Authors: Elizabeth Thornton
Think. She had to think how Mrs. Mornay would act if this had suddenly been sprung on her. Her legs would hardly hold her when she rose to her feet. “I think you have taken leave of your senses,” she cried, trying to sound outraged. “How many times must I tell you that I am not Deborah Weyman? Don’t think you will get away with this. If anything happens to me, Miss Hare will see you hang for it.”
He leaned back in his chair and eyed her dispassionately. When he spoke, his voice was slow and reasonable, as though he were talking to a witless child. “It could be weeks before Miss Hare comes to suspect anything and by that time, there will be no trace of Mr. Gray or Mrs. Mornay. As far as she knows—as anyone knows for that matter—you left Bath to take up another appointment. Months could pass before you are missed. Oh, I’m not saying that Miss Hare won’t suffer a few pangs of uneasiness when there is no word from you, but when she remembers that you are under the protection
of that ‘nice Mr. Gray’ ”—he smiled diabolically—“she won’t act with undue haste. It wouldn’t surprise me if six months, no, a year were to go by before any real push was made to find you, and by that time the trail will be stone cold.”
Mentally, Deborah was dredging up every vile name in her limited vocabulary that could describe this black-hearted scoundrel.
That nice Mr. Gray
—that’s what got her goat, and didn’t his snide smile show that he knew it? He’d seen through her disguise from the very beginning. He’d deliberately worked his charm on her, and like an idiot she had succumbed to it. He knew that too. He wasn’t “that nice Mr. Gray.” He was a thoroughgoing bastard. The word wasn’t fit for a lady’s lips, so she knew she had hit on the right word to describe him.
Bastard
, she repeated inside her head, wishing she had the courage to fling it in his face. Better still, she wished she had the courage to pick up her glass of wine and dump it on his head. It would almost be worth it just to ruin his insufferably flawless appearance. Wiser counsel prevailed. He would make her suffer for it. His kind always did.
When he rose, she squared her drooping shoulders. “At last,” he said in that lazy drawl which she was coming to detest, “you appear to understand the seriousness of your position. Think about it, Deborah. I have you in my power. There is no one here to save you. No, we won’t discuss this further tonight. In another minute or two, you will be willing to confess you are the queen of England just to please me. Now there’s a thought—you, wishing to please me.”
His little joke fell on deaf ears. “Where are you taking me?” She sensed a new peril, and every muscle tensed.
“To bed,” he answered succinctly, and reached for the lantern.
Fear and rage unfurled inside her. That’s why he had sent Nick and Hart away. He was going to put her to the test, just as he said he would, to prove that she could not possibly be a married woman. Then, when he had his answer, he would question her in earnest. Every
nerve straining, she reached for her half-empty glass of wine.
“What the—” Gray straightened.
“Monster!” she shrieked, and flung the glass at him. She had a gratifying glimpse of red droplets of wine spilling over his immaculate shirtfront, then she bolted for the door.
He caught her in the hallway. She was lifted off her feet and hoisted over his shoulder like a sack of coal. Bucking, beating at him with her fists, she tried desperately to free herself. Her struggles were rewarded by several ferocious swats to her backside. A couple of those swats landed on her sore hip, and pain exploded through her in waves. She hadn’t the strength to fight him. Blackness hovered at the edge of her consciousness. When he returned to the kitchen and picked up the lantern, she was hardly aware of it.
The chamber was at the top of a steep flight of stairs. There was one window, boarded up like those on the ground floor, and a couple of straw pallets on the bare floorboards. In one corner, nestled under the eaves, was a washstand with a pitcher and basin and an assortment of towels. The fire was unlit.
Setting the lantern on the floor, he dumped her none too gently on one of the straw pallets, then stood over her, feet splayed, hands on hips.
“You little fool,” he bit out. “Don’t you know when you are beaten? Are you determined to make me hurt you?”
She stared at him with huge, frightened eyes.
His brows slashed together, then, as comprehension dawned, he threw back his head and laughed. Shaking his head, he said, “You can’t believe I meant to ravish you?”
Pride dictated only one answer. “It never even entered my head.”
His look was skeptical. “In the first place, you look like a scarecrow.”
