No Choice but Surrender (28 page)

"While you rape me?
Despoil me? But that is not so! For rape is one of his favorite pastimes," she spewed at him.

"But were you raped last night?" He moved to the bed and grabbed her arm, demanding her answer.

"Don't touch me." Violently she pushed him away and got off the bed.

"You see? That is where I'll get him. I have his precious house under my hand and his only daughter, who'll willingly take everything I can give." Now it was his turn to laugh mirthlessly. "Aye, that will do it. Whether he hates you or loves
you, that
will bring him to his knees."

"How wrong you are!" She pulled her arms across her bare chest and looked for her shift, which was nowhere to be seen in the bedchamber. "I'll leave before that comes to pass. I have the means now, and I'll use it."

"You have the means? Pray tell, and what are they?" He cocked his brow wickedly.

"The
money . . ."
Her voice trailed off, seeing his taunting smile. "You would go back on your offer?" she demanded.

"The offer was withdrawn last night, love. You chose to stay."

"But that was when I thought you . . ." She looked down, hiding her vulnerable, expressive eyes from his sight. She tried to think, but her head pounded from a wretched headache. All she could say was "Then I shall leave without any means."

"You will never leave here. You're
mine
now because the price for you was extracted from my own flesh and blood." His words were tightly spoken, as if he were fighting for self- control. But then he suddenly shoved the priceless lapis lazuli urn off the pedestal. A moment's flash of anger and the three-thousand-year-old urn lay in worthless shards before her feet. A stifled sob racked her body and she quickly ran to the tapestry room to get away from this unfeeling, brutal man who was bent on torturing her. She gratefully saw her hyacinth brocade
laid
out on a chair near a newly built-up fire and she quickly flung the fabric over her head.

When she had the dress on, she pulled it together with her arms, looking down for her laces. Then she saw the gold key sparkling in the light from the hearth. She knew Avenel was behind her, stalking her like some magnificent, naked carnivore, and she knew she would have to be quick if she were going to win her freedom. She grabbed the key, but her cry soon went from triumph to defeat as he came upon her. He almost broke her fingers as he wrenched the gold key out of her hand. Without an ounce of remorse on his face, he then flung the precious key into the fire. Instinctively she reached for it, moaning from the sharp pain that the flames inflicted on her. But when he grabbed her to get her hand away from the flames, she thrust out her fist and beat mercilessly on his bandaged thigh, knowing from her experience with his wound exactly where her small hand could hurt him most. When he was helpless and groaning, she calmly walked out of the room the victor. Yet she felt bitter with the knowledge that, despite his aching wound, she had left him feeling less pain than she felt—not from her burned hand, but from her ravaged heart.

Everything was ready. Her brown cloak lay on the counterpane with a coarse cloth bag that held all her worldly possessions: two dresses, an extra linen shift, and the miniature of a young man painted on a wafer-thin sheet of ivory. Stepping into her pattens, she momentarily rubbed her forehead. Her head ached pitiably from the tears she refused to shed. Taking a deep breath, she went over to the bed to grab her cloak and bag. Then she moved to the door, somehow feeling anxious about her departure, which seemed to be going too smoothly.

But then she encountered the locked door. Pulling on the brass knob, done in arabesques and etchings, she struggled with it for a long time, hoping against hope that it was just stuck. She hadn't heard the quiet click of the lock when she had first entered her bedchamber, for she had been too involved in collecting her things and getting out of the hyacinth brocade. But there was no mistaking it now. The door was locked, and she could be sure there was no key left behind for her.

She gave up on it and looked around the yellow taffeta room, seeking another way out. There was only one other door. Going into her dressing room, she went to the wall where the jib was placed. She ran her fingers along the edge, seeking the spring lock, but she quickly realized it was no use. The door could only be sprung from the other side by the servants, and for the moment it was tightly shut and locked, too.

"Damn," she whispered, holding her head, which now pounded unmercifully.

*
  
*
  
*

Late that afternoon, Avenel sat by the blazing fireplace in the gallery just underneath the painting of Oliver Morrow.
A glass in his hand was filled with amber spirits. He held on to it tightly, keeping the tension of his fingers on the beaker just below the breaking point.

"You've been drinking all day, Avenel." Rose walked over to the armchair in which he sat. She kneeled down beside him, taking his free hand in hers.

"So I have." His eyes were red and tired from the drink, but his speech did not show its effects.

"Perhaps you would like me to help you into your bedchamber? You could try to rest." She placed her head gently on his knee and looked over to the side where her husband stood.

"That sounds like a good idea, Slane. You look worn out." Cumberland moved closer to them.

"No, no. I'm not tired. I've been thinking.
Remembering times past."
Avenel lifted the glass to his lips and took a long sip of the expensive liquid. "I was recalling that terrible fever you had. It seemed to me and Staples, 'twould never cease. Do you recall?"

"Not hardly
. It all seems a bad dream," Cumberland said.

"I do, though. Staples had me up and about in no time after we jumped ship. But you—you were laid up for a long while." Avenel squinted as if he were pulling something from the back of his mind. "I remember how I went to work with Staples
. '
Twas in the tobacco fields with that fresh shipment of African flesh. We were hardly better off than the slaves that toiled alongside us. By the end of the summer, Staples and I appeared as black as they from the sun beating down on our backs. To this day I still cannot abide the stench of dried tobacco leaves. It reminds me too dearly of the cost in blood and sweat.""

"Staples
was
a dear friend. I mourn him too, Slane. But we moved up, didn't we? And we moved him up with us," Cumberland reassured him.

