Kate and Julia: Abducted in India (3 page)

James Macdonald had been a civil servant who, like many another, had dabbled in a little private enterprise on the side. He had begun importing treadle-powered sewing machines, had made such a fortune at it that he had resigned his post, and was now the representative for a multitude of companies eager to sell their goods in the sub-continent. For years rumour had had it that he dealt in items of more questionable legality than the refrigerators and gramophones that filled his warehouses, but they
were
only rumours and Penny had never heard that he included slaving amongst his activities. Nevertheless, his customers included the chieftains and princelings of the semi-independent states along the frontier, frequent buyers of the flesh the slavers peddled. Part of the reason for Macdonald’s success was that he kept himself well informed.

Penny accepted the cup of coffee he offered her and drew out a chair from the table, angling it to ensure he had a good view of her shapely calves before she sat down. She fitted a cigarette into her holder and lit it.

Leaning back in his chair, Macdonald looked a little red-faced and seemed to be breathing rather quickly. Penny looked down to ensure she was not revealing more than she had intended, and then at the whisky bottle that stood beside the empty bowl on the tablecloth before him. She had heard he was given to adding a dash of whisky to his breakfast porridge each morning, but surely he was not drunk so early in the day.

“Are you all right?” she enquired, sincerely hoping he had not become a drinker since they had last met. If so he would likely be of little help.

Macdonald grinned. “Oh, much more than all right, Penelope, to be sure. What’s it been? Five years since I saw you last?”

“Not
quite
that long,” Penny said.

“I was sorry to hear about Tom,” Macdonald continued.

“Unfortunate business that. I hear he left you without a feather to fly with. Damned nuisance, I’ll bet.”

“Quite,” Penny agreed quickly, embarrassed and anxious to turn the conversation to her business. She raised a surprised eyebrow when the man gave a low grunt for no apparent reason.

He grinned again. “Well, you’ve only been in Peshawar since yesterday,” he said, revealing he was still well informed about what went on. “I doubt I was top of your list for social calls, so what is it you want from me, Penelope?”

Penny gave a quick, succinct account of what she had discovered that morning and the conclusions she had drawn, and looked at Macdonald hopefully.

“You haven’t reported it to the authorities?” he asked, and gave another strange grunt followed by a soft gasp.

“You know how they react if a white woman disappears,” Penny said. “There’ll be a wholesale crackdown that will only drive the kidnappers deeper into hiding, and their victims along with them.”

Macdonald nodded. “You can rule out anyone at the hotel being involved. The only illegal activity they get up to is watering their gin. I would expect your girls were taken out of the city the moment they were seized.”

“I’m aware of that,” Penny said, failing to hide her impatience.

“What I need to know is
where
they were taken.”

“And you think I can tell you?” Macdonald chuckled and gave another grunt as he did an odd shuffle on his seat.

Penny again raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow, momentarily distracted from her purpose by his unusual behaviour.

“You know everything that goes on for miles around, James,” she said, forcing a smile to her lips. “I’m sure that includes where the upcoming slave auction is going to be held this year.”

The smile Macdonald returned was neither relaxed nor friendly.

“Indeed I do, Penelope. I also have a pretty good idea who those two military types in the hotel bar might be.”

Quickly stubbing out her cigarette, she leaned towards him. “Then please be kind enough to tell me, James.”

His eyes flickered to the generous amount of cleavage her posture was revealing, and he laughed. “Are we suddenly such good friends that we should be swapping secrets? As I recall, I was never much more than an acquaintance the last time you were here. And you certainly didn’t go out of your way to seek my company at the social events we both attended. In fact, I seem to recall the one time I propositioned you, you laughed in my face. You may have been too drunk to remember it.”

“But… but I haven’t got any money.” Penny was embarrassed again, more because of her penury than by the fact he was right that she did not remember.

“I didn’t say I wanted any.”

Penny finally recognised the gleam that had been in Macdonald’s eye since she had entered the room for what it was. A little shiver ran through her as his gaze roved over the twin swells of her breasts. She drew back and drained her coffee cup to hide the sudden increase in her nervousness.

