No Choice but Surrender (27 page)

Releasing a sob as he moved nearer, she suddenly clamped her legs together and felt hot, burning tears glide down her cheeks. Horrified at what she'd done, and then more so when she saw the shocked look upon Avenel's face, she turned her head away to hide her hurt and her fear.

"Brienne, Brienne," Avenel gasped above her. He hadn't released her, but his hold loosened. Over her head, his hands clasped with her own, and he asked very slowly, "Brienne, what is it?"

"I don't want you to hurt me," she cried against the pillow.

"I've frightened you." His voice was harsh but understanding. He seemed to be fighting off some terrible pain, and it took him several moments before he spoke again. When he finally did, she noticed that his breathing had slowed down and his body seemed more relaxed. Kissing her forehead, he still refused to let her go, but he soothed her by saying, "Remember that tonight is a first time for us both, my love. You've never had a man and alas, I've never had a virgin."

Even though she still felt frightened, with Avenel lying on top of her, her tears began to dry. "I do want to be close to you, Avenel," she whispered.

With that he seemed to laugh and groan in one breath. Stroking her hair, it appeared that for the first time in his life he was at a loss for words.

"Teach me how to do that, Avenel. I know you can." Brienne stared up into his handsome face. "Teach me how to love a man. Teach me how to love you." She dropped her eyes. She was baring her soul to him. She could only hope that Avenel would understand what she was saying so artlessly.

"No," he answered so swiftly that she thought her heart would break.

A silent cry sounded in her head. A tear slid down her cheek.
He doesn't understand. He doesn't—

"My love," his voice broke into her thoughts. Her eyes lifted to his, and she took a deep breath, readying herself for his rejection. But it never came. Instead he kissed her eyelids and said, "I would have it the other way around. Tonight you must be the teacher. Tonight you must show me what to do, how to love a virgin."

"I don't know how to teach you anything, Avenel. I don't know—"

"Well, does one please a virgin by kissing her here?" Slowly he bent his head and pressed his lips to hers. Their hands clasped more tightly; feeling his new tenderness, Brienne found herself relaxing.

"Or does one kiss her here?" He moved lower, reaching the fragrant hollows of her throat. He took his time kissing her there and appeared to savor the way her pulse quickened with his touch. He lingered for a long time before he made his way lower.

"Or here?" he finally asked as his mouth reached her breast. But this time she was ready for him. This time, she was the one drinking in sensations. Her fingers combed through the thickness of his hair, and she melted beneath his practiced lips.

A long time passed before he raised his head, yet his magic was working. She moaned shamelessly, "Avenel, give me what I'm missing." Her loins this time didn't rage with fire but smoldered in a slow, urgent burn. But he was not through. He was not ready to satisfy her yet.

He turned her on her stomach and cupped her smooth, rounded bottom. Her spine took the heat of his lips, and he kissed her in places she'd never been kissed before.

"Is this what a virgin seeks?" he teased her, his voice husky and promising.

"Avenel . . ." She moaned the rest of her answer when his tongue wound lazily down the small of her back. Before she could articulate another word, he pulled her on top of him, kissing her breasts, her shoulders,
her
waist. He paused only once to brush the burgundy strands from her eyes and whisper urgently, "When I look at you like this, do you know how I feel?"

She shook her head and delighted in the gleam of his eyes.

"I feel greedy. So overwhelmingly greedy that I would rather die than see you in another man's bed." With that he gave her a long, slow kiss that took her breath away and made her weak.

When he laid her back on the bed and again moved over her, she found no more fear in her breast.
When he whispered possessively into her ear, "My beautiful, sweet woman.
My beautiful, sweet Brienne," she knew then without a doubt that it was the most natural thing in the world for them to form a union. And finally, when she felt the searing tear of her maidenhood as it was lost forever to his lovemaking, she took him willingly, ready to pay the price in exchange for the pleasure he'd given her.

