Rules of Surrender (32 page)

“What are you… you can’t…”

He maneuvered out the door. She felt the twist of his muscles as he turned sideways and realized the care he exerted so that she wouldn’t strike the doorframe.

“My lord, this isn’t…” Her head hung down his back. She kept trying to push herself up by her elbows, as if that would somehow allow her to see past the blindfold.

A blindfold. She was blindfolded and trussed. He’d had a gun.

He’d expected her to lock herself in. He’d been prepared!

The first uproar of her agitation was replaced by trepidation, although she tried very hard to make it indignation. “What are you doing?” She gasped for breath. “This is outrageous!”

He didn’t respond, but strode along silently… somewhere. Again she struggled to bring her arms up. If she could just grasp her blindfold and fling it off! Then from below she heard someone call, “I tell you, I heard a gunshot.”

Incredulity struck. They were approaching the stairway. “My lord, where are you taking me?”

His voice resounded with tenacity and composure. “I am kidnapping my wife.”

She began to struggle in earnest. “Where are you taking me?”

“I have prepared a place.”

“But you’re not to go through…”

He took the first steps down, and she stilled. She didn’t want to fall off his shoulder and roll down the stairs. Only one thing could be more scandalous. “Wynter, I forbid you to do this!”

He ignored her, but all the while he moved carefully, cradling her against the worst of the jolts as he descended the stairs.

The sound of voices grew louder, and a male voice—Lord Bucknell’s?—exclaimed, “By Jove!”

Her fears were all the more horrible for being well grounded. Wynter was headed for the reception.

“Look at that!” A woman tittered.

“Wynter, please don’t show me to the guests,” she pleaded.

“It will be a brief showing,” he assured her.

The buzz of conversation grew louder.

Panicking, Charlotte asked Wynter, “What purpose will that serve?”

“I must go this direction to take you to the place I’ve prepared.”

Individual voices began to impugn on Charlotte’s sensibilities.

Cousin Stewart stammered, “Wha-what is Cousin Wynter doing?”

“Isn’t that sweet?” Adorna trilled. “Wynter is so fond of our dear Charlotte, and they do enjoy playing their little games.”

Charlotte didn’t think it was sweet, and she wasn’t playing a game. Digging her fingers into his back, she said, “You could go another direction!”

“This is the direct route.”

“You are humiliating me.”

He stopped. “This is not about humiliation, Lady Miss Charlotte.” He smoothed a possessive hand over her buttocks. “You are a maiden with a maiden’s fears. I am a man and I will cajole you out of them. You will admit your love for me. We will live happily ever after.”

Whatever alarm she felt faded in her rise of indignation. “You make this exhibition sound like a normal incident.”

“Today, Bucknell reminded me that reluctant maidens should be kidnapped.”

Her mouth would have dropped open if she hadn’t been hanging upside down She struggled to raise her head. “Lord Bucknell reminded you of that?”

“Yes.” Wynter walked on as if he’d explained everything.

Conversation had halted. Wynter must have walked past the reception, although she couldn’t trace his route in her mind. She got her hands up to her blindfold at last, and shoved it up on her forehead—and saw that they moved right through the ballroom and long salon. People were standing, hands hanging at their sides, wide-eyed, watching her. Watching
them
as Wynter strode through the reception and toward the outer doors.

She pulled the blindfold back over her eyes and drooped down on Wynter’s back. Miss Priss? After the scandal of her engagement and this spectacle, she would never be known as a maven of civility again.

She heard the door open. She smelled fresh air and felt sunshine on her back.

She relaxed. What a relief to be out of the house even though she knew, without even looking back, that every guest from her wedding stood in the open doors and observed them leaving the manor.

She heard the horse whinnying, and she struggled again. “My lord, please. I don’t want to ride on your back on a horse. I’ll suffocate. Wynter?”

He righted her. The horse was right there; she smelled its equine odor, felt its heat. Wynter took a step up, placed her into the saddle, put her hands on the saddle horn and while she wavered, mounted the horse behind her.

