Authors: GnomeWonderland
Gayle mumbled "aye aye, sir" beneath a curse, the door shut, and she was alone with him.
Garrett leaned against the door, studying her. Those remarkable blue eyes stared back at him, her fear shimmering there in unshed tears. The silence stretched as he futilely tried to reconcile the beauty curled against the wall and the beast within. Each moment of the prolonged silence fueled her fear, the pace of her small, rapid breaths, until the fear seemed so real Garrett could taste it.
"Get down."
The soft-spoken command sounded like a shout, visibly jolting her. With a trembling hand she reached to her mouth as if to stop her cry. He just did not seem like a man to do another's bidding for coin. The very things terrifying her—his strength and command, the unmistakable aristocratic ring not just to his voice but in that of so many of his men too, and the intelligence shining in his eyes—all made it seem so unlikely he would abduct and torture young women for a pocket of monies. And the hate there? What lies had her uncle told him to create such hatred?
These thoughts struggled above her terror until he said with deadly calm, "I will not tell you again. Now get down."
She shut her eyes tight, fighting to comply as the image of her uncle's hand to her face swam dizzily to her mind.
Yet as she came off the bunk it seemed to her as if she moved in slow motion to her death, and she wondered wildly how the anticipation of being struck could be so much worse than the real thing. With eyes lowered, she stood perfectly still and crossed her arms tight across herself, mute and painfully aware of her helplessness.
"Come here."
Her eyes opened with brief shock and confusion, but lowered quickly again. She took two small steps forward and waited for the strike of his hand. She felt the sudden heat of his body and opened her eyes with a small startled gasp to see his dark shape towering above her. She instinctively started to fall back, but his hands coiled around her upper arms with a harsh but not painful hold as he brought her hard against his body. The shock of it went through her like a lightning bolt and she released her breath in a small surprised cry, certain he would start shaking her.
"Look at me."
She brought her eyes up. A strong hand reached to hold her face there, and he watched terror grow in the magnificent bright pools of her eyes as he leaned over and took her mouth. She froze with the unexpectedness of it, a kiss being absolutely the last thing she imagined him doing. Kisses were associated with love and Tomas, the scent of tall grass and the sound of rushing river water, with her happiness and joy. A mindless kind of confusion added to her terror and she thought she might swoon as she felt the firm warm pressure of his lips on her mouth. She knew she would swoon when he paused as if he too were confused, then gently bit her lower lip till she gasped.
He pulled back just slightly, staring down. "You kiss as though you've not a clue as to how it's done. I'm tired of this pretense of innocence. I want to meet the whore."
She heard only the last word, the name her uncle called her mother, and a small startled cry sounded as she tried to twist free. He used the moment to advantage, crushing her hard against him so that her head tilted up. Hard warm lips claimed her mouth again, and to her utter horror, she felt the intrusion of his tongue in her mouth. "Twas madness!
Never, no, never, had she imagined someone could or would put his tongue there. A silent scream rose in her throat to protest the obscenity as she now tried desperately to twist free, suddenly mindless with fright at this outrage.
It was then that she experienced the great iron wall of the power of his body for the first time. He could use none of his true strength, an ounce of it would kill her and he knew it. He exercised a shocking restraint, and still the kiss became savage, a thing he could neither tame nor control. She couldn't breathe as he crushed her against his body, stifling the struggle of her arms. She wondered wildly why she wasn't fainting as her mouth and mind, her every sense, reeled with the heady taste of his brandy, a lingering moist taste of the sea. Still there was no end to his kiss. Tension gripped her, and she remained stiff as a board until—
Until his tongue slid with tantalizing slowness over hers. A wild rush of chills exploded through her. In their wake she swooned, her body going limp in his arms. Feeling her surrender, he broke the kiss but kept his mouth dangerously close. "God, girl, I never imagined I was a man who could enjoy rape, but as you look like an angel, you taste like the heavens." His each warm, labored breath brushed her skin and she began shivering uncontrollably. "I am as disgusted as you are, but for your disgust I am only too glad. I had reason to fear you might enjoy it."
The shock of those words piled onto the shock of that kiss, and she opened her eyes to see his face filled with the emotion he proclaimed. She cried out as he lifted her effortlessly into his arms and carried her through the door. She buried her face in her hands, not understanding at all what was happening, what would happen.
