On the fourth night, despite her longing to continue those truces, she forced herself to remain in her chamber, to prove to herself that he had not completely vanquished her will.

He did not take it well.

“Where were you last night?” Marcus asked the question as soon as he sat down at the high table. The evening meal had been delayed because he had ridden out before dawn and not returned until late.

“I knew that you needed to leave early this morning, and thought it best not to disturb your brief rest.” It was a lie, devised in a blink when she saw his tight jaw. She wanted to kick herself for being such a coward.

She forced herself to summon something of the woman she had been before she met him. “There will be other nights when I do not come. Nights when I am tired, or when I have my flux. Or when I do not choose to come.”

His hand reached to cover hers on the table. It seemed a more possessive hold than normal. “If you are tired, you can sleep in my arms. If you have your flux, you can still give me your company. If you do not choose to come, I want to know why.”

She sighed with exasperation. “You already know why.”

“I think that I do, but it is not the reason you will throw at me. It is because you are afraid.”

“I have nothing to fear from you, Marcus.” Annoyance made the statement more a challenge than an admission of trust.

“You have everything to fear from me. I am the man who holds your life in my hands by day and your heart in my hands by night. The daughter of Llygad does not worry much about the former, but the woman in you is a coward about the latter.”

She really resented his calling her a coward. That she had used it herself did not matter. She did not want evidence that he understood the war taking place inside her, or that he suspected the ground her duty was losing.

“But what you fear with me is something we are not allowed to speak of, isn’t it, Nesta? My apologies.” He raised her hand and kissed it. “Come to me tonight.”

“I am not yours to command in this, Marcus. Even our mockery of a betrothal does not give you that right.”

“You have given me the right. Come to my chamber. There are things I must tell you.”

Of course, summoned like that, she could not go.

She lay in bed that night, glad he had made it easy for her. He might speak seductively of not subverting her, but that had been his intention all along. Now he was annoyed because she had proven that those brief truces would be on her terms, and that the pleasure would not make her clay in his hands.