Passion in the Blood (6 page)

Robert nodded.

Hugh pointed to Robert’s injury. “From what I see, and what we’ve heard, the same hatred has taken root in the breast of his son as well.”

Robert touched a hand to his wound. He’d hardly noticed the pain in his preoccupation with Dorianne. “Pierre was full of hatred. I didn’t expect it. I mean, if anyone has a right to hate members of the Giroux family, it’s me. But it’s time to put an end to this feud.”

Antoine drained his tankard and looked around for the servant. “Drink your ale, Robert. Where is Dorianne now?”

Robert took a swig. “Pierre has taken her back to their castle. Maybe I should forget the whole thing. She may not feel the same way. She’s young, probably too young for me.”

Antoine banged his tankard on the table, attracting the servant’s attention. “I overheard Giroux blustering about sending her to a convent. You may have condemned the girl to a life of religious servitude.”

Robert looked up sharply. The idea of Dorianne in a nunnery made him want to retch. She was so full of life, so curious. She was a woman made to partner a man, to bring him pleasure and love. She’d lived most of her life as a virtual prisoner. It was time to set her free.

He drained his tankard, but refused the second one the servant was set to pour, putting his hand over the top. “I must return to Montbryce forthwith. We’ve relayed to these other barons our family’s position. We can do no more. When you return home, strengthen your garrisons further. I’ll do the same at Montbryce, then travel on to Ellesmere and apprise father of what has transpired here.”

“Including that you want to marry a Giroux?” Antoine asked quietly.

Robert looked into his uncle’s green eyes and whispered, “
Oui
, even that.”

Hugh raised his tankard, “Then I wish you luck, nephew. You’ll need it!”

Pierre didn’t speak a word to his sister on their journey home. Dorianne felt she rode with a stranger. Her attempts to broach the topic of Robert de Montbryce were met with stony silence and hateful glares. The ride to Avranches had been an adventure. This was an ordeal.

Weary in body and heart, she walked from the courtyard into the keep while Pierre spoke to the stable boys. Suddenly, he was behind her, gripping her elbow, his nails digging into her flesh. He gripped a riding quirt in his other hand. “Go straight to your solar, Dorianne.”

Her insides clenched with fear at the grim expression on his face. She pulled away, but he tightened his hold. “What are you doing? It’s the middle of the day. Why should I go to my chamber?”

Pierre pushed her along. “You will be confined from now on. You cannot be trusted.”

Dorianne gasped. “Trusted to do what? Be as full of hate as you and father? Let me go.”

“What’s happening, Pierre?” It was their mother who had come to investigate the commotion.

Dorianne could barely keep up with Pierre as he hurried her in the direction of her chamber. She appealed to her mother. “He’s forcing me to my chamber,
maman
.”

Her mother bustled to keep pace with them. “Why are you treating your sister this way?” she asked nervously.

He sneered, and stopped abruptly. Elenor pulled up in surprise. “Because she’s a whore. She enticed Robert de Montbryce to a secret tryst. She allowed him to kiss her.”

Her mother’s hands flew to her mouth. “A Montbryce?”

Elenor de Giroux’s fear of her son showed in her eyes then, and Dorianne’s heart sank. Her mother would be of no help to her. But she had to try. “
Maman
, Pierre and Papa have made it more than clear there’s no future for me with Robert de Montbryce, but why should I be kept in my chamber?”

Elenor looked enquiringly at Pierre, who shook his head. “She’s to go to a nunnery. D’Avranches cancelled the betrothal. She has brought shame on our name.”

Dorianne managed to free her arm from Pierre’s grasp. Anger flooded her. “
Maman
, what shame is there in befriending Robert de Montbryce, a true nobleman, a future
Comte
?”

Tears streamed down her mother’s face, her eyes full of despair. “But he’s your father’s enemy,” she whispered hoarsely.

Pierre had reclaimed his grip on Dorianne and he escorted her roughly the rest of the way. Their mother stood like a statue, clenching her fists. None of Dorianne’s pleas seemed to outweigh her fear of her son.

