Oh, but he soon would.
Lance had agreed to “take care of things,” but only because he knew it required little effort to keep John in a stupor. By the time he’d had his talk with Gwen and reached her father’s study, the drunken fool was already faced down at his desk, snoring blissfully, leaving Lance to sit in his favorite chair and drink the man’s Bourbon by himself.
Growing bolder with every glass, he’d told his unconscious host exactly what he thought of him, and his attempts to keep Lance from his daughter. No need to toady up to the man who held the Willows in his grasp; hell, John would not have known had Lance leaned down and bit his face.
As his fear of John lessened, his comments grew more insulting, until Lance vibrated with a surging sense of power. Forgetting his defeat in the competition. Nurtured by drink, he became convinced that he’d vanquished Michael, once and for all, and because of its, Gwen-and more importantly, the Willows-would be his forever.
Drunk in more ways than one, he’d left John’s study to roam the halls, stuttering as if he already owned them. In his mind, Lance was not here as Jervis’s lacking, and signed to take care of things in his absence. He was lord and master, King of all he surveyed.
Droit seigneur, thoughts with an inner laugh as he stopped before her bedroom door. No more empty nights with a ring with an absent lust; he would storm her citadel and possess her at last. There was not a blessed thing her father could do to stop him.
Foolish Jervis; he should never have left for town.
Smacking his lips, Lance imagined Edith’s luscious breasts squeezed beneath his fingers, her whimpers of delight as he took her, hard and fast, like the strumpet she longed to be. There would be no more teasing, no dangling him on a sensual leash. He would show her–show them all–just who was master of the Willows.
He reached for the knob, anticipating her shocked expression he flung open her door. His smile swiftly vanished as he realized the door was locked.
His anger needed an outlet. It was more than one female in the house, wasn’t there? He even had permission to bed Gwen. Her uncle had given him that before he left.
He marched down the hall and yanked open her bedroom door. Finding the bed empty, on slept in, he felt another wave of fury wash over him. After all the trouble he had taken to warm her, had Gwen actually gone out? He was heading out the door, determined to go after her, when the truth eventually dawned this was no longer Gwen’s room. He heard that willful miss herself, complaining to her uncle about how Edith had moved her to inferior quarters down the hall.
Somewhat subdued, and not liking it, he made his way to her new bedroom. Annoying, how she’d whined about her accommodations. Always the little Princess, their Gwen, demanding the best and doing she damn well pleased.
Reaching her door, he thought back to their earlier conversation. Overly occupied she’d seemed, and entirely too flippant. Jervis was right. Lance would have to start hounding her every step, watching her day and night. Wouldn’t do to have Gwen thinking acting on her own.
His grasp tightened on the knob. Queen Gwen would soon learn who truly ruled the Willows. Oh yes, he would teach her soon enough how he expected his wife to behave.
Wife. His handle recoiled as the word echoed through his drunken brain. Desire drained out of him, leaving him week with dismay. What was he thinking of, coming here to Gwen’s room? This was the woman he had chosen to bear his child. Good Lord, he might just as well bed his mother…
Feeling as if his mother were actually there to punish him, he backed away from the door. Lance you must go slow with Gwen, mother had instructed; he cannot afford to be frightening her off with his baser passions. At least wait until he had the wedding ring on her finger.
“Sorry, mother,” he muttered, hurrying down the hall. Maybe he might better wait to talk to Gwen in the morning.
***
Michael looked at Gwen, huddled on the other side of his pirogue. He wished he had a more stable vessel. Design for slipping through the narrowest parts of the bayou, but the pirogue was more a canoe then the barges her ladyship was used to, and one good tantrum could well capsize them.
Though quiet enough now, Gwen had been scratching, biting she-cat an hour earlier, he knew better than to trust her poise of surrender. Even with her hands tied and her eyes blindfolded, she could still cause trouble. In more trouble was the last thing he needed.
You refuse to question his motives for taking her. She was his wife, and, as Jeffery insisted, the family owed him. Still, he might have ignored the old man’s urges to claim her as you not seen Gwen just as he’d left Jeffery’s place. Ready to slide his boat in the water, he’d spotted her on the nearby mound, tears streaming down her cheeks. It was then, if he cared to be honest, that he’d made the decision to grab her.
Damn, but he never could bear to see a woman cry.
And so he’d swept her up, just like that, with no real thought to his motives, or even the consequences. It was too late to turn back now, but that did not mean he cannot regret his split second decision. Kidnapping Gwen should just about killed any hope that they might one day, to an understanding. If she had disliked distrusted him before, she wasn’t going to be any happier once she learned where he meant to take her.
Turning his boat into the narrow fork to the right, he went deeper into the swamp.
***
Gwen had never been so frightened in her life. They’d been gliding along the bayou for what seemed like hours. By now, he must have lost in the swamp. Blindfolded, her imagination went riot, and she could sense all sorts of hideous things; spiders dropping from trees, bats grabbing to her knotted hair, water snakes slithering up over the sides of the boat to…
Trembling, she tried to think of some way to escape, but her hands were tied, and she had been told these narrow byways could be surprisingly deep. Snakes were bad enough, but who knew what other creatures could be swimming along in the waters ahead. Worse, every now and then she heard a loud splash. She could be jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire indeed, if she somehow managed to elude Michael, only to find herself acing a hungry alligator. And even if by some miracle she did reached dry ground, she could well find herself on an island, as cut off from civilized nation–and safety–as if she had sailed off the end of the earth.
