After breakfast, Carrick ordered a bath for me, and I gratefully soaked my aching body in the waters fragrant with healing oils and salts. Feeling much refreshed, I spent the morning with my mother and Felicity walking about the grounds, feeling some optimism about my life for the first time in more than a year.

"Your lord husband is much infatuated with you, Cali," my mother said, bouncing Felicity lightly in her arms. "Quite a different man than the one who visited us after you fled from him."

Feeling the blush overtake my cheeks, I nodded thoughtfully. "Perhaps he is."

My mother stopped and turned to me. "Your father and I were most distraught when he told us of the camaspoza tradition. I wish you to know that had we known such a tradition existed, we would have spoken to him about it before he married you. We could not go against our kings' wishes, daughter, in making a marital alliance between the kingdoms, but we would have tried to talk to Lord Carrington about it, to sway him from such a deplorable way of life."

"How were we to know, Mother? It is not as if such things are openly discussed. I assumed he shared our way of married life, and he assumed I shared his way. It was a true tragedy of mistaken assumptions since neither of us knew that not everyone shared our way of life."

My mother cocked her head at me, blinking at me like a curious cat. "And how goes it between you two, now, Calissande? I assume from the way you were walking this morning that it goes well?"

"Mother!" I was shocked, not that she would bring up such an intimate, delicate topic, but that she had seen through my ruse.

"I have also used the twisted ankle excuse, so you need not act as if it were brand new," my mother sniffed at me.

Choosing to ignore that line of thought, I turned the conversation to something that I had been wondering about ever since Carrick had told me that he had gone to visit my parents while I had been busily avoiding him on my journeys.

"Tell me about his visit to you and father."

We resumed walking, Felicity's head dropping sleepily onto my mother's chest, as my mother related the visit to me.

"He was a much different warrior than the one we had known in the month prior to your wedding. Though he was still a bold man, he was...hurting, Calissande, if I had to find a word to describe him. The warrior was a man whose entire approach to married life had been overturned by a mere slip of a girl. He was questioning everything he had always taken for granted. Your husband spoke to both your father and me together and explained his country's tradition and neither your father nor I could hide our abhorrence for such a thing. He held nothing back from us and seemed at quite a loss for what he could do to find you and convince you to come back home. He was also very clear that he would no longer have a camaspoza and had sent her back to the training center."

My mother gave a slight shudder, and I could understand her reaction. I had known about it much longer and still shuddered when I thought about the tradition.

"Your father was most angry and had several choice sentiments to share with Lord Carrington. I know for several days, they were on the training field together and your father said that Lord Carrington was allowing his guilt to prevent his sword arm from working as well as it could when your father sparred with him on the field."

A smile touched my lips. "Father tried to beat him into the dirt."

"Lord Carrington allowed it as his punishment for having offended you and hurting you so badly. Your father is a notable warrior still, Calissande, but we both know he is no match for your warrior. Any hurt your father inflicted was by Lord Carrington's unspoken permission."

"I cannot imagine him allowing that," I mused.

"Regardless, he allowed it," my mother assured me. "And may I say, your father took advantage and enjoyed every moment of it."

We laughed, and I noticed the warriors leaving the training field and Carrick heading toward the stables.

"Mother, I would go speak with Carrick. Would you please take Felicity and put her down for her morning nap? Jannip will be in the room with her."

My mother assured me she would do so, and I hurried toward the stables, hoping to catch my husband there.

I found him talking to the stablemaster, my eyes drinking him in as he spoke to the smaller man. He was fresh off the training field, so he was shirtless, wearing nothing but his breeches that hugged his muscular legs. His chest and arms were glistening with sweat and appeared more massive than ever after his hours of training and fighting.

"Lord Carrington, a word, please, if I may?" I asked very prettily from behind him. He immediately turned to me and walked until he was right in front of me. I motioned for him to bend down so I could whisper in his ear.

"Do you remember me telling you that I would find some lusty, strapping man to take me into a barn, bend me over some hay bales and give me all of these things that you refused to give to me?"

He stood to his full height and glared down at me.

"I do, my lady wife. It is not something I shall ever forget."

I gave him a coy smile, then motioned him once again to bend his ear to me.

"Well, standing right in front of me is a lusty, strapping man," I breathed into his ear, my fingertips gliding over his rock-hard chest muscles. "And just behind me are some hay bales, and since I have long been wondering how a riding crop feels --"

"Leave us," Carrick snapped out the command, and the stablemaster and the stable boys all scurried out, shutting the stable doors behind them.

When we were alone, he took one of the riding crops hanging on the wall, grabbed my hair into a bundle with his fist and walked me toward a hay bale.

