by Gaelen Foley
No wonder he kept all these guards, she thought. Even drugged, she could see it was only logical that a wealthy peer who dabbled in the criminal underworld would want to take added measures to ensure his security.
Perhaps he was merely as paranoid as every tyrant in history, she thought, missing her dusty historical tomes. Caesar and his Praetorian Guards—and the modern-day Caesar, Napoleon, with his elite Grande Armée, or what was left of it, after Waterloo last summer.
Lord, if the duke was this paranoid, her situation might be even more dire than she had thought.
Ahead, the Norman keep with its four rounded towers rose against the darkness. The carriages filed into the mighty quadrangle, arriving in a formal courtyard at the center of the inner bailey.
As the horses clattered to a halt, a fresh wave of terror gripped her, any hope of some miraculous reprieve dwindling by the second.
Quickly, the smugglers began jumping out of their three vehicles. The door to the middle one flew open abruptly; a burst of frigid air rushed in.
“Come on,” Caleb ordered gruffly. Reaching into the carriage, the smugglers’ chieftain pulled her out.
Kate clutched the too-small blanket, trying to protect herself from the elements, but he ripped it away, leaving her exposed again in her harlot gown. “You don’t need that.”
When he set her on her feet, she let out a small cry of pain, for the thin white stockings she wore offered no protection against the coating of frost on the flagstones.
Doyle nodded to a pair of his underlings. “Help her walk.”
“Aye, sir.” The two men grabbed her by her elbows and began steering her toward the yawning Gothic entrance.
Teeth chattering, her body shivering violently, Kate did her best to keep up, but her legs were wobbly with fear, her almost-bare feet smarting with every step.
Still dizzy and disoriented, she thought surely anyone who saw her at this moment would believe she was indeed just a common drunken trollop. Oh, God, her highborn French mama would be turning over in her grave to see her now.
Fortunately, however, the cold served one purpose in Kate’s favor. It cleared away some of her stupor, forcing her to stay relatively alert and aware of her surroundings.
She kept a bleary eye out for any means of escape, either now or in the future. Scanning the smugglers who had come along, she did not see any of the three who had burst into her cottage on the night of her kidnapping.
She especially hated O’Banyon. Filthy, leering brute.
She had overheard the ringleader’s name on the night of her abduction when one of the two younger men had asked him for permission to rob her home after they had taken her captive. O’Banyon had generously allowed his assistants that night to help themselves to whatever money and jewelry they could find. Which wasn’t much, anyway.
The possessions Kate valued most of all sat on her bookshelf, but those ruffians were too crude to care about the likes of Aristotle and the Bard.
Just inside the windbreak of the mighty stone entrance, Doyle called a halt. “Untie her hands,” he ordered his underlings.
The men holding her arms looked at their chief in surprise.
“His Grace might not like it,” Caleb muttered. “Let him tie her up himself if that’s how he wants her. Don’t worry, she ain’t goin’ nowhere. Lass barely knows her own name at the moment. Go on, be quick about it!” he ordered, nodding at the ropes around her wrists. “I’m freezin’ me arse off.”
To Kate’s relief, the man he had spoken to obeyed, removing the knotted rope that bound her wrists.
Before moving on, however, Mr. Doyle stuck his finger in her face and issued a dire warning. “Don’t you give His Grace any o’ your lip, my girl, or you’ll wish you was back in that cellar. Ye mark me? He don’t take kindly to insolence. He’s a very powerful man. If you’re smart, you keep your mouth shut and do as he tells you. Understand?”
She nodded meekly, rubbing her chafed wrists.
The smugglers’ chief looked startled by the absence of her usual fighting spirit. The frown on Caleb’s lined face deepened to a scowl. “Aw, don’t look at me like that—some wee lamb brought to slaughter!” he blustered. “Dozens o’ lasses around these parts would give their right arm to spend a few nights in his bed! You’ll live.”
