My Lady Series Bundle (53 page)

"S
he is perfection. What unusual race must she have been bred from, troll?" Lord Incubus asked looking down his long, too thin nose.

Yojo did not bother trying to look upward, because the height of his head only reached Lord Incubus' upper thigh.

"Gypsy, master," Yojo answered with an excited giggle as he swayed from side to side. Yojo could only view a sea of stocking-clad legs with buckled shoes or wide ballooned skirts in the circus atmosphere of the upper ballroom. The stiffness and the under wiring of the elaborate skirts were the most dangerous, and he wished for Baco's presence, because Baco would willingly carry him on his stout shoulder. Lord Incubus would never consider such a feat or kindness. Lord Incubus was cruel. And, Yojo loved him. But he'd never tell, never tell, never tell...

"Hmm," Lord Incubus hummed in his throat like a lethal purring. The sound always trilled up Yojo's miniature spine. "She is petite enough and her flesh is just that pale, delicious white. I am surprised at this deep red hair. Yes, I believe it will make the contrast between them striking."

"She has no one, master. No one now that will be missing her," Yojo said.

"Damnable, I can barely hear you, troll!" Lord Incubus snapped irritably.

Yojo knew that it was Incubus' way to blame him for his midget height and Incubus would never consider bending down to hear better. It was up to Yojo to right the wrong or Incubus' anger would flare down on him. Yojo giggled nervously, then trundled to the corner of the large sweeping balcony that stood above the ornate ballroom below. The lightweight gold leash Lord Incubus held laxly in his left hand and hooked to Yojo just reached the distance.

Yojo nimbly climbed up the railing and stood in the corner on the top rail. With one of his thick stubby hands, he held onto the column at his side, balancing himself. He wore a festive hat of dark green, blue, and red plumed feathers and he bobbed as he shuffled a little dance. Ladies tittered at him, passing behind them on the balcony, and Lord Incubus' inscrutably drawn face showed no signs of approval. Yet, the slits of Lord Incubus' eyes held glints of gray as he stepped forward. The elaborate black wig Incubus wore blocked Yojo's view of the party revelers behind them and Yojo stared with fascination at the long curls upon curls hanging half down Lord Incubus' chest. How he wished, he could wear such a handsome wig on his bald head instead of the silly hat that he wore. But he was Lord Incubus' pet for the party. A
pierrot
mascot was a fashionable accessory of the times.

"Now, tell me again, runt," Lord Incubus ordered.

"No one will miss her now!" Yojo exclaimed. "She lied, using her old dead aunt's invitation to enter here."

"Her only living relative that died so advantageously just last week?" Lord Incubus' voice purred with evil intent.

"That one!" Yojo exclaimed, bouncing up and down. "Now she looks for her distant cousin. But she will never find him. Never find him!"

"Quiet down, troll," Lord Incubus snapped irritably and Yojo pursed his lips looking about ready to explode, but silent for the moment. "That long distant relative, an elder Baron isn't he, and he knows nothing of her. Nor does he want to?"

"Yes!" Yojo peeped.

"Hmm, a Gypsy lady. Full Gypsy blood by the look of her. She had better not be coarse, this Lady Joelle Zurka."

"Real, lady!" Yojo piped.

"Hmm, well it seems you have done well picking her. And, she received a false note saying her long lost cousin would be here then?"

"Not a note," Yojo said. "Bribed the Baron's butler!" Yojo clapped gleefully, nearly toppling backward, but he caught the column just in time.

"And the butler?" Lord Incubus snapped.

"He belongssss!" Yojo said in one long drawn out hissing.

"A follower of Hellion?"

Yojo nodded, turning to look outward, and then down on the revelers below, but more at the beautiful Lady Joelle. She was special. He had known it for a long time. Not like other ladies around. Lady Joelle had no need to wear a false wig. Her hair was glorious. Maybe, maybe, maybe this time Lord Hellion would praise Yojo.

***

"I
should
not
have come," Joelle whispered harshly as she walked down the long winding road from the mansion that she'd just left. "
Bi lacid
," she muttered.

