The Bride Bed
Chapter One
Carrisford Castle
Devonshire, 1145
"By the rood, Lady Talia, that bloody Lord Rufus be the meanest, ugliest bugger there ever was!"
Mustn't forget cruel, malicious, and stone-stupid, Talia thought, but didn't dare say to Leod, else the dear old warrior and his compatriots might take the matter of Lord Rufus into their own hands.
"Mean and ugly or no," Talia whispered, swallowing the cold panic that had settled against her heart, "in just a few minutes Lord Rufus will be my husband."
Husband. Dear Lord, the word tasted bitter.
"Hell's hoary hound, girl, y'can't marry that Pig-snouted bastard!"
"It's not a matter of choice, Quigley," Talia said, a darkly distant thunder shifting her off-balance as she stepped into the firelit shadows of her castle courtyard. "I'm Rufus's Ward."
And this time there would be no escaping the inevitable.
No escaping the horrid ogre waiting for her to join him on the chapel steps.
To marry him.
This time there'd be no army to come crashing through the castle gates, like the last time.
No act of God, like the time before, no broken siege.
No royal warrant in ... read full excerpt from: The Bride Bed ebook
