by Cerys du Lys
“Yes, sir, I shall!”
He shook his head, still smiling. “Ahh, Miss Rossington, what a firebrand you are! Hugh said that you screamed well, and fought him. You must be in pain, and sore, and your world has changed so utterly. Yet you stand in front of me, still defiant! You are an uncommonly strong woman.”
She bit her lip. No, she was not strong. He was mistaken. She was prone to attacks, and she wondered why she had not been overcome as she had been in Lady Frances’s salon. Maybe she had gone beyond all that.
“Yet now a tear comes to your eye?” Tristan came close to her again. “What is it?”
“You say my world has changed, sir, but it changed a year ago and since then… well, nothing can quite touch me. Not even you.”
“Not even I?”
“Not your brother, not your brother’s men, and not you.”
“Well, for one, they are my men not his - it is my business, and my gang of coves and brigands - but how strange you are, Miss Rossington. If I am to tell you the truth, I will keep you a little while, because you interest me.”
“There is nothing about me to interest any man.” Thank goodness; Stapleton Jones will most certainly look elsewhere. Again, that flood of relief.
“I shall decide as to that.”
“How?”
As soon as she said it, she regretted it, but the words were out of her mouth and his own mouth was closing upon her. She was trapped by the couch and had nowhere to go. His lips were warm and sent fire straight to her belly, as if her body wanted more though her brain was telling her this was wrong, move away, kick out, escape… her body did not obey, and it wasn’t until his tongue flickered into her mouth that she spluttered and wrenched her head to one side, pushing at his chest with her hands.
She managed to squirm free and she ran around the couch, trying to keep furniture between them, and she looked around desperately for weapons - a china vase, a poker from the fire - anything she might use to keep her honor, such as it was.
“Sir,” she said. “You might think that now your brother has taken my maidenhead, that I am fair game for any man who wishes to have his way? That once fallen, a woman stays fallen?”
“I am amazed that you fight on, it is true!” he said, and he was grinning as if the idea delighted him. He stayed still, watching her desperate flight. “Why not give in to it? It cannot become any worse for you, after all.”
Her stomach flipped and a demon’s voice agreed with him. Why not, indeed? Why not find out what these pleasures of a man and a woman were?
But then, she had had no pleasure from his brother Hugh and she doubted she would find any pleasure with this man. She sneered.
“You disagree,” he said with a laugh. “Oh, how your defiance stirs me. I could spin you around right now and lift your skirts and plunge into your tight little hole.”
The way he then suddenly loomed at her made her tremble, but it was not entirely in fear, and she was alarmed at how her body was throbbing. He stepped toward her. No, she instructed herself, fight on. Fight on!
“Sir, I am tired and sore. Weary and in pain. If you will not let me go, at least afford me the dignity of a bath and some food. After all,” she added, spite sharp in her tone, “I am your guest, am I not?”
He paused in his advance, three paces from her. “As to that… yes, you make some sense. But know this. You only delay the fun I intend to have with you. You think to buy some time, to formulate some plan to escape, but it is fruitless. Oh, plan away - I find your defiance most appealing. I will have a bath made ready for you, so that you can wash the filth of my brother out of you, and be ready for me. I will have food brought to you in the bath, so that you can fortify yourself for the games to come.”
She felt sick, and considered refusing food, but she knew she needed strength. “Thank you,” she managed to say.
Chapter Five
Tristan looked at her for a moment. She was as variable as all the women he knew; full of fire one moment, and sunk into this curious depressed acceptance the next. If she were a man, he would wonder which was his true face. But women, as he knew, had many faces - and none of them true. He had learned that lesson over and over.
So he told himself he ought not to dwell on her supposed mysteries; women were alike in their vagaries. He led her into the hallway and called for Mrs. Roberts to attend to him. The housekeeper was a stern, silent woman who had been in the household for decades and showed her love and loyalty by barely ever uttering a word. She came in and cast her eyes up and down Anna briefly, and then awaited orders, her face as blank as a white page.
“This is Miss Rossington, who is our guest. She has met with some misfortune upon the road, and requires a warm and soothing bath.”
Mrs. Roberts did not question the torn clothing, grazes, bruises, and tumble-down hair that the young lady sported. She nodded as if it were a perfectly normal occurrence. “Which room, sir?”
“Ah. My wing, I think, the sitting room by my bedroom.”
“Very well.”
Mrs. Roberts swung into action, ordering an ant-like army of maids to haul a deep bath to the sitting room and begin to fill it with water that was continually kept at a high temperature in a deep cauldron in the back kitchens. While that was carrying on by the back stairs, he led Anna up the grand public front stairs to his rooms. To his mind, the house was cluttered with the accumulation of generations, and the styling reflected his lack of interest in modern trends. The statues and the paintings were just the heavy dross of past lives.
The girl was looking around, her head dipping one way and the other, looking at the portraits and the busts, and he decided to answer her curiosity. He guessed what she was wondering. “I live here with my brother.”
She started. “With - Hugh?”
“Yes. He has a suite of rooms on the other side of the house.” He watched her reaction. “And yes, he will be here later tonight.” She tensed, and he added to it by saying, “And my wife lives … elsewhere.”
