“I’m pleased to meet you, Fleur. I am Danabella. I don’t know what it means, but my mother liked that name.” She smiled as she accepted Fleur’s proffered hand.
Their introductions over, the two women turned to Lorcan. “Shall we go release your other...guest?” Dana asked with an exaggerated smile.
“Of course.” Lorcan held out his arm. “After you, ladies.”
The two women practically flounced out of the room, if a woman could flounce while wearing a skintight jumpsuit.
Lorcan followed them as they practically ran down the corridor. He had eyes only for his mate. Even with her hair that sickly shade of streaked brown, she was a beautiful woman. He knew her hair would, one day, be as beautiful as it was the day he’d first seen her. They had worked the sixteen-thousand acre plot of land as farmers for nearly a year before finding her. Originally, they had thought to make it a ranch, but didn’t want to leave animals untended during their trip home. If they returned permanently, they would buy animals and leave the farming to those who knew what they were doing.
Like others of her ilk, Dana had answered their cry for a wife. However, only her scent had stirred their interest when they followed their posted letter back to the general store in Philadelphia where she had impatiently awaited their reply.
The two women made their way down the hallway to the next set of lights on the wall. The screaming subsided, the silence obviously like a balm to the other women’s frazzled nerves. They both seemed to relax a bit. Reaching out, Dana touched the pad much like Lorcan had a few minutes earlier and the door opened upward, just as it had before.
“Mon Dieu!” Fleur leaned forward and stared up to where the door had disappeared into the ceiling. “How does the door do this and where does it go?”
“It slides upward into a hollow space in the wall above.” Lorcan explained the best he could. The door didn’t actually fit into the space above it, but they wouldn’t understand how it actually disappeared until they needed it again and he didn’t have time to explain it. His explanation was as good as any.
“Oh!” Fleur kept staring at the ceiling. “How clever.”
“Yes. Shall we rescue your friend?” He directed this question at Fleur, because she sat next to the other woman on the train.
“Friend?” Fleur’s face was blank for a moment before she made a face and waved her arm. “That is not my friend. That is the woman my father married only two years before he died.” She gave Dana a sideways glance. “I think he expired from exhaustion. That Amelie is ever so active. Always running here and there, wanting something.” She waved her kerchief with a sniff. “Friend? Ha! That woman would not know how to be someone’s friend.”
The three of them entered the room, looking for the woman in question. Silent, she lay prone on the bed, her face buried in a pillow, her hands holding it to her face.
Lorcan shook his head, disgusted. “The damned fool woman.” He strode over to the bed, yanked the pillow from her grip, and stared down at her for a moment. “Carella?” He spoke the name almost gingerly. He hated having to call upon the sentient computer. The damned thing always gave them a hard time. If he could have put the thing into a male body, he would have beaten it to death long ago.
“Yes, Captain?”
“Captain? He is a captain and we are on his ship. He is taking us to a place where no one will ever see us again.” Fleur wailed to Dana. “You don’t think he will make us painted ladies, do you?”
While Dana looked frightened, at least she had the presence of mind not to irritate the man whom she thought her captor. Smart girl.
“Please transport the lady to the medical bay and see to her health.”
“Which lady, Captain?”
Which lady? Sighing, Lorcan shoved his fingers through his hair, tempted to yank a bit of it out. “I would obviously like you to transport the lady who is unconscious, Carella.” If it had been human, Lorcan may have suspected Carella was dense, but it was impossible for the living machine to be stupid.
“None of the ladies are unconscious, Captain. If you refer to the woman on the bed, I would suggest you step back. The rate of her heartbeat and the tensing of her muscles indicate she intends to kick you in the—”
Pain exploded in his groin, and Lorcan almost fell to his knees as he fought the urge to vomit. The contact of the woman’s foot against his sensitive balls nearly brought him down. “Damn, and I’d wanted children, too.”
Chapter Four
Dana watched the captain’s face as he almost hit the gleaming floor. He held his family jewels as though he thought they would fall off if he let them go. Perhaps they would. What she knew about men would fill a thimble.
If the color of his face was any indication, the captain was in a lot of pain. It served him right. He had no business bringing them here regardless of his intentions. Dana bit her lip. Even though he was her captor, she felt sorry for him. In truth, she felt more for him than she should have. She could only assume it had something to do with his commanding presence and dark good looks. Whatever it was, her stomach did little flips when he was around, and he made her shiver.
She had no business feeling anything for him. She’d just met the man, for goodness sake. Dana bit her lip, wondering if they were in danger or if he was nothing more than a gentleman who had helped three young women in distress? What gentleman wouldn’t rescue three ladies in dire straits? She could hardly call being on a train with such strange-looking creatures as she’d seen earlier anything but dire straits. They had needed rescuing and he had done just that. Still, she thought as she looked around, he should have taken them to the sheriff, not brought them to this strange place.