So she stayed where she was, frozen by indecision, trying to figure out what Michael meant to do. Spite kissing him more than she should, she knew little about the man he’d become, other than what Lance had told her, and of course, her initial impression of him that day on the docks. Dangerous. She’d thought then, as he’d given her no clue to revise her opinion. The way he’d appeared out of nowhere, on ominous manner in which his boat had been waiting, would suggest Lance was right, that Michael had been lying in wait. They he’d watched her, stocked her, and then drag her off with pitiful ease.
I am a relentless Hunter, he’d once told her. I will not give up until I have what is owed me. And now, too late, she believed him.
It was his other strength – both physically and mental – that had shocked her in silent. Michael could have been wearing a plate of armor, for all that effect of her threats and blows. Unaccustomed to the feeling so helpless, she was left with a growing panic, and the knowledge that if you wish to hurt her, there was nothing – absolutely nothing – she could do to stop him.
Considering the way he had found her, perhaps it was not so much a case of its, but rather when she would be hurt.
If only she had listened to Lance. But no, spoiled and willful, she had to sneak out of the house, go charging off to the middle of nowhere, until now nobody knew where she had gone. The horse no doubt had already wandered back to the stable, so who would even think to look for her in the bayou? Her family knew she hated the area, that she had avoided it’s all her life. When they started their search, they would begin at the neighboring plantations and worked their way down river to New Orleans. By the time they realized that Avenue was fruitless, Gwen w
ould be dead.
Swallowing hard, she forced herself to consider the possibility. After all, what better place to dispose of the body that in some deep mysterious hole in the swamp? No one would find her, or even come close looking. The way she behaved in the past, they’d naturally assumed she’d just up and run away.
She tried to slow her panic. Surely she was overreacting. Michael’s revenge would hardly require a murder. In what other reason could he possibly have to kill her?
His kind don’t need a reason, she could almost hear Lance say, as he repeated the list of his crimes. Men like that kill for sheer pleasure.
As if to give in to her fear, there was a distant, roll of thunder. Michael muttered “dammit” under his breath, he felt them pick up speed. In her mind, she could picture his dark features, fierce with concentration, as he silently drove his way through the eerily quiet marshland, working to reach their destination before it rained.
Don’t worry on my account, she thought, giddy with fear, even as the boat went even faster. Killing her was bad enough, but must he be in such a hurry?
Her life passed before her, the pace accelerating with the boat. She saw her father, and mother, and Lance. How wrong of her to doubt him, to kiss and flirt with other men. Please save me, she cried out in her mind, but she failed to see how anyone could halt the building momentum before the inevitable crash. She struggled for air, yet found it hard to draw a breath, knowing each could well be her last.
Just when she could there spence no longer, and she was ready to die just to get it over with, the boat slowed and came to a halt. “All right, my lady,” Michael said quietly. “We are here.”
The boat rocked as she felt him move. When his hand came out of nowhere to tug on her blindfold, she whimpered. He did not bother to untie it, but rather pulled the knot up over her head. Dawn had begun to break, she had time to notice, before her gaze came to rest on his hands.
They held a knife.
“No,” she whimpered again, finding she wasn’t ready to die after all.
Ignoring her protests, he reached down and sliced through the rope around her wrist.
Giddy with relief that he had not killed her, Gwen offered no resistance when Michael helped her out of the raft and onto dry land. Well, not exactly dry, for she found herself standing in an inch of mud as he busied himself securing the boat. Looking about her, happy to be alive, she took in her surroundings.
They were most definitely in the swamp, she thought, not liking how the Bayou wound off into dark shadows in both directions. Large trees trait with moss lines the opposite shore some ten yards away. There are an opening in their entwined branches, she could see the gray sky, lit by a single bolt of lightning. She jumped as a clap of thunder warned of the storms arrival.
“Come on, we best beginning up to the house,” Michael said, hoisting a bundle out over the boat.
“What a thoughtful kidnapper, bringing me to your home,” Gwen said, still giddy. “Am I to be lavishly entertained?”
He sniffed. “Whether or not you are entertained is up to you. That,” he said, nodding behind him, “is the only reason I have brought you.”
She turned to face a weather-beaten house on a hill ahead. “That shack is your home?”
“It is not a shack,” he snapped. “It’s a cabin. And I was not talking about it. I meant them.”
Following his nod, she saw a series of boys, each a half head taller than one after another. Lining the cabins porch. “I know those boys,” she thought aloud, though it took a few moments to recall how. “They are… Why yes, look, they are the brats from the docks.”
He looked momentarily confused, then none too pleased. “I had forgotten you had already met. A word of caution, though. I would not suggest calling them brats to their faces.”
Something snapped inside her, most likely her nerves. “I should have known. That is why you defended them–you were in league together. He probably planned to kidnap me from the beginning.”