Her face set hard and she was about to retort but he led her into his private upstairs sitting room, and the bustle of the maids and Mrs. Roberts stayed Anna’s tongue. In truth, she could have spoken freely, for nothing either Hugh or Tristan did would surprise them, but she was not to know that. He expected that at some point she would try to privately enlist one of the members of staff for help in escaping, and he found himself wishing he might eavesdrop upon the rejection he fully expected her to receive.
“Please, sit.” He waved her to a deep chair where she curled up, looking immediately small and fragile. He organized a tray of food to be brought up, and as soon as the bath was ready, he sent the staff away.
“Here,” he said, and beckoned to her.
She looked up. She had eaten silently, and he saw her wage war within herself; she didn’t want to accept anything of his, but she knew she had to eat. She raised her eyebrows at him, and did not stand up. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for the food.”
“Are you not coming to your bath then?”
“Yes, sir, as soon as I am alone.”
“No, I think not.” She tipped her chin up at him. As if he hadn’t already seen her naked!
“Think you to escape? Perhaps you intend on jumping from the window, where you will surely break your neck - or breaking through the door, though I am not sure how. No, I shall stay and perform all the offices of a lady’s maid, and some more besides.”
She frowned at him which made him laugh at first, but when she did not move, he felt his impatience rise. “Come now. Up and into the bath - it was your request and I indulge you.”
“Turn around, then, please,” she said, finally getting to her feet.
He snapped. “No one orders me, Miss Rossington, least of all a woman of fallen virtue who was caught running along in London without a hat or a chaperone. So off with your clothes, or I shall complete my brother’s actions and finish tearing them to shreds. I have already seen your body, remember?”<
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There was a moment of tension. He waited for her to respond and he realized he didn’t know what she was going to do - the frisson excited him. Might she shout at him for calling her a fallen woman? Or would she throw the plate at his head? Or would she simply obey? He hadn’t met a woman he could not predict before, and he watched her keenly.
Clearly, all those options were going through her mind, and eventually she chose the path of least resistance. Her fingers fumbled at her badly-tied belt and pulled at the jacket and dress that was barely held around her body with makeshift ties and buttons. Her undergarments were in slightly better array, and she hesitated in her shift and bloomers, looking to the floor with her face turning red.
He took a step towards her - not meaning, really, to intimidate her. He was just drawn to her and her body. She jerked her head up and stepped back, her flesh growing goose bumps.
He should have been appalled at himself for frightening her but the way she quailed made him smile. He wanted her to know that he was a strong, powerful man; he wanted to feel his muscular body wrap around her soft feminine one. Her skin was pale and her hair tumbled about her shoulders in mounds of yellow, like a pure goddess.
He longed to possess her.
“Get in the bath,” he growled, alarmed at his strange need for her.
Her fingers flew to her shift and she dragged her final garments over her head, curling her body around herself as if she could hide away. She tiptoed to the deep bath and sank into the milky waters. Mrs. Roberts had flavored it with scented salts, and once Anna’s body was submerged, it was impossible to see her through the opaque liquid. Just her head and shoulders, and the tops of her knees, poked through.
As the hot water soaked in, pain chased across her face, followed by gradual relaxation. He reminded himself that she had suffered unspeakable brutality at the hands of his brother, and that she would be bruised and sore.
But then, he thought, that was a woman’s lot in life and she would already be used to her monthly flows. And it wasn’t his concern what his brother did, except when it jeopardized their businesses.
“Feeling better?” he asked.
“You almost sound like you care.”
He shrugged, and pulled a chair close to the side of the bath. She sunk a little lower in the water, scowling. “Must you watch me?”
“Yes, I must,” he retorted. “It is my house, my bath, and my good nature that you are here at all.”
“Your good nature-!”
“I could hardly turn you loose in the state you were.”
“You cannot twist your actions around to make it seem as if you are in the right!” she exclaimed. “How dare you!”
He laughed at her, and she subsided. After a moment, she said, “I do believe that you enjoy making me angry. It is a game to you, isn’t it?”
“All life is a game, pretty one.”
She scowled again. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Try to flatter me, calling me pretty, as if this is all normal. None of this is correct. It is as if…”
He waited but she dipped her head. He reached out to stroke a tendril of hair away from her face, and his fingers brushed her cheek. “It is as if… what?”
She looked up at him sideways, her eyes large and liquid with imminent tears. At last, the stress of the day was catching up with her, and she was breaking. “It is as if now I have fallen out of the bounds of convention, and my chastity taken, everything else is fair game. Here I am, naked in the presence of a man I do not know except that he is the brother of the man who ruined me! I ought to be screaming and crying or threatening to take my own life. Yet…”
“I think you are past screaming and crying.”
“That is true,” she whispered. “Since…”
He waited. Footsteps slithered past the door, out in the corridor beyond. Somewhere, a bird was singing. She flapped her hand in the water and it splashed, and she sighed as she watched the ripples. “Well, oh, what does it matter? You may as well know. I was out in the street on my own, because I could not bear to be in the stuffy salon of Lady Frances for one moment longer. My mother was there, and my friends - or at least, my acquaintances. My one true friend… Lucy… my cousin… she is dead now.”