Reaching out, she ran her fingers down the smooth wall. Cool to the touch, it felt odd. It didn’t feel like wood or the plaster walls in the home where she grew up. It felt strangely smooth and cold like the jade her father once brought home from the orient.
A low groan caught her attention, and she looked back at the man the invisible voice had called “captain.” Watching her uncle in such circumstances may have been amusing, but this wasn’t her uncle, and the man looked so miserable she felt bad for just thinking it.
Still, rescuing them was no excuse for undressing them while they were unconscious and burning her dress. It didn’t matter how bad it smelled. In her opinion, that alone was criminal. She thinned her lips and made up her mind. “We should find our own way out of here while we can.” Dana looked at the other women in turn. “What do you two think?”
“We must find our clothing first.” Amelie stepped forward as she examined her strange jumpsuit with distaste. “Whoever these”—she paused with a disdainful sniff, reminiscent of her stepdaughter—“cretins are, they know nothing of proper ladies’ attire.”
“He said they burned my dress. I can only assume they did the same with yours.” It was true that the captain had said he’d burned her horrible dress, but he had made no mention of the other ladies’ clothes. However, Dana knew if they stuck around looking for their things long enough, someone would catch them snooping around and lock them in the strange rooms again. Besides, there was no proof that the man had even brought the bag that she’d kept on the seat next to her. The last thing she remembered was picking it up and clutching it to her chest with horror when she saw those things. The word of an abductor meant little to her.
“We’ll have to go now, while he’s still incapacitated.” Their captor started to straighten, taking deep breaths. In a few moments, he would be able to stop them. “He’s in no condition to follow us now, but it looks as though he is recuperating quickly. We’ll find the local sheriff and send him back for our things.”
Amelie turned and gave the man another vicious kick to the groin as he stood bent over, his hands on his knees. The new assault brought the man down. He rolled to the floor, clutching his crotch.
Biting her lip, Dana was torn between staying to help the poor man and running. The part of her that was attracted
to him wanted to stay until she was certain he would recover. The thought of her husband-to-be gave her pause. After a moment’s thought, self-preservation won out and she turned to the door. “Follow me. He told me how to get out of this area…sort of.”
“Mademoiselle Dana is right, Maman Amelie.” Fleur took her stepmother’s hand and gave it a gentle tug. “We do not know how many fiends the captain has in his employ or how large his crew complement is.” She paused to peer around the large room. “If this is a ship, I fear it is the largest and most strange vessel I have ever seen.”
Dana feared she must agree with the young Frenchwoman as she led the way down the wide corridor to the door at the end of the hall. All three women gasped when the door opened to an even bigger passageway and a large, strange window that showed nothing more than darkness and what looked like the stars in the sky.
Off in the distance, they could see a large, blue orb spinning near what looked like the sun. Amelie fainted at the sight while Dana could do little more than stare. Well...if she wanted to escape her uncle permanently, this certainly was a solution.
“Merde,” Fleur said as she stared out into the darkness, her hand on her throat, her slender fingers tapping the side of her neck. “We have been taken by...by...” She grew silent, her terrified gaze meeting Dana’s. “We have been taken by men like those in the stories of the Indians.” Her eyes grew wider. “We are in some great, flying ship! What shall we do?”
Drawing herself up to her full height, Dana took a deep breath. “We shall do whatever we have to do to survive, Fleur.” She knelt next to Amelie, fanning the other woman’s face with her hand. She looked up at Fleur. “Remember, Fleur. We all must do whatever we can to survive, including associating with those who have so obviously taken us from our homes.”
Fleur blanched then nodded. “Above all else, we must survive.” She stood straight, her shoulders back and chin up. “We can endure anything.” Then, with a sigh, her shoulders slumped and a tear streaked down her cheek. “I fear I am not so strong as you. I cannot survive if these men try to... if they want to...” She left off at that, and Dana had no words of comfort to offer.
In truth, she had no idea what she would do if they wanted the same from her. No. The only option open to them was escape. There must be a way back down to the ground. She had a train to catch. With luck, her Mr. Matthew Harker would pay for another train ticket for her. If not, she wasn’t sure what she would do.
Dana led the two women down the large corridor. There had to be some way to get outside. If there was a way in, there was a way out. She glanced at the window just over her right shoulder and shook her head. That scene couldn’t possibly be real. If it was, it would mean that she and her companions had been taken by creatures not of their world.
She had heard of such creatures in the Native American folklore. The Indians she knew were a colorful group who weren’t afraid to tell their outlandish stories of the sky people. Of course she never believed in them…before now.
The corridors were long and seemed to all curve in the same direction. Why, she had no idea, unless the native’s stories were right and there were strange people who lived in round ships in the sky, but that idea just seemed ludicrous.
“How long before we find the door?” Fleur asked for what seemed like the hundredth time.
Dana sighed. “I don’t know.” She tried hard to keep the frustration from her voice, but it was difficult. Of the three of them, it seemed as though she were the only one not whining. Why did she get stuck being the grown-up? She just wanted to give up and go back to her strange room with the big bed and cry herself to sleep.
