No Choice but Surrender (8 page)

"How wonderful that you can speak French, my lady!
When I am nervous, my English is unrecognizable!" the little woman answered in French, smiling in gratitude. "But to answer your question, I have just arrived from London today. Master Slane has brought me here for you. And such a rush he was in this morning! I have never traveled so quickly! But as for this Annie, I do not know where she is. I have not met anyone by that name here. Would you like me to find her?"

"No! That is, I suppose she is busy with other matters now." Brienne felt a strange little jab inside her, and she wondered briefly if those other matters included warming the state bed.

"But, my lady!
Enough of my chatter! We must think of you! "'The little woman went to work, busily laying out linen towels by the bath, pouring steaming water into the tub from a brass kettle near the hearth, and then helping Brienne, who was rather dazed by all the attention, out of her soiled clothing.

Letting Vivie do everything, Brienne allowed herself to be whisked into the tub. Her icy fingers and feet luxuriated in the warm scented water as the little maid scrubbed her back and lathered her long, rich hair. Then Vivie poured pans of deliciously warm water over Brienne's head until all traces of the expensive soap were removed from her hair and body.

Then she was wrapped in the linen towels, and Vivie labored over her wetfhair, combing it dry by the fireside; only then did Brienne ask the questions that were hovering in her mind.

"What did Master Slane say of me? I mean, what relationship did he propose
we
. . ." She spoke in perfect French until she found it too awkward to continue.

"He has not said a word, my lady. Please do not concern yourself." Vivie stopped combing for a moment and brought her a clean white night smock and her old slate blue wool dressing gown. After helping her into these, the maid moved to the Pembroke table. She took the silver covers from the platters and discriminatingly filled a Sevres porcelain plate with die delicacies within.

"Vivie," Brienne said as she watched her dinner being served, "I suppose you think I am here to—"

"No explanations are necessary, my lady. I am French. These things are a way of life for a French girl. But for you at least there is such a man! I have heard he is kind and generous —and a true Adonis. What more could one ask for? To be taken in and cared for by one such as he is more than—"

"No! It is not like that! I am not his mistress! You see, he is holding me . . ."
Here,
Brienne thought abruptly to herself, her voice trailing off.
You see
—
she recited the speech to herself
—be is holding me here against my will for some reason that I do not yet know. And even though he may pay you well and is obviously one of the most virile and handsome men a woman could ever desire, he is really an ogre, and . . .

She gave a heavy sigh of despair. There would be no point in telling the sweet little Frenchwoman any of this, she knew. Either Vivie would think it a ghastly lie to cover up her role here as Avenel's mistress, or the little maid would believe she was as crazed as Annie did.

Vivie brought her a tray with her dinner, but Brienne found her appetite diminished by the strange circumstances in which she found herself.

"Please try to eat something, my lady." Vivie watched over her like a mother on her daughter's wedding night. "It will not be good if you get too thin." The maid gave her a sage look and then went into the dressing room to unpack Brienne's worn and muddied bag.

Brienne tried some of the roasted tripe but found the heavy red wine more to her liking. Finally she sat back in the settee, which had been moved nearer to the fire with a full wineglass in her small hand. It did not take long for her to become drowsy. All day she had worn herself out with futile planning.

Thinking back to the morning, she recalled that she had paced furiously in the little stable block room, trying desperately to come up with a means to leave. She had considered using one of the horses as a means of escape, but she'd known she wouldn't get far, since she didn't know how to ride.

Later that afternoon, she'd tried just walking away, descending the steps to the stableyard and then, bag in hand, sauntering to the back of the house to head due west toward the woodlands. It was not a complete failure; no one had physically tried to stop her from going. But doubts had seized her when the cold winter wind whipped at her petticoat and reddened her cheeks with their sting. Where would she go? She had no money for even the most meager of lodgings; even returning to Tenby would cost her coach fare.

In that second of indecision she had turned around to look back at the house; its immense brick structure had beckoned her with at least a fireside and some food. Then she had seen him staring at her from the gallery windows that lined the entire back of the house. Avenel's face had had a hard expression on it as he watched her, and his mouth had formed a grim line. Their eyes met, and then she knew exactly why he was merely staring out the window at her and not coming forth into the cold to bring her back. It was not that he had suddenly been taken with a fit of compliance. He had simply known even before she had that she would not go. She was trapped at Osterley, more because of her lack of means than because of locks and threats and giants guarding the gates. She couldn't go anywhere without her comb. He had not doubted that she would come back to get it.

