Reckless Seduction

by Jane Feather

  Neither would help her, but she accepted the offer anyway. It meant another few minutes. She thought now only in terms of the passing time and how to buy that precious commodity. Even if Dominic was not coming for her, forestalling the horror could only be to her advantage. If she must lose to Sergei, she prayed, let it at least go to three games; let him not win outright with the first two.

  The Russian cut, won and elected to deal. The cards seemed even, and she closed her mind to the three others in the room who were watching the play intently, sipping brandy, occasionally throwing another log on the fire, all waiting patiently for the turn that they knew would come, for the outcome already determined.

  Genevieve won the first game, and as she gathered up the cards, her eyes met those of the Russian. He had given her the game, and they both knew it. And they both knew why. He was much the stronger player and had chosen to increase the pleasure of his secondary purpose by extending her dreadful anticipation, knowing full well that anticipation of pain was always worse than the reality.

  She lost the second game but only by a handful of points and for a few minutes of foolishness, she hoped. Sergei had given her nothing that time. But when she saw her hand for the third game, she faced reality with that numb resignation. The cards would give her no help. She endured twenty minutes of exquisite anguish, counting desperately, trying to fix the discards in her head, going over every hand several times before she made her play. But there was nothing she could do. She could not even avoid the mortification of the rubicon.

  As she laid her last card on the table, the silence seemed to extend into infinity. Sergei smiled, the fleshy lips curving over startling white teeth. “Finally,” Sebastiani murmured. “First fall to you, Sergei.”

  “Yes, indeed,” the Russian replied softly. “Madame?” He stood up.

  Genevieve felt her head shaking in mute, desperate denial. But he came around the table and took her elbows, pulling her to her feet. They were all smiling. Sergei cupped her face with his soft white hands. “A little on account, I think. Let us give our friends a small taste of what they, too, may expect before we seek privacy.” Those heavy lips came closer, seemed to fill her field of vision. Stand still, she told herself. Do not fight. It will only add to the degradation and this one, at least, will enjoy every minute of subduing you, and of doing it in front of an eager, envious audience. His lips covered hers, seemed to swallow her mouth in their fleshy wetness, and her body rebelled, broke free from the sensible, self-preserving constraints of her mind. Her hand came up, fingers clawed to rake down the smooth pink cheeks leaving crimson-dropped tracers.

  Sergei exhaled in sharp pain and hurled an obscenity at her, wrenching her arm behind her back as his mouth pressed deeper, invading the tender barriers of her soul’s integrity. A hand ripped at the collar of her gown, tearing away the lace, thrusting into the opened bodice to grasp with hurtful fingers the soft swell of her breast. She twisted and writhed, ignoring the screaming pain of her bent arm, managed to bring her knee up into his groin. He swore again but his hold did not relax. Instead, he twirled her, sent her spinning toward the couch. She fell forward across the arm, felt the ridged cord of edging velvet hard against her pelvis as her feet left the floor; felt the hooks at the back of her gown fly undone; realized with an anguished cry of desperation that in a second she would be exposed to every eye in the room, open and vulnerable to receive the obscene vengeance. There was a ringing in her ears, and her heart beat in rapid flutters, pressed against the seat of the couch by the weight of his body. The velvet smothered her, and a red mist danced ever closer, offering surcease, threatening the final, involuntary capitulation.

  The door crashed open, and suddenly she could turn her head from the stifling press of velvet as Sergei turned around, relaxing his hold. Then the Russian seemed to fly through the air, and there was a moment of utter confusion, of voices raised in fury, of the sharp crack of a pistol shot, the splintering of wood as the warning ball buried itself in the paneling beside the hearth. In the ensuing silence, Genevieve struggled upright, the skin of her bared back prickling with the knowledge of exposure rather than cold.

  “I knew you would come,” she said.

  “Of course,” Dominic replied, calmly matter-of-fact. “Go and stand behind me by the door, now.” He waited until she had obeyed, then said, “I am desolated to discommode you, gentlemen, but I must ask you to remove your pantaloons, your shoes, and your stockings.” He smiled and perched on the arm of the couch over which Genevieve had been flung. The two silver mounted pistols rested across his knee, his index fingers poised on both triggers. “I am certain you will not object to madame’s presence at this disrobing, since it would have formed part of your evening’s entertainment at some point, anyway.”

  Legrand’s eyes slid suddenly to the door behind the privateer, and Dominic swung around an instant too late. Genevieve’s breath whistled through her teeth as an arm caught her around the neck, and something very sharp pricked with clear intent against her throat.

