“Don’t be frightened, petite,” he said, gentleness in the husky timbre of his voice. “This was inevitable from the moment I saw you standing lost and alone, hiding at the window of the ballroom. I am not your Marcus, but who knows? Perhaps in the morning you will be glad it is so.”
As he advanced Catherine backed away. “There — there is something I must tell you,” she stammered, deeply ashamed of the quavering smallness of her voice as he drew nearer. “My name is not Celeste. It is Catherine. Catherine—”
But she had waited too long. With steady strength he drew her into his arms, smothering her words against her mouth.
“I don’t care what your name is,” he whispered, his breath warm on her lips. “I don’t care who you are, or what you have been. I only know I want you as I have wanted no other woman.”
“Marcus — my family — will kill you,” she gasped, turning her head.
“You think so?” he asked, a grating and cynical amusement in his soft tone. “It will be many a long day before Marcus raises a sword. As for the others, I have found that a full purse salves most consciences, satisfies most honor.”
What more was there to say? When she felt herself lifted, felt the turban sliding from her head, Catherine gave a cry of despair. Still, she fought him there in the smothering softness of the feather bed. She beat at his face with her hands, twisting back and forth, trembling with fear and impotent rage, searching with awakened instinct for some weakness that would allow her to slip from his grasp.
There was none. Her blows made no impression. He did not retaliate, indeed she could not see that he felt them. And, even as she fought, with his weight slowly pressing her down into the feather mattress, using its confining depths to subdue her struggles, she was aware that he could have overcome her resistance much sooner, and more painfully, if he had wished. The knowledge was humiliating, triggering an anger so deep it sent her senses tumbling. This could not happen to her. It could not. It could not,
One arm was imprisoned beneath his body, while with unrelenting strength he forced the other up beside her face. Her head was cradled on his arm, and he caught her wrist with this hand, holding her immobile.
His lips bruised her mouth until she allowed her own to part, then he kissed her with slow pleasure, savoring, tasting. Never had a man touched her lips. This violation of her helplessness seemed degrading beyond anything she could experience.
She was wrong. The flimsy blue muslin tore easily, as did the silk underdress. But her nakedness and the coolness of the night air on her flesh was as nothing compared to the searing heat of his hand moving at will over her body. She writhed with her breath sobbing in her throat as his lips trailed along her chin and down the taut line of her throat. His mouth rested in the valley between her breasts, then moved caressingly over the soft, white curves to the nipples taut, not in passion, but in fear. She shuddered as revulsion, mixed with the shock of pleasure, ran over her. She could not bear it, she thought incoherently, turning her head from side to side. She could not bear it—
The kissing stopped for a moment and he looked at her. “Perhaps kindness is the greatest cruelty,” he said. “Let us have an end to it.”
He shifted his weight, and for a blinding instant Catherine was sure he intended to free her. Then she felt the smooth bareness of his chest against her breasts. With swift competence, he stripped what remained of the muslin gown from her, gathering her close to him, fitting her to him so that she felt the warm hardness of his body and the urgency of his desire.
“Be calm, my lovely,” he murmured against her hair. But such a thing was impossible. She arched away from that burning, swift invasion, her throat closed upon a silent scream, her breath caught achingly in her chest. Dimly, she felt him hesitate, heard his soft “nom de Dieu” as the air rushed from his lungs, as though someone had struck him. She did not know the reason. She was more intensely aware of the moment when he released her hands and she could strike out at him, raking his chest with her nails in her agony.
He made no move to stop her. “Very well then, pauvre petite, hurt me if you must. For I must—”
As he moved slowly above her, molding her body to the rhythm of his desire, Catherine felt the slippery wetness of blood beneath her hands. Surely she had not — but if she had, she was glad, fiercely glad. Her consciousness of sharp pain faded, to be replaced by a strange and barbaric exultation. They were bound together by shared anguish. As the tension left her, he moved deeper, penetrating remorselessly until he was a part of her, and she of him, their bodies fused, inseparable.