“Thank you,” she snapped.
“And you smell … rank. My dear Miss Weyman, I assure you my tastes run to something quite different.”
She was relieved to hear it, naturally, but no woman liked to hear herself described in such unflattering terms. With a little sniff, she cast a disdainful eye around the room. “Am I to understand,” she said scathingly, “that you expect me to sleep in this vermin-infested hovel?”
He grinned. “Fear not. I shall be close by to protect you from … um … spiders and mice or what-have-you,” and he indicated the other straw pallet.
The eyes that met his were fiery with temper. “You mean … we are to share this room?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. In short, Deborah, I fear you are not to be trusted. Either I or one of the others will keep you in sight at all times. Now, are we going to have another fight about it, or are you going to give in gracefully?”
She folded her lips together.
He waved a hand airily in the direction of the wash-stand. “Ladies first,” he said.
For a moment, she hesitated. Deciding that argument was useless, she hauled herself to her knees, then to her feet. Her hip was so painful that she was sure each halting step would be her last. Pride kept her back straight and her feet moving. To betray weakness to this man could prove fatal.
The water in the pitcher was ice-cold. What she really wanted was a hot bath; what she allowed herself, under his prying eyes, was a quick splash with cold water on her face and hands. There was a piece of broken comb by the basin, but it was so filthy she wasn’t even tempted to use it. Having completed her ablutions, she returned to her pallet.
“Remove your clothes,” he said. “Please, no more fuss, Deborah, just do as I say. Oh, you may leave on your shift.”
She could tell by his voice that he was enjoying himself enormously. She turned her back on him so that he could not witness her shame. Tears pricked her eyes. This was the man who had pretended to be so nice in his notions that he was reluctant to travel in the coach with her. One day, God willing, she would see him dangle at the end of a rope.
“Be quick about it,” he said, “or I shall strip you myself.”
She dragged her gown over her head and then began on the tapes that held her petticoats in place. When she was down to her chemise and drawers, she halted. This had gone far enough.
“The drawers, Deborah,” he said, “or I swear I shall take them off you.”
He would do it too. The remnants of her resistance ebbed away. She was so weary that every movement felt weighted. Again, the blackness hovered and she blinked it away. Wordlessly, she undid the tapes of her drawers and removed them. She felt like a whipped cur when she stretched out on the pallet. Even the sight of his far from immaculate shirt had not the power to cheer her. She made to lie on her side, away from him, but her hip was so painful, she gave up the attempt. Stretched out on her back, she gazed unseeingly at the blackened ceiling.
A quilt was thrown over her. She heard his movements as he padded around the room, but they hardly penetrated. Every cell in her body demanded a respite. Before long, her lashes fluttered, and she succumbed to the blackness.
Using a taper to get a flame from the lantern, Gray lit the kindling that had been set in the grate. When he heard snuffling noises coming from Deborah’s pallet, he left the fireplace and moved quietly to her side. Sinking on one knee, he let his eyes roam over her. Her abundant auburn hair curled around her pale face in a mass of tangles. Small freckles dusted her nose and cheekbones; violet smudges made hollows of her eyes. With one finger, he caught a tear that hovered on the tip of one butchered eyelash. Her brows were drawn together in a frown. He had known that when he unmasked her, she would turn out to be a pretty girl, but this transformation was more than he had bargained for.
Without thinking, he touched his tear-dewed finger to his lips, and the taste of her spread over his tongue, tantalizing him, filling him with a hunger to take more. Ruthlessly quelling his errant thoughts, he waited a moment
till the impulse had passed, then he deliberately pulled back the feather quilt which covered her.
He did not expect her to waken, nor did she. The few drops of laudanum with which he had dosed her bowl of stew had finally taken effect. With an expert eye, he examined first one wrist, then the other. The marks from the bonds were raw, but not so severe that he felt they required doctoring. He was not so sure about the knocks she had taken in her fall from Jupiter. It had seemed to him that in the last little while she had been favoring her right foot, and when he had swatted her, he was sure he had felt her wince. She wouldn’t confide in him, of course. He was the monster who had abducted her. His hands were not quite steady when he raised her shift.