“Ahh,” he said, thinking this was the problem. A simple bereavement. He kept his hand on the back of her head.
“One year ago. And in the same accident, my… the man who is now to be my husband.”
“Oh. Also dead? I am sorry to hear that,” he murmured, and to his own ears he did sound suitably sympathetic.
“No, but injured and damaged. Now, we are to be wed. Can you imagine that? Not that he cares for me, particularly. So as you see; I am alone.”
He perceived the marriage was made to suit others, as was always the way in society. So, her best friend’s bereaved fiancé was to be her husband? He waited for the flood of tears but strangely she tipped her head back, nestling against his hand, and stared across the room, her face set and hard. “Yes,” she continued, “So you see now why I am past screaming and crying. All is gone, all is ruined. Even the marriage that I didn’t want now cannot happen, so that is something good. And so.”
“And so?” Tristan had to admit to himself that he was moved by her predicament, even while his baser instincts told him that this was a boon to him. She was low, vulnerable, friendless and alone; ripe for the picking, then.
She shrugged, causing the round tops of her breasts to float up and briefly break through the water. “And so. I do not know.”
He decided to strike. He resumed stroking her head, letting his fingers play in her damp soft hair, and from time to time he brushed against her neck and shoulders lightly. “Well, let me assure you that you are safe here. Why not stay, at my hospitality, for a little while? You can recover, and decide on your next action. Perhaps you might write to your parents. Or seek a position as a governess although I must confess that would fill me with utter and abject sorrow.”
She turned to face him, her eyes almost hopeful, and he wondered if she really was as eager for compliments as any other woman. Perhaps they were all the same, in the end. “Why so?” she asked quietly.
“You would be wasted as a governess, completely wasted. Why, such beauty to be hidden away? You would be hated by the mistress of the house as she would be convinced you’d turn the master’s eye. You would be lusted after and pursued by all the male staff. And the master himself would simply take what he chose, and he would choose you. I have seen this sorry tale played out a thousand times, Miss Rossington. Anna,” he added, letting his hand rest on the back of her neck. His thumb continued to stroke her soothingly.
She caught her lip in her teeth when he used her name - one more impropriety, he knew, and it was a calculated one. He was testing her out, seeing how much he had relaxed her and made her willing.
She did not call him out on it, and he smiled.
“I think you are wrong,” she said. “And anyway, what else might I do now? No man will marry me. They will know…”
“They would not necessarily know,” he said. “I do not see why you cannot carry on as if nothing has happened. Come your wedding night, take a knife to your inner thigh and let out a little blood onto the sheet. That is all he need know.”
She shook her head. “I would know. It’s wrong. I cannot stand at an altar in the sight of God, wearing white as if I were a virgin.”
“You are still as innocent as one.” He exerted a steadily increasing pressure on the back of her neck, drawing her closer to him by slow degrees. Her eyes darted but she didn’t fight back as before.
“Sir,” she said, warningly, but he closed upon her at that, and stopped any further words with his lips. He kissed her as tenderly as he could, intending to woo her rather than ravish her.
But either way, he intended to have her, of course.
After all, what kind of man would he be if he let a beautiful, innocent, ripe young woman just slip t
hrough his grasp? She was naked in front of him! And she wasn’t pulling away from his kiss, either.
He let his spare hand creep forward, dipping first into the water and moving stealthily forward until he had touched her upper arm. At that, she broke away from his kiss. He noted, with deep satisfaction, that she was flushed and breathing heavily.
Before she could get a word of protest past her lips, he said, “There, now. That felt perfectly natural and pleasurable, did it not? And now your heart is racing and your parts are clenching with need, and it is exactly as bodies ought to be. What a fine thing! What my brother did to you was inexcusable, so I intend to set things right by showing you what it ought to feel like.”
“But sir, that will compound my sin…”
“No, not at all. I will negate it - cancel it out!” Tristan stood up and straddled the bathtub, standing over her and bending forward. He dipped his hands into the milky waters and sought her breasts, grasping them gently and palming her nipples. Her back arched, her desire responding involuntarily and she gasped.
“No, I-”
“Yes,” he said, very firmly. “I insist. I insist.”
She looked up at him, her eyes wide and starting to film with tears. Her lips parted but no sound escaped.
His hands snaked around, his shirt cuffs getting wet. He didn’t care; he had a dozen others. He lifted her clear out of the water and set her on the rug where she shone, her wet body catching the light, and he watched her as she dripped.
“A towel?” she asked tentatively.
“No,” he said. “I rather think I will fuck you as you are, you beautiful mermaid.”
At his crudity her brows furrowed but he gave her no more time to think. He said, “I will show you what my brother should have done.” He tore off his jacket, and wrestled his shirt over his head, and her eyes widened - but did not leave his naked torso. He could feel how his cock stirred in his breeches and his balls were tingling with need.
And he advanced upon her, and pushed her back onto the couch.