Scalding tears had burned her raw cheeks. In frustration she had turned from the house so that he would not see her defeat. She'd never been prone to tears and emotion. But then that had been before this man had shown up at Osterley. In one day her very insides had been turned inside out from the wonder, worry, doubt, and fear associated with his arrival.

All alone in the great field behind the house, she had stood rigidly still. When her tears had passed, with her head held high despite her feelings of hopelessness, she had returned to the stable block room, noting on her way that he had moved from the gallery windows. But she knew he was still watching her just the same.

Now, sleepily curled up on the pale yellow settee, she was still trying to figure out a plan. She knew the first thing she had to do was get her comb back. That had become crystal clear during her battle with her tears. Only then, would she have the means to leave. But then her inexperience with spirits caught up with her as she imbibed the rich
Burgundy
; she told herself almost merrily she would soon have the pleasure of seeing
Osterley
Park
and Avenel Slane for the last time.

With this comforting thought, she took one last sip of her wine and placed the glass on the Brussels carpet. Her thickly lashed eyelids closed in deepest slumber; she was completely unmindful of Vivie, who peeked into the room and then contentedly retired for the night.

Three days of waiting—that much time passed before Brienne saw Avenel leave the house. There had been no point in venturing forth from her room while he was in residence, for surely where her comb was, he would be, guarding it. But here was her chance.

Slyly she watched him through the painted taffeta curtains of her room. He walked arrogantly toward the stable block, looking completely unmindful of her and her troubles—or so it seemed, she thought irritably. It was a rare glorious winter day; but a few billowing clouds swept their way across an azure sky. Avenel obviously meant to take full advantage of the beautiful weather by spending it on horseback. From her room she saw the bright sun glinting off his well-sooted and shined black boots. Tied back with a dark silk cord, his natural hair glinted with blue shimmers. He saw the new stableboy bring his fully tacked up horse to him and flashed him an even white smile. Brienne's feminine instinct told her with little doubt that there were women on at least two continents thinking of him at that very moment. Looking at him now, relaxed and smiling, basking in the sunshine and anticipating his ride,

he
had a boyish quality about him that she begrudgingly admitted was very attractive.

But enough of this! She nervously stepped back from the window and let die curtains fall to their hanging position. She had to find her comb, and there would not be much time!

She crept stealthily out of her room and down the great staircase. In the hall the old footmen were as omnipresent as the ancient Roman statues lining the wall. They stared after her, but she dismissed their vacant, fixed gazes and swept purposefully toward the drawing room. There she bypassed the south passage and went instead through room after room to gain access to the state bedroom, thereby avoiding any servants who might be wandering the halls.

Ignoring the rich crimson Gobelins tapestries that hung like so much wallpaper in the magnificent antechamber, she quickly sought the door to his room. Her nerves were strung tight as she moved into the bedroom; she knew full well that she must not be caught. She closed the door firmly behind her and stood just inside the room, taking deep, calming breaths.

She had seen it many times, but the room's rich decoration still caught her by surprise. How oddly beautiful it seemed now that someone inhabited it, she mused. Whenever she'd come here in the past month, the room had appeared rather dark and oppressive; but now she was struck by how lovely the hues of pleated green velvet were that warmed and lined the walls, and how overwhelming and terribly unnerving the splendid domed bedstead was that boasted not less than eight painted and japanned columns with gilt capitals. But not wanting to waste one more precious minute, she made herself turn her gaze from the bed and pushed her wary thoughts of it to the back of her mind.

She swept over to the south passage door and pulled it closed to keep away the prying eyes of the servants. The japanned commode was the most logical place to start; she walked over to it, opened the top drawer, and rummaged through Slane's spare handkerchiefs, a plain pewter snuff box, several pairs of fine white silk hose, and his own tortoiseshell comb that still held two or three of his shiny, long black hairs. But she didn't come across the comb.

