Stolen (Royally Hot 1)

Any information about Angelica or Bors would have passed through there, and Charmaine, the innkeeper’s daughter, knew my father. I would implore her to keep my sighting silent.

If she knew anything, I would not be above begging for her to tell me.

Nobody noticed me as I walked in, my hood drawn up to cover my face. I hurried across to Charmaine, who stood tending the ale, and lowered my voice.

“Charmaine, listen, I beg you. I need—”

“Well, well, what do we have here?” She grinned, her voice raised, as she pulled back my hood, not even giving me a chance. “The whore’s apprentice, lads!”

The room was filled with laughter, and I felt the heat rise to my face. Aside from Charmaine, they were all men. I felt their eyes on me, and as I turned, ready to flee, I saw a new expression on every face—one that I was very unaccustomed to seeing: hunger. The hunger of he-wolves and bucks and stallions.

The hunger of desire.

“I do like them young and fresh. High time this town got a fresh pussy for us men to enjoy!” One of the men at the bar reached out and I shrank back. I was surrounded, and the few strides to the door may as well have been a hundred miles.

“You’re right about that, William. That old cunt Angelica…well…she was all used up long before she gave up whoring and started healing.”

“Healing, he says! Only healing she’s ever been good at was in making a man forget his aches. One in particular.”

Laughter followed his words and I felt torn between loyalty to my friend and fear for my own safety.

My eyes drifted around the room, and knew these were the same men that had accosted me and the washerwomen in the town square. Men of Clan Johnston, I recalled, clearly still garrisoned near the town. They stared at me with an air of arrogance that made me swallow hard.

I could barely talk. “Let me go…”

“I like a little protest when I pay for it,” one of the soldiers said. “If it’s too easy, it’s no fun at all.”

His companions let out lecherous laughs, nodding their agreement as they clapped each other on the backs and took long drinks of their ale.

I looked to Charmaine for help but the coldness I saw in her eyes chilled me to the bone.

“We don’t normally allow your sort here,” she said with a grin. “But this is a special occasion.”

I gulped, my heart thundering. Part of me wanted nothing but to try and flee, but I was here for a reason. Angelica was my friend. Over the last few days, she’d become like a mother and a sister to me, far more than my own kin ever had. I couldn’t leave without completing my task.

“I’m looking for Angelica,” I said, keeping my voice as clear as I could. “Have you seen her?”

“’Course we have.” Charmaine continued to wipe down the bar with a dirty rag. “You’ll find her in the sheriff’s holding cell, getting no better than she deserves.”

I gasped. “For what? She hasn’t done anything wrong. Why are you being so hateful?” I spat out. Charmaine had always had an air of superiority, her father owning the pub seemed to give her a sense of celebrity of some kind, but I had never known her to be outright cruel.

Charmaine laughed. “She’s being tried for witchcraft. They’ll burn her if she’s found guilty.”

I gasped. Witchcraft?

In a daze, I turned for the door, but when I did I found my escape blocked by the Clan Johnston soldiers.

Instinctively, I reached for the knife that Bors had given me, but I was too slow and the men too experienced for me to surprise them. One of them stepped forward and pinned my arms to the bar.

“Please,” I begged. “This is all a misunderstanding. I just want to go find my friend!”

It was as if they didn’t hear me, or didn’t care, blinded by frenzied lust. A second man hiked my skirt up and I felt his rough, greasy fingers on the inside of my calf, then my knee, then my thigh. I screamed at him to leave me alone, but he ignored me.

Desperately struggling against their grip as I begged them to stop, I searched for a means of escape, but I could find none. A third man stepped forward and clapped his hand over my mouth, then tore my blouse from my chest. My eyes filled with tears as I fought with all my might, screaming against his palm for help.

These six outsiders meant to take me by force, and I was utterly and completely powerless to stop them. Bors had warned me about tension with Clan Johnston along the border and I felt I was going to be just the first in the spoils of an oncoming clan war. I tried kicking them between the legs, but the one I recognized as their captain grabbed my ankles.