Kate stiffened, but his rough tone had succeeded in chasing off the threat of tears that stung her eyelids and calling up the last reserves of her courage. She steeled herself the best she could and squared her shoulders, determined to survive. By God, she would not go into this already cringing and defeated.
“Come on, you lot,” Doyle muttered to his men, shrugging off her ruin. “Let’s give the devil his due.” With that, he banged on the iron-studded door with the huge metal knocker.
At once, a wiry, black-clad butler admitted them.
“Evening, Mr. Eldred,” Caleb greeted him with all the charm he could muster as they stepped inside.
The butler bowed like an animated skeleton in black clothes. “Mr. Doyle.” He had shrewd, deep-set eyes, a bony face, and an air of gaunt, foreboding stillness. Past his receding hairline, a storm cloud of wild gray hair stuck out in all directions at the back of his head.
His expression inscrutable, Eldred the butler glanced at Kate, but was apparently too shrewd to ask any questions. He turned away, lifting his lantern high. “This way, please. The master is expecting you.”
Their whole party followed as Eldred led them down a tall, shadowy corridor, all stone and aged plaster and carved dark wood. Kate stumbled along on her frozen feet, staring all around her. She had never been in a castle before, but it was hard to believe that anyone could actually live in such a place.
It was not a home, it was a fortress, a mighty barracks left over from the days of knights and dragons.
Everything was dark and hard, cold and threatening. Ancient weapons, shields and pieces of armor, tattered battle flags hung on the walls instead of paintings. There was not one cozy thing about it, yet perversely, despite its unwelcoming atmosphere, the castle’s historical significance made her forget her dread for one or two seconds as her scholar’s unquenchable curiosity was roused about the place, the battles it had seen, and all the other mysterious things that might have happened here over the centuries.
Then she noticed her captors becoming increasingly nervous.
“ ’Hoy, Eldred.” Caleb leaned toward the butler as they trudged down a darkly paneled corridor. “How’s his mood tonight? ”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“The Beast!” he whispered. “Is he in a foul temper?”
The butler eyed him in disapproval. “I’m sure I couldn’t say.”
“So, that’s a yes,” Caleb muttered.
Then Eldred led them into a cavernous great hall with a soaring vaulted ceiling.
Darkness clustered thickly between the arching beams. Moldering tapestries draped the side walls here and there. Overlooking the room, a small balcony—the minstrel’s gallery—jutted out slightly from the far wall. Closer to hand, several pieces of thick, ancient furniture provided barren comfort.
Two black-clad guards, like those stationed at the gatehouse, were posted in the nearest corners. They stood at attention, as immovable as the ancient suits of armor that adorned the great hall.
The only real sign of life glowed from the blazing bonfire in the yawning fireplace, far away down at the dais end of the hall—and it was there that Kate caught her first glimpse of the Beast.
She knew at once that it was he.
The huge, crackling power of his presence filled the hall before he even turned around. His back to them, the Duke of Warrington stood before the fire, a towering figure silhouetted against the flames.
He was toying with a large, strange weapon with a long, notched blade, some sort of deadly cross between a lance and a sword. Balancing it on its tip, he twirled it slowly in a most ominous fashion.
Eldred announced them with a polite cough. “A
hem, Your Grace: Caleb Doyle and company.”
He lifted the weapon, resting the bar of its long handle on his huge shoulder.
Her heart leaped up into her throat as the iron giant slowly pivoted to face them. He paused, studying them from across the hall with a dissecting stare.
Then he began prowling toward them, his long paces unhurried yet relentless: a medieval warlord in modern-day clothes. Each fall of his mud-flecked boots boomed in the hollow vastness of the chamber.
Kate’s mouth hung open slightly as she stared at him in fear and some degree of awe.
Caleb whipped off his hat and took a couple steps forward, gesturing to his men to do the same.
The smugglers’ party advanced in cringing dread, with Kate in the center.