She opened drawer after drawer of white, immaculately pressed linen shirts. She rifled through these, not caring in what condition she left them, hoping desperately that her risk- taking wouldn't be for naught. But her sparkling purple and gold comb did not turn up among his shirts either. She groaned with nervousness and frustration and looked about the room, searching for possible hiding places for her comb. But the bedstead so dominated the chamber that there was no room for additional furnishings. Silently she cursed the huge structure; its very immensity possessed new meaning at the unbidden thought that Avenel had awakened in it that very morning. The bed loomed over her. It intensified her desire to get far away from him.

She forced her attention to his trunks, which were placed one on top of the other against the north wall. Apparently they had been emptied and were about to be removed for storage. Gladly moving away from the bed, she went to the leather trunk at the top of the stack and pulled it down. But quickly she found it too heavy for her, and the massive piece fell to the ground with a clamoring thud. Her heart pounded in her chest, for she was sure that an army of servants was going to descend upon the room and find her out. But a few minutes of silence passed, and the only sound she heard was the quiet, steady tick of the French clock on the mantel in the state bedroom.

Breathing an enormous sigh of relief, she sat cross-legged on the edge of the Thomas Moore carpet that had been made to outline the magnificent bed. She tapped and jiggled the undone locks of the trunk until it fell open. She could not hide her disappointment when she found the trunk empty.

Pushing it aside with disgust, she went for the next trunk, this time anticipating its weight and taking it more securely in her arms. But just as her arms had a firm, steady hold on it, she suddenly made out the faint, menacing sound of riding boots on the marble floor coming toward her from the passage. Fear jerked through her like a bolt of lightning, and the trunk fell from her arms with a loud crash and boom. Wild-eyed, she waited for the sound of running feet. But the footsteps did not quicken their pace; instead they confirmed her worst fears by merely continuing forward with maddening and dooming evenness. That was enough for Brienne.

Flying through the jumble of trunks and thankfully not tripping over any of the angled and open lids in her way
,,
she knew she could reach the tapestry-room door before anyone entered the bedroom. But when she got to it, she found that it had somehow locked behind her. Despite her pushing and pulling on the arabesque-decorated door latch, it would not open. She was left with no way out.

"Looking for this?" Avenel filled the doorway to his bedroom with his large frame and dangled the comb from his thumb and forefinger.

"Damn you! Why didn't you go riding?" she whispered from the locked door;
her
back hugged every board in it. Her mouth had gone dry, and she swallowed several times to moisten it.

"Now, how did you know I was going riding? You wouldn't be spying on me? And here I thought you were merely a thief!" He sauntered into the room and shut the passage door behind him with such finality that she had to close her eyes to keep from shrieking in terror. She had only seen the tip of this man's anger before, and then she had not provoked it.
But now, caught searching his bedroom, she felt that he would surely kill her or worse.
Forcing her eyes open, she saw to her horror that the bedstead which had seemed so large before now seemed to have grown to an overwhelming size.

If she had been weaker, she knew she would have fainted. But instead she met her foe, saying as steadily as she could, "I am not a thief. I have come to retrieve what is mine."

"This?" He held the comb up to her. "I told you before— this was found by one of my men." He walked toward her at a slow, steady pace, holding the brilliant bejeweled comb in front of him.

"It's mine. The comb is all I have in this world." She looked up at him as he came closer. Her face was pale, but she didn't know that this enhanced the dark, rich red of her hair and the full ripeness of her pink mouth. Her fear made her look like an enchanting wood nymph, clinging to the impassable doorway in high-strung anticipation.

"If this is all you possess, my
lady, then you aren't
worth much, surely." With that, he took the comb, and with precise calculation he threw it into the middle of the looming bedstead. She started for it almost immediately, but her arm was grabbed in a strong grip, and she felt herself being turned around to face him. Then his sensuous mouth, which had appeared to her boyish and smiling only an hour before, clamped down on hers in a way that only a man could know of. Her fear made her momentarily passive, and she stood there feeling his angry, demanding lips move over hers almost as if she were a spectator rather than a participant. Slowly she started to struggle with him; she pulled at his linen shirt until she had completely opened it, exposing a tantalizing amount of soft, curling black hair. But he would not let her go. Instead he moved closer, placed his hands around her tiny waist, and moved them upward along the side of her body. He rested them intimately under her arms, just to the sides of her breasts. She felt a growing hardness near her belly as he pressed himself against her. But in spite of his previous demanding and forceful manner, she found she was suddenly not afraid, nor, to her surprise, repulsed.