"I feel you should get used to what I am about to say to you, Calissande," he said as he released my hair. "Bend over, and lift your skirts."

I immediately did as he asked, and he ran his calloused fingers between my legs. "I see there is no need for me to draw down your wetness, my lady, as you are already soaking wet for your lord."

His fingers worked me mercilessly, until I was panting and squirming in my need, then he suddenly withdrew those marvelous fingers.

"No," I pleaded, so close to my release I wanted to beg him to finish.

But then he brought the riding crop down on my bottom, and I jumped all three times that he smacked me with it.

"Such a good little lady wife," he praised me roughly, and then his fingers were playing in me again, and my pleasure increased until my release was almost within reach.

"I can feel your cunt tightening around my fingers," he told me, then removed his fingers from me again and brought the crop down twice.

Over and over he repeated this, never allowing me my release; he would use the crop on me two or three times, then reward me with his fingers, working me back up until I was begging and pleading with him, almost sobbing in my desperation to finish.

"Tell me, Calissande," he ordered me sternly. "Tell me exactly what you want. Use the words I gave you last night to describe what you need right now, for I vow I am ready to give it to you the moment the words leave that pretty little mouth of yours."

"I need...I need your cock, my lord. Please!"

"Where do you want it?" he rasped, and I could feel him rubbing his hard cock in my wetness.

"In my...cunt," I managed to gasp. "I need your cock in my cunt."

And without another word, he plunged his thickness into me, filling me so quickly I could not catch my breath, and then he grabbed my hips and pounded into me without mercy until we both chased our release and found it.

I felt his ragged breathing near my ear as he held himself over me, and we both fought to slow our breathing again. After a few moments, he lifted himself off me.

"Now, my lady wife, you shall learn how to put that pretty mouth to good use. Get on your knees before your warrior."

Pushing off the hay bale, I hurried to do as he asked, having been long curious about this.

He traced the riding crop along the edge of my jaw. My eyes fluttered shut and I shivered at the feather-light sensation.

"Watch your warrior," he ordered me and my eyes opened, looking up into his.

"You are so very good, my love," he praised me, and then he proceeded to teach me more.

A few nights after our encounter in the stables, something woke me up, but I knew not what until I realized Carrick was no longer in bed with me.

I looked around the room and saw him standing by the window, the moonlight streaming in, casting a slight glow on his strong features.

Getting out of the bed, I quietly padded over to him on my bare feet. His hands clasped my arms, and he rubbed them gently. "I did not mean to wake you," he said to me quietly.

"Is there something amiss?"

Carrick looked out the window into the night, then back at me, his face serious and unhappy. "I have been thinking, Calissande, and my thoughts are keeping me from sleep for I am faced with a problem I do not know how to remedy."

"Tell me, warrior."

His giant hand cupped my face, his thumb rubbing lightly over my cheek.

"I am thinking of how much I hurt you, my lady wife. I told you once that I had done nothing wrong, that I had just acted according to tradition, and I wished you to get over it. But I was wrong, Calissande. I did do something wrong, regardless of it being a tradition. I hurt you. I robbed us of something beautiful that we have shared these past few days and nights. I have never experienced the like, Calissande; it is beyond anything I have ever imagined, being with you in every way."

He leaned down and pressed a kiss to my lips. "I am sorry for hurting you the way I did. You are my very heart, Calissande, and I hope you know I would never hurt you again."

The warrior looked at me for a moment, his eyes soft and tender, a glimpse of his gentle side that is mine alone, I realized.

"But making amends for what I have done, my lady wife? That is an entirely different matter, and one not so easy to accomplish as an apology, for it is impossible to take away that which I have done, no matter how much I wish to do so. I do not often suffer from bad feelings in my heart, but I wish you to know this ache will live with me always for having hurt you, for not having been the lord husband I should have been, for giving what should have been yours alone to another. And if I do not like this feeling inside of me, how much greater is the feeling that lives inside of you, of the hurt that I inflicted on you? And try as I might, I could think of only one way to make right what I have done."

He took both of my hands in his, and pressed a kiss to the back of each one.

"You once asked me to allow you to reside at a different estate of mine, separate from me. So I will offer that to you now, Calissande, though it grieves me to do so. If you wish, I will let you go where you will, and I will keep myself from you because I have found that your happiness is above my own. You have only to let me know." "

My heart thudded in my chest. Was he asking me to decide right now what I wanted? In effect, he was asking me to decide if I had forgiven him...or not.

"What exactly are you asking me?"

He looked into my eyes. "Would you still prefer a life away from me?"