But unknown to her there was more. She moaned and felt a sparkling tremor move down her thighs as her hips and Avenel's moved in rhythm. With Avenel's every thrust, Brienne felt her body loosen, and she took more of him into her arms and into her body. Soon a delicious tightening between her thighs began, and she looked up at him, touching the handsome planes of his face. Although she was almost blinded by the feelings he aroused in her, she could see how he watched her. His eyes, usually icy blue, had become smoky and passionate. With every movement, the expression in them grew hotter and more possessive, until Brienne finally could stand it no more.

Shuddering, she felt her entire body writhe beneath his movements, at once trying to get away from his excruciating, tantalizing rhythm and at the same time move toward it, desperate for more. When her release came, she whispered almost inaudibly, "I love you, Avenel." But she didn't know if he heard her, for as she said the words, he closed his eyes and unleashed himself, giving out a low powerful growl from seeking and receiving his pleasure to the fullest.

When they both lay breathless, still entwined in their intimate embrace, Brienne swept one hand down his thigh; her emotions showed clearly on her face. Avenel had taken her to a place where she thought she'd never go. It had been a place where even the coldest and most sinister of men could learn to be
loving
and giving. All her days of loneliness seemed to dissipate before her like mist with the dawn. She had become close to Avenel, and with him, for the first time in her life, she had had her first taste of true happiness. Closing her eyes, she vowed to cling to it as she had never done before.

As she lay quietly with her thoughts, Avenel brushed her hair back from her brow. But before either knew what to say, Brienne felt warm blood permeating the bandage on his leg.

"You're bleeding," she whispered.

Avenel studied her for a very long time, not moving, not leaving. He kissed her then, deeply, and startled her by biting her full lips. Then, as if they were words he almost hated to say, he said, "I'm afraid, my love, your father has seen to it that we both are." With this enigmatic statement, he finally extricated himself from her and enfolded her protectively in his arms.

Someone was knocking at the bedchamber door, softly at first, then more insistently when no one answered. Avenel opened his eyes; his gaze went immediately to Brienne, who lay next to him. Her hair fanned out across his chest like an exquisite ruby-colored counterpane, and she lay sleeping in his arms, her lips reddened from their passion of the night before and slightly parted in slumber. Slowly he moved away from her, hardly making her stir underneath the warm creamy linens and heavy green velvet coverlet. He bent, kissed her enticing lips,
then
covered her tender breasts, before moving naked to the door.

"What is it?" he asked impatiently as he opened the door to the passage. Seeing Cumberland standing in the threshold clad only in his red banyan and hat, he cocked one jet brow and said, "The sun has not yet risen. What could be so important that you must come here now?"

"A letter, Slane, from Satterlee."
Cumberland's mouth was a grim line, and he didn't even seem to notice Avenel's lack of clothing. "I am afraid it's been delayed getting here. The messanger told me it was on a frigate sunk by the Americans. Do you see the date? It was written five months ago, the day after we left." Cumberland shot him a nervous, foreboding glance and watched as Avenel forced open the wax seal with the Satterlee crest. He read the letter swiftly, and when he was finished, he too looked grim. "What is it, Slane?" Cumberland asked in a voice that implied he was not sure he wanted to know.

"Staples
is
dead," Avenel answered in a lifeless voice.

"How?"
The elder man swallowed.

"Morrow's handiwork.
It seems he left his signature on Staples's body."

"Oh, God, no!"
Cumberland gasped.
"But what about the boy?
Is he dead, too?"

"No, apparently Nob was out hunting at the time. When he returned, he found his father, and then ran to Satterlee for help." Avenel ran a shaky hand through his dark, untied mane. "He's been staying at Satterlee, but they said that if they hadn't heard from me after a few months, they would ship him here. It seems they think I'm the best keeper for the boy. He needs to be looked
after,
and . . ." He gave a great, mournful sigh and refused to finish.

"He is all right, though, Slane. He should arrive in a matter of weeks, safe and sound. Things could be worse."

"No!" Avenel lashed out through clenched teeth. "Things could not be worse! Staples saved our lives when he found us swimming ashore, bloody and maimed as we were. Look how he has been repaid! Because he helped me regain Osterley, Morrow has butchered him." Suddenly his face contorted into a mask of murderous rage. "God help that beast," he said low and hard. "God help him if he ever sets foot on Osterley soil again. Though he caught me off guard in the woods, I swear he will never get a second chance!"