He was kissing her now with the softness of a lover. His lips took time to move over her face and slowed over her nose and her closed, relaxed eyelids. He made her feel something that did not seem terrible at all. In fact, it was like a floating sensation that she had felt before in one of her dreams. And the more she relaxed, the more heightened the sensation became. All thoughts of what she was actually doing seemed unreachably distant. Before she knew it, she had accepted his mouth willingly over hers. She then bade him enter her mouth as she opened it in an instinctual act that came from deep inside her. As his tongue moved inside her, her nerves flared and sparked. Wanting more of him, she took his dark head in her hands and pulled him to her, desiring the fiery, impending explosion that was wreaking turmoil in her body to go on and on.

Eventually he pulled his head up, and she knew she was panting just as hard as he. He looked down at her with his arms around her; there was an expression of mild disbelief in his visage. "So you aren't afraid of me after all."

She nodded her head, keeping her jewellike amethyst eyes so close to his that she could see the brilliant white flecks that burst from the cerulean ground in his irises.

"You're beautiful, little wildflower." He held her close and whispered into her faintly honeysuckle-scented hair, "Perhaps 'tis I who should be afraid of you. Your father must have created you just to bewitch me."

At the mention of her father, waves of reality lashed through her body. What was she doing? Had she lost all her reason? The man before her was entirely capable of doing to her what Oliver Morrow had done to her mother! But deep down, she realized that there was a difference between the two men. Her realization made Oliver Morrow that much more evil in his abuse, and it made Avenel Slane that much more powerful—and frightening.

Pulling away from his hold, she took several steps back from him; the warmth she had felt from his body was now gone, leaving her empty and unfulfilled. But she had to stop this. He obviously hated her for something her father had done to him, and he had made no effort to hide that fact. If she were not careful, he could inflict more than just physical pain on her.

"I'll have my comb now, if you don't mind." She tried to affect a cool tone, but it was hard when her pulse was drumming fiercely and her skin was pink and hot.

"By all means," he replied, giving her a wickedly beautiful smile. With his arm, he gestured at die towering domed bed with her comb nestled in the plush silk of the pale green coverlet.

"After you."

"I will not," she stated, nervously looking at the ornamented structure.

"Then you will have no comb." He leaned back against die tapestry-room door and watched her. She was again wearing the violet wool dress, but today she had donned a deep wine- colored petticoat of almost the same shade as her hair, which was now piled becomingly into a large, loose chignon and covered with black netting.

"Tell me, Lady Brienne, what is it about this trinket that makes it so valuable to you? Why not steal some of the riches this house has to offer?" He walked over to the corner of the room, where an ancient lapis lazuli urn sat on a tripod pedestal. He unceremoniously picked up the Roman antiquity, jockeyed it between his hands, and then turned to her. "Why not take this, for example? I imagine 'tis thousands of years old. Surely it would bring you all the funds you need to get out of here. And you would also be doing your father a service by depriving me some of his wealth. What say you? Why not give it a try?" He suddenly tossed it to her, and she barely caught the priceless object before it shattered on the ground. She clutched it to her bosom for safekeeping. At her near miss, he merely cocked one of his fine jet eyebrows, which made him look almost satanic; his eyes gleamed like silver coins.

"That would be stealing," she told him indignantly.

"Stealing!
And what do you call this?
Rifling through my belongings, knocking my trunks onto the floor.
Come now, my lady, you need a better reason than that. Why not take the vase?
In fact, 'tis yours.
You may keep it."

"You know why I dare not take the vase!" She was suddenly furious at this game of cat and mouse that he was playing with her. "Whatever I could carry from this place would be unsellable, and you know it. Anyone could trace it back to magnificent
Osterley
Park
. Everything in this house from the doorknobs to the firelogs has the mark of Robert Adam on it. I would be accused of stealing it by the authorities. And I sincerely doubt that you would aid my defense by revealing that you actually gave me one of the priceless treasures from its interior. The whole idea is ridiculous. I do not trust you nearly enough to take that chance; I am not such a fool."