Her stare stayed locked on the warrior duke as he sauntered closer. She searched in vain for any sign of softness in the man, but instead, a capacity for ruthless force emanated from him. He was hard and dark and dangerous, intimidation incarnate.
It was clear he had just arrived, his wild, windblown mane of thick sable hair tied back in a queue. She studied him, wide-eyed. The dark knotted cloth around his neck was nothing so formal as a cravat. His loose white shirt hung open a bit at the neck, disappearing into a black waistcoat that hugged his lean, sculpted torso.
Rain and sleet still dotted his black riding breeches, while the reddish firelight gleamed on the blade that he wielded so idly as he advanced, as though he’d been born with it in his hand.
Heart pounding, Kate could not take her eyes off him.
He appeared to be in his midthirties; she scanned his square, rugged face as he drew closer. He had thick, dark eyebrows with a scar above the left like the mark of a thunderbolt. His skin was unfashionably bronzed, as though he had spent years in sunnier climes. His nose was broad but straight, the grim set of his hard mouth bracketed by lines.
His eyes were terrifying.
Steely in color and expression, they were narrowed with suspicion, their depths gleaming with a banked fury that she realized he was waiting to unleash on the smugglers—and might take out on her, as well, before the night was through.
Dear God, he could kill her easily, she understood at once. The man was huge, nearly six and a half feet tall, with arms of iron, and shoulders like the Cornish cliffs. He looked strong enough to lift a horse, while she only came up to the center of his massive chest.
No wonder the smugglers were terrified of him, despite Caleb’s claim to the contrary back at the village. Warrington had the imposing physique of a conqueror, and all the worldly power of the aristocracy’s highest rank, save the royal family.
She tried to back away as the duke stalked closer, running a bold stare over the length of her.
“What is this?” he growled softly at Doyle, nodding at her. She reacted instinctively to his notice, pulling against her captors’ hold in panic. She tried to run.
They stopped her.
“A gift, Your Grace!” Caleb Doyle exclaimed in forced joviality.
As the smugglers dragged her over to him, Warrington studied her like a predatory wolf.
“A gift? ” he echoed in a musing tone.
Caleb thrust her toward him with a cheerful grin. “Aye, sir! A token of our regard, to welcome you back to Cornwall after all this time! A fine young bed warmer for a cold winter’s night. Right little beauty, ain’t she?”
He was silent for a long moment, perusing her intently. Then he answered barely audibly, his deep voice reverberated like a distant rumble of thunder drawing closer: “Indeed.”
Caught in his stare, Kate could not even move. She was lucky she remembered to keep breathing.
When Caleb laughed again nervously, the others followed suit, but Warrington barely took note of them, his stare trailing over her in appreciation.
“Very thoughtful of you, Doyle,” he murmured, taking lecherous note of how the chill affected certain regions of her anatomy.
His brazen stare erased any last remaining hope that he might not be a party to their crimes. Of course he was.
She was naught but merchandise to him.
“We thought you’d like ’er, sir. We brought a few other tokens of our regard, as well—” Doyle gestured hastily to his followers. “Show him. Hurry!” His men leaped into motion, presenting their lord with a case of premium brandy and a selection of fine tobaccos.
He barely glanced at these offerings, however, still studying Kate with a speculative gleam in his eyes.
She barely knew what to do with herself. She had never been looked at this way by a man—inspected, nay, devoured.
Warrington’s glance flicked down from her still-damp hair to her stockinged feet, assessing her from top to bottom; then, to her surprise, he stared, hard, into her eyes—but only for a moment.
In that fleeting instant, she was not sure what she read in his penetrating gaze, other than a chilling degree of intelligence, like a man in the midst of a chess game.
“The gift is, er, acceptable, Your Grace?” Caleb ventured in a delicate tone.
The duke flashed a dangerous smile more potent than the laudanum.
“We’ll soon find out,” he said. Never taking his stare off her, he nodded to his silent guardsmen. “Put her in my chamber.”