  “An opportune arrival, Gaston,” said Legrand. “Your pistols, if you please, Monsieur Delacroix.” He held out his hand.

  Dominic hesitated and the tip of the knife pressed, drawing a bead of blood from the white skin of her throat. With a tiny shrug, the privateer turned the pistols around and was about to pass them, handles politely first, to the Frenchman, when a strange gurgle came from Gaston. The knife clattered to the floor and the manservant slid down to follow it. Genevieve stepped shakily to one side, and Silas straightened from the crouch that had brought him, silent and invisible, behind Gaston.

  “Your pardon, monsieur,” he said, wiping the blade of his knife on his britches. “I do not know if I have killed him.”

  Dominic shrugged and reversed the pistols again, handing one to the sailor. “Your clothes, please, gentlemen. You will give them to Silas.” Without taking his eyes off the four men, he stretched his free hand behind him for Genevieve, and when she stepped forward, he held her close in the protective curve of his arm. “Are the others dealt with, Silas?”

  “Yes, monsieur,” replied the sailor, moving to take Legrand’s pantaloons, snapping his fingers as Sergei, his face set in lines of murderous hatred, finally accepted the inevitable and unfastened his own. “We counted five. Just that one was missing.” A groan came from the figure on the floor, and Genevieve slid out from the warm, firm security of Dominic’s arms and went to kneel beside him. The knife thrust had gone deep between his lower ribs, but it did not seem to have pierced any vital organs as far as she could tell. As she bent over the prone figure, she felt hands on her back. Dominic was fastening her gown. The simple gesture brought back the whole horror of those few minutes, the dreadful knowledge of what had so nearly been. She looked at him, stricken with remembered terror, and the turquoise eyes deepened with compassion and remorse.

  “It will fade, sprite,” he said with gentle reassurance, slipping off his short cloak and draping it around her shoulders, fastening it over her torn bodice. “I will do all I can to ensure that it does.”

  Five of the six sailors appeared, like Silas, on stockinged feet. “Bound and gagged, monsieur,” one said. “Paul is out back.” They all stared with frank astonishment, not untinged with amusement, at the sight of the four gentlemen standing by the fire in nothing but their shirts. Silas, his arms full of pantaloons, shoes, and stockings, turned to the door.

  “Take these with us, shall we, monsieur?”

  “We can leave them in the street,” Dominic replied with a careless shrug. “I wish only to ensure that our friends cannot follow us without delay. But perhaps you should tie them also. You may string them together with the rope we used to climb the tree to the window.” He turned to the silent group of four who, white faced with humiliation, their eyes sliding around the room, clearly did not know where to look. “I must apologize for the indignity, gentlemen. But I am sure you understand its necessity—not to mention its justice.”

 
Sebastiani muttered with overpowering venom, and Genevieve shivered at the potent hatred thus expressed. Silas reappeared, bearing the coiled rope with the leaded end. “If you’d just turn around and put your hands behind you, messieurs,” he said with wooden courtesy. Genevieve went out into the hall, for some reason unable to bear witness to this debasement of her fallen enemies. Although, why she should have such delicacy after what they had been intending to do to her, what they had already done, she could not begin to imagine.

  She felt weak and drained now. Unable to think of anything except that the terror was over and that Dominic would decide what next was to happen. She could no longer summon up the energy to care. Apart from the moment when he had given her the security of his arm and the moment when he had fastened her gown, he had not touched her. And she ached to be held.

  “Come, Genevieve. We will leave Silas to tidy up around here.” The privateer stepped into the hall. His expression was grave, almost stern, as he took her hand and led the way into the back quarters of the house. She recognized the corridor, the narrow door, and then they were in the courtyard where the unmarked carriage that had brought her to Legrand’s house waited beneath the tall poplar tree, two horses between the shafts, the sailor called Paul upon the box. “We will borrow this, I think,” Dominic said conversationally. “Our friends will not be needing it for awhile.”

  Her knees suddenly buckled as the hard lines of reality smudged. How could he talk in this way? His voice so pleasant, so matter-of-fact, as if nothing untoward had happened; as if he had not severed their relationship; as if she had not narrowly escaped the ultimate degradation; as if four, partly naked men were not standing in the library, their bound hands linked together by a coil of rope; as if a manservant was not lying bleeding on the carpet; as if five other men were not similarly immobilized, somewhere.

  “Damn you, Dominic Delacroix!” she cried with her last ounce of strength. “Damn you!” She felt the same outraged, dazed incomprehension that she had felt on Danseuse when he had torn her out of the self-enclosed refuge into which she had retreated to escape the hurts he had inflicted.

