sharp tongue.” He chuckled at her impotent anger. “She would not give me her name, and yet I feel sure I will eventually find her.”
“Not if she can avoid you,” Lilliane muttered as she struggled to free her hand.
Sir Corbett did not respond at once. When he did speak his voice held a warning note. “Both maid and lady as well as the demesne shall be mine. Never doubt that.” He released her hand. “Whether you be willing or not matters nothing to me. You will do your duty as a daughter and a wife, as I shall do mine as a husband.”
It was said with such conviction and finality that Lilliane’s heart filled with dread. At that moment he was her enemy, pure and simple. And he was announcing his victory before the battle had even begun.
Lilliane could not reply. Worse, she felt the sting of foolish tears behind her eyes. Knowing only that she must get away from him, she abruptly rose from the table, nearly toppling her chair in her haste. She did not pause to excuse herself. Indeed, she feared that should she speak, shameful tears would overwhelm her.
As at her entrance, the great hall quieted at her leaving. She knew that speculation abounded and that the gossips would find her abrupt departure generous fodder for their mills. But she could not stay. She could not!
She should never have returned, she told herself as she mounted the stone stairs. She should have remained at Burgram Abbey and never returned to help with Tullia’s wedding.
But what was done was done, she had to admit as she wiped her tear-dampened cheeks with the back of one hand. She had come and her father had decided to honor the betrothal. A heavy sigh caught in her throat and she slowed her frantic pace to catch her breath. The wall was cool and smooth against her flushed cheek as she leaned against it. It helped to clear her racing thoughts. She needed to think and to be away from the wedding furor that seemed to have taken hold of the entire castle. How she wished she could just leave and find a peaceful clearing in the forests to be alone in.
But she knew it would be useless for her to try to leave the castle. The guards would never grant her passage alone at night. But neither did she wish to sit idle in her chamber, fretting and worrying.
Then she remembered the look-over. Above her parents’ old chamber, the look-over was a small roof court, surrounded by battlements. At one time it had been the highest point of the castle. But a new section added to Orrick by her grandfather more than fifty years before had made the old Lord’s Look-Over, as it had been called, unnecessary to castle security. As a child she had used it as a place to daydream or else to lick her wounds. Just as then, she knew it was precisely what she needed now.
Up the solid stone steps she went. Up, winding past her chamber, then past the tower room. She averted her eyes as she rushed past that particular door. Beyond it lay the chamber claimed by Sir Corbett, the room she was expected to share with him. With a grimace on her lips she hurried past that offending portal and up the last steep flight of stairs.
Lilliane was out of breath when she finally stepped into the cool night air. Autumn was upon the land and the crisp September weather raised goose bumps on her arms and shoulders. But she did not care about that at all. Beyond her lay the lands of Orrick bathed only in the meager light of the waning moon. She could see the dark shapeless mass of the forests far to her right. Before her stretched the fields and meadows, silent and still. The village at the base of the long hill that led up to the castle was only a dark jumble of shadows, and yet Lilliane was comforted by what she saw.
It looked the same as it had ever been, and she hugged her arms tightly around her waist. Orrick Castle had survived over three hundred years. From Saxon stronghold to Norman castle it had grown and prospered, and the people of Windermere Fold had prospered as well. Even