"How do you 'know of such things?" he thundered angrily, grasping her upper arms so hard that she knew she would be bruised come morning. "What kind of a woman has England sent me? No respectable woman should know of such abomination! Answer me, madame!" His black eyes blazed his outraged fury.

"My first husband," she cried, trying to loosen his grasp on her tender flesh. "He loved to humiliate me by doing… doing that."

"You did not like it?" His gaze searched her face anxiously.

"It disgusted me," she replied honestly.

He loosed his grip on her. "So it should have, madame, for God forbids such wickedness. You need not fear that I practice such depravity. However, you must trust me when I ask you to lie face down upon the bed, and you must obey me, madame, for I am your lord and master in both God's eyes and man's."

Skye was distressed. He had assured her that he did not practice Dom's particular perversion, yet why did he want her to lie face down upon the bed? The silence hung heavy between them. She wasn't going to find out standing here, and surely he wasn't going to harm her after he had said he wouldn't. With a sigh she lay down upon the bed.

"Move into the center, madame," came the command, and she obeyed him.

He took her left wrist, and she felt him sliding something about it, something soft and yet strong. As she moved her head to look he moved around the bed to grasp her right arm and bind it as well to the carved posts of the bed with a woven silken cord.

She gasped again, this time with shock. "Monseigneur!" she cried, "what are you doing?" Her fear was beginning to rise again. She struggled to control it, trying to draw a calming breath. His actions, however, were not reassuring.

He was now spreading her legs and binding them also to the lower posts of the bed. "I am binding you to the bed, madame. I would have thought that that was obvious to you." He had finished, and moving up by her head, he pulled the pillows from beneath it. Then lifting her with a surprisingly strong hand, he stuffed the pillows beneath her belly so that her hips were well elevated.

"Why are you doing this?" Her voice bordered on the hysterical. Dear Heaven, what terrible perversion was he going to practice upon her helpless form? If he killed her what would happen to her children?

"Because," he said, as he carefully raised her silk nightgown up, fully exposing her buttocks and legs, "I am going to beat you."

"What?!" Her voice was a shriek. He was a madman!

"I am going to beat you," he repeated calmly.

"But why? What have I done? We do not even know each other! How can I have displeased you so in the short time since I arrived that you would do something so awful as to beat me?!"

Fabron de Beaumont sat by her side, and in a calm voice began to explain. "My beautiful bride," he said in a voice laced with patience, "you are a woman, and women are weak vessels who must be constantly corrected in order to give them true strength. Pastor Lichault advocates the daily beating of a wife until she conforms perfectly, instantly, and without questions to her husband's will. He and I spoke at great length tonight before I came to you. He feels that you are much too independent a woman at present to make me a dutiful wife. Nonetheless we are now wed, and so he felt that I must begin on this our wedding night a program of correction so that I may mold you into the kind of woman that my wife should be. If you are to bear my children you must raise them as I desire, without question, and with instant obedience. Women are inferior to men, and yet you have dared to raise yourself above your humble station, to put yourself on a level with men. You are overproud, Skye, but I am going to save you from yourself. This I promise you."

She was horrified. "How can you judge me so quickly, my lord Fabron?" she asked him pleadingly. "If women are so inferior then why has God chosen a queen for England, a queen who reigns without the aid of a husband? And what of France's Catherine de Medici, a queen mother who has reigned for her minor children with God's blessing?"

"You ask too many questions, Skye," he said. “That is one way I am able to judge you. Women should not ask questions, for Pastor Lichault says they were born to obey without question. As to those two queens you have mentioned, who is to say that it is God who keeps them in power? More likely it is the Devil!"

"Monseigneur, I beg of you, do not beat me!" Skye was becoming extremely frightened. Was her husband a madman? Did he really believe the foolish nonsense that he had been spouting? Pastor Lichault was obviously one of those awful Calvinists who believed that any joy in living was sinful. They were such fools, the Calvinists. She had known some in England, and they were as dangerous as the fanatics among the Catholics. She shuddered with her fright.

"Madame, I do this for your own good. In time, when you have been properly schooled and seen the errors of your past attitude, you will be grateful to me for my perseverance."

"H-how long will you continue to do this?" her voice was shaking. Dear God, she prayed silently, don't let him kill me in his zeal. Let me live to win him over for both our sakes, and the sake of my children.

"When the day comes, my dear, that you admit to your faults, admit that a woman is incapable of running a business-and I suspect that your business partner does it all for you, despite your claim; when the day comes that you admit that you are not suited to running the vast estates that you claim to run, and entrust such things to me, then I will know that you have become the kind of wife I seek, and want. Until that time I will beat you each night before we retire."

He stood up and moved where she could not see him, only to return a moment later. In his hand he now had a birch switch the thickness of her finger. He placed it before her lips and commanded her, "You will kiss the rod of correction, madame. When I am through you will kiss it again and remember to thank me for your punishment."

Skye turned her head aside. In this she would defy him. It mattered not what she did, he was going to hurt her anyway. At least she would not grovel.

His voice grew cold with anger. "I had meant to go easily with you tonight," he said, "but I can see that the pastor is right. You are arrogant beyond reason. You will be given the full measure of your punishment."

She tried a last time. "Monseigneur, I beg you do not do this. If you do I shall complain to my queen who sent me here! She will not be pleased to learn that you are abusing me."

