inn, where Roul immediately commandeered every available room for us. I was shown the smallest one. It had a plain bed and it was the size of a broom closet.

“I apologize that we don’t have anything better for you, my lady. All of the other rooms have been…otherwise distributed.”

I didn’t intend to spend very long in the broom closet, so I said, “I don’t mind. Thank you for your help.”

She curtsied to me. I had no luggage at all, no maid, and so I went inside. There was a washbasin and a bed. I peeked out the door. Roul and his stupid friends were already sitting down for a game of cards. They motioned to the barmaid to bring them a round of drinks. I wasn’t going to be able to use the stairs, so I went back into my room, which didn’t have a window. There didn’t seem to be any windows that I could use on the upper floor. The staircase was my only hope. I needed some kind of distraction so that Roul wouldn’t notice when I escaped.

There was a frustrating lack of resources here. I decided not to fight it. I would fall asleep and wake up in the middle of the night, when Roul and his friends would either be extremely drunk or asleep.

I climbed into the lumpy but very soft bed and closed my eyes. In a few hours, I could make a bid for freedom.

Instead, though, I woke up the next morning inside of the carriage.

Coachman

Marceau

Within a day, I had assembled my team: the coachman, the footman who had been there when she’d been retrieved, and someone to take care of the details and money, my steward. The four of us rode out in my lightest carriage. Speed was of the essence. I didn’t know where she’d been taken. I didn’t know how far I would need to travel, but I didn’t want to be unprepared. The housekeeper put clothing into a trunk for all of us, along with a hamper of food as well.

I was impatient as I waited for everyone to get the necessary things together before we traveled. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to see her for another week or so, but I could stay out of sight near her home. We made good time on the road, traveling through the night. I almost wanted to be stopped by highwaymen, just so that we could have a fight. There was frustration boiling in my veins. I’d have to wait for a while to reclaim my bride if I wanted her to live. Meanwhile, the castle was undefended, although my servants were all there. I was sure that they could handle whatever came.

It was a two-day journey before we got to the village near her family’s manor. We went straight past it, since they would surely notice, and we waited in the inn in the next village. They didn’t know how to deal with royalty. I used one of my lesser titles and received service barely tolerable for someone of lesser rank.

I sent my steward to the inn in her village. He reported that they were behind us, since we’d driven through the night. The youngest sister of the local baronet had been stolen by a monster, they said. A vicious beast of a man had threatened the life of her father before forcing her to marry him with that threat.

I felt a shred of shame, but I’d known when I smelled her on him that she was it for me. And I wasn’t about to apologize for how we had met. If I had been some sort of commoner, a blacksmith’s apprentice perhaps, I would never be able to give her everything that I wanted to. I would have had to convince her to love me before getting married. I knew that I’d done a good job after we’d married.

She could be carrying my child, and someone had taken her. They may not have known that they’d done me a very painful favor. She was unlikely to thank them, but she hadn’t known the danger that she was in. I tried to shift every morning, but I could only lengthen my canines and change the color of my eyes to gold every day.

Until one day, when I couldn’t will myself to shift at all. That day, I knew I was ready to reclaim my wife.

Reclaiming

Cateline

I’d been home for fewer than two weeks, and my father still hated to let me out of his sight. He was still weak and unable to get around, but the pure happiness and relief that I had seen in his face when Roul brought me home was worth Roul’s rough handling. Melisende and Aalis were less horrible than usual, because they’d genuinely thought that they had lost me forever.

Within a day, I’d settled back into my old routine. I held classes for the stable boys and hid in the hayloft, just like old times. Roul left nearly right after he had left me in the “decaying manor house” with the rest of the family on the very boring estate that provided all his money and the support that he needed for his own lands.

I was disappointed not to hear a word from Marceau. No messenger came. No letters arrived. It seemed that my husband, whom I’d fallen deeply in love with in a very short time, didn’t care that I’d gone away. Maybe he was still at the castle. He had shouted when I’d left. I knew that he had tried to run after the carriage, since the footman with the carriage had said as much to Roul. But I had truly thought that he had claimed me.

Days had passed. All the color seemed to be gone from my life. My quiet life, with which I’d been so content, seemed dull without the companionship of my husband. I’d spent so many years without him, and in mere days he made himself indispensable. But he did not come, and I could not stop myself from crying at night when there was nobody to hear. My bed felt as cold as ice when there wasn’t anybody to hold me. I developed moderate insomnia, running through all of our time together in my head over and over and not understanding why he’d let me disappear.

I must not have meant much to him. I believed that and internalized that by a week in. My father, after the initial shock of my return, forbade all of us to talk about what he considered a highly traumatic experience.