Jennifer Horseman

by GnomeWonderland

  Garrett heard only the last as he came over, having watched the pitiful scene unmoved. At least Stoddard saw that his precious daughter's fate was worse than death, at least according to a man who put such a price on his daughter's lost virtue.

  Shaking her head in denial Juliet stared with the shock of just how much her uncle did hate her. "The ring," she said in a frightened whisper. "Was that your brother's ring? Did Clarissa know? Did she give me that ring because she knew .. . you . . . ?"

  Garrett had no mind to listen anymore. He bent over and in one easy movement his arm coiled around her midsec-tion and he lifted her up. The air squeezed from her lungs in a small pained cry and her small hands dug her nails hard into his forearms, like a death grip. Garrett reached behind to the knife clasped in his belt, then held it to her dress. Juliet took one look and screamed, a scream that did not stop even when it was joined by a weak cough from her uncle. The last thing she saw was the blood streaming from her uncle's mouth as his head dropped forward with death.

  It was that one scream of abject helplessness and terror that would haunt Garrett the rest of his life. Yet as the sound reached his ears and the girl dropped in his arms, it became his brother's scream, and revenge felt like a gift from the heavens, extirpating his own helplessness at not being able to change the unchangeable. He lifted Juliet to his arms and brought her to his bed. He returned to the dead man, cut his bindings, and lifted him onto his back, heading for a rail where he'd watch the flesh sink to the sea. His only regret was that she was left, but as Gayle observed, she was not likely to last very long.

  Tomas woke to the unpleasant taste of dirt in his mouth. A cough brought him to his knees, and as he spit, pain shot through his head, reverberating through his whole body, washing him in dizziness. Memories flooded into his mind. He looked up with horror. The sound of the rushing river nearby echoed eerily in the silence as he rose slowly to his feet.

  "Juliet . . . Juliet," he whispered after a frightened pause. He spotted her cloak lying in the grass. He picked it up, grasping it with both hands and staring with pained disbelief. He took her! He took her!

  "Juliet!" he screamed over and over, even as he started running, running as fast as he had ever run, but as he raced through the woods to the narrow road that would lead him to home, to help, to his father, the name Juliet turned to a desperate denial, the one long word "Nooo ... !"

  Juliet woke with a start. She bolted upright in the bed, her body instantly mobilized to fight the angels of death. In the space of a breath her heartbeat rose to a frantic tempo but her breathing stopped to aid her heightened senses, as she listened, waiting for the attack. A canopy of dark blue velvet surrounded her. He had put her in a bed. Only silence greeted her ears, but the gentle motion beneath the bed said they were at sea.

  Her uncle was dead. Dead ... A strange unreality colored the event. She felt nothing, no gladness or relief or anything, for no feelings could struggle above this fear of her own death. Death at the hands of this man called Garrett, a man who thought she committed the most vile crime, one that resulted in his brother's death. ". . . laying with Edric my brother, then claiming rape when your father caught you. Damning enough . . . but what you will pay for is listening in silence to his pleas as your father had his men hold him down, while he personally took a knife—" "No," came as a whispered denial as she struggled to believe Clarissa did that. Her mind flew over the events, stopping at every twist of the truth and each mistake with a question. Clarissa . . . Clarissa gave her that ring just as she sent Missy out to damn her. Clarissa had known Garrett was coming to kill her and she arranged for this . . . this nightmare of a death sentence!

  Dear Lord, Juliet pressed her temples hard to stop her scream, how much you must have hated me! Why? Oh God, why? I never did anything to you! How could you do this to me?

  It didn't matter, nothing mattered past convincing Garrett of her innocence. Somehow, someway, she must break through his hatred and rage and madness to make him see that he had made a mistake. Yet how could she? All she had was her word—

  Panic rose over her fear and she closed her eyes tightly, trying desperately to hold it back long enough to think. To no avail. Could fear grow to a size that it had the power to kill? Will he kill me soon? Oh God, will I die now?