"You will complain to no one, madame. It is my right as your husband to chastise you. Even your corrupt church will not deny me that right! You wished to get to know me better, and I am granting you that privilege. For the next month you will not leave these rooms, and I shall leave them only when necessary. I intend mating with you as often as possible in that time so that you will bear me a child as quickly as possible. I need an heir! We will spend the next month mating, and struggling through prayer and punishment to change your behavior." He raised the switch and brought it down sharply upon her bare buttocks.

Skye screamed with surprise. She had not been expecting the blow so soon, and he gave her no time to recover. His arm rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell again in ceaseless motion as he began to beat her in earnest. She cried out again and again with pain as the switch cut sharply and cruelly into her tender bottom.

This was a nightmare! It could not be happening! "Please," she wept, "please, monseigneur, I beg you! Stop! Stop!" Skye felt very ashamed of herself to beg, but she could not stand the awful pain.

His answer was to lash her harder, this time cutting into her legs. She felt the warm trickle of blood as he broke the skin. Skye struggled against her silken bonds, but she could not escape him, and the pillows he had placed beneath her had only served to raise her hips up higher so he might get at them easier. His arm did not seem to tire easily of the punishment; rather, he seemed to be gaining strength from her struggles.

"Bitch!" he hissed at her, and he cut viciously at her writhing bottom. "Admit to your faults! Admit that you are nothing! That man is the master! Admit that you are mindless softness made only for man's pleasure, the cracked vessel for the spilling of his seed! A beast to bear his sons! It is God's law, and you defy that law!"

"No! No!" she sobbed as the switch laid white-hot pain upon white-hot pain. "Women are not beasts! They have minds, too!"

"You are stubborn," he again hissed at her, his arm never flagging in its punishment of her helpless flesh, "but in the end I will prevail, and I will save you from the snares of the Devil, who has so obviously gained possession of your soul!"

She could not stand much more of this torture, and her mind began to drift away into a blessed and quiet darkness. She no longer felt the switch's heat, or heard the duc's voice. Adam, she cried out within her mind, and then she felt him loving her as he had so often loved her. She struggled to open her eyes, feeling her desire for him rising, wanting to see his dear face, to feel his caress.

Her black lashes fluttered against her pale cheeks, and she finally managed to raise them to unveil her eyes. To her horror, it was the duc who was upon her, preparing to insert his long, swollen male organ within her helpless body. "No!" she shrieked, seeking to force him off her, but though she was now lying upon her back, her buttocks burning like fire beneath her, to her dismay her arms were still bound to the bedposts.

He seemed not to notice her resistance. Instead he moaned with open desire, pushing her nightgown up to her neck and fumbling with her breasts again. "Beautiful, beautiful," he murmured, "such beautiful little tits!" He lowered his head and sucked each one in turn, then rolled the tight nipples between his thumb and his forefinger, pinching them gently again and again until she thought she would scream. His hand roamed over her belly, fondling it, murmuring of the babes she would give him, and then, despite her protests, he was pushing himself into her. He thrust deeply, moving rhythmically as he muttered, "Fuck! You were made to be fucked, Skye! Ah, God! You were born to be fucked!"

She stared at him with horror. She could have been a dead body for all he cared! It made no difference to him whether she was conscious or unconscious as long as he could feel, and touch, and fuck her. What was worse for her was the terrible realization that she felt nothing herself. She, the most passionate and sensuous of women, felt nothing except an awful invasion of her mind and her soul and her body.

The man atop her shuddered with his own release, and then fell over to one side. Within minutes he was snoring and she lay next to him, numb with shock and with shame. Even with Dom, God assoil his black soul, it had never been so dreadful. Dom, for all of his crudity, had loved her in his own fashion, had been proud of her, and jealous of her. This man wanted nothing but to break her, to possess her very soul, to make her a mindless creature fit for nothing more than bearing babies until she finally died of too many children in too few years. She had seen it happen to other women. It might even have happened to her with Dom had she not had her sister, Eibhlin, to help her.

He had not taken the time to unbind her arms before he had fallen asleep, and so she lay uncomfortable and chilled as the night slowly progressed. Her bottom and the tender backs of her thighs ached with the beating that he had given her. She could feel the welts that had been raised on her skin burning like hot embers. Never before had she been subjected to such treatment. Her mind rebeled at the words that he had thrown at her this night. So he believed his warped pastor. He believed that women were nothing but mindless softness. Her bridegroom was in for a shock when he learned that this woman was rock-hard!

She wondered if he would eventually untie her, or if he intended to keep her bound to the bed for the entire month. Was Fabron de Beaumont truly mad, or was he simply a crazed fanatic? Had he been like this with his other wives? No. It was not possible. She did not think that Edmond had lied to her, and he had always spoken of his uncle with genuine affection. No. The duc was obviously not a strong man, and had somehow come under the influence of this terrible creature, Pastor Lichault. Perhaps he felt guilt for the deaths of his two previous wives. Or perhaps he had secretly wanted to be a priest, as Edmond had suggested, and he could not because of his family obligations. The Huguenot had seen the duc's weaknesses and wielded his evil influence upon Fabron when he was bereft of all his family. But it could not, must not continue! Skye knew she could not stand many more beatings like the one the duc had administered to her this night.