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to grab her, but slipped and landed across the bed, with an empty hand. Leaning up, he watched as she tried, like a trapped, wild animal, to run with nowhere to go.
    Her bare feet skidded on the wooden planks of the floor and her momentum carried her as she stumbled across the chamber. Soren climbed over the bed and reached for her just as she got to her feet and dashed away. Like a madwoman, one too caught up in escaping to remember she could not see. Confused and probably still dazed from her injury, he watched as she pressed herself up against the wall, whispering and shaking her head.
    Soren spoke her name several times, but clearly she was incapable of hearing him. He approached her as he would a high-strung mare, trying to gentle her with a calm voice.
    â€˜Sybilla,’ he said, sliding off the bed and trying to get to her before she caused more damage to herself. ‘You must stop.’
    She stood motionless, but only for a deceiving second, and then she bolted as soon as he moved towards her. He almost got hold of her when she knocked over a small table that held a jug and cups. Soren managed to take hold of her shoulders and stop her from further injury, but she began to wail as soon as his hands touched her skin. It was a pitiful sound that he hated hearing, both for what it made him want to do and what it made himfeel. Sybilla would have backed away from him but for his hold on her and she surprised him again when she collapsed to the floor.
    Soren told himself that she simply sought to avoid the inevitable and that he had every right to claim her body this night, but something deep within him refused to let him take that step. Instead, he whispered her name and tried to calm the devastated woman he had forced into marriage. Somehow he guided her over to the bed and settled her under the bedcovers.
    He ran his hands through his hair as he gazed around the chamber and wondered how he had so mismanaged this situation that had seemed completely under his control just minutes before. His plan to bed her regardless of her feelings on the matter fell apart in the face of her pitiful condition. Some remnant of his old self ate at him as he witnessed the fall he’d planned for so long. But only for a scant moment as he realised he could not, would not, bed her this night.
    Acknowledging it, acknowledging that he could not take her against her will, no matter his will or his desire on the matter, seemed to let loose all the anger he’d held inside for so long.
    She’d won again.
    Her father had defeated him yet again.
    Soren felt the rage seething and turned away from the bed and her. He struck out in blind anger, at the only thing he could, grabbing a nearby wooden loom and throwing it frame first against the wall, then crashing it to the floor. He heard Sybilla scream out, but ignored it this time. He’d given up much this night and could give no more.
    Unfortunately, the loom had landed partially against the door, blocking the path of his retreat, his exit, so he had to call out for the guards. When they opened the door immediately, Soren knew they’d been right outside and not down the hall.
    â€˜Get this damned thing out of here!’
    Only as they began to collect the wooden beams did she react, sobbing and sliding from the bed where he’d placed her. He blocked the guards’ view of her and wrapped a blanket around her as she scrambled towards the remnants of the loom. He shook his head in confusion and disbelief.
    Was she mad as well as blind?
    As he watched, Sybilla tried to gather and touch the pieces of the frame in her arms, all the time rocking to and fro and sobbing. Stephen arrived at the doorway and frowned as he watched the strange scene before him.
    â€˜What happened, Soren?’
    Soren shrugged. At first he thought fear had taken hold of her. Fear of consummating their vows would be something he could understand since she was a maid and was his bitterest enemy. But