  Death appeared to her as it never had before, but its opposite followed, an intense, overwhelming desire to live. A desire that brought her to her knees, and with all the drama of a young girl's heart her hands clasped as in prayer. As if to answer her prayer, Tomas's face rose in her mind. He was her greatest reason to cling to life, and she tried desperately to keep his image there, successful until she heard his voice in the hall.

  The door opened and shut. Silence greeted her ears and she tensed, more so as the quiet sound of his footsteps at last broke the silence. She forgot to breathe as he stopped in front of the bed.

  Reaching up to part the drapes, Garrett greeted a sight that would be permanently etched in his memory. Juliet had knelt on her knees with her hands clasped in prayer, turning to him with a small gasp, the frightened stare of a trapped and helpless creature. She looked so breathtakingly beautiful, so angelic, and oh so bloody innocent, that Leifs parting words echoed through his mind: "I don't know how to dispute the ring found on her finger. I don't know how to dispute any of it. I don't know anything except that if you rape that girl, you will be raping innocence."

  Garrett's hands reached up and rested casually on the rails of the canopy, making him look like a great eagle ready for flight. He leaned casually forward, the well-carved muscles of his bare chest and arms constricted only slightly, but enough to make her acutely aware of the blatant masculinity of his strength. There was a strange light in his gaze, too, a thing concealing his hatred. The hate remained, she felt its threatening presence, but its shape had changed. Why? How? Because of her uncle's death, one half of his revenge?

  "I'd be interested to know what god you thought to appeal to, Clarissa? And how you could have any hope left of changing your fate?"

  "The same as anyone—by making you believe my name is Juliet."

  That name fit the picture so perfectly that he laughed, a mean and joyless sound. "I see you've found time to polish your act. It won't work, though I give you credit. This pretense of innocence has fooled even Leif, a first, as far as I can remember."

  She backed slowly toward the wall, shaking her head. "My name is Juliet and I am Clarissa Stoddard's cousin. I have lived at my uncle's house since I was ten. I don't know your brother and, and," her voice dropped, her sincerity plain, "I am sorry you lost him—"

  Garrett reached his hands to her before another word of sympathy could be said. She cried out as he pulled her harshly off the bed. His large hands coiled around her upper arms, crushing her, stopping just short of shaking her senseless. "I warn you: I can take this game only so far. I will not listen to you pretend to be sorry for what happened!"

  "But I am!" she managed in a strained voice, weak with desperation and a hair's breadth from absolute hysteria. "I'm sorry for everything! But you can't have revenge from me because I've done nothing to you or your brother."

  He stared down at the lovely upturned face, the tears shimmering in her eyes. She could almost pretend to cry. The very fact that she persisted in the lie said much, though in truth, the chance he gave her came from Leif s certainty rather than from what were no doubt impressive acting skills. He released her and turned his back, moving to the table where he poured a glass of water.

  "You answered to the name Stoddard, but now you would claim to be a cousin. Yet Stoddard had no brother or sister. Nor is there a record of the birth of a girl named Juliet in the family annals, which my agents examined before I set off on this hellish task."

  "No, that's not true. . . . My mother was his younger sister. He struck her name from the book. I don't know why ... he hated her. My father died before he could marry her, before I was born, and, and my uncle would not record my birth for the shame.
"

  "A child out of wedlock?" he questioned, turning back to see her. She trembled slightly and held herself tightly, accenting the fear and shame with painfully lowered eyes. He drained the glass and leaned his weight on his long arms, studying her intently. "Your father's name?"

  "Charles Princely ... he was French. . . ."

  "Princely? French?" Garrett's derision came as an unkind sneer, as if growing bored of these questions. He sat on a chair, setting his long legs on the table top. He picked up a piece of fruit, an apple from the fruit bowl, and began carving it. "If you really exist my lovely 'Juliet,' why did my agents find no trace or word of you?"

  She looked up at him, her eyes speaking of her confusion, as if she hadn't expected the question. "I don't know. My uncle kept me from society—"

  "And why would he do that? The shame again?"

