The country home had been begun in Elizabethan times, the old redbrick and Gothic-arched windows covered with ancient ivies. As each successive generation added to the original structure, one architectural style overlay another, but the sprawling whole still looked as though it were wedded to the land, the grand scope of English history written on its exterior. They entered by the most recent Gothic-revival portico into a small secondary entrance hall gleaming with hand-rubbed paneling and massive silver pieces from India. No servants appeared, their escort two of the quasi-military troop that had flanked the carriage from London. Hugh was shown into a large bedroom suite on the main floor, the view of the rolling lawns falling away to a sylvan lake put there by Capability Brown like a perfect jewel in the green countryside.
"Pierce will be up shortly," the lady said, standing in the doorway.
Hugh swung around from the windows. "You've thought of everything," he drawled. "My compliments to your husband's thoroughness."
"Since Pierce served as your batman in India, my husband considered him appropriate for valeting you in this rather rustic abode. The staff is minimal for obvious reasons."
"While the mounted troop is large."
"Exactly. We dress for dinner despite the rural setting. You'll find your clothes in the dressing room." Although the marquis's brows rose at her last statement, she went on as though she were hostess under ordinary circumstances. "We keep country hours here; dinner is at eight." Moving back into the hall, she allowed the guard to swing the door shut.
It was locked, of course, but he had to check, and returning to the windows overlooking the lake, the Marquis of Crewe surveyed the countryside and pondered the startling circumstances of his captivity.
Pierce arrived shortly with servants carrying water for a bath, and once the staff were dismissed, the two men exchanged stories of their abductions. Pierce had been stopped in the mews behind Dalsany House, where the lane was narrow and out of sight of traffic. Both the tiger and groom had been taken as well. "I don't know for certain where they are, but I was most kindly treated considering. Why are we here?"
"Apparently I'm to stand stud to this nameless lady."
"A command performance," Pierce said with a sly smile. "You should manage."
"I dislike being coerced."
"If it's the lady I seen in the corridor with red hair and a right comely shape, sair, she'll make the coercion sweet enough I don't doubt."
"Her husband's a brute."
"Not likely that should matter none. Seems lots o' ladies you bed have husbands like that. They like you the better for it."
"Don't be so bloody reasonable, Pierce. This is fucking irritating to have some Balkan satrap decide I'm to produce his heir. Damn his impertinence. I'll bed whom I please."
"If'n it's just the coercion, sair, hell, there's men who pay for that in them fine brothels."
"I'm not one of them."
"I know, but she's a fine piece for all your temper. How can it mattera night or two with this'un after all the years of fucking, sair."
Another logical insight, Hugh thought with disgust, and had he not been glutted and weary of the concept, he could have been logical, too. "How many guards do they have?"
"It looks like forty or so; only a small troop followed you here. The rest were in place when I arrived. It won't be easy if'n you're thinking of escape." The small, wiry, sandy-haired man had served in Hugh's regiment in India and decided he preferred the position of batman to the marquis than the brutal life in the Army. He knew combat firsthand and was the very best man to have beside you in a tough fight.
"Are you allowed any freedom of movement?"
"Not without a guard at my side, sair. It's a right tight camp they've set up here."
"Do what you can in tracking their schedule. I don't intend to stay any longer than necessary."
"I'll try, sair, but I'm not allowed much movement. See what the lady has to say at dinner. If she doesn't wish to be here, either, she might be able to help. She goes about without a guard."
When Crewe entered the dining room at eight, his escort fell back, and with the silence that seemed habitual with them, they shut the doors behind him. The marquis stood motionless, taking in the large dimensions of the dining room, his gaze sweeping over the allegorical mural of Apollo driving his sun chariot above his head, coming to rest on his hostess yards away down the length of a mahogany table. She looked very small in the cavernous room.
"Do you have a name?" he asked, strolling toward her, his evening shoes sinking into the plush nap of a Tabriz carpet custom-made for the chamber.
"Call me Juliana."
"You don't have a name then. Why don't I call you Delilah?"
"It would be very much easier for us both if you simply did what you apparently do so well," she replied, ignoring his discourtesy. "The record of your female conquests is formidable. What do they call youThe Rajah?for the number of women in your personal harem. Do they take a number? How do you arrange to satisfy them all?"
"I see I was vetted."
"Most carefully. My husband has memorized theAlmanack de Gotha; your bloodlines are pure enough even for a descendant of Charlemagne. Do sit down. You'll find the menu to your liking."
"Your husband's spies are competent," he noted, taking his seat at the place setting beside her. "You have my favorite champagne."
"My husband's security system is extensive. And more than competent. Keep it in mind, my lord," she gently said, nodding minutely in the direction of the large standing portrait of a Hapsburg in Elizabethan hunting dress. At which point, a procession of serving men flowed through a hidden door in the linen-fold paneling, carrying an array of silver platters and dishes filled with the marquis's preferred foods. Each roast and fish, soup and vegetable, dainty and sweet were arranged French style down the long table, and as silently as the servants had appeared, they disappeared through the concealed door.
"I thought we might have an informal dinner tonightwithout staff. I hope you don't mind."