She was scarcely conscious when he eased away from her at last, though even so she tried to move, to get as far away from him as she could as reaction gripped her. This he would not permit. As he pulled her to him once more the warm male smell of him assailed her. She clamped her teeth together against a physical sickness while hot tears rose to her eyes. After a moment the nausea passed, but she could not stop the bitter, silent tears that trickled into her hair.
As her chest lifted with her difficult breathing, Navarro reached across to take up his shirt and push it into her hands, turning her face into his shoulder.
“Weep, minou,” he said, pressing his lips to the salt tears that wet her temple. “It is your right.”
For all his permission, the stinging, helpless tears were no easier. Nor did the soothing movement of his hands on her hair, taking the ivory pins from the tumbled, silken skein, straightening the tangles, bring surcease.
After a time, he grew impatient. “Enough little one. You are a woman, not a child or a hurt kitten. Come, sheath your claws, and let us seek together the little death that leads to sleep.”
When she saw his meaning, Catherine tried to protest, but it was no use. She had neither the strength, nor, in truth, the will to fight him anymore. The sweet, tart taste of desire was on his lips, and if there were no fires of passion burning in her veins, there was reflection enough from his to dry her tears and carry her into the realm of dark and thoughtless pleasure, something to remember with wonder before she closed her eyes.
~ ~ ~
A bright glow beyond her eyelids woke her. She turned her head fretfully to escape the glare, unwilling, yet, to leave the comforting forgetfulness of sleep. She wanted to fling an arm over her eyes, but they were confined against her sides. Odd. She was so tired. Her eyes felt swollen. She ached as if she had been beaten—
As full awareness returned she opened her eyes slowly, her lashes quivering. Her restriction of movement was caused by a quilted coverlet spread over her. It was held down on either side of her by strong, brown arms. A man leaned over her, a man naked to the waist, with his forehead creased in a scowl of angry concentration.
Rafael Navarro. For a full minute Catherine stared into his black eyes, thinking, inconsequently, that they should have been the bright yellow-green eyes of the great swamp panthers. Then a slow, painful flush moved over her, staining her shoulders and neck, blooming in hot embarrassment across her cheekbones. She looked quickly away, hating the weakness that destroyed her composure, hating him with a virulence she dared not let him see.
The dark of night hovered still in the corners of the room out of the reach of the light of the lamp on the commode table beside the bed. The jalousies were closed again over the windows, and the door of an armoire in the corner behind the door sagged open, revealing a folded pile of bedding. From the pre-dawn chill of her flesh beneath the coverlet, Catherine thought it could not have been over her long. What kind of man was this who could force her to accept him one moment and see to her comfort the next?
And what was troubling him now as he studied her in the lamplight, his gaze moving over her as he assessed her features one by one? With a slow movement, he reached out and took up a honey-gold curl, letting it drift in iridescent strands from his fingers. It fell on her breast and he smoothed it back into order, laying it carefully across the rosy aureole.
With an abrupt movement that made the
mattress sway on its ropes, he released her and got to his feet. “What is your name?” he demanded.
She eyed him warily before she spoke. “Catherine. Catherine Mayfield.”
“Your mother?”
“Yvonne Villère Mayfield.”
“Your father was Edward, and he had his Merchant’s Bank on Royal Street. My God!” He put one hand to his head as if it ached, thrusting his fingers through his hair and around the back of his neck. Wheeling around, he strode with decision to a bell pull hanging to the side of a fireplace mantel of wood painted to look like marble. He tugged viciously at the tasseled rope, then turned to face her, sublimely unconcerned with his lack of clothing, unconscious of the startling contrast between his teak brown chest and the whiteness of his lower body. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded.
Catherine stared up into the canopy overhead. “I tried,” she said at last without looking at him.
“A feeble attempt when your courage misgave you,” he said scathingly. “You had time to recount your life’s history before we arrived here, but I don’t remember much of importance that passed between us.”
