I’m taking part Hump Day Hook Ups this week, with a snippet from my current work in progress Warrior’s Surrender.
This has been a much more difficult story to write than Moonstone Obsession (to bereleased on October 18 through Etopia Press), because the hero and the heroine have emerged as conflicted and complex people who are not very comfortable talking about their emotions.
The heroine, Frey, the daughter of a dispossessed Saxon Earl, in particular has emerged as being very involved character.
Warrior’s Surrender is a historical romance set in Northumbria in 1074 in the years following William The Conqueror’s infamous Harrying of the North that destroyed 360 square miles of English countryside as retribution for rebellion by the Saxons.
In order to protect and secure treatment for her seriously ill younger brother, Frey has volunteered to be hostage to Baron Sebastian de la Coix, Baron of Tyrswick, appointed by William The Conqueror to control the lands her father once possessed.
In this scene Frey confronts Sebastian with news about the man she once loved, Drefan, who now poses a threat to them all.
I hope you enjoy:
Frey remained in the shadows of the solar, a cloak and hood thrown over her night gown against the chill of the night. Its dark colour allowed her to remain undiscovered in the shadows.
Sleep would not claim her, not when Drefan lurked like a spectre outside. With the arrival of Baron Villiers, this was her only opportunity to speak with Sebastian alone.
She had overheard the low murmurs of conversation through thick timber wall that separated this room from the Baron’s bedchamber and knew that Sebastian talked late with Rosalind’s husband still, so she huddled in the dark corner, hugging her knees and waited for the man to leave.
After a period of time he did and Frey listened intently until the sound from the floor below, of his chamber door opening then closing, echoed up the stairs, before she edged across to the entrance and glanced through the crack left between the door and the jamb.
Perhaps Sebastian slept and that is why Lord Rhys left.
If that were so Frey would have reconsider her plans. By the light of the fire she could see the abandoned chair. To see the second chair she would have to peer around the door.
It too was empty.
Frey frowned. Did she doze and Sebastian slip past her unseen? She took a further step or two into the room and looked.
The bed was…
Before Frey could process the thought, she was grabbed roughly from behind and held firmly against a firm warm wall. A large hand covered her mouth and suppressed an involuntary scream.
The wall softened, recognising its captive.
“You picked the wrong night to slit my throat while I slept, princess.”
Sebastian’s whispered voice filled her ear and heat shot between her legs. He held her still for long moments before speaking.
“Are you recovered? You will not scream?”
Frey nodded and shook her head in answer to each question and she was released, but her heart still pumped furiously.
“Do you suggest I pick some other night then?” she said, wiping her mouth to rid it of the sensation of his hand.
Sebastian ignored her barb and poured a small measure of spiced wine into his goblet and handed it to her, watching as she drank it.
“Why do you assume the worst of me?” she asked.
“Habit,” he answered, arms folded across his chest.
“Now tell me what you’re doing in my chambers while others sleep.”
“I have to speak to you.”
Sebastian’s eyebrows rose in surprise, it might have been scepticism, Frey couldn’t be sure.
“And it couldn’t wait until morning?”
All of a sudden Frey’s courage left her and with it wondered if her senses had taken leave of her too.
She was an unmarried woman, alone, late at night in the bed chamber of a man whose mere presence made her feel powerful sensations that she struggled to understand. What on earth was she doing?
She shook her head softly.
“This was a mistake.”
As she turned to leave, Sebastian grabbed her wrist.
“It’s a mistake to not finish what you start.”
Frey tugged the wrist, but Sebastian held firm, looking at her with a mistrust that she hadn’t seen since after the battle with the wolves.
“Sit down,” he ordered. “It seems your past returns to haunt us, princess.”
Frey gave him her most implacable stare and defied him for long seconds before slowly and deliberately lowering herself onto the chair left by Lord Rhys, but despite her show of external bravado, her chest tightened as she watched Sebastian slowly reclaim his seat.
“Drefan,” she stated.
The word dropped like a lead weight between them.
“You’ve been less than forthcoming about what this man is to you and I’ve run out of time and patience,” he told her.
“You want to know what he is to me,” she echoed bitterly.
The banked coals of emotion long suppressed, glowed and burst into flame with this breeze of change, they heated Frey’s temper and stoked her courage.
“I hate that man more than I hated you Normans,” she told him.
“He kept my father angry and drunk while he drained his purse and fed him fantasies of reclaiming our home. He promised great and mighty armies to march victoriously into England, he wormed his way into my brother’s affections and pretended he was a friend.”
Frey paused and chanced a glance at Sebastian. A single slow blink was the only reaction he showed.
“That still doesn’t tell me who he is to you.”
“He’s nothing to me. He’s a dog,” she sneered. The warmth of Sebastian’s chambers receded as memory of Drefan’s flattering words and his cold-hearted deception played itself in her mind’s eye.
“Drefan claimed to have contracted marriage and my father was rarely sober enough to ask but that didn’t stop him from taking…” Frey’s voice caught and long repressed tears of bitterness, shame and anger breached the embankments of her lids and fell in rivulets down her face.
“He used me, he used all of us and now he’s back.”
Thank you for reading!
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