Pierre thrust his sister to the floor of her chamber and bolted the door. He put down the quirt and took off his doublet, then his shirt. She scrambled away from him, her heart beating rapidly, a knot of fear forming in her belly. “What are you doing?”

He retrieved the quirt and braced his legs. “Bend over the bed,” he commanded.

Dorianne gasped. “Pierre—”

He moved towards her. “Lift your skirts and bend over the bed.”

She shook her head vigorously. “I will not allow you to whip me. I’m not a servant.”

Pierre sneered, his face a grim mask she didn’t recognize. “You are less than a servant. You’re a whore.”

He tightened his grip on the quirt and grabbed her, forcing her to the bed where he pushed her down on her stomach and put his knee on her back. She screamed and struggled, but he was too strong.

“Lie still,” he hissed. “The more you resist the more times I’ll strike you. You must be punished.”

She clenched her fists into the bed and bit the linens as he lifted her skirts to bare her bottom. The leather of the quirt bit into her tender flesh again and again. Her last desperate thought before she surrendered to the pain was that her brother seemed to take pleasure in her punishment.

***

The fire in her buttocks and thighs had suddenly cooled. The aroma of marigolds filled the air. She stirred. It was dark, but a single candle chased away some of the shadow and illuminated her mother, standing over her, applying a salve to the lacerations, sobbing.

Despair had turned Dorianne’s throat into a desert. “
Maman
,” she rasped.

Her mother shook her head and continued her ministrations. Dorianne buried her face in the linens, lest the tears begin again.

Her mother cleared her throat. “Your father has returned.”

Dorianne had nothing to say in reply. Her father wouldn’t help her, and her mother was too afraid to do anything. She was at Pierre’s mercy until he sent her to a convent.

“Is he of a mind to send me to a convent as well?” she murmured, the sound of her own voice intensifying the ache in her head.

Elenor took hold of her hand. “Let me help you remove your clothes, daughter. You need to sleep. Your father is yet too angry to speak to me, and I’ve avoided him. I know I’m a coward, Dorianne. I wish I had your courage, but I don’t.”

Dorianne stood up carefully and let her mother prepare her for bed. Her heart was numb. “Pierre whipped me,
maman
, as if I were a serf.” She tried to hold back the tears of pain and humiliation, but couldn’t.

Elenor wiped away her tears. “Sleep now,” she crooned, helping Dorianne crawl to lay on her stomach in the bed. She stroked her daughter’s hair. “The morrow will bring its own troubles.”

***

Elenor came to understand the extent of her daughter’s troubles the next day. She couldn’t believe her husband’s pronouncement. What made it worse was the gleam of satisfaction in Pierre’s eyes. But she had to say something. The idea was too monstrous.

“Mont Saint Michel? You intend to send her to Mont Saint Michel Abbey?” she whimpered. “I’ll never see her again.”

Her husband glared. “Pierre is right. He spoke with the Bishop of Avranches at the Council. It’s the best place for her. She needs to learn discipline.”

Elenor fidgeted with the lace of her sleeves. “But it’s a place known for its rigours, its poverty. The nuns are enclosed and not allowed to speak.”

She knelt at her husband’s feet, her head bowed, wishing she had the courage to lay her hand on his. “We cannot do this to our daughter.”

François walked away. Pierre strolled over to his mother and proffered his hand. “Don’t fret,
maman
. You’ll still have me.”

Elenor’s heart filled with dread. What had happened to the darling boy who’d been her son? He’d become a monster. The hatred his father had instilled in him had robbed him of his senses. Her hand trembled as he helped her rise. He put his arm around her and coaxed her to a chair. Surely he wouldn’t do this to his own sister?

“Dorianne and I will leave on the morrow, at dawn,” he gloated.

Elenor gasped and looked to her husband, seemingly fascinated by the embers in the hearth. “But she cannot sit, you whipped her so soundly. How can she ride a horse?”

François turned abruptly and looked at his son. “You whipped her?”

Pierre pouted. “I thought you would have wished it, Papa.”

François looked back at the hearth, his hands behind his back, his head bent. “You will take her in two days, when she’s healed.”