"And if I did?" he softly inquired, pouring his champagne goblet full, his sidelong glance sardonic.
"I told the prince you'd be difficult."
"Impossible, actually. Tell him that."
"I wish it were so simple, my lord. Marko unfortunately has no understanding of dissent." She rose from her chair, her pearl-embroidered gold net gown rustling faintly as she moved toward the splendid display of food. "Please help yourself," she remarked, as if immune to her companion's umbrage, spooning a serving of trout and morels on her plate. "You must be hungry after your recent days of debauch."
Surprise registered for a flashing moment in his eyes.
"One of the women was in my husband's employ," she explained, looking up from a decorative lobster aspic, the spoon in her hand suspended above the elaborate jellied mold, her breasts mounded high above her low décolletage equally lush. "Clarissa gave you high marks," she added, a faint smile lifting the corners of her mouth.
"This isn't going anywhere," the marquis curtly said, resisting the magnificent display of feminine pulchritude, lifting his glass to his mouth and emptying it down his throat. "No matter how damned urbane you are." He reached for the bottle again, refilled his glass, and, raising it to his lips, glared at her over the rim. "I wouldn't fuck you if you were the last woman on the face of the earth." After which pithy statement, he drained the glass, pushed his chair away from the table and rose to his full commanding height.
He was outrageously beautiful, she thought, all bristling resentment and affront, tall, powerful, dark as sinthe contrast to her despised husband so striking, she almost felt compelled to thank Marko for his good judgment. Although certainly, if her husband had any expertise, it was in the appraisal of young, good-looking men.
Turning from the table, the marquis stalked toward the door through which he'd entered only to be stopped midway by the appearance of four guardsmen stepping from behind a large ivory screen shielded by the ubiquitous
palms, which were de rigueur in every Edwardian interior.
They stood directly in his path, men as tall as he, armored in crimson leather jacks like some Byzantine praetorian guard, their swords drawn.
"They have orders to only detain you so you needn't fear the sharp blades," the lady remarked. "If you're sensible, you'll rejoin me for dinner. They have instructions to tie you in your chair and feed you if necessary. Not my orders," she calmly added, cutting her fish. "And if it were possible to apologize enough for this distasteful situation, I wouldmost profusely. But I learned long ago not to ignore my husband's commands and I suggest you do the same. There are a dozen more guards in the adjoining room."
Hot-tempered or not, he couldn't take on sixteen men. And, cursing, he turned to retrace his steps.
"For your information," she quietly said as he sat down again, "the estate is well secured, too. Or did Pierce tell you?"
"And how areyou guarded?"
She seemed to stiffen slightly, but her smile when she spoke was so genial, he questioned his observation. However, her reply was pitched low, her words barely audible. "I'm guarded always. Please, have something to eat, my lord," she went on in a normal tone. "You'll enjoy the roast beef."
And dinner proceeded as if they were actors on a stage. He ate in a minimal way, drank two bottles, responded to the lady's conversational gambits in a desultory fashion, and, in general, planned revenge on his unknown adversary. The marquis had been born and bred a golden child, gifted with all of nature's bounty: beauty of face and form; wealth beyond measure; the bluest of blood and lineage; intelligence rarely found in those of his class; the enterprise to work as hard as he played. And he intended to find his way out of this snare, no matter how many guards were in place.
But he didn't understand the price of failure when the despotic Prince Marko of Badia was displeased. Men died at his orders, the bastinado his discipline of choicehis principality remote from the civilized world when it suited him.
Both his wife and guards understood they must heed his commands.
So once the marquis had been returned to his suite after dinner, the lady entered his bedchamber a brief time later, elegantly robed in green cut velvet against the cool evening. A fire had been lit in the grate, and the marquis, still dressed, stood at the window, a bottle in his hand, drinking away his discontent. He didn't turn at the sound of her voice nor when she came up behind him and, reaching up, touched his shoulder.
"Go away," he said, lifting the cognac bottle to his mouth.
"I can't. No more than you can."
"If he's not here, you can do anything you damned well please. I'm not fucking you. How many times do I have to say it?" The stars shouldn't be shining so brilliantly tonight, he sullenly thought, when he was so afflictedhis sense of injustice keen, the idea of captivity galling.
"You have to."
He swung around so violently, startled, she jumped back. "No," he whispered, unbridled rage vibrating in his voice. "I don't."
He took a threatening step forward, but she stood her ground. She'd learned long ago to never show fear.
He carefully set the bottle down as if to restrain his more brutish urges and, towering over her, quietly said, "Get out of this room."
She raised her hand the merest distance from her side, a gesture so small it would have gone unnoticed had she not been closely watched.
The dressing-room door opened and his four warders from dinner strode into the room, their faces impassive.
"Tie the marquis to the bed," the Princess Marko softly said.
He didn't succumb passively, and during the struggle, additional guards were called in, several of them bearing damage from the marquis's powerful fists before they were able to subdue him sufficiently to tie his wrists and feet. He was carried to the bed and placed on his back on the crimson brocade coverlet, four guards firmly holding him down while four others untied his feet and, slipping his shoes off, secured his ankles to the bed posts with thick, braided silk cord. Restrained by the weight of four guardsmen, his wrists were then untied and, after forcing his arms above his head, he was bound to the headboard with knots pulled so tight, there was no question of him gaining his freedom.
