‘By my troth, madam, you will pay for that,’ he told her thickly, watching her.
She knew she was treading dangerously but was too incensed to stop herself, her whole body going rigid as she felt him sweep her up into his arms. She cried out to him to put her down, but her protests were ignored as he strode from the room and up an ancient flight of narrow stairs.
She was as yet unused to her new home. It was a hotch-potch of styles and passages, each generation apparently having added to the original whole but her abductor seemed to know his way through the warren of passages and narrow flights of stairs, for he never once checked until he stood outside a stout oaken door in what she assumed must be the older part of the house—as yet unexplored by her.
Securing her with one arm, he ignored the fists she was hammering against his shoulder, to open the door and drag her inside, locking it behind them and tossing the key on to a tallboy.
A fire was the room’s only illumination, and she felt her stomach muscles clench as she recognised the room’s entirely male ambience. On a chair before the fire she could see a ruffled shirt, thrown carelessly down as though its owner had disrobed in haste.
‘Unlike Francis, I cannot run to the expense of my own valet,’ she was told by a mocking voice. ‘But tonight I am in luck, for you may perform that service for me.’
At first, she had been too angry at his effrontery in dragging her away from the ball to register her own danger, but now, suddenly, it overwhelmed her. Just to be found in a gentleman’s company unchaperoned meant the complete destruction of an unmarried female’s reputation. To be found alone with him in his bedchamber ..! She shuddered and ran despairingly to the door, even though she knew it was locked, hammering on it with protesting fists, crying out for aid.
‘You waste your breath—no one will hear you. My father’s impecunious state means that what servants we have are all employed on duties connected with tonight’s ball.’
‘Why?’ she demanded, turning to face him, her back pressed against the door. ‘Why are you doing this?’
‘Oh, there are any number of reasons.’
She watched in horrified fascination as he removed his coat and set about unlacing the ties of his shirt. His skin beneath the fine white lawn was brown, his chest covered in fine dark hair. Jenna had never in her life seen a man without his clothes, apart from servants, who did not count, of course, and even though caution warned her to drag her gaze away it was as though he had bewitched her and she could not.
‘You are a very proud and arrogant young woman,’ he told Jenna mockingly. ‘And, moreover, by your meddling determination to buy yourself my brother’s title, you have upset all my own plans. Before your arrival in my life, it was odds on that my charming brother would either drink himself to hell or be despatched there by one of his gaming cronies.
‘My father has been most anxious to encourage Francis to take you to wife. Should Francis die without legitimate issue, his title and therefore my father’s would eventually come to me, something my revered parent is at great pains to prevent. And shall I tell you why?’ His voice had dropped to a soft, almost mesmeric whisper that she was powerless to deny even had she wanted to. ‘It is because I am not my father’s son, merely my mother’s.’ His mouth twisted bitterly. ‘Having made my mother’s life so miserable that she willed herself to death in order to escape from him, he would now like to see me destroyed also.’
He stopped and laughed harshly. ‘I realise now that there is nothing I can do to stop this marriage. You are plainly set on it. Had you been of a different nature there was always the possibility that I might b
e able to persuade you to transfer your affections from Francis’s title to my person.’ He sneered openly as he looked at her. ‘But you are not woman enough to fall for such a ploy. Therefore, it came to me that if I could not rely on inheriting my brother’s glories for myself, I could secure them for my son…For I am sure that you, unlike my poor mother, would never betray by whom your child was fathered.’
‘Your son, but…’
‘Come, madam, you are not really so naïve as not to understand what I mean.’
In that second, with the sapphire eyes fixed implacably on her own, she did, and the knowledge galvanised her into frenzied action. She flung herself away from the door and towards the window, thinking it might offer a means of escape, but he was there before her, barring her way, laughing deep in his chest as he picked her up and tossed her easily on to the four-poster bed. The brooding look she had seen in his eyes when he spoke of his mother was gone, and in its place was one of devilish determination.
‘Surely, madam, you do not mean me to believe that death is preferable to enduring my embraces? I assure you you will take a deal more pleasure in them than in those of my brother, and the result in the end is all the same, is it not? What matters it to you which of us fathers your child, so long as you are secure as my brother’s wife?’
‘I will be missed!’ she burst out frenziedly, struggling to disentangle shuddering limbs from her skirts and escape from him. ‘Francis will——’
‘Francis will be too drunk to know where you are, and if he asks you will tell him you had a headache and retired to your room. Of course, you could always tell him the truth, but do you think that he will wed you if he believes you might bear my bastard child?’
What he was saying was all too grimly true, but she had something of her father’s determined spirit and would not give up so easily.
‘Stop!’ she warned him, backing away as he advanced towards the bed. His shirt was open to the waist now, the wristbands untied to display dark sinewy arms.
‘If you let me go I shall pay you well,’ she told him, panting slightly in mingled fear and outrage, ‘and, moreover, I shall say nothing to—to Francis of what has passed between us.’
When he threw back his head and laughed she longed to tear her nails down the olive mockery of his face, to destroy for ever that cynical male beauty and to give vent to her anger.
‘I think I already have the better deal,’ he told her softly. ‘It will give me great pleasure to see your belly swell with my child and to know that he will inherit this estate from my foolish brother. A fine idea, think you not, madam?’
She moved blindly, instinctively warned by the soft menace in his voice, but she was too late. The bed subsided beneath his weight, her attempt to escape foiled by the smothering weight of his body over her own, her wild, twisting, thrashing of limbs and torso, succeeding only in tangling her in a web of bedclothes.
He plucked her from them as easily as though she were only a child, staring down at her trapped body in its flimsy muslin gown, his legs pinning her to the bed, his fingers cruel bands of steel that tightened round her wrists as she tried in vain to lift her hand to push him off. She could see the faint shadow darkening his jaw, and the heat of their struggle had raised tiny beads of sweat along his chest. He smelt male and alien, and she gave a despairing cry as she tensed her body and tried to thrust him off.
‘Be still! Remember, it is no different from what you might expect to endure on your wedding night at my brother’s…at my half-brother’s hands,’ he told her harshly, underlining the real relationship which existed between Francis and himself, as though doing so gave him some additional measure of pleasure. ‘And you were ready enough to accept that,’ he added curtly.
‘Because Francis would have that right as my husband,’ she managed to spit bitterly. ‘You have no rights! You are a vile seducer!’