"It was mostly your doing. We never could have gotten him such a plantation if you hadn't taught me how to gamble." Avenel sipped again and frowned. "As it was, it took years before I thought I could win. Those wealthy, impetuous fools!" he scoffed. "How easily they threw away their gold, when they didn't have the vaguest knowledge whence it came! Nor how hard a man must work to earn the most meager of livings." He laughed now, his mood as changeable as mercury. "But look at the three of us! We're all three rich beyond our wildest imaginings and back at
Osterley
Park
. We have them to thank for it!"

"We have you to thank for it," Rose said softly, looking at his pain-filled eyes.

Avenel took notice of her now, and he found comfort stroking her corona of faded blond hair. "You must tell me, Rose. Why did I not marry you when Christopher was killed? You're still lovely, though you be years older than I."

"Hush your musings, my lord!" she exclaimed with a playful smile. "For my husband is near, and you will force him to all you out!"

"But tell me, why did we not fall in love and—"

"Because, my lord," she answered gently, "you were not Christopher and you are not Cumberland. And I, alas, am not Bri—"

"Do not!" Avenel warned her before she could say the lame.

"But it's true, is it not, Slane?" Cumberland forced his way nto their conversation.

"No! You're both mad
if
you think I would fall in love with Morrow's daughter!" Avenel sat up straight in the armchair, causing Rose to jerk her head abruptly from his knee.

"Why don't you admit it? We cannot go on fooling ourselves that the girl upstairs is to be used and then cast
aside,
she is a person, Slane. It's true we had our plans to do that to her, but that was before we came here. We thought she'd be a vile, selfish creature, well used to a soft, indulgent life. But Brienne is not like that, and you cannot abuse her like a London strumpet." Cumberland looked over to him with imploring blue eyes. "She loves you, Slane. And God forgive me for saying this, but you love her too!"

 
"Damn you for saying that!" The glass that Avenel held so forcibly now shattered in his hand. Tiny rivulets of crimson started down his palm into the crisp, snowy lace of his cuff, Rose jumped up off the floor to get a cloth from the tea table, but he violently waived it away, choosing instead to vent his anger on her husband. "Are you crazed, old man, for speaking such things?" Avenel stood up and shouted at Cumberland, "Why not be quick about it and simply put a knife in my back? Or are you both hoping Morrow will do it for you? I daresay he would love to attend to that task! Just look what he did in the woods!" Avenel looked up, his eyes as mean and white as a wolf's. "But I vow to both of you, and heed my words well," he spoke in a tightly controlled whisper. "Oliver Morrow will not get to me through Brienne. He will not get me that way!" He kicked out at the fine elbow chair and then stalked out of the room, leaving Rose and Cumberland behind, their faces full of shock and helpless disbelief.

Brienne paced the pale wool carpeting in her bedchamber.
 
The waiting was driving her mad. She knew someone, whether it
be
Vivie, Cumberland, or Avenel himself, would have to enter her room eventually, and when they did, she would make her escape. But now it was all she could do to fight the compulsion to bang wildly on the door and beg to be let out of her yellow-silk-hung prison. But she forced herself to pace quietly and wait, to ease her aching head in the peaceful solitude of her bedchamber. There had been a lot of time to think as the early evening sun descended into the surrounding forests. A plan had formed in her mind as to how she could get past the guards and gatemen, who by now had surely been informed of the possibility of her escape. She did not doubt Avenel's thoroughness in this matter, but she knew that with the plan she had in mind her greatest obstacle was getting through the locked door before her and not by the burly Scandinavians at the Park's entrance.

Her ears pricked at the sound of a key in the keyhole. There was a click, the lock was sprung, and she backed from the door to meet whoever stood on the other side of the thick mahogany.

"Get out!" she whispered vehemently at Avenel as he stood in the threshold. But he did not heed her words; instead he closed the door behind him and relocked it. Brienne noticed the stark, glazed appearance of his eyes and knew he had been drinking, although his calculated and controlled movements belied this fact.

"Leave me, I tell you!" she demanded, horrified that he nonchalantly placed the key on the mantelpiece and then sat on the settee. He removed his tall, black boots and his fine knitted stockings. She watched in absolute silence as he pulled each of them off his legs, noticing for the first time his cut and bleeding palm. But she felt no sympathy for him, only fear, as he pulled off his waistcoat and tossed that elaborately embroidered garment onto the floor. Then he looked straight at her with dispassionate eyes and pulled off his white linen shirt. Bending his head to his front, he slowly unlaced his doeskin breeches. She watched from her place at the window like a frightened red vixen caught in a trap. The scarred flesh of his taut, lower abdomen was exposed, and then his manhood, large and unfettered, was revealed. She looked away as he tossed the last vestige of his clothing over the settee; her mouth went dry, and her heart beat desperately in her chest.

Slowly and deliberately, he walked over to her; his naked male flesh swung with every powerful step. All too soon he was upon her, and she expected a violent assault on her body. But there was none save die soft brush of his skin as he positioned her against the wall.

"You will have to force me this time." She jerked her head to the side in refusal, breathing in his brandy-laced scent. His darkly furred chest skimmed the bare skin that was exposed at the top of her bodice, and against her will she found it pinkening and tingling beneath him.

"I think not," he whispered into her mass of auburn, honeysuckle-scented hair. He inhaled her fragrance deeply and then paused to admire the sweet, kiss-starved curve of her lips before his own descended on them.

Her eyes squeezed shut as if to force from her mind the overwhelming memory of their lovemaking. Her hand pushed against his well-muscled chest to announce her reluctance. But there was no pulling away from the proud, naked man as his hips pressed into her soft belly, proving his desire again and again with his hard and swelling manhood. She dared not look down in fear of its very size, and so she looked up, thereby allowing her mouth to be opened and explored by his hard, thrusting tongue.