Now, he bent down, took her arm, wrenched her up on to her feet and shoved her toward the door. Her father had never raised his voice to her, had coddled her since childhood. You are not a man! Would to God that I had remembered that a year past! Would to God that you had died in your brother's place! You are God's curse upon me and if you die in the Duke's keeping, I will dance a jig and pray you land in hell!
To such a fate, you would never surrender a man! You insisted that we not parley when the Duke came to us for your hand. You planned this campaign with your brother. In the last year we lost all our crops, our women have been raped, our children murdered. His eyes were pits of hate in a dead white face.įour hundred men have died defending this keep.
She dropped to the floor, head reeling, looked up to find him over her. The back of her father's hand came across her face hard. You would prefer he kill us all? her father demanded. Share the demon's bed? Bear his children? she asked incredulously. Not a young man to begin with, he looked to have aged a lifetime. Blood and mud coated his battered armor, a soiled bandage covered the stumps of two fingers. We have summoned the priest, and he waits with the Duke below, said her father.įace grey, eyes staring, he might have been a stranger. She swept the maps and treaty drafts covering the table onto the floor and hurled the inkpot at the wall. Chapter OneĮleanor hit the table in front of her father so hard that she heard the bones in her hands crack.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Read moreįind other great books by Andreya Stuart, get free books and podcasts at. In this dark historical mystery romance, the Duke and his daring Virgin Bride fight a brutal war for their survival and the future of their people. He will have only a woman of honor, dignity, loyalty, and virtue to wife. She will be his prisoner until he can set her aside.
He refuses to allow his reward for decades of service in the Holy Land to be this dangerous madwoman of a wife. To end the ceaseless raids devastating his land and people, he must marry a girl who loathes him, who he has every reason to hate. Even as her body is bartered, and her freedom taken, Eleanor vows her enemy will never know a moment's peace while she lives.įresh from the Crusades, commanding a battle-weary Army, the Duke of Trevich has been forced to wage war to seize the estates granted to him by the King in London. Eleanor, suddenly the sole heir to her father's estates, must wed the brutal, battle-hardened Warrior who laid siege to her castle and killed her only brother.
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