"Aye," Cumberland assented. But suddenly the old man's mouth dropped open, and he stared beyond Avenel to the domed bed. There could be no mistaking whose auburn head rested on the pillows.

"It's early, Cumberland. Go back to bed. I shall take care of her." Avenel spoke in a flat monotone. His eyes shone with vengeance like rays of icicles, and Cumberland shook with fear for the young girl who now slept so peacefully in her lover's bed, unaware of the storm brewing around her.

"What are you going to do, Slane?" Cumberland asked, desperate to reason with him. "She has had no part in this." He pulled the letter from his friend's grasp. "She is innocent—"

"No longer, my friend.
And 'tis just as well." Avenel took the letter from the old man's hand.

"Don't do this to her, Avenel. She loves you. And this will kill her." Cumberland licked his dry lips.

"I gave her her chance to leave, and she refused. Now she is a part of this. Whether by her own hand or not, I tell you, my friend, she is now a part of this." Slowly Avenel backed into the room, closing the door behind him.

"For God's sake, Slane!
She saved your life! Don't do this!" Cumberland whispered desperately at the door.

"Then she is playing the fool.
For perhaps 'twas not worth saving."
The door closed with a thud, and not another sound could be heard from behind its reaches for a very long time.

Gradually Brienne's sleep-heavy eyelids opened, and two gentian irises peered out from the encircling dark lashes. She breathed in deeply and became heady with the scent of Avenel and their lovemaking that clung to the fine Egyptian linen surrounding her. Raising her head, she looked to the other side of the bedstead for him, but the bed was empty. Soon, however, she spotted him standing naked at the window, awash in the predawn light. His back was to her, and he appeared almost stern. His arms were folded neatly across his chest, and his finely hewn thighs, one still bound with white linen bandages, were spread apart in a stance of superiority. Her eyes caressed his body, from the wide, scar-nicked shoulders to the firm, small buttocks that finally melded down to two, dark-haired, muscular legs. These sights brought on memories of the night before as time and time again, he had taken her to him and they had tumbled helplessly about in the bed. They had made love ferociously all night long, as if there would never be another time for them. Now, feeling wonderfully sore and utterly satiated, she sat up in the large, columned bed, draping the linen modestly across her full bare chest.

"Avenel, love," she greeted him, feeling for perhaps the first time in her life fully glad to be alive. She smiled and waiting for him to turn around and wrap his strong, warm arms around her. But there was no response from him at all.
"Avenel?
What is it, my love?" Lines of concern marred her smooth forehead. He still did not turn around to face her, and perhaps that was what disturbed her most of all. "Please?" she whispered, and he answered her in a harsh, merciless voice.

"I've received a letter today,
Lady
Brienne." He suddenly seemed to take pleasure in reminding her of her tide.

"A letter?
But it's not even dawn." She pulled the covers to her, feeling a quickening desire for protection.

" 'Twas
sent by special messenger. It was lost in the war we are having and just recently was found."

"What—what does it say?" She moistened her lips with her tongue and vaguely wondered how they could be so dry after so much kissing the night before.

"It says," he began, this time raising his voice. "It says that my friend has been murdered by your father."

"Murdered?" She frowned. "He will be tried for the crime, will he not? When they find him guilty, they'll hang him. Lord Oliver will be dead, and we'll be left alone," Brienne reasoned, desperate for him to change the hard-edged tone of voice.

"How can your father be tried when the authorities do not know it was he?" He laughed bitterly.

"But you know it was the earl."

"Yes, and do you know how I know?" He was deadly calm now.

"No, Avenel," she whispered, suddenly fearful.

"Because he left his calling card."
She listened to the hatred in his voice and then watched as he slowly turned around to face her. Suddenly she let out a horrified gasp, and the morning bloom left her face as she gazed below his waistline. Dimly she recalled moving her hand down his abdomen the night before. But never did it occur to her that the smooth flesh she had touched there was the result of so many scars. His entire belly below the navel was flecked with a starburst of razor-thin scars. A particularly mean one ran down one side of his groin, just missing his manhood, it would seem, by a hair's breadth. "Do you know what castration means?" Avenel forced her eyes back up to his angry face.