“Well?” Macdonald said.

“Well what?” She avoided meeting his eye.

“How badly do you want the information, Penelope?”

Penny swallowed. “I… I….” She wanted it very badly. She
had
to have it. She looked up and felt the colour rush to her cheeks. “What do you want?” The words did not come out as the challenge she had intended but as a hoarse croak.

“Oh, I want it all, Penelope! Everything you flaunted under my nose and the rest of the garrison’s for all the years you spent here.” He grinned at the sudden widening of her blue eyes. “You enjoyed being a flirt, didn’t you? You loved all the teasing and outrageous behaviour; always dancing too close to whoever your partner was, always making sure your gown was cut a little lower and more revealing than the others.

The women all hated you for it, you know? The men did too, eventually.

There’s nothing more annoying than a little tease who never delivers.”

“I… I was very young then,” Penny said, cringing inwardly at his reminder of her vulgar behaviour. “I’m not the same person now. I…

I’ve grown up a lot since.”

“So you have,” Macdonald agreed, leering at the rapid rise and fall of her breasts. “But you’re still a damned handsome woman, Penelope, and I’d like to see a bit more of you.” His grin broadened. “In fact, a great deal more, if you expect my help.”

Penny shuddered and groped a hand towards her cigarette case.

“No! You can smoke afterwards if you want to,” Macdonald snapped.

She gulped. “Afterwards?”

“It’s a little late to play the innocent. You know exactly what I’m talking about. You can begin by taking your clothes off.”

“But….” Penny was in a corner and he knew it. If she wanted to stand any chance of getting the girls back before it was too late, she had no choice but to do whatever he told her to. A shiver ran down the insides of her thighs. Slowly, she raised a hand to the buttons on the front of her calico jacket.

“Stand up first,” Macdonald ordered. He still seemed a little breathless. His face was flushed and she could see beads of sweat on his forehead. If both his hands were not resting on the table she would have sworn... Penny cut off the thought with another shiver and saw the expectant look he was giving her. She opened her mouth to make a last plea to his decency, and then closed it again. The fact that she was on her feet with her fingers on her buttons showed how far she was willing to go, to Macdonald as well as herself. Gnawing her lower lip, she unfastened her jacket.

He gave another of his grunts as she freed the last button, hesitantly slid the garment from her shoulders and hung it on the back of her chair.

His noises had seemed odd before, but now they sounded positively obscene as he forced Penny to strip while he watched. Gut lurching, she lowered her eyes and saw the two dark patches on the semi-transparent silk of her chemise where her nipples were thrusting against the material.

A little despairing mew escaped her at the depth of her humiliation, and even more at the knowledge it was not going to stop there. Just how far did he really mean to go?

“Look at me, Penelope,” Macdonald said. “I want to see your face as well as your body. I want to see how a cock-teaser behaves when she knows for once she’s going to have to go all the way. And step away from the table so I can see those famous long legs.”

Belly fluttering wildly as he confirmed her worst fear, Penny glanced at her handbag. She dared not use the pistol it concealed. He would know any threat she made was a bluff as long as she needed the information only he could give her. She had no desire to kill him anyway, and if she wounded him she would spend days she could not afford to waste explaining herself to the authorities. Reluctant but resigned, she stepped to one side and let her skirt fall around her ankles.

Macdonald smiled. “You’ve certainly kept your figure, Penelope.

It was always those big tits that fascinated me most. I think I’d like to see them now. Slip those straps off your shoulders and let’s have a look.”

Penny had thought the heat in her cheeks could not possibly grow any greater but learned that she was wrong as first one trembling hand and then the other slid the straps of her chemise down her upper arms.

With a ragged breath and a quiver on her lower lip she pulled the thin silk over the jut of her breasts and down to her waist.

Instinctive modesty made her raise her arms over the twin peaks, until Macdonald’s impatient snort reminded her of her situation. The return of the girls was far too important to allow even humiliation such as this to get in the way. She put her arms at her sides.