It was the Romani word for, "no good" and she rarely used the Gypsy tongue unless she was very upset. Her parents Lord Gunari Zurka and Lady Yolanda Zurka had taught her the rich Gypsy traditions in her younger life, before they died. It was a legacy far removed from their higher stations. A station of nobles bought and bribed many years ago by her great-grandfather. Lord and Lady Zurka taught her all the flamboyant richness of true Gypsy blood, while also strictly advising her to keep the outward signs hidden while in society. It was like having two inner selves. The one in her blood, pounding warm and full-bodied in her veins, then the outward, more constricted one, of the proper social window-dressing that she wore.

And, she did have the price for a hackney fare, instead of walking. But her foolish pride had kept her from asking a footman at the ball to call one for her. Pride?
What good was pride now
, Joelle wondered? It appeared she was destined to swallow her pride for the more important virtue of survival. And she would do so if only she could find that old crow Baron Palko. He was a fifth or sixth cousin, so distantly removed that one could barely hold onto the thread.

"Why was my family not more prolific?" Joelle muttered.

But she would throw herself upon ancient cousin Palko's mercy.
At his very feet,
she thought dramatically, if she could only find the dratted man. She just wanted a husband, she thought wretchedly. Simply the chance of one, yet if no one took her around, how was she expected to meet anyone, much less a husband?

"It would be the answer for both of us, Palko," Joelle mumbled, but just then she thought enough to look about. She quickly realized that while thinking and worrying over her circumstances she'd walked quite far, and it was very dark the further she'd distanced herself from the mansion. Joelle peered into a stand of poplar trees lining the right side of the road. The tall trees looked like malevolent sentinels. She immediately quickened her pace. She calculated that it was a quarter mile from the mansion back out to the main thoroughfare, nevertheless at night, and a pitch-black and starless one at that, it would seem further.

Clop. Clop. Clop.

"Spirits!" Joelle cried.

She was completely startled at the sound so abrupt behind her. She was so goosey that she could not dare herself to look behind her as she quickly stepped toward the trees intending to hide from the oncoming carriage. It would not do for anyone to see her in the predicament she was in. Out alone and unescorted at night. Never mind that she only had one more night at her departed aunt's home before she was out on the streets.

But besides those dark and tragic thoughts, she still wondered how she'd not heard the carriage sooner. Then, she aimed her footsteps toward the base of a wide tree. It would be good to hide behind was her last thought, right before someone abruptly grabbed her from behind!

"I
f those blundering initiates have damaged her, I will flay them alive!"

"No, no, no, master. Only passed out. Awake soon. No magic drafts. You said no potion . . . Yet!"

Joelle's heart thundered as she peeked through her lowered lashes at the source of the two diametric voices. She realized at once that they had gagged her mouth and tied her wrists in front of her. She was lying on a flat surface, lifted off the ground. A table perhaps, because she could just see the two men speaking as she forced her body to remain still and not quake in terror. One man was a midget and she had a clearer view of his small gnome like appearance. Of the tall man, she could only see from the top of his chest down, unless she moved to look up further.

She had no intentions of looking further up and giving away her wakefulness. That was the only small bit of comfort she had at the moment, in the terrifying turn of events. Frightening events she could not imagine and she willed herself not to imagine what their intentions were, because therein lay terror and she had to keep her wits about her as the words, "magic potion" fluttered through her mind.

"I will examine her here, Yojo, and then you will take her onto the castle."

Examine!
No, no, no. Joelle shuddered, unable to halt her body's tremors as the import of what the tall man said rushed through her mind and the fact that he was unconcerned to use names.

"Yes, yes, Master Incubus."

A moan churned in Joelle's chest at the sound of the tall man's name. Most assuredly fictitious. The name and possible meaning clamored over her, just as the moan thrashed free.

Both men turned at the sound. "Ah, she wakes. Excellent," Incubus said.

Joelle rolled onto her back, jerking her tied hands upward in a defensive and warding off gesture as her wild-eyed gaze lifted up to see the man called Incubus. He looked like a middle-aged French aristocrat. But his gray lacquered eyes and the slash of his lips opposed any hope for noble demeanor. His charred eyes held discord, and in them she could see that the weight of his intelligence was perverted. She knew with an instinct deep inside that his intentions were warped in a sexual nature. It oozed from his lupine face with avid, yet boldly calculated interest as she uselessly swatted the air before him.