  "I said he ... hated my mother and me," she spoke in a soft whisper, filled with trepidation and uncertainty. "You must see by the way he called me ... Clarissa when he knew, he knew you would kill me and not Clarissa herself! She gave me your brother's ring—"

  "Ah, yes, the ring. Let's do hear how you explain that."

  Distress marked her face and manner as she tried now to explain the ring. "Last night she came to my room. She made a ... a speech about becoming friends after all these long years, about how she was sorry and how the ring, the ring was to be a symbol of a new beginning — "

  "Or end, as the case may be. Tell me, love, why did these people—your own blood relatives —hate you enough to want you dead?"

  "I don't know," she cried. "I don't know. . . . I've never known—"

  "You don't know why your relatives wanted you dead?"

  She shook her head. "He was cruel since the very first day I arrived at his house after my mother's death. He always referred to my mother in the most vile terms, yet he never said why . . . exactly. I could only guess that he sought to punish my mother through me."

  "Punish a dead woman, now that's clever," he said after a contemplative pause. "You were identified, you know. Why would your maid do that?"

  The question distressed her more and she struggled for a moment before saying: "I don't know that, either. She was Clarissa's maid and I knew Missy never cared for me but ... I shouldn't have imagined she'd do that."

  "Yet she did," he said indifferently now, and he rang a bell connected by wire to one outside. "Look at me, love, I need to see those eyes."

  Startled, she looked up, but only briefly, for the way he stared at her sent a rush of apprehension through her. She bit her lip hard and clasped her hands together, wringing them, searching for one thing, anything, that could convince him. What more could she say? How unlikely her life sounded! She could hardly blame him for doubting it, unless—

  Unless, dear God, unless the very unlikeliness lent it credibility . . .

  Garrett measured each lie she uttered against the contradiction in those eyes. He had Leif s own gift for recognizing deceit, and her story seemed as likely as a snowfall in Egypt. He could only assume that the ridiculousness of her lies were the result of her fear, which must be great indeed, for she did not seem witless enough to otherwise imagine he—indeed anyone—could believe them.

  Gayle promptly answered the call, his gaze taking in the situation at a glance. The lovely girl's clothes were still on and she was still breathing, two miracles, considering . . . Yet Garrett had threatened her, that was plain, and the hopelessness of her fate left her trembling with fear, a fear he could taste even if it wasn't so plain in those enormous eyes. For the first time in his life, he, like Leif, found himself doubting Garrett's judgement.

  Garrett's gaze never left her. "Gayle, who searched the girl's house? Heart, was it? Pax?"

  "Aye."

  "Send one of them in here."

  Gayle left as quietly as he entered.

  Juliet held herself tightly to contain the mounting horror of this day, a horror not over yet, one in fact that might have only begun. The whole day began to take on an unreal, dreamlike quality, as if part of herself could not believe it had happened or was happening, any of it. Oh God, she looked up frantically to gaze at the strange order and beauty of this place where she stood, seeing little through her heightened fears until her eyes settled on his knife. Was it to be the knife and a horrible death by mutilation, or would it be the violence of rape . . . ? 'The very worse thin' that could 'appen to a woman," Stella had said. Worse than mutilation? Would she want to die afterward?

  Garrett watched in an ominous silence, aware of the change each second's passing brought. Since the day he heard of Edric's cruel fate he had struggled to overcome the force of his rage, living with the fear that he'd fail, that he'd not feel anything but this madness and rage forever. Only now his rage had begun to dissipate, reluctantly yielding to a different force. The force of his desire did not surprise him; it would have to be enormous to counteract the violence of his rage. He was grateful for her presence; he certainly hadn't expected it.

  The door opened and Heart stepped into the room. Garrett did not look at him but asked instead: "What did you find when you searched the house?"

  "Nothing unusual. Two wings were closed, and there was the downstairs, sitting rooms, library, dining room and what not."

  "Of the upstairs?"

  "Two large bedrooms, his and hers," he pointed to where Juliet stood. "There was not even a guest bedroom open."

  "That's all."

