The Conqueror

When his unreadable grey eyes shifted to her, she was aghast to note that even when he did not plan to, the man sent waves of seduction and sexual prowess out before him like the prow of a ship. He was dressed as befitted his victorious claim to the castle, the lands, and the lady, and he simply took her breath away.

Her fingers, grown strangely cold, fluttered at her throat. Her world was changed from this night on, and it would be by his hand.

His hands. His lips, his mouth.

Gwen ripped her attention away from the ungodly list her mind was detailing and tried to still any sign of fear.

If his smug smile was any indicator, she had failed. Miserably.

The whole thing turned her face further downwards, her mouth into a scowl, her nose to hover above the rim of her wine cup, which was now weaving unsteadily from the tips of her fingers as she beckoned for more. When it arrived, she took a deep draught.

“Careful, wife. I’d rather have you upright, at least for awhile yet.”

Griffyn’s words came close by her ear. She angled a sour look up. He was standing beside her chair, his thigh a few inches from her nose. “Beg pardon?”

“I would rather you be upright. For awhile.”

He was grinning from ear to ear. Oh, but he was a crafty one. He’d won his home back, took a wife, and was on his way to planting a thick wedge of devotion between her and her knights.

All of her father’s curses came back into her mind, vibrant and particularly applicable to the scoundrel standing so close she could mend a rent in his breeches, should she ever be so inclined.

“You must be pleased with your accomplishments,” she observed sourly.

“I would be if my pretty betrothed did but smile at me.” Down went the corners of her mouth. He sighed. “Wine does not agree with you.”

“Defeat does not agree with me.”

“Nay,” he said, his eyes roaming over her face. “What can I do to ease it?”

She pretended to ponder this. “Leave?”

He laughed, evidently willing to entertain her bad humour for the moment. And what did it cost him, she wondered gloomily. Nothing but a few seeds of patience probably well-sown in the armies of the fitzEmpress over the last eighteen years. Let her prattle on, he must be thinking, in the end she will be mine.

“What did you say to him?” she asked abruptly.

“Whom?”

“Jerv.”

His dark grey eyes held hers. “He’s a liking for castles and how they’re built.”

“How did you know that?”

He shrugged.

She scowled. “I could have told you that. I knew a long time ago. When he was twelve, he told me his first dream of building a castle.”

“Umm.”

“For years now,” she insisted, as if she had to prove Jerv was more hers than his.

He nodded calmly, infuriatingly. “How wonderful.”

A fissure of fury steamed through a crack in her hard-fought composure. “Yes, isn’t it?”

He looked at her in silence.

“I’ve known him since I was a child. Since w