"That's it, little mare, show me your fire." She watched his lips moving while saying the words, and they were slim and malevolent. "Obedience is worthless without any challenge."

The instant the word, "challenge" left his lips, Incubus caught her bound wrists in his hands, squeezing the too fragile bones and flesh into submission. Then, with her gaze bulging upon him, he wrestled her wrists above her head. Her body thrashed upon the table, but it was more a helpless gesture, because she discovered to her horror that her ankles were bound together.

Joelle tried desperately to fight her own instinct to struggle against the inevitable. It was what the deadly and wicked Incubus wanted. He wanted her terror and her sexual vehemence. It was why he had not drugged her with the magic potion. She was perceptive and quick-witted enough to understand this. She was not the normal provincial and naive lady of society. Those "ladies" of society were callow and unschooled in worldly ways. Their titles shielded them from the crassness of society.

Yet, even with the knowledge that fighting Incubus would not win her release, and that she had to stop the terror in her mind and find a better way. Still, she could not master the fear rushing through her. But, Incubus easily secured the bindings around her wrists to a hook, conveniently mounted on the table above her head. The snug material of her bodice pressed upward beneath her breasts, constricting her breath with its stretched tightness, while the mounds of her breasts nearly lurched out of the scooped neck collar. Joelle felt air rushing over her stocking clad calves at the raised position of her full skirts. Her teeth gnawed helplessly on the gag, too wide and set too far back in her mouth, forcing her lips open as though an animal bit had been fitted into her mouth.

Incubus knew all of this. He knew every feeling that assaulted her and he wallowed in it. It did not show on his stridently austere face, but it twisted in the depths of his dissonant gray eyes. Then, she watched in horror, writhing futilely beneath him as he bent over her, lifting a stout and glistening knife for her to view.
Was this to be the end?
Her mind cried as her bug-eyed gaze watched the sharp tip lowering. It seemed to her as though, in that moment, her mind physically snapped. Yet, instead of hysteria, her body heaved to a shuddering stand still, with only her breasts rising and falling erratically. Her breasts were in the exact direction of the tip of the knife as her mind actually slowed to eerie calmness. She felt the long black curling ends of Incubus' wig touching the silk of her dress above her belly. She inhaled the heavy redolence of his cologne. Her sensitive nose detected the saturating odor of rosemary and muscadine, as the scents strangled her nostrils. She saw the bead of sweat on Incubus' slim upper lip.

Then suddenly, she jerked her bound legs upward in an impossible acrobatic curl, defying yards of frothing silk that bunched up trying to impede her way. In spite of everything, her vigor and strength conquered them as she twisted to the side and kneed Incubus straight away in his chest. Her knees together hit solidly enough to sound a dull cloth on cloth thud, and Incubus fell back with surprise upon his face. Still in motion, her long cumbersome skirts landed in a tide across her waist, exposing her legs clad in black stocking, thigh garters, and the short crotch-less undergarment ladies wore. Incubus had never expected her to expose herself in such a fashion.

Joelle supposed that Incubus would believe ladies to prefer death, but she was much more than simply a lady and she would defy death or anything less with all her heart. And now her legs were free, bound at the ankles, but free in motion. She did not waste the moment of surprise, by looking at her actions furthering effect on Incubus, but instead she swung her legs two times strongly in widening arcs, and then she hefted with all her might, curling her legs over her head. Pushing . . . pushing, until the weight fell through and she landed on her feet beside the table. She looked quickly at the hook, forcing herself not to instinctively look to see where her attackers were.

There was no time and partial freedom was so close. She saw instantly that the hook was not closed and she twisted her bound wrists, tugging them free of the hook. In the same motion, she whirled toward a chair, toppling it over as she hopped past it in the direction of a huge dripping candle, set in an iron wall sconce. She understood that because they had tied her there was little hope for escape. Yet, she would not breathe her last breath in weakness and fear, but gasp it in defiance. Whether it was murder or mutilation and rape they intended, she would only fall beneath their strength fighting!