She hated this whole scene. She hated it and yet— she felt so alive. Her heart pounded, her muscles tingled. Behind her, Wynter wanned her back. His arm encircled her waist. When had her incredulous embarrassment become excitement? Or were they one and the same? They rode for perhaps a quarter of an hour, galloping sporadically, and walking frequently. Occasionally the hooves tossed up gravel. Occasionally she smelled the scent of grass as the horse crushed the stalks beneath its hooves. She lifted her hands toward her blindfold, but he caught the cord that bound her and held it. She was not to know where he was taking her, where Wynter had “prepared a place.”

“We’re here,” he announced.

She could scarcely catch her breath as he slid out of the saddle, reached up and pulled her down into his arms. This time he held her with one arm under her back, one under her knees, and as he walked away from the horse, Wynter laughed. Laughed right out loud, and raised her up as though showing the world his newest acquisition.

She jabbed at him with her elbow.

He huffed when she connected with his sternum, and said, “Lady Miss Charlotte, if you are not cooperative I will tie you hand and foot.”

“You will not!”

“This is my day. You are my wife. I will do with you as I please.”

He hadn’t stopped walking to produce his ludicrous pronouncement, and through the blindfold Charlotte saw the alteration in light that indicated they’d entered a building. She felt the temperature change, and she smelled sweet scents. Rose, lemon and a warm spicy fragrance she couldn’t identify.

Wynter kicked the door shut, then put her on her feet. He untied her wrists. He pushed the blindfold off her eyes and dropped it to the ground. Hands on hips, he stood smiling at her as if he were the pirate king and she the captive princess.

She had never felt less like a princess—or more like a captive.

The chamber wasn’t one that she recognized, but she guessed it must be in a home somewhere on the estate, for it was of large proportions with tall ceilings.

The drapes were closed over the windows. There was no furniture.

But most important, dominating the room was a tent. A huge tent formed of white and pale pink silk. The door flap was swept aside, revealing an inner room large enough to stand in, with carpets on the floor and—she ducked her head and looked inside— a bed. A mattress, really, made up and massive and strewn with velvet pillows and softly draped sheets.

A woman could be debauched in that bed.

She tried to back up, but Wynter stood right behind her. Catching her, he propelled her remorselessly toward the opening. “I have prepared this place for you. You will find it enjoyable to lose your virginity within.”

She stumbled on the edge of the carpet as she entered at his behest. “I won’t.”

“You sound like a child, saying, ’no,‘ and ’won’t,‘ and ’don’t,‘ in defiance of something that will bring you great joy.”

Her bare feet sank into the lush carpet. The bed was even bigger than she realized. “You will never bring me great joy.”

He turned her to face him and held her shoulders. “It will be
my
great joy to prove you a liar.”

She glared at him. A silly, futile reaction, but what was she supposed to do? Strike out at him as if she were Leila? She’d already cried like a child; she didn’t need to act like one, too.

“Take down your hair.”

Her hands went to the flattering chignon created by Adorna’s
femme de chambre
.

He surveyed her figure, shown clearly by her upraised arms, with flattering appreciation. “If I have not yet told you, this wedding gown is lovely. How do I take it off of you?”

Retain some maturity,
she warned herself as she lowered her arms.
“You
don’t.” So much for the maturity.

Leaning down, he drew a knife from his boot.

She knew he wasn’t going to hurt her, and she was determined not to let him frighten her. “Is there some food you wished to slice?”

“Not at all.” Even in the dim light, the curved edge gleamed as he hooked it in the high, unadorned neckline. “I’m going to remove your dress.”

She couldn’t move. Not with the tip pressing so close to her skin. “Don’t be childish. Just because you’re not going to get your way—”

The satin tugged, then gave with a rich ripping sound as the knife sliced through it.

“You cut my gown!”

“My knife is very sharp, Lady Miss Charlotte. Don’t distract me.” The blade slid downward.

“There are buttons!”

“Too many to cut off.” He split open the fitted bodice, the waistline, the beginning of the skirt.

She stared at the ruin of her wedding dress in dumbfounded astonishment.

“Charlotte.” He used that conspicuously seductive croon when he said her name. “You wear no petticoats.” He cut with a great sweep of his knife, leaving the tatters of her dress hanging off her shoulders. “You have no stockings.”

