Free Secret Song by Catherine Coulter

silent. She heard the door open softly. She heard a man’s step, a man’s steady breathing.
    â€œI cannot wait longer for you,” he said, coming to a halt beside her cot. “I am here to become your husband. I have prayed long in the chapel. God approves my actions. You will take me and accept me and obey me.”

4
    She’d known he would come, and strangely enough, she wasn’t paralyzed by fear. She listened to him speak, and some part of her marveled at his ability to bring God to his side, be the matter one of piety or lust. She listened but heard no sound of a key turning in the lock. She knew there was a key, for he’d locked her in the first several weeks of her captivity.
    Then he hadn’t bothered this time, for he’d seen no reason to. She heard his heavy breathing, heard his footfall as he approached the bed. She heard him trip over the single stool and curse; then he called out, “Have you no candle? I wish to see you. Where is the candle?”
    Very slowly, very deliberately, Daria rolled to her side to the far side of the cot. She eased off the side and came onto her hands and knees on the hard stone floor. Could he see her somehow? Hear her heart pounding?
    â€œDaria?” His own breathing was deep and harsh, and she knew he was feeling for her on the bed. She crawled slowly, silently, toward the door.
    He yelled her name, knowing now that she wasn’t lying there on the bed waiting for him. He roared, wheeling about, and he again tripped over the stool. He kicked it from his path and in the next instant he threw the door open. Dim light from the single flambeau in the corridor wall cast shadows into the chamber. And he saw her, kneeling, her arms over her chest, staring up at him, pale and still.
    The earl wondered if he should beat her now for her attempt to escape him; then he thought better of it. Perhaps if he struck her he would hurt her and she would not give him her full attention when he took her. No, he wanted all her attention, he wanted her to look at him when he thrust into her, drove through her maiden’s barrier. His heart pounded and his loins grew swollen and heavy.
    â€œGet up,” he said, not moving. He was standing there, his arms crossed over his chest, his legs spread, blocking her, he knew, and there was nothing she could do save obey him. But she couldn’t.
    She didn’t move.
    â€œObey me, now, or you will feel my hand.”
    Daria believed him. Slowly she got to her feet. She stood there silent and waiting. He smiled at her and held out his hand. “Come, Daria. Be not afraid of me, sweetling. You will be my wife, after all. I offer you this honor willingly and with all my heart and with our Lord’s blessing. I will visit pain upon you tonight, but you will open to me willingly and you will accept my seed into your womb. Perhaps you will know some pleasure, but I trust it will not be overabundant. I do not want you to forget yourself like some women do. They are not good women; they are unworthy. My first wife was a whore, abandoned in her cries and demands, but you—you will be just what I want.”
    His words had held her in thrall, and when he moved so quickly and grabbed her arm, she finally shrieked, “No. Get away from me, I don’t want this.”
    Surprisingly, his hold on her arm gentled. “Fear not, Daria. You are blessed amongst women. God and man will it so. It will be my duty to take you as often as I am able, and you will come to wish for me, surely, in your sweet way, and to ask me prettily to take you. Women are to bend to their husbands; it is in your nature to do so.”
    He stopped a moment and gave her a look filled with such certainty that she wondered for an instant if she were not somehow amiss in her view of him and the world itself and not accepting something that was truly an honor bestowed upon her. Then she laughed. She’d thought to jump out of that window if