Pierre pursed his lips and left. Elenor sobbed as quietly as she could, her heart breaking for her beautiful daughter. If only she had the courage to break through the icy wall her husband had built, but it was impenetrable. She cursed the day she’d been betrothed into this family.

Dorianne’s lacerations hadn’t healed. The journey to Mont Saint Michel was long and painful. Her brother forbade conversation, insisting it was good practice for her new life of silence. After close to two days in the saddle her
derri
ère
was bruised and raw, but she was more stricken she would likely never see her mother and father again. Was she so hateful her father would cast her out?

A dull ache of disbelief had taken hold of her. As the interminable miles slipped by, she became lost in thought. What had she done to deserve this treatment from her father and brother? She’d merely found the company of Robert de Montbryce intoxicating, and had envisioned marrying him, becoming the future
Comtesse
de Montbryce. What was wrong with that? Most fathers would be overjoyed at the prospect of such a match for their daughter. Only hatred made it a crime.

She clung to the memory of Robert’s hands on her waist, the taste of his lips, the hard length of his manhood pressed against her. Remembering the warmth of the kitchen chimney warded off the damp chill. Would he come for her? How would he know where she was? Had he meant what he’d said when he pledged to her in the chapel? Or would he too succumb to hatred under the influence of his parents? Was there hope? She had to hold on to the notion there was, otherwise she too might go mad. Hope was the only thing she had left.

Her first glimpse of Mont Saint Michel filled her with dread. No wonder Aubert, Bishop of Avranches four hundred years before, had long resisted the call of the Archangel Michel to build an Abbey on the isolated barren rock. It was formidable, and Dorianne could see no way to reach it. The sea isolated it completely.

Pierre ordered their escort to dismount and set up camp. “We’ll have to wait for the tide to recede,” he told his lieutenant. Dorianne was thankful for the chance to get off her horse. The treeless shore provided no shelter from the drizzling rain. She huddled under the rough canvas the men erected, keeping her weight off her bottom. She dozed fitfully for a short time, to be awakened by a shout. “Prepare quickly, the tide’s going out.”

She struggled to her feet and stood in amazement watching the tide rush out like a galloping horse. Pierre bustled her to her mare and the two set off along the mudflat, followed by a flock of sheep that had been grazing in the fields nearby. The escort remained on the shore. As they made their way through the vast, muddy solitude, the forbidding walls of the Abbey came into full view. She supposed the multitude of pilgrims who braved many hardships to travel here would be elated at the sight. It was to be her tomb.

No wonder they call this Mont Tombe.

Pierre would not enter the Abbey, speaking to the Prior at the gates. He made the excuse of having to regain the mainland before the tide rushed back. He brushed a kiss on Dorianne’s cheek, turned and left without a word. She couldn’t watch him go. She stepped through the gate held open by the monk, shuddering as it creaked shut behind her.

A crow cawed its mocking cry in the distance. Would the sheep grazing on the meagre grass tufts of the rocky island be the last thing she would see of the world? Her dulled brain could only wonder how they knew when the tide was coming back. At least the drizzle hid her tears. She drew in a ragged breath and looked to the elderly Prior for instruction. He had a kindly look.

Pray I don’t swoon
.

“My brother has left me no clothing—”

The monk put a forefinger to his lips and shook his head. He extended his hand, showing the way to the entry. She followed in his wake. As the doorway loomed, she glanced up at the scaffolding, wooden planks supported by poles lashed together. Slabs of stone hung suspended in mid-air, the pulleys stilled as the masons studied her progress. She looked away from the pity on their faces.

Were they building or repairing? It was likely such a structure would need constant repair and renovation, exposed as it was to the open sea. Men had probably scurried over its walls and rooftops since the time of Charlemagne. It was odd they didn’t shout to each other. When masons toiled on the castle Giroux there was a great deal of calling back and forth. Here silence reigned. The only sound was the crunch of her boots on the narrow stone pathway. Not even the soaring seagulls exchanged a cry as they watched. She could smell the sea. She’d never seen it before. It called to her.