She had but the fuzziest idea of rape. She had found many references to it in books, including the Bible, but never anything to say exactly what it was. She knew it was an act of violence done by a man to a woman, that it was when a man forced a woman to do whatever it was that came after kissing. Yet that, too, was a mystery to her. Her curiosity about it had pricked her mercilessly, and she had put the question first to Stella and then to Tomas. Stella, married with two young children, had been painfully embarrassed by the very mention of the subject. "Well, 'tis . . . you know, 'aven't ya ever seen the master's dogs or the pigs?" The idea had alarmed her. "You mean . . . why, you can't mean rutting?"
"Yes, like that. But 'tisn't good for a young lady to think about that till she has to—when she's married."
Tomas had been embarrassed, too, and had said the same: that she shouldn't think about it until they were married, at which time he vehemently promised her he would not demand his marital privileges very often. He and Stella made it sound so unpleasant, a horrible thing to be endured only in the hope of begetting children. All of that only confused her more. She had read too many poets who seemed, at least as far as she could tell, to exalt the act, elevating it to a religious experience of sorts. . . .
She tried to imagine him forcing her to rut with him, but no pictures formed in her mind. It seemed impossible, like purple oranges, and then terrible, like the four horsemen, a thing too awful to happen, like kissing with tongues. Her hand reached to her mouth and her heart pounded, infuriated by the very idea. . . .
Garrett brought her out onto deck. The sudden light, the fresh moist scent of the sea, made her open her eyes. Tall black masts jutted up to the sky. Her gaze darted to and fro, taking in the smooth clean boards of the ship's deck, the many men stopping to watch him pass. He carried her past the main house, housing the galley and the carpenter's room. Her small hand gripped the hard muscle of his arm, as if needing a lifeline. "We're on a ship at sea! Where are you taking me?" "To your father, before he dies." "My ... my father?" She stared at him, waiting for more words that would make it clear to her, but he watched his step as he climbed the stairs to the upper deck, moving quickly to the back, where more stairs led down to his quarters. He pushed open the door and stepped into the spacious room.
She saw not a single other thing in the room. Garrett still held her in his arms as she stared with shock at the bound, beaten, and bloodied man. Garrett's greatest moment of doubt came as he felt her tense even more, unconsciously pressing her small weight against him, as if the sight of the man could possibly be more terrifying than himself.
"Uncle!" came in a shocked gasp.
Garrett would have known the mistake had he seen Stod-dard's expression when he saw the girl, but Stoddard's wave of joyous relief passed in another sputtering gasp for breath. Stoddard knew he would not last an hour, and yet the inexpressible pleasure of seeing Garrett's gross error made the idea of death almost bearable.
Juliet's gaze flew to Garrett. "My uncle . . . what happened to ... him?"
"Your uncle?" he repeated, his voice dripping with sarcasm, stopping just short of laughing as he pulled her to her feet. After her maid identified her and she admitted to her name, knowing who he was and why he had come, after finding her wearing Edric's ring—as if she had wanted to shove it in his face—now she tried to make up a story, a witless, harebrained one at that. "Oh, now this is ripe. I suppose this means that you're not Clarissa Stoddard but her poor cousin?"
Yet Juliet was no longer listening as her gaze passed from Garrett to her uncle and back again as she desperately tried to make sense of her uncle sitting beaten, bloodied, and bruised in Garrett's ship. "I suppose this means you're not Clarissa Stoddard. . . ."
"Uncle, I ... I don't understand-"
"I don't think he believes you, Clarissa—" He stopped as a sudden sharp pain twisted his face and he managed, "God forbid, but if your mother could see what her betrayal reaped . . . Clarissa. . . ."
He seemed to pass out. Garrett went to the brandy set out on the table, poured a healthy shot, and came back and tossed it unceremoniously at his face. Stoddard lifted his head with a gasp but Garrett was not watching him. His gaze was on her and hers on his as she began to slowly back up. Her eyes were wide and enormous, she slowly shook her head. "There is a mistake here—"
"Indeed. The first mistake was in laying with Edric, my brother, then crying rape to your father when he caught you. Damning enough," he said easily, as she hit the wall and he stepped in front of her. The words brought vivid pictures to his mind, pictures filling his gaze with the hate and rage. "But, my lovely little whore," he spoke slowly now, "what you will pay for is listening in silence to my brother scream as your father had his men hold him down while he personally put the knife to his body."