Macdonald laughed. “Oh, there’s that look you’re so well known for! That sullen little pout on those luscious lips. That petulant little knitting of your brows. I’m surprised you haven’t got a wrinkle there by now. And there’s the flash of defiance in those big, blue eyes that always showed you had every intention of having your own way in the end. I thought you said you’ve changed.”

“I have,” Penny said, stunned. Was that really how others had seen her when she had been one of the garrison wives? She had known and cared little that she was not popular with the women, but it had always seemed she could wrap any man around her little finger. After all, she had been a High Society girl and a renowned beauty who had frequently been mentioned in the society pages of the newspapers when she had lived in England, and even in Delhi. Tom’s transfer to the North-West Frontier had changed all that.

Macdonald was still chuckling, his gaze roving over her near-naked body, drinking in the sight of her long, bare legs, her trim waist and smooth shoulders, and the fullness of her pink-tipped teats. Penny suppressed the need to turn away from his hungry look and steeled herself for the next ordeal.

“What are you waiting for, Penelope? Don’t imagine there is any way but one for you to get what you want from me. And you had better make sure I get everything I want from
you
. So take your panties off.”

To her great discomfiture, Penny had already admitted to herself he was right. Nevertheless, it was hard to find the courage to expose her most intimate places to a man she had not seen for years and who even then had been little more than an acquaintance. Damn those foolish girls, she thought, for letting themselves get kidnapped so easily. And if she was being unfair, well, she was entitled to be, considering the position she was in. She hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her French knickers but could not quite bring herself to push them down.

“One of the men you’re looking for is an ex-sergeant,” Macdonald told her. “A twenty-year man who stuck around after he mustered out.

His name is….” He grinned. “Something you’ll learn when we’re finished.”

It was enough to persuade her. Accepting her fate, Penny dropped her knickers and stepped out of them, thanking heaven she had not had the chance to get Subaidah to trim her fleece. At least it helped a little to conceal the plump cleft between her thighs. She pressed them tightly together, even more acutely self-conscious now that she was completely nude and entirely exposed to Macdonald’s scrutiny.

“Come here where I can see you better,” he ordered.

Penny obeyed, very aware of the swaying heaviness of her breasts as she took the few steps that brought her within his reach. She flinched from the finger that he used to trace a line from her navel to her pubic hair. Macdonald laughed and pushed his chair back from the table, revealing the shiny shaft of his penis straining upwards from his unbuttoned trousers.

Penny stared in shock, saw something else even more horrifying, and quickly covered her breasts and sex with her hands. “Good heavens, this is outrageous!”

Macdonald laughed heartily. “That will do, Ishani. Come on out.

I won’t have need of your clever little mouth for a while now that Penelope is here.”

Penny’s inner shame burned even more than her flaming cheeks, as a brown-skinned girl with straight, black hair that reached her waist crawled out from under the table and stood at Macdonald’s side, a big smile on her pretty face.

“You cad,” Penny accused. “She’s a native girl and you… you let her overhear everything and see me like this. Have you no sense of decency?” She realized the question was foolish as soon as she asked it.

If he had, he would not have made her undress in the first place.

He shrugged carelessly. “I always have my cock sucked after breakfast. I could have let Ishani finish but you told Ranjit you had to see me urgently.” Macdonald eyed the point of Penny’s right nipple, which was peeping over the forearm covering her breasts. “Now, I have other matters to attend to today, so I think it’s time we properly got down to business.”

“Business?” Penny was still burning with indignation that he could allow his native houri to see her naked.

“It’s a simple enough transaction, Penelope. I fuck you. You get the information you want.”

“Oh, really!” Penny’s belly flipped as he declared outright what she had known he intended all along. “Must you put it so crudely?”

Macdonald shrugged again. “A fuck is a fuck. Call it anything else you like.” Chuckling, he slid a hand up between Ishani’s thighs from behind and smoothed his middle finger over the pinkish-brown petals peeping from between the plump crescents of her labia. She giggled.