Nothing was said during the next grim minutes. Her fear and revulsion were so strong, her body was closed tight against him despite Mathilde's lubricating ointment. But her resistance seemed to please Michael. She heard him laugh in the darkness as he forced himself into her, driving into her unwilling body with a ferocity that made her scream. He seemed to batter against the very edge of her womb, plunging, surging, an alien force that violated her to her soul. She felt his seed rush into her, heard his grunting satisfaction, then he pulled out of her, falling heavily to one side.

She was shaking uncontrollably with the physical shock. Her nightgown was pushed up to her belly, and with a little sob she pushed it down to cover herself. The sticky seepage between her legs disgusted her, but she was too terrified of disturbing him to move. She lay trying to stop the shaking, to breathe properly again, to swallow the sobs that gathered in her throat.

The ghastly assault was repeated several times during that interminable night. At first she fought desperately, pushing him, twisting her body, trying to keep her thighs closed. But her struggles seemed only to excite him further. He smothered her cries with his hand, flattened hard across her mouth, and he used his body like a battering ram as he held her wrists above her head in an iron grasp. Blindly, she tried to bite the palm of his hand, and with a savage execration he forced her body over until her face was buried in the pillows and he had both hands free to prise apart her legs while he plunged within her again.

The next time, she had learned the lesson and she lay still, rigid beneath him, not moving until it was over. Again, apart from his short brutal exclamations, he said nothing to her. He breathed heavily, snored during the times he slept, moved over her when he was ready again. Cordelia lay awake, trembling, nauseated, but filled now with a deep raging disgust both for the man who could treat her with such contempt and for her own weakness that forced her submission.

The memory of those moments of glory with Leo at Melk belonged to another life, another person. And she would never know what sensual wonders lay beyond that explosion of pleasure, never know what it was to share her body in love with another.

When dawn broke, Cordelia knew that somehow she must escape this marriage. Even if she couldn't cease to be Michael's wife in name, she must somehow keep her own sense of who and what she was, separate from the violation of her body. She must take her self out of the equation. She must rise above her husband's contemptuous and contemptible acts of possession and maintain her own integrity. Only thus could she keep the self-respect that was so much more important than the mere brutalizing of her flesh.

Michael was now sleeping heavily. Gingerly, Cordelia slid from the bed, pulling back the curtains to let in the gray light of morning. Blood stained the sheet, stained her nightgown, smeared her thighs. Her body felt torn and broken; she moved stiffly like an old woman across to the washstand.

"Cordelia? What are you doing? Where are you?" Michael sat up, blinking blearily. He pushed aside the bed-curtains, opening them fully, then bent his eye on the bed-linen. That same complacent triumph quirked his lip. He looked at Cordelia, standing with the washcloth in her hand. He saw the blood on her nightgown. He saw the trepidation in her eyes as she waited to see if he would rape her again.

"I daresay you need your maid," he said, getting out of bed, stretching luxuriantly. The chamber robe he still wore was untied and fell open as he raised his arms. Hastily, Cordelia averted her eyes.

Michael laughed, well pleased after his wedding night. He reached over and chucked her beneath the chin. She shrank away from him and he laughed again with overt satisfaction. "You will learn not to fight me, Cordelia. And you will learn how to please me soon enough."

"Did I not please you last night, my lord?" Despite her exhaustion there was a snap to her voice, but Michael was so full of his own gratification he heard only what he wanted to hear.

"As much as a virgin can please a man," he said airily, retying his girdle. "I'll not require you to take the initiative in these matters, but you must learn to open yourself more readily. Then you will please me perfectly." He strode to the door, a spring in his step. "Ring for your maid. You need attention." He sounded mightily pleased with himself at this evidence of his potency.

Cordelia stared at the closed door, fighting for composure. Then she dragged off her soiled nightgown and began to scrub herself clean, to scrub as if she would remove the layer of skin that he'd sullied.

Mathilde had kept her vigil all night, and as soon as the prince appeared in the corridor, she stepped forward. "I'll go to my mistress now, my lord?"

"Good God, woman! Where did you spring from? I just told the princess to ring for you."

"I have been up and waiting this past hour, my lord."