Chapter 2
Kate gasped as two of his black-clad guards took ate gasped as two of his black-clad guards took her from the smugglers’ hold. She struggled to free her arms, scowling in woozy defiance. Damn and blast!
“Let go of me!” Her angry words came out slightly slurred.
“Is there a problem?” the duke demanded, glancing back in irritation.
“No, sir,” the guard on her right answered rather sheepishly as he gripped her elbow again.
“Don’t touch me!” Kate yanked away and nearly lost her balance. Steadying herself, she whirled to meet Warrington’s gaze with a curse for him on the tip of her tongue like a dart.
“Go upstairs and wait for me,” he ordered her.
Kate stopped, taken off guard by the velvet undertones in his deep voice. She forgot her anger for a heartbeat, arrested by the promise of pleasure in his smoky eyes; she stood motionless, staring at him but disoriented when the drug swept her up in its most disturbing side effect yet.
Attraction. Arousal.
A fatal fascination with him gripped her. He was beautiful, undeniably, but an utter mystery to her. One she suddenly desired to solve, obsessed as she had always been with finding hidden answers. An impetuous hunger to taste his lips stormed through her blood. As if outside herself, she saw, of course, this was the maddest possible reaction.
She couldn’t seem to control it. Dear God, the devilish tincture would almost make her eager for her own ravishment. How humiliating!
At the same time, the satisfaction in his eyes, as if he was thoroughly used to being wanted by women, his air of towering pride, awoke the slumbering fighter within her.
How dare he have this effect on me?
Who did he think he was, the big arrogant brute? A rush of bracing anger slammed her back to her senses, but as she shook off the strange sensation of lust, Caleb’s warnings echoed through her mind. Keep your mouth shut. Do as he tells you. Kate stifled a low growl. Easier said than done, she thought, but at least now her wary sense of self-preservation had returned.
Given that Warrington’s pride seemed even larger than his castle, she suddenly realized it would be folly to dare reject him in front of all his men. Only a fool would give him a reason to punish her. Don’t make it worse for yourself.
“Parker?” he said in a long-suffering tone.
“Yes, Your Grace. Sorry, sir.” The guard on her right, apparently Parker, took hold of her arm again. “Come along, miss. His Grace has got business to attend to with these fellows.”
Kate suspended her efforts to fight, realizing direct confrontation with such an invincible foe was not going to get her anywhere. She stood a better chance of dashing away from these two guards
once they were out of the Beast’s vicinity.
Bide your time. Be patient, she told herself.
Though she shot a parting glare at the smugglers, she offered no further objections, but let the duke’s black-clad henchmen escort her out of the great hall.
Passing the dais end of the chamber, they exited through the archway beneath the minstrels’ gallery.
At once, the two men shepherded her up a lonely staircase carved of stone. The merest glimmer of starlight shone through the stained glass of the tall, pointed window at the landing where the stairwell turned.
Though her brain was still working slowly, she cast about for a ruse of some sort that would help her slip away from the guards. “I-I need to use the necessary,” she forced out all of a sudden.
“Don’t you get sick on our floors,” the man the duke had addressed as “Parker” warned her sternly. “Hold on, the garderobe’s right up here.”
“Garderobe?” she mumbled.
Reaching the upper floor, they tugged her over to a sort of closet at the end of hallway. Parker took a lantern off a peg on the wall and handed it to her.
“Take this with you. And mind you don’t fall into the moat while you’re at it.” He opened the door to the garderobe for her, but Kate immediately recoiled at the smell—beyond disgusting!
Bringing her hand up to cover her mouth and nose, she shook her head violently, backing away. “Never mind!”
The guards laughed. “That’ll clear your head, won’t it, you little tosspot?” the other one said.
“Ah, leave ’er alone, Wilkins. She can’t help what she is. Come on, you,” Parker muttered. “There’s a chamber pot in the solar if you’re goin’ to puke.”
Actually, Kate had not felt queasy until now, but the horrible stench of the garderobe had temporarily routed all thoughts of escape.