His manner touched her on the raw. “Certainly,” she exclaimed, her eyes sparkling as she turned back. “You were the image of sympathy, weren’t you, as you sat there congratulating yourself on your plan of revenge against Marcus. You could have ruined both Marcus and me by exposing my presence at the masquerade. How could I guess you had a more drastic plan of ruin in mind?” His face tightened, but she did not heed it “As for my feeble attempt to tell you later, you told me plainly that it would make no difference who or what I was. Nothing would stand between you and — and what you wanted. What choice did I have except to believe you!”
He was quiet for a long, considering moment, his gaze so enigmatic that she knew a sudden unease. The ghost of a smile flickered about his mouth before he shrugged. “No doubt I meant it at the time.”
“An attitude I find not at all amusing,” she snapped, raising on one elbow.
“Don’t you?” he asked. “Then what in hell were you doing at a quadroon ball?”
How could she answer that grim challenge? “It — it was a private matter. I doubt it would interest you.”
“You think not? You will find I am extraordinarily interested in the affairs of Marcus Fitzgerald.”
“I see no reason why I should satisfy your curiosity.”
“I seem to remember that your dashing escort for the evening was less than his usual belligerent self last night. He had, in fact, to be forced into a fight. I wonder why?”
“Because he had no wish to embroil me in your quarrel, of course.”
There was nothing to show that he agreed or disagreed. Catherine wished she knew what was going through his mind as he stared at her from his copper mask of a face. “It occurs to me,” he said, “that a fight was no part of Marcus’s plans for the evening. Perhaps you were involved in those plans. Perhaps I was expected to seek my revenge by removing you from the ballroom — then Marcus, outraged, would arrive on the scene, perhaps with your august parent, in time to save you from being ravished? It would have made me look a fool and a seducer of innocent maidens, would it not? The furor might even be enough to drive me out of New Orleans again.”
“How can you think I would consent to such an infamous trick?” she demanded when she had caught her breath.
“You were at the ball, weren’t you? And after a pretty show of reluctance you accepted my invitation to dance. Moreover, I am credited with having a measure of affluence. Who knows? If properly repentant at the destruction of your reputation, I might even offer marriage.”
Wrath, hot and heedless, boiled in Catherine’s chest. She looked about for something to throw at him but there was nothing; no trace of the previous tenant remained, no bottles or boxes, or china ornaments so dear to the feminine heart. She sat up, clutching the quilt to her.
“What makes you think I would accept your condescension?” she cried. “I don’t need your money, I have more than a comfortable fortune of my own. As for being at the ballroom, it was nothing more than a wager, a perfectly innocent appearance — or it was, until you came!”
“The ladies I knew before I left the city would not have set their pretty little feet in a quadroon ballroom on fear of death, much less a mere wager,” he told her.
“Would they not? Then they must have been poor, spiritless creatures.”
“I’m beginning to think so,” he agreed, though she could detect no humor in his voice.
“No doubt that is what you prefer,” she said scathingly. “Weak, spineless women who can’t fend for themselves — like your poor little Lulu—”
He moved toward her so quickly, with such an angry expression, that Catherine recoiled with a gasp, dropping the coverlet. But he did not touch her. At her movement he stopped, bracing one hand on the bedpost.
“You, of course, are strong, able to take care of yourself,” he said with a lift of his brow, an eloquent reminder of her helplessness in his arms. “Pity Lulu then, sold at the tender age of fifteen by her mother. She played here in this house for half a year, pathetically relieved to be treated well. When I was forced to leave New Orleans, I left her affairs in the hands of my lawyers. A mistake, but what else could I have done? I made over several properties, and their rentals, here in the city in her name, including this house. But I failed to take into account the trusting gullibility of her youth, and so made no provision against her selling them. Such a thought would never have crossed her mind without the help of a man, a man who also took her jewelry and few other valuables into his safekeeping. What he told her, I don’t know, though I can guess. When she had nothing left to take, he left her.”