“So it starts.” Shaking his head, he turned up the twenty yard path to the shack.
“Do not walk away from me.” Hands on hips, she forgot her fear that he meant kill her. “I demand you take me home to my family. Do you hear?”
“We are your family now, my lady,” he tossed her over his shoulder. “Or did you forget that you married me on your own free will?”
“You cheated me into that marriage. And I would rather be dead than related to you and those...” She hesitated, considering, then plunged right in, “… Those brats.”
He turned to face her with a scowl. Gwen tensed, but all he said was, “let’s continue this up in the cabin. Standing here arguing much longer, and you are liable to get drenched.”
Continuing on it to the cabin, Gwen stood sputtering until there was another clap of thunder, so near she felt the electricity sizzle in the air around here. She ran.
The clouds broke open, drenching her before she could reach the porch. Michael, she noticed resentfully, manage to reach shelter in time. He herded the children before him into the cabin.
Finding herself on the porch alone, Gwen told herself this was just how she wanted it. She would never go inside, she swore. But even as she thought this, a gust blew rain onto the porch, soaking her more. Sputtering, she decided to go in until it stopped raining.
Six faces stared at her as she pushed open the door, their expressions surprise, then swiftly scornful. Returning their attention to each other, they acted as if she wasn’t in the room.
It wasn’t much of a room, she decided, with a sniff. Michael and the children sat to the left around a table with a single candle in the center. The cup for around them led her to assume that this area must be the kitchen, though how anyone could cook in that small fireplace, she could not imagine. Directly ahead, second doorway led into a dark corridor, no doubt the bedroom area, and to the right was a sitting area of sorts. Where those shows with books? My heavens, a literate kidnapper. She must count herself lucky indeed.
“What is she doing here?” Taller boy was asking. It was more than his jet black hair, sculpted features that reminded her of the younger Michael; both had the same bluntness.
“Watch what you say,” Michael cautioned. “I have brought her here to take care of you.”
There was a collective gasp; the children as appalled as Gwen. She could find nothing in there sullen, unfriendly faces to imply welcome, nor the slightest indication of any need for her help.
“No” the protested in unison, followed by “she is mean,” “she hates us,” and the all too popular, “we don’t want her here.”
“What makes you think I want to be here?” She asked, tired of being talked about as if she were invisible. “I find the whole idea as repulsive as you do.”
This was followed up I chorus of “I told you so’s,” which wrapped the silence with the slap on the table. Coming as it did before another role of thunder, she couldn’t blame the boys for instantly shutting up. “You have all been whining that you need a mother,” he told them, his features stern. “Well, here I have got you wanted, and that will be that.”
He looked from one angry face to the other. “Besides, this is not a case of wanting. We all know you cannot be staying here on your own. Or must I remind you what happened to the pantry?”
There was a great deal less bravado and the boys’ attitude as they looked at each other, then back to Michael. Whatever had happened, the seemed to have guilty enough consciences to forestall further protest.
Gwen, however, saw no reason to cower beneath his dark glare. “I cannot see why I must be punished for their misdeeds. You might as well know, I have no intention of being anyone’s mother.”
Spared her a fierce look, then turned his attention back to the children.
“Go ahead, try to ignore me, but I’m serious, Michael. You cannot force me to stay here. The instant you turn your back, I will run away.”
His tone was cold as his expression. “That is where y
ou are wrong. You are my wife now, and by law, I can drag you out of any hole in Louisiana, and leave you wherever I choose.”
“My uncle is having this marriage annulled. It is just a matter of time, before I am free of you.”
He shrugged. “But you are not free yet. Until that time, might as well make the best of things. Might even find you like it here.” “Here?” She shuddered, thinking of the bayou and its various creatures. “You must be joking.”
The children gazed at her with disgust. “You cannot do this to us,” the one named Jude cried. “You have got a see that she is awful.”
“Enough!” Michael hoisted his bundle up to the table. “Here is some provisions. I hope to be home sooner, but if not, this should last until Friday.”
As the children groaned, Gwen reacted with horror. “You are leaving? You expect to leave me here and leave me alone with these-“she bit her lip. “Theses children?”
“Can’t be helped. I have business that can’t wait.”
“And what about my business, the life you had so casually disrupted? Do you realize that if I’m not back by Friday, there is a very good chance I will Miss Angela Hamilton’s birthday party? What you are doing to me as unfair, uncivilized, and absolutely inhuman.”
“Marriage usually is,” he said, making his way to the door. Desperate now, Gwen tried appealing to his common sense. “You might want to reconsider,” she said, forcing her tone to remain even. “I haven’t the least idea how to be a mother, much less a wife. These children were never asked to me as a substitute. Why, the way we get on, we are liable to murder each other in your absence. What then?”
Reaching the door, he opened it. Outside, she saw the treacherous rain showed signs of letting up. There was no justice in this world, Gwen thought resentfully. The least he deserved was to be drenched.
“The boys know what I expect of them,” he said, giving each a departing glare, “which is to see to it that you are still here when I get back. How you get on with them is up to you, though I warn you, life-and the swamp–have taught these children to be hard. Might want to take care how you address them.”
The Willows Page 16