Bonds of Blood [Lords of the Expanse] (Siren Publishing Classic) Read Free Page B

putting everyone at ease, a skill she’d learned long ago and worked on everyone but her father. “It is an honor and a privilege to be promised to someone whom my father holds in such high regards.”
    Lifting a brow at her words, Andries looked toward the chancellors for an explanation and got blank stares that told him they had no idea. “I have never met your father, my lady, so I am not sure how the man could hold me in any sort of regard, let alone high,” he told her.
    Fernando was pushed forth once more and he winced, having to put himself in the Colonel’s sights yet again. “Pardon, my lord, if I may?” he said in a respectful tone. At his nod Fernando looked to the lady. “I am not sure what you have been told of this union, but my lord Mauricio has placed a stipulation upon it. We require to know if you come into this union of your own free will without any coercion of any kind. If there is any coercion, we will have to nullify the possibility of the union, but if there is none, we can proceed at your ladyship’s leisure.”
    She looked from the Chancellor to the lord and back again. Her mind simply wasn’t working right. He had said he didn’t know her father. However, her father had said he knew the lord. She didn’t doubt for a moment her father could and would lie, but the why was the question.
    Did she have coercion to join with the lord before her? Yes. Could she voice it? No. To voice such would enrage her father and, potentially, have him go off on another of his murderous rampages, the innocents of her world his targets. “And what of you, my lord?” she whispered softly, looking to the large man standing before the banks of windows. “Would you wish to marry a woman you don’t even know? A woman who isn’t one of your people?” She shouldn’t ask these things. It wasn’t her place, and she knew as soon as her father found out…well that was for later. “I stand here now alone, my lord. There are no guns to my head.” Just her heart and her people’s heads. “So I believe the question is back to you. Do you have someone coercing you into this marriage?”
    Oh, now there was a bunch of loaded questions. Eyeing her, Andries knew he’d have to watch his tongue around her. Anything he said could and likely would come back upon him. Noting how the chancellors all suddenly had other things to look at, he let them suffer for a moment longer before he shook his head. “There is no one that could or would dare”—slight lie—“coerce me into anything, my lady. As to marrying you or one of my people as you called it, there really is no one that has ever caught my eye or my interest. While I know naught of you, I see no reason not to proceed if you are still of the mind to do so.” And that was probably the most he’d ever said in the whole of his life at one time.
    The sound of his voice wrapped around her, made her feel strange, and she heard herself asking, “Can you tell me of yourself, my lord? Tell me of the place we will call home?” She suddenly found it imperative to know if that would always be the way his voice affected her. “Will we live together, or separate? Will you send me home?” Her voice quivered in fear at the thoughts of being wed and then sent back home. The only reason she hadn’t been sexually used for her father’s joys was because she was a virgin, and he had known that was a commodity that was easily bartered with. However, if she made it home after being wed and no longer had that small defense, she would be one of the whores used for whatever her father wished.
    Tipping his head at her question, no, not so much the question, it was the tone that caught him, Andries looked pointedly to Fernando, who quickly took off for the sidelines once more. Shifting, he indicated the windows and began walking toward them, glad that she followed without him having to say anything. Once there was enough space that the chancellors couldn’t hear them easily he