Juliet took in each word as it was said and she knew. She saw the whole horrible thing. She shook her head, her breath coming in frantic gasps as her heart pounding madly. "Nooo ... I don't know how this has happened or what has happened, but, but I don't know your brother! Clarissa, you think I'm Clarissa? I'm not Clarissa!" She slipped from under him, dashing to where her uncle crouched bleeding and close to death. "Uncle! Uncle!" she dropped to her knees, "Dear God, tell him I'm not Clarissa-"
Stoddard stared in disbelief, sickened by her desperation to sacrifice Clarissa to save herself. Juliet watched the anger rise through his pain, twisting his bloodied face to damn her. "You goddamned whore!" he said with barely audible vehemence. "You're just like your mother! Just like that slutting, traitorous bitch ... oh God, Clarissa," he spat the name loud enough for Garrett to hear, "I only pray he does kill you—"
Garrett heard only the last as he came over, having watched the pitiful scene unmoved. At least Stoddard saw that his precious daughter's fate was worse than death, at least according to a man who put such a price on his daughter's lost virtue.
Shaking her head in denial Juliet stared with the shock of just how much her uncle did hate her. "The ring," she said in a frightened whisper. "Was that your brother's ring? Did Clarissa know? Did she give me that ring because she knew .. . you . . . ?"
Garrett had no mind to listen anymore. He bent over and in one easy movement his arm coiled around her midsec-tion and he lifted her up. The air squeezed from her lungs in a small pained cry and her small hands dug her nails hard into his forearms, like a death grip. Garrett reached behind to the knife clasped in his belt, then held it to her dress. Juliet took one look and screamed, a scream that did not stop even when it was joined by a weak cough from her uncle. The last thing she saw was the blood streaming from her uncle's mouth as his head dropped forward with death.
It was that one scream of abject helplessness and terror that would haunt Garrett the rest of his life. Yet as the sound reached his ears and the girl dropped in his arms, it became his brother's scream, and revenge felt like a gift from the heavens, extirpating his own helplessness at not being able to change the unchangeable. He lifted Juliet to his arms and brought her to his bed. He returned to the dead man, cut his bindings, and lifted him onto his back, heading for a rail where he'd watch the flesh sink to the sea. His only regret was that she was left, but as Gayle observed, she was not likely to last very long.
Tomas woke to the unpleasant taste of dirt in his mouth. A cough brought him to his knees, and as he spit, pain shot through his head, reverberating through his whole body, washing him in dizziness. Memories flooded into his mind. He looked up with horror. The sound of the rushing river nearby echoed eerily in the silence as he rose slowly to his feet.
"Juliet . . . Juliet," he whispered after a frightened pause. He spotted her cloak lying in the grass. He picked it up, grasping it with both hands and staring with pained disbelief. He took her! He took her!
"Juliet!" he screamed over and over, even as he started running, running as fast as he had ever run, but as he raced through the woods to the narrow road that would lead him to home, to help, to his father, the name Juliet turned to a desperate denial, the one long word "Nooo ... !"
Juliet woke with a start. She bolted upright in the bed, her body instantly mobilized to fight the angels of death. In the space of a breath her heartbeat rose to a frantic tempo but her breathing stopped to aid her heightened senses, as she listened, waiting for the attack. A canopy of dark blue velvet surrounded her. He had put her in a bed. Only silence greeted her ears, but the gentle motion beneath the bed said they were at sea.
Her uncle was dead. Dead ... A strange unreality colored the event. She felt nothing, no gladness or relief or anything, for no feelings could struggle above this fear of her own death. Death at the hands of this man called Garrett, a man who thought she committed the most vile crime, one that resulted in his brother's death. ". . . laying with Edric my brother, then claiming rape when your father caught you. Damning enough . . . but what you will pay for is listening in silence to his pleas as your father had his men hold him down, while he personally took a knife—" "No," came as a whispered denial as she struggled to believe Clarissa did that. Her mind flew over the events, stopping at every twist of the truth and each mistake with a question. Clarissa . . . Clarissa gave her that ring just as she sent Missy out to damn her. Clarissa had known Garrett was coming to kill her and she arranged for this . . . this nightmare of a death sentence!