One of the guardsmen spoke to the princess in an unfamiliar language, his phrases in the nature of a question. She shook her head slightly, replied in a few brief words and waved them out. Without even a glance at the bed, she turned away from the door, walked to a chair by the fire, sat down and, resting her head against the pillowed chair back, gazed into the flickering flame. The heavy Genoa velvet of her gown spread in folds at her feet, the opulent fabric lush, touchable, like her pale skin and silken hair. The delicacy of her features, the tumble of her loosened hair on her shoulders, gave her a look of innocence at odds with the depraved circumstances.
The silence was a balm to her agitated senses, the dancing flame mesmerizing, and she wished for a moment she could sit here forever in this suspended moment of time. But she couldn't, she knew, reality too intense and demanding, the requirements of her hermitage in the country exacting. She was to conceive an heir to Marko's title. Like the marquis, she was a prisoner… worsehis durance vile would end in a month and hers would not.
The lady before the fire evinced such melancholy, even in his vengeful mood, the marquis was struck by her sadness. And her words from dinner reminded him she was no more free than he. "Come and talk to me," he neutrally said, surveying the room, wondering where the peepholes and listening posts were.
She looked up, but neither moved nor replied.
"I'm not asking to be untied. You're safe enough."
"A relative term."
"Come closer," he cajoled, his understanding of women acute after years of sharing their beds. She might be as interested in her freedom as he was in his. "Tell me exactly what's expected of me," he added, wanting to coax her near so they could talk with less fear of being overheard.
"Nothing out of the ordinary for you, if gossip is true."
"I can't hear you," he murmured, arching a brow toward the dressing-room door, where the guards apparently had set up their watch.
She seemed to understand, for she rose and walked toward him.
"Sit down," he suggested when she stood indecisive at the foot of the bed. "Tell me your name."
She sat a circumspect distance away, and when she said, " Sofia " in little more than a whisper, he felt a curious provocation quite distinct from logic. Maybe it was the sultry undertones of her voice or the wafting sweet scent of her hair; maybe it was because he'd loved a Sofie once who'd died when they were both very young and he'd never loved anyone again.
This Sofia 's lashes were sooty dark as if they'd been kohled although they hadn't, and her eyes were like tamped green flame. And her flamboyant auburn-haired beauty wasn't like his Sofie at all, who had been very blond and childlike and much too young to die. But provocation and beauty aside, he had no intention of fathering a child on this unknown woman. "Is there any way you can get us out of here?" he murmured. "I'll protect you from your husband."
Instant fear shown in her eyes.
"Bend down and kiss me," he whispered, "so we can talk."
She hesitated, skittish under the surveillance.
"I could say seduce me if you can," he murmured, challenge in his dark gaze, his mouth quirked in a smile.
"I wouldn't have to kiss you for that." How curious that he could almost make her smile when so much in her life was cheerless.
"You might enjoy it."
"And so might you."
"Not likely," he said in truth and also to nettle, wanting her to move nearer.
Both considered themselves jaded, worldly, immune to trembling anticipation, but when she accepted his challenge or his offer to talk and moved closer, gracefully leaned forward when her silken hair brushed his face and her perfume pervaded his nostrils, when she stroked her palms lightly down his temples and held his finely modeled face between her hands, they both felt a
n irrepressible impatience, a restless enticement quite distinct from previous amorous encounters. "I think I hear choirs of angels," he lightly breathed.
"Nocherubim," she whispered, her voice as teasing.
Then their lips touched and pure lust dissipated more temperate images of heavenly bliss. His body instantly responded, the shock of desire so intense he wondered if he'd been drugged at dinner. She pulled away as if burned and sat trembling beside him.
"Untie me," he whispered.
She seemed to come back from some inner world and, appalled at her response, at what she perceived as the disreputable marquis's expertise and cunning, she said, cool and brisk, "Let's keep this impersonal."
"It's too late."
"You're wrong."
"I can make you hear those cherubim anytime you want." Seduction was so familiar to him, even he didn't know whether it was emotion or necessity driving him. But this woman was the only way to freedom.
That he knew.
"Untie me. It's safe enough with all the guards. And if we must dothis… baby making," he gently said, his gaze guileless, "why not make it more pleasant?"
Debating his sincerity, she gazed at him, his power undiminished despite his bondage. He stretched the length of the large bed, his powerful musculature evident beneath the fine wool of his evening clothes, his thighs and biceps straining the fabric. And then her glance slipped downward and his arousal brought a heated blush to her face.
"There are enough guards to protect you," he quietly reminded her and, taking note of her gaze, insolently added, "Do you like it?"
"Whether I do or not doesn't matter." Her eyes turned cool.
"I can make it matter if you'd let me," he lazily drawled.
"Maybe I'm offended by such libertine charm."
"Really. You don't look as though pleasure offends you."
"This isn't pleasure, Crewe not by the farthest stretch of the imagination."
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