Her thoughts drifted back to the strange man they had left rolling on the floor in pain. Other than his companion who was just as good-looking, he was the most handsome man she had ever met. Her stomach did a little flip when she thought about him.
He was tall, very tall. In fact, Dana was certain she had never seen two men of such great height before. They even made her seem small, and she was tall for a woman. It was probably why her father couldn’t marry her off before he died. She knew he didn’t want to leave her in her uncle’s care, but he didn’t have a choice.
Dana squared her shoulders. That didn’t matter now. She was on her way to the Dakotas to marry a man who wanted her no matter her flaws. With women in such short supply in the frontier, he would no doubt be happy to have her regardless of her height, just so long as she was healthy and of childbearing age.
Her thoughts wandered back to the captain. With his hair black as pitch and his eyes the color of coffee, it was no wonder she had the absurd idea that he had come from somewhere beyond the stars. It was as though he was like a character in one of the stories that her father bought in France. He used to read stories to her about men going round the moon.
She had never seen any man so tall, nor so handsome, as the captain and the man accompanying him. Perhaps their height was something that was normal on their world.
Dana stopped short at the thought of the other man and the possibility that he had come from some other place. The two women behind her ran into her back, causing her to jerk forward again. “Where is his friend?” She bit her lip and spun around to see if anyone followed them.
“Pardon?” Fleur asked from just behind her. “Did you say something, Mademoiselle Dana?”
“The captain was on the train with us. He had a friend with him. Where is he?”
“I do not care where the other bad man is. I only wish to disembark this vessel, post haste.” Amelie stomped her foot, her air of superiority firmly in place.
“I don’t think we can.” Dana made her way over to the large window and looked out. The large, blue orb was smaller still than it was before, and there was nothing beneath the ship that she could see. There was no land, no water. The only thing she could see was blackness and what looked like stars.
Her stomach got that strange, queasy feeling it got when she ran away from her uncle’s house. She was sure it was fear. It settled deep in her middle and made her feel ill. Was there nothing she could do to get off this…this strange ship and get herself to the Dakotas where she had a new life awaiting her?
“Perhaps they are not bad men,” Fleur said as she looked out over the blackness surrounding them. “What if they live here in this horrid place, and this black world drives them to do terrible things?” She wrung her hands together and began to pace. “What if they do not have wives?” Fleur spun around, an expression of both hopefulness and fear chasing across her face. “What if they have taken us to be wives to others such as themselves?” She smoothed her hair back, suddenly taken with the idea that she could possibly marry one of these men. “Do you suppose they would take woman of seventeen with no dowry?”
Ah, so that was it, was it? Poor Fleur was much like herself. She had no dowry. Well, that wasn’t quite true of Dana. Danabella Marie Worley had had a large dowry until the day her father died. That was when her uncle stole it and did goodness only knew what with it. No matter what her uncle did with the money, it still left Dana with nothing.
“I don’t know, Fleur. I only know that no matter what they want with us, it is a good sign that we are still alive.” She placed her hand over her roiling stomach as Fleur’s words echoed in her mind. What if the two men wanted wives? Was she prepared to give all to one of them in the same way she had agreed to give all to her unknown husband-to-be?
Chapter Five
Tarin checked the time and frowned. Lorcan should have returned from his visit with the ladies by now. As much as they both hated the thought that they had kidnapped the three women from their world, he knew they only did what they must to survive.
Without mates, their civilization would eventually crumble and die. They had no choice but to search out new worlds and hope to find compatible species with which to breed.
The rest of the crew was already excited at the prospect of a world filled with humans with whom they could procreate. Some of the
m already contemplated going back to Earth and living there among the inhabitants to help protect them as well as finally get families of their own. Their kind was both cursed and blessed with longevity. If one didn’t find their mates, their long life could be like a prison sentence. He could see why others would choose to stay on that world. In fact, he and Lorcan had contemplated the same no matter what their people said.
A part of him wanted to go back now, to use the transporter to return to the planet’s surface and to stay there amongst the humans to protect them from the invasion of a more advanced civilization, but that wasn’t up to him. It also wasn’t up to Lorcan. There were steps they all must take in order to list this world amongst the protected before they returned. Unfortunately, returning to their home world would put all of them in danger when the elitists found out about a world filled with humans who were of a compatible breed.
The elitists were a fanatical group who felt as though no matter how dire the straits of their world, they needed no new genetics introduced. They wanted their race to remain as pure as possible until the bitter end, and end it would.
According to their top geneticists, their civilization would see its last generation in approximately fifty years. Tarin and Lorcan refused to let their kind end so quickly and without a fight.
With these humans and their world filled with both male and female mates, there was no reason wolven kind should reach extinction. To insist on the pure blood of a race that had been diluted for thousands of years was simply ridiculous.
Mail-Order Bride [Taos Wolven Mates] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 3