  The door had not yet shut before she attempted to explain, "My room was in the attic. He would not have seen the stairs that led to it. There—"

  "Stop," he said with an unnatural calmness, his eyes filled now with amusement as he balanced an apple slice on the knife, then brought it to his mouth. He studied her for a moment more before saying, "Your story sounds suspiciously as if it were drawn from the German folktale the English have such fondness for, the Cinderella story my own mother sang to my sisters: A child out of wedlock, a lovely orphaned girl left to the malevolent hands of her wicked relatives, kept from society and hidden in an attic room and, oh yes, instead of Prince Charming saving you—I suppose even you can see how unlikely that is—you use it as your father's name."

  Juliet's eyes danced over him in what amounted to shock as she turned the words over in her mind. Cinderella . . . Charles Princely . . . Prince Charming. Oh Mother, you didn't, you wouldn't do that, and yet as she stood there she grasped that her mother had indeed done just that, and she—oh God, how stupid—had never guessed. Her very life sounded like little more than a bad joke or a ruse, a ridiculous child's story that she could not even begin to defend past; " Tis all true though. . . "

  "And my would-be princess, I think not. I offer you a bargain when you don't deserve one: seeing how frightened you are now, I can imagine you felt this same fear for your father, that perhaps it made you do what you did." He lowered his voice to say, "So if you admit now that you're lying, I'll spare your life."

  Juliet looked up as those awful words formed in her mind. She started to shake her head, then stopped. Did he mean that? Could he be trusted to spare her life if she told a lie as the truth? Yet dear God, what did she have to lose?

  Nothing, after he killed her.

  "Your silence begins to tax me."

  "Please," she begged in a whisper, "take my silence for what you want. I ... truly don't want to die."

  An admission, but yet not an admission. Garrett stared, just stared at the picture she presented, seeing everything: the mist of unshed tears in the enchanting, magical eyes, the slight tremble of that mouth paired with the memory of how it tasted, the rich sable-colored plaits falling a good half-foot past the slender curves of her hips, the way her thin arms hugged herself in such abject desperation, and even the modest white dress, all of it forming a startling picture of innocence. Innocence and femininity and helplessness, a potent trigger for his own masculine counterparts; he could not seem to stop his response to her, even knowing she was an illusion.

&
nbsp; He wanted to see the illusion ruined. "Take out those plaits."

  With confusion and no small amount of alarm she looked up at the terrible sight of him. He still sat at the table, leaning back in the chair with his long legs crossed casually on top and his arms holding his head as he watched her, threatening her with his hate again. Her braids . . . her braids, she didn't understand what he meant by it. A test? Was this a test?

  She didn't know, she didn't know how she could know, beyond the fact that it was a threat of some sort. A test. With trembling fingers, she reached for her hair and began unraveling first one braid then the other.

  Garrett watched the beauty unfolding before him: the waves of silk, rich and thick, falling like a virginal shroud over her form. Once she finished, it was as if she knew, God knows how or why, that the sight bothered him. Nervously, she tried to smooth each side of it, then push it off her shoulders.

  "Take off your clothes."

  Her eyes shot up with plain shock, followed by denial, a denial sounding in her mind with a weak shake of her head, a pained whisper, "Oh no ... please, you can't, I can't—"

  Garrett raised his arm and without a word the dagger sliced through the air, catching the folds of her dress and pinning the material to the bedpost behind her. She caught her scream in an instant, two small hands flew to her mouth so that all he could see were the terrified pools of her eyes.

  "Your obedience, love. I want it."

  A sick wave of terror made her dizzy for a moment. Obedience, her uncle's word, that most hated word, paired with the image of his hand striking her face again, knives and whips and pain. She tried to swallow back her fear enough to comply, but it choked her, released in small uneven gasps. She reached her hands behind her hair to the wide blue ribbons circling beneath her bosom and tied in back. She pulled the ribbon loose and reached up for the buttons. The bandaged hand felt almost useless and the other shook so. With a small gasp of ever-escalating desperation, she tore at the neat row of tiny glass buttons until—