Captured by the Count: An Abduction and Breeding Fantasy (3 page)

Cassie closed her eyes and took a deep breath – advice she had often g
otten from her mother but had never
followed
before
. 
But then she’d never found herself in a situation in which she felt such a complete lack of control. 
She wanted desperately to throw a huge tantrum, as she’d done when she was younger
when things didn’t go exactly the way she wanted them to
o
, but could hardly do so now.

“Your hair is truly gorgeous,” he whispere
d, much to close to her ear.  “It’s t
he very definition of a crowning glory.”

The compliment, which sounded heartfelt even if it wasn’t, went a long way towards soothing he
r bruised ego.  A
lthough she
still refused to respond
,
he could feel her relax
, more than
just slightly.

And then he realized that she was practic
ally in a dead faint as she leaned limply against him
.
  Without missing a beat,
Victor lifted her up into his arms and
carried her out into the gardens,
to the very end of them where they would be well out of eyesight of anyone at
the house and the back gate was handy to his purpose,
while
the faint light of dawn was just beginning to appear at the horizon. 
As he walked out of the ballroom with her, Victor
flagged down a servant
for a glass of champagne and
a bit of gammon to feed to her once he’d roused
her,
which he did with a kiss that she sputtered
against as soon as she came to.

“Here,
eat this,” he instructed while sitting down on one of the white marble benches that were strewn about the ornate gardens.
 

Cassie had a rebellious look in her eye, but his were just as resolute, she did as he asked.

“How long has it been since you’ve eaten?”

“Some time yesterday, as if it’s any of your business,”
she answered haughtily, still nibbling on the portion of meat he had given her.

“Drink this.”

If she had been standing, she would have stomped her foot
at his autocratic manner
, but it was impossible to do so
when one was being held on someone’s lap, and she found herself docilely doing as she was told, although she was going to give him a piece of her mind as soon as the world stopped spinning violently.

But it seemed that the more she drank, the fuzzier she got – and she had a horrible thought in the back of her mind that it wasn’t just that she hadn’t had much to eat in a while, nor was it the fault of the champagne.  There was a slightly bitter aftertaste to the bubbly, and she knew that couldn’t possibly
be right.  Angus Costello – the owner of the house and host of the ball – was much too much of a snob to serve anything but the best of champagnes.

It was then that she saw the slightest grains of residue at the bottom of the glass, but not before she had consumed it all.

“You – y – drug – d- mehhhhh.”  Cassie was trying for an accusing tone, but her voice became a breathless whisper as she fell into unconsciousness.

Victor again lifted her into his arms and began to carry her towards the back gate, but not before he heard someone very nearby calling for her.

“Miss Cassie?  Miss Cassie, where are you?”

Instead of trying to slink away, he walked towards the voice, and when he discovered a distraught Sissy, who had been told by
another servant that her mistress appeared to have fainted, Victor said, “I’m taking her to my physician to make sure everything is all right.  Why don’t you come with us and then you can accompany her home.”

Sissy, who had brought with her the light wrap that Cassie had forgotten, nodded passively and followed the man who was carrying Miss Cassie in his arms into a
large, nondescript black coach that she was immediately terrified to realize was full of
rough men who apparently took their orders from the man who was holding her mistress.

“This is her?” one of them aske
d in a language Sissy didn’t recognize
.

“Yes.  All is as it should be.”

One of the men sitting across from Sissy inclined his head towards her.  “And this one?”

“I believe she’s her maid.”

“What are we doing with her?”

Victor gave the man who dared question him a sharp look.  “Keeping her, until she’s no longer of any value to us.
”  In his experience, despite the bother of ye
t another mouth to feed, situations
like this involving ladies of quality often went much easier if they were allowed to k
eep a
familiar face about them
at first.

Although Cassie awoke several times during the next few days, she was never really clear headed at all, and was only roused so that Sissy could attend to her personal needs and she could ea
t something.  The food was crude
and cold – often no more than a scrap of bread and some ale – but she didn’t feel the lack.  All she wanted was to get back to sleep.

Sissy, on the ot
her hand, had remained as alert and
awake
as she could make herself be
through the entire trip.  She had surmised after an hour or so in the carriage that they weren’t headed towards a doctor, as the strangely accented man had said initially, but she knew well enough to keep her mouth shut and do as she was told. 
What could she have done
to save them
against a carriage f
ull of men
?  Nothing. 
They were travelling at such a speed that jumping out was out of the question, too, especially for an unconscious Cassie. 
All that would have happened then was that the two of them would probably have gotten deader much faster.

So she kept to herself and did what she could to keep Cassie comfortable and
to
not annoy anyone else when they stopped late in the evenings to eat
and sleep.
 