When he looked up at her, his brown eyes flickered with an inner flame. His chest rose and fell in forceful breaths.

He’d been playing before. Playing with a knife, yes, but he had always been completely in control of him-self and his infantile kidnapping. Now… now he had seen her bare legs and he knew that at last he had her in such a place that he could thrust the seal of his possession within her body.

He removed his boots. She stepped backward. He pointed his knife at her. She gave in to panic and ran.

She tripped on the drooping hem at once, falling half on the bed. He grabbed her skirt and tugged. She wiggled her shoulders free and stripped her arms out of her sleeves.

He laughed.

Of course he would, the crafty blackguard. He’d tricked her out of her gown. She scrambled toward the back of the tent, thinking if she could lift the silk she could crawl under and be free.

Picking her up by the waist, he tossed her on the bed. “Lady Miss Charlotte, I have told you time and again you should leave off your corset. Now”—he knelt on the mattress beside her, that wicked blade gleefully shivering—“I will enforce my wishes.” He turned her over, anchored her with his knee right on her derriere and started cutting.

She didn’t care about the danger anymore. He just made her so angry! She clawed at the bedcoverings, but everything was silk and satin, slippery and soft. The mattress was feathers, impossibly thick and deep. She got nowhere. Meanwhile, one by one, all of her corset strings were popping and half her hairpins falling. That left her clad in a thin lawn chemise with a partial tumble of shining red curls around her shoulders.

She could do nothing about the hair, but she wasn’t giving up the chemise—although how she was going to stop him from doing as he wished, she didn’t know.

Cunning. He was cunning, but she could be, too.

She shoved a pillow out of her face. “This is not fair. I’m to be naked and you have your clothes on!”

The last corset string burst. He pulled on the edge to remove it from beneath her, flipping her over at the same time. Her chemise was hiked to her thighs and she knew it was almost transparent, but for some reason he kept his gaze on her face. “I remove all of my doming on your command.”

The gold cords were tied in a simple knot, and when he eliminated the first one, Charlotte realized she might have outsmarted herself. “No. Wynter…”

He tossed the second cord aside. He opened his djellaba. And her curiosity was answered at last. He wore nothing underneath.

Any proper maiden would have covered her eyes.

Charlotte looked. She’d seen his chest twice before, and in a primitive way found it appealing. But below the waist was a whole different matter. A very large, very straight, very smooth and frightening matter.

He allowed djellaba to drop off his arms and let her look her fill. “You tell me as my governess it is rude to point, but as your husband, I tell you—this kind of pointing is gallant, and a compliment.”

He might have been speaking in jest, but she couldn’t tell. Obnoxious man, he was as proud of himself as if he had created his own body rather than receiving it as a gift from God. She couldn’t lift her gaze from that… organ.

While she was staring, he sliced the slender sleeves of her chemise.

She was glad for an excuse to look away. Smacking at his hand, she said, “You dare!”

“It was
your
dare. Your challenge. I only answered it.” He made one last cut in the neckline, then took careful aim and threw the knife. It stuck in the side of a low table across the tent, quivering and quite out of reach. With one last tear of the fragile material, he would have her freed of clothing and laid out for his delectation.

Cunning? If she had any at all, now was the time to show it. Holding the neckline together, she slid back from him. More hair came tumbling down, the chemise slithered down her back, but she managed to speak as judiciously as she did when supervising any scholarly competition. “I admit. You’ve won. We’re done.”

His fingers clamped onto her ankle, and his laughter mocked her propriety. “We have not even started.”

She tried to kick herself free.

He crawled up her body, hand over hand, touching her calf, her thigh, her waist. He didn’t even bother to wrest her grip from her chemise. He rose above her, straddled her and taunted her with his grin. Hooking his hand at the place where the cloth was torn, he said, “You are a good”—
rip!
—“civilized”—
rip!
—“dutiful lady of England.” Yanking his hand back, he tore the chemise clear to the hem.

At his first sight of her bare body, his eyes widened, he drew an audible breath and he was blessedly silent. But not for long. He smoothed his palms between her breasts and down her belly to cover her hipbones. There he pressed her into the mattress. “You will submit to your husband as the law and custom demand.”