"Mmm. So you're a faithful attendant at least. Yes, go to her. She needs attention." He waved her toward the door with another smug smile. His bride had found him a most devoted husband, and he couldn't remember when last he'd been so aroused, so filled with potent energy. Certainly not since he'd begun to suspect Elvira's unfaithfulness.

But that was past history. He had a new bride and a new lease on life. Cordelia would not disappoint him, he would make certain of it.

Mathilde bustled into the dimly lit chamber. "His lordship looked right pleased with himself."

"He is loathsome," Cordelia said in a fierce undertone. "I cannot bear that he should touch me ever again."

Mathilde came over to her. Her shrewd eyes took in the wan face, the lingering shock in the blue-gray eyes. "Now, that's a foolish thing to say. For better or worse, he's your husband and he has his rights. You'll learn to deal with it like millions of women before you and millions to come."

"But how?" Cordelia brushed her tangled hair from her eyes. "How does one learn to deal with it?"

Mathilde saw the bruise on her nursling's wrist and her expression suddenly changed. "Let me look at you."

"I'm all right," Cordelia said, "I just feel dirty. I need a bath."

"I'll have one sent up when I've had a look at you," Mathilde said grimly. Cordelia submitted to a minute examination that had Mathilde looking grimmer and grimmer as she uncovered every bruise, every scratch.

"So, he's a brute into the bargain," Mathilde muttered finally, pulling the bell rope beside the door. "I knew there was something dark in him."

"I got hurt because I tried to fight him," Cordelia explained wearily.

"Aye, only what I'd expect from you. But there's other ways," Mathilde added almost to herself. She turned to give orders to the maid who answered the bell. "Fetch up a bath for your mistress… And bring breakfast," she added as the maid curtsied and left.

"I couldn't eat. The thought of food makes me feel sick."

"Nonsense. You need all the strength you can get. It's not like you to wallow in self-pity." Mathilde was not prepared to indulge weakness, however unusual and well justified.

Cordelia would need all her strength of character to survive untouched by her husband's treatment. "You'll have a bath and eat a good breakfast and then you'd best set about making your mark on the household. There's a majordomo, one Monsieur Brion, who's a force to be reckoned with, I gather. And then a governess.

"What about the governess?" Cordelia, as always, responded to Mathilde's bracing tones. She wasn't such a milksop as to be crushed after one wedding night. There was much more to this new life than the miseries of conjugal sex. Time enough to fret about it again tonight, when presumably it would be repeated. She shuddered and pushed the thought from her. She must not allow fear of the nights to haunt her days.

Mathilde turned from the armoire where she was selecting a gown. "Dusty spinster, I understand from the housekeeper. Keeps to herself mostly, thinks she's too good for the servant's hall. Some distant relative of the prince's."

"And the children?" Cordelia's legs seemed to be lacking in strength. She sat on the edge of the bed.

"No one sees much of them. Governess pretty much has sole charge." Mathilde came over to the bed with a chamber robe.

Cordelia slipped her arms into the clean robe. "Do they say whether the prince has much to do with his daughters?"

Mathilde bent to gather up the bloodstained nightgown. "Hardly sees them. But it's his voice that rules in the nursery even so. That governess, Madame de Nevry she's called, is scared rigid of him. Or so the housekeeper says." She glanced sharply at Cordelia. "There's a bad feeling in this house. They all fear the prince."

"With reason, I imagine," Cordelia said. She frowned. "I wonder why the viscount didn't say anything when I asked him about my husband. I gave him every opportunity to tell me the worst."

"Maybe he doesn't know. A man can have one face for the outside world and another for the inside. And you've got to live in a house to know its spirit."

"But what of Leo's sister-Elvira? She lived here, she must have known these things. Didn't she tell him?"

"How are we to know that?" Mathilde shook her head in brisk dismissal of the topic. "We manage our own affairs, dearie."

Cordelia had always had utter faith in Mathilde's ability to manage affairs of any kind. She didn't always know how she did it, but she hadn't yet come across a situation that stumped her old nurse. The thought gave her renewed strength and courage. "I shall go and visit the nursery as soon as I'm dressed." Forgetting her earlier queasiness, she broke into a steaming brioche from the tray the maidservant had placed on the table. In the small bathroom adjoining her chamber, footmen filled the copper tub with jugs of water brought upstairs by laboring boot boys.