She guessed she could have tried to escape
then herself
– leaving Miss Cassie to whatever face whatever fate had in store for her alone – but she couldn’t imagine that she’d get away with it, and didn’t much want to think about what
the consequences might have been
for doing so
once she was inevitably caught
.  Besides,
where would she go?  The only person she knew on the continent was Cassie.  And,
o
verall, Sissy was being treated much better by her captors than she ha
d been while she had been by anyone
at
Two Rivers
, including Cassie
.  There w
as no comparison.  She ate what they ate, and the Count didn’t suffer bad food.  He always made sure that a big plate was sent up to her as she watched over her mistress, and even offered on occasion to take her place so that she could go downstairs
if she wanted to
, although she always declined.  He had noticed that she didn’t have the right clothing for the colder climes they were entering, and took it upon himself to find warmer dresses and a finer coat than she’d ever hoped to own
for her, cupping her cheek in his hand when tears overflowed down her cheeks at his generosity.

“Watch over her, keep her as calm and quiet as you can, and see to her . . . other needs a
nd I will reward you generously,
”
he’d said to her at one point, early on in their journey.

As far as she was concerned, Sissy had already bee
n more than adequately rewarded, but she managed to nod slowly at his promise.

No one ever questioned the man – who Sissy gleaned was a count or something –
about the woman he claimed was
his wife and why she had to be carried up to the
ir
bedroom and back down again
, but then she figured his title bought him assumed respectability, and when that wasn’t apparent, his money would step in to grease the palm of anyone who
might ask a few too many questions.

They travelled forever, it seemed, and no one bothered to communicate anything about their destination to her or Cassie, not that Cassie was conscio
us often enough – or even
conscious enough
at any time
– to grasp what she might have been told.  She was kept quite deliberately drugged until they had been t
ravelling for several weeks, when
one morning Sissy
noticed that he hadn’t given her the ale laced with whatever drug he was using to keep her
subdued
– laudanum or some such thing, she was sure – when she’d gotten Cassie up enough to feed her a breakfast slice of bread soaked in milk so that it was easier for her to swallow in her twilight state.

Although she still slept the rest of the time they travelled that day, Sissy could tell it was more of a normal sleep, less dependent on chemicals as she moved quite a bit
as she slumbered
.  The medication he was using had her so deeply in its clutches that her sleep with it was almost that of the dead – in fact, at first, Sissy had routinely put a mirror up to Cassie’s nostrils, just to assure herself that she was still breathing.

When the coach finally turned off what seemed to be the main road, then off its tributary and into a deep forest, Sissy hunkered down for another long day of sheer boredom.

Instead, the trees parted, reve
a
ling a gorgeous estate that had to be at least three times the size of
Two Rivers
.
  The carriage stopped at the front door and masses of garishly uniformed servants descended
and relieved
it of all of its baggage, as well as the strange men who had travelled with them.  Only she, the Count and Cassie remained as the coachman clucked to the horses and they were moving again, although much more slowly than before. 

They made their way around the huge main building, then well back from it, to
a cluster of small houses that were much better appointed than the breeding cabins where she’d come from, but just about as small.  But they didn’t stop at any of these apparent residences.  Instead they were driven to a bigger building at the end of the road, where the Count swung out of the carriage and reached
in to offer his hand to Sissy – which had surprised her to no end the first time he’d done it.  No white man had ever offered her assistance in anything, much less just alighting from a coach. 
The Count had been unfailingly courteous to her, much more so than any other white man she had ever met, and
she had come to accept the common courtesies that he displayed towards her, which only served to point out
how badly she had been treated previously.

When Sissy was safely on the ground, Victor reached in and plucked Cassie from the seat.  She was aware enough to put her arms around his neck
, and he knew when she didn’t make any other moves
that she was still sleeping cozily.

The doors to the building were thrown open for him
by two matronly looking women, who, with Sissy, followed him to
what seemed to be a
medical room of some sort
at the back of the facility.

“But, Sir,” one of the matrons exclaimed, “we haven’t had a chance to
examine her yet!”

It was then that the Count removed the hood of the warm cape Cassie had been wearing since shortly after they’
d departed Paris, causing both of the women to “Ahhhh” lou
dly as that unique hair
spilled down over her shoulders.
The cape
had served two purposes – keeping her warm as well as
hiding that most unique of attributes from any prying –
or spying – eyes.  He wasn’
t the only one in this business
, and he knew that his rivals would slit his throat in a second to have what he had finally succeeded in procuring.

“You found one!” the ol
dest of the two women exclaimed reverently.

“
That I did,
Matushka,
” Victor agreed, at least as
devoutly as she had as they
all stood and stared at Cassie – except for Sissy, who was looking at them as if they had lost their minds
.  “And she’s totally untouched, right, Sissy?”
he added.

He seemed to be looking to her for some sort of
confirmation of Cassie’s
purity, which was something Sissy had never considered before, and certainly never been asked, so she hesitated.

Victor turned his full attention to Sissy
as he and the other women held their breath
.  “You would know, right?  You’ve probably been with her since she was born.”