Counterfeit Lady (James River Trilogy 1)

“Not a waste at all,” Janie said. “In fact, I don’t believe I’ve ever enjoyed any dessert as much.”

“Clayton Armstrong!” Bianca screeched. “How dare you stand there and let them insult me like this!”

Everyone turned toward Clay. No one had noticed that all through dinner he’d been drinking heavily of the bourbon. Now, his eyes were glazed and he looked with disinterest at Bianca’s gyrations.

“Clay,” Nicole said quietly, “I think you’d better take Bianca…home.”

Clay rose slowly, seeming oblivious to everyone around him as he grabbed Bianca’s arm and pulled her toward the door, ignoring her screams that the pudding was still burning her. He pulled her outside as she grabbed her cape, and he took a jug of the bourbon. The cold, snow-filled air threatened to freeze the wet, sticky mass to Bianca’s ankle.

Bianca followed Clay reluctantly, stumbling in the dark behind him. Her dress was ruined; she could feel the cold cranberry juice against her thighs, and her ankle hurt from the burn and the cold. Tears blurred her eyes so that she could hardly see where she was going. Once again, Clay had humiliated her. He had done nothing else since she’d arrived in America.

At the wharf, Clay grunted as he lifted Bianca and set her inside the rowboat. “You put on any more weight and we’ll sink,” he said, his voice slightly slurred.

She’d had all the insults she was going to take, she thought as she stiffened. “You seemed to like this new drink,” she said sweetly, nodding at the stoneware jug in the bottom of the rowboat.

“It makes me forget for a while. Anything that can do that, I like.”

Bianca smiled into the darkness. When they landed across the river, she took the hand he offered and stepped onto shore, following him quickly back to the house. By the time they reached the garden door, she was trembling because she knew what she must do, even though the idea came close to making her sick to her stomach.

Clay set the jug on the hall table and stepped back outside.

Bianca muttered, “Peasant!” lifting her skirts and running up the stairs to her room, ignoring the pain of her ankle and her wildly beating heart as she flung open a drawer and withdrew a small bottle of laudanum. The bourbon combined with the sleeping drug would make Clay unaware of anything that happened to him. She just had time to add a few drops to the liquor she poured into a glass. The stuff smelled vile!

Clay lifted one eyebrow at her when she offered him the glass. But he was already too drunk to question her actions. He lifted the glass in a mock salute to her, then downed the fiery liquid in one gulp. Setting the glass on the table, he lifted the jug to his lips.

Bianca merely smiled at his crudeness and watched him mount the stairs. When she heard the door to his bedroom open and each of his boots fall to the floor, she knew it was time.

The hall was dark, and Bianca stood alone, listening. The idea repulsed her; she hated a man’s touch as much as her mother had loved it, but as she took one last look around the hall, she knew that if she didn’t climb into bed with Clay, she’d lose all of this. She grabbed the bottle of laudanum and went up the stairs.

Insi

de her own room, her hands were trembling as she undressed and slipped into a pale pink silk nightgown, crying a little as she drank some of the laudanum. At least, the drug would help dull her senses.

Moonlight flooded Clay’s room, and Bianca saw him sprawled across the bed. He wore nothing, and the silver light on his bronze skin made him look as if he were made of gold, but Bianca saw nothing beautiful in the sight of the naked man. The laudanum made her feel as if she were in a dream.

Slowly, she slipped in beside Clay on the bed, dreading the idea of having to make advances toward him. She didn’t know if she could.

Clay needed no encouragement. He’d been dreaming of Nicole, and now the touch of a woman’s silk gown, the smell of perfumed hair, made him react. “Nicole,” he whispered as he pulled Bianca close to him.

But even in his drunken, drugged state, Clay knew this was not the woman he loved. Reaching out to touch her, he encountered a handful of lumpy fat and, with a muffled grunt, turned away to relapse into his dream of Nicole.

Bianca, rigid, breath held, waited for his animal lust to take over. When he merely grunted and turned away, it was some moments before she realized he was not going to touch her. Cursing vilely, she told his sleeping form what she thought of his lack of masculinity. If the plantation weren’t so important to her, she’d give this caricature of a man to Nicole, and she was welcome to him.

But now there had to be something done. In the morning, Clay had to believe he’d deflowered Bianca, or her plan would never work. The laudanum she’d taken was a hindrance to her as she rose and stumbled down the stairs, but she could have been even more drugged and she’d still have been able to find her destination—the kitchen.

On the big table was a roast beef marinating in herbs, and Bianca half filled an earthenware mug with beef blood. Grabbing six leftover rolls from a cabinet to reward herself for her cleverness, she started back to the house.

Upstairs again, the rolls eaten, the laudanum making her eyes too heavy to hold open, she slipped in beside Clay and doused herself with blood, hiding the mug well under the bed. Cursing him again for making her go through this ordeal, she fell asleep beside him.

Chapter 16

THE EARLY MORNING SUN BEAT DOWN ON THE LIGHTLY crusted snow and flashed back into Clay’s red eyes. The pain in his eyes went directly to his head where everything vile that had ever been created seemed to exist. His body seemed to weigh a thousand pounds, and each movement was an ordeal, even as he picked up another handful of snow and pressed it to his dry, swollen tongue.

Worse than his raging headache and his churning stomach was the memory of this morning. He woke beside Bianca. At first, he’d been able to do nothing but stare because his body hurt too much to be able to think.

Opening her eyes quickly, Bianca’d gasped when she saw him. She sat up, pulling the sheet to her neck. “You animal!” she said through clenched teeth. “You dirty, filthy animal!”

As she told him that he’d dragged her to his bed and raped her, Clay couldn’t speak.