Her body was perfectly made, lush and lean in all the right places. Scowling now, he concentrated on her injuries. When he gently touched the bruise on her left hip, she whimpered and flinched away. He got the same reaction when he touched her left shoulder. She made no sound when he examined her ribs. Satisfied that she was not hurt in any real sense, he covered her with the quilt, returned to the fire, and added a log to the blaze.
Staring at the flames as they licked around the log, he went over in his mind the merits of the strategy he had decided to employ. He had to make her fear and hate him. He glanced at the sleeping girl. He had not expected such a hard core of resistance in her. Most women of her station would have been reduced to a quivering mass of jelly by this time. He admired her pluck, but at the same time, he regretted that she was making things so hard for herself. She wouldn’t admit when she was beaten. More than ever it made him wonder about her. Nothing was known of her before she had taken up a position as Quentin’s governess, except that she had come to him from Miss Hare’s school. Campbell, Lord Lawford’s agent, had tried to dig deeper, but no one knew anything about her. Miss Hare was the key, of course, but Miss Hare kept a close guard on her tongue. Who was Deborah Weyman, and what was she hiding? Miss Hare, whom he liked and respected,
had nothing but good to say of her. As for Gil, she must have made quite an impression on him before he named her as one of his son’s guardians.
The thought turned in his mind as he added another log to the blaze in the grate. Gil had mentioned Quentin’s governess in passing, but he had paid scant attention at the time. The thing he remembered was Gil’s very evident relief that his son was happy and gradually getting over the loss of his mother. Quentin was happy, Miss Weyman was a treasure, and Gil felt free to devote himself to his work at the Foreign Office.
He was wishing now that he
had
visited Gil’s house in Saint-Germain, if only to meet Deborah. He’d made a point of avoiding it. Sophie Barrington was the reason. She was a born coquette, and it had made things awkward between him and Gil. He’d had the impression that Gil was not happy in his marriage. Not that Gil had said anything to him. He was still the same old charming Gil, but though he could talk and laugh with gaiety, sometimes his cheerfulness seemed forced and not as natural as it used to be.
He shook his head, smiling, remembering that it was Gil’s charm that had got them out of many a scrape when they were schoolboys at Eton. The masters always believed that it was he, Gray, who was leading Gil astray, and because they were loath to punish the one they believed was innocent, Gray got off scot-free too. The truth was Gil could talk his way out of anything. He’d been well suited to a career in diplomacy.
For a long time, he stood at the fireplace, one hand resting on the mantelpiece, his thoughts roaming far and wide. The smile on his face gradually faded, and his expression became hard and inflexible. He was reminding himself that Gil had been murdered, and Deborah Weyman might well turn out to be the one who had committed the crime. If she were not the murderer, she could be an accessory. At the very least, she had abducted Quentin, and that in itself was a capital crime. He shouldn’t be softening toward her. He should be trying
to break her. He must do whatever was necessary to find Quentin.
He had to make her fear and hate him
, and her obvious distrust of his “unbridled passions” had put the germ of an idea in his head. With that sober thought, he began to undress himself.
It was a shocking, lurid dream, such as she had never experienced before. In some dark corner of her mind, it registered that when she chose to, she could awaken, and the dream would recede. But not yet. She was too drowsy, too languid, and far too curious about the unfamiliar though pleasurable sensations that held her in thrall. It had never occurred to her that she would like the feel of a man’s hairy leg rubbing against her bare skin, that she would like the feel of his hands as they gently kneaded the soft cheeks of her bottom. She knew that she should put a stop to it, but it was, after all, only a dream, and she couldn’t be held responsible for her dreams.
Even in sleep, it troubled her that she could be susceptible to a man she both loathed and feared. If she was going to have romantic fantasies about anyone, she would have expected them to be about a man she liked, someone like Nick, or even Mr. Gray. That was the thing about dreams—they turned harmless people into ogres and ogres into lovers, and there was no accounting for it.
The hands on her bottom clenched and unclenched and she moaned as tiny shivers swept over her. All her senses were focused on what he was doing to her. Her
breathing was uneven, her body throbbed, and her loins ached in anticipation of she knew not what.