"I—I do. You are marked, but surely—"

"Ah, but I am not referring to myself. There was a botched attempt on me, to be sure. But I speak about your loved one, Brienne. I am talking about Cumberland." His eyes flashed coldly.

"No!" she cried at him, refusing to listen. But soon his words seemed to find their way to her ears, and he spoke without regard for her delicate senses.

"We were on a ship bound for England, my brother and I. That was when it happened to Christopher." He paused, and his entire body seemed to burn with vengeance that was now "directed completely at her
. "
Your father had him disemboweled,
my lady"
—he spat at her—"disemboweled and castrated. When he and his band started on me, Cumberland attempted to fight them off. But by the time we jumped into the Chesapeake Bay, he had left all that made him a man in a bloody heap on the decks."

"He is still a man. Rose loves him very much." She wept bitterly, thinking how dear Cumberland had become to her and how brutally the earl had treated him.

"You may be right there. But think of the humiliation! Think, will you?" He walked up to her, grasped her unbound mass of hair, and jerked her face painfully up to meet his. "Think of the pain of hitting the salt water with your body half-butchered. And watching your own blood
make
the clear blue waters of the Atlantic turn red." He tossed her violently back onto the bed and then walked over to the window, now not moving a muscle except the one that twitched in his lower jaw. "I was thirteen then. It took me twenty years to find retribution. And the day after I found it, he killed and castrated the man who helped me."

"Why does he hate you so?" She wiped her tear-stained cheeks with the back of her hand. Unmindful of her unclothed state, she shivered and sat back on her slim haunches to look at him.

"You will find that out in good time. For now, let it suffice to say that greed has been his motive." He touched the ancient lapis urn displayed so proudly on the tripod pedestal before the window. In the early morning light the piece shone almost black. He skimmed the polished surface with his palm and watched it wobble precariously. "Your father has a great love for beautiful things, has he not?" He looked back at her with an evil glance.

"Yes," she said flatly. "My mother was one of his things."

"Ah! Then you know-how it is." He looked back out the window. The only sound in the room came from the heavy, wobbling urn.

When it finally came to a stop, he stood quietly, and she took this moment to assure him. "I will help you, Avenel. Whatever it is that I can do to help you, please know that I will do it. Together we will find some way to—"

"We have already found a way."

Suddenly the hairs stood up on the back of her neck. There was a stance about him so utterly void of emotion that she could have sworn he was some sort of satanic being. Reluctantly she breathed the final question, knowing the answer was not what she wanted to hear: "And what is that way?"

"I planned this for you all along." He laughed harshly and then started to speak as if she were not even present in the room. "From the very first moment I'd heard Oliver Morrow's daughter was stranded at my blessed Osterley, I asked myself, how could I use her to get to him? What would be the one humiliation no father would stand for?" Inch by inch, his eyes trailed to the magnificent rumpled bed. "I'm afraid the answer was obvious. After all, how could the earl stand by while I made his daughter prisoner in the house he believes to be his? While I not only forced her to live in servitude and submission, but also"—he paused as if he were struggling with what he had to say next—"but also made her my willing whore as well."

Something inside her died when she heard his words. It was not her love for him that seemed to wither and fade, for that, she knew, was destined to remain strong and tormented. But her reason for living and this hoped-for, fresh new beginning was swiftly killed by his shrewd words. She saw now that their wonderful night together that had brought her love for him to the surface had been nothing less than a calculated and immoral act. And now all he could relay to her was his consuming hatred for her father and his contempt for her.

Cold, mad laughter seemed to come from her throat, and she suddenly spat out at him, "What a pathetic creature I must seem to you! But the little plan you've devised for my downfall will come to naught—of that I can assure you.
For I will not go along with your scheming.
And it will do no harm to the earl for you to torture me. You see, Oliver Morrow despises me. He despises me almost as much as you do." She stopped and watched as his eyes moved worriedly over her face, as if he wondered about her sanity.

"He may hate you, my lady. But he will not stand by while I—"