Leila is surprised

Leila awoke with a pounding heart. Her body already knew he was in the room.

“Leofric?”

“Even I,” he muttered.

“I didn’t think you would return tonight.”

“Surprise.”

She heard him unbuckle his belt in the dark.

“Leia is upstairs in her room,” she said.

“I’ve already seen her.”

Then he would not stay with her.

“She—”

Leila searched for something she could tell him about Leia. Perhaps something to distract him. Oh, if only the baby had been ill that day!

“She was a little fussy this afternoon,” Leila said.

He moved from the foot of the bed to the head. She could hear him pull off his tunic. The dim glow of the embers only frustrated her eyes. She could not see him. In the dark, he seemed enormous, bodiless. He seemed to fill the entire room.

“She’s sleeping fine now,” he slurred. Oh, he was drunk, too!

“I was thinking she might wake.”

“The nurse is there.”

Leila pulled the blankets up beneath her armpits and clamped them against her body with her arms. They were nothing—neither the blankets, nor her arms—but she would keep him out any way she could.

She heard him remove his trousers. So, he had already removed his boots before she awoke. She had less time than she thought.

She heard him scratch his head, ruffle his long hair.

“Shall I go sleep with her?” she offered.

He froze. If he did not move, if he did not make a sound, she could not tell where he stood. He seemed to be everywhere at once.

Finally he yanked down the blankets on his side of the bed. If he did not answer, it meant he knew what she was trying to do. That had been a mistake.

He sat on the bed, and she twisted away from him as her body began to roll towards the depression he made.

She felt him swing his legs up onto the bed, and then came a sharp tug on the blankets she was pressing against her body with her arms.

“What’s this?” he growled. He gave another tug. “Are you lying on it?”

She lifted her arms and allowed him to pull the blankets down. There was no point in infuriating him. Perhaps he only meant to sleep. He had ridden far that day—at least six hours in the saddle, all told. And he had been drinking.

He pulled the blankets up over his legs and let his head fall back onto his pillow. He sighed, and then the arm closest to her went up, and—

Nothing. She could feel his arm up in the air, somewhere—doing what, she could not tell. Her fear grew cold and began to sink like a chill mist, becoming a nausea that crept like tendrils of fog through her belly.

Would the arm never come down? She was too frightened to swallow, though her mouth prickled with dryness. He lay on his back—he could not mean to hit her with that arm. What was he doing?

And then she heard the rough skin of his palm dragging over the smoother skin of his face and rasping across his beard. He had merely been holding his hand against his brow! She nearly laughed in relief. He was only a tired man.

He let his arm drop, and then he rolled over and flung the other one across her body. She shuddered and tensed. He was only a drunken man. She squeezed her eyes closed, though she could have seen little more had she opened them. But she would shut him out any way she could.

His hand slid down her body in search of the hem of her nightgown. Her skin crawled in revulsion, though it was protected by the linen yet.

Her gown had ridden up as she’d slept, and she’d not been able to pull it down since he’d come in. She could not help crying out as his hand met the skin of her leg, sooner even than she had anticipated, surprising her.

“What?”

“Not tonight,” she whispered.

“Why not?”

“I cannot tonight.”

He removed his hand from her leg and pushed himself up so he lay reclining on his elbow. His body rose up beside hers like a menace.

“You lie,” he growled. “You told me so a week ago. Either you lied then or you lie now. And I don’t care either way.”

His breath stank of wine. It was always worse with wine. He drank as much as with ale, and the wine was stronger.

His hand fell on her leg again and slid up between her thighs in search of the pad of cloth that was not there. A week ago she had not been lying.

She no longer tried to hide her fright. Her heart fluttered and threatened to stop beating entirely, and her breath came in shallow gasps.

“You show a remarkable disregard for your pretty sheets,” he snarled. Then he jammed two fingers inside of her.

She cried out only once. She never cried out in pain or in humiliation, nor even in fear when he held his hand too long around her throat. She only ever cried out in surprise.