  He caught her up the instant before she hit the cobbles. “You may damn me as you please, mon coeur, but let us achieve a degree of privacy.” There was gentle amusement in his voice, but also a deep throb of warmth and understanding.

  “Do not call me that if you do not mean it!” she whispered, no longer able to hide the truth from him or from herself. She was bundled into the carriage where the merciful darkness cloaked her words and hid the hurt vulnerability in her eyes.

  “Oh, but I do mean it. I have always meant it. I cannot imagine why I tried to deny it to either of us—mon coeur.” The endearment was repeated with a firm emphasis as he drew her onto his lap.

  Genevieve sighed and crept against him like a small, wounded animal. “Why must I go away then?”

  “You aren’t.” His arms tightened. “But I would have followed you as soon as I could.” He stroked her hair, cuddling her as if she were, indeed, a small, hurt member of the animal kingdom. “It did not occur to me to spell that out for you, I am afraid. I just assumed you would know it.” He smiled slightly in the darkness. “You’ll have to forgive me, sprite, but I fear I heard only the willful objections of young Mademoiselle Genevieve with her exasperating and dangerous habit of following her nose into trouble simply because it appealed to her. ‘Mon coeur’ has left childhood behind her, but I forgot that for a moment.” She said nothing, absorbing this and all its implications—implications that opened new horizons of dazzling beauty.

  “Did they hurt you more than I saw?” He asked the question painfully and when she did not immediately answer, shifted her on his lap so that she was obliged to sit up. “I have to know, sprite.”

  “No.” She shook her head vigorously. “I was afraid, but I knew that I had to play for time because you would come. My time had just run out.”

  Moving her head backward into the crook of his arm, he kissed her with a searing sweetness that healed the memory bruises of the Russian’s violation. “Mon coeur,” he whispered as his lips trailed honeyed fire to her earlobe, and she reached against him, wondering at the extraordinary indomitable quality of loving desire. An hour ago, in physical revulsion, she could never have imagined feeling again the stirring, the hunger for her body’s fulfillment. Yet she needed him now, almost more powerfully than she could ever remember. But there was an added dimension to that need. A demand for affirmation, a confirmation of this half-articulated understanding that was taking shape in the darkness of the carriage, in the unashamed honesty of his loving words, of the loving hold.

  The carriage stopped outside the house on the rue du Cirque, but when he stepped out, holding her in his arms, there seemed no interruption of their contact. He carried her upstairs and laid her on the bed, sitting beside her, leaning over, his arms braced on either side of her body.

  “It seems we need a priest, my Genevieve.”

  “You do not have to marry me,” she said with a tremulous smile. “I have never expected it. We can continue as we are now, can we not?”

  “No,” he said definitely. “It is time we turned fantasy into fact, and you became Madame Delacroix in truth. If you wish it, that is.” The softness left his eyes for a second as he raked her face. But it came back when she reached her arms around his neck, drawing his mouth down to hers in passionate answer.

  “You have always said that you could never be earthbound,” she said against his lips. “I do not wish to be so, either, so we will go on in the same way.”

  “We shall see,” said the privateer, a smile lurking in his eyes, curving his lips. “Women have an almost universal tendency to wish for nests and babies. You may not be so wishful yet, mon coeur, but I expect it will come. I shall adapt to changed circumstances with little difficulty.”

  “I do not think it will happen for quite some time,” Genevieve said, her fingers busy with the buttons of his shirt. “Where do we go now?”

  “Now,” he said, pushing aside the ripped lace of her bodice and pressing his lips to her bosom, whispering in gentle, healing strokes across a purpling finger bruise. “Now, I am going to take you with me to the well of eternal pleasure, sweet love, where you may lose the fearful memories and know that you have my love for all time as shield against the world.” Raising his head from her breast, he took her lips with the same sweet tenderness so that she felt her entire self opening in love and trust. “Later,” he continued in a soft murmur, “we will go to Rochefort where we will find a priest, and then we will wait on Danseuse for Napoleon to decide the fate of Europe—or for Wellington to decide the fate of Napoleon.”

  “I do not wish to look beyond the now,” she said, touching his face, drowning in the azure gaze of love and promise.

  “Then look no further, mon coeur.” His hands moved upon her and her eyes closed, turning inward on the realm of loving glory that they shared now and for all time.

  Reckless Seduction

  © 1987 by Jane Feather

  ISBN: 9780821779880

  ZEBRA Books

  Ed♥n