“Marcus?” she whispered.
“Marcus Fitzgerald. I expect he thought it safe, that no one would notice or care what became of her. He was wrong.”
“You are a little late, surely?” She would have liked to discount what he said as a distortion of the truth but there was Marcus’s own behavior to consider. There in the ballroom last night he had looked ill at the mention of the girl’s name, and he had not denied the accusations made by this man.
“True. I could not be reached even by my lawyers — a friend of mine bought this house in my name when it came on the market, a sentimental gesture, one I appreciate. But I doubt Lulu tried to find me. I had left her behind with little more than a pat on the head. I didn’t care enough to take her with me, and she knew it. Too, she had herself been unfaithful and according to her code that should have killed any interest I might have had. So she took to the streets. She was neither as pale nor as beautiful as you, Catherine, but she was fair to look upon, and she had that rare gift, a loving heart that seeks no return. She died, alone, in pain and degradation. She was seventeen.”
An apology for her attitude was a weakness she could not afford, even if she could bring herself to make it. She remained stubbornly silent, her clear, brown eyes hard with defiance.
He pushed away from the bedpost, his mouth tight with what she took to be irritation that he had told her so much. Why indeed had he bothered to explain? It was not necessary for her to understand his motives. In the act of turning, he swung back, a frown between his eyes as he stared at her upper body.
Glancing down, Catherine saw the rust-red smears of dried blood that stained her breasts and abdomen. He was in no better shape. Though the stains did not show up as clearly against his copper skin, on close examination, he, too, looked as if he had been subjected to some unspeakable torture. Raw scratches ridged his skin and low on his waist there was the puckered edges of a sword slash several inches long. Catherine drew in her breath in sharp relief as she saw it. She was not wholly responsible for his condition.
“You are hurt,” she said, then flushed at the look that sprang to his eyes. To cover her confusion she reached once more for the coverlet, folding her arms over it.
“A scratch,” he assured her. “Pure carelessness.�
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“Or absinthe?” she asked as he put a hand once more to his head. Whatever might have been answered went unspoken, for there came a timid scratching at the door. When Navarro pulled it open, the Negro manservant who had let them in the night before stood outside. The scuffs on his feet, rough cotton nightshirt tucked untidily into his pantaloons, and sleepy look in his eyes indicated that he had been abed when summoned.
“Are you the only servant in the house?” Navarro demanded.
“Yes, Maître. The others, they went back to ‘Lambra, Maître. On the orders of your ami, Monsieur Barton.” He shrugged. “They were idle all the day, always in trouble. I am here alone now, to watch the house.”
Navarro nodded. “Is there any cognac then?”
“Yes, Maître, good cognac. Left from the old times.”
“Bring a bottle then, and two glasses. And put water on to heat for a bath.”
“Yes, Maître,” he said again, and bowed, backing out the door without once looking in Catherine’s direction, though she had no illusions that he had missed a single detail.
A bath would be welcome, she thought as she watched the dark man close the door. But he had ordered only one, and she had not the slightest intention of asking who it was for.
A log fire had been laid in the fireplace. Taking a spill from a brass holder, Navarro used it to set the kindling ablaze. Only then did he look around for his breeches and pull them on.
The dry wood must have been on the firedogs for months, for it caught with a rush, quickly sending the light of its cheerful flames out into the room. The smell of the wood smoke seemed to make her more aware of the coolness, and she shivered a little under the quilt, sullenly envious of Navarro, standing with one elbow on the mantel, in reach of the heat. The silence between them deepened. As her position in the middle of the bed grew strained, Catherine eased backward to lean against the carved headboard, pulling the coverlet up to her chin.
The spitting of the burning wood was loud. From somewhere in the distance came the crowing of a rooster, a melancholy and somehow ridiculous sound in the darkness.
Love and Adventure Collection - Part 1 (Love and Adventure Boxed Sets) Page 50