Sattler, Veronica (47 page)

Dismounting
and throwing his reins to a sleepy-eyed stable boy he called Tim, he lifted
Ashleigh from the black filly's back, gave her gag a tug to pull it free and,
with a menacing look that said he would brook no attempts at fleeing or calling
for help, ushered her to the rear door of the town house.

A
wide-eyed Higgins met them at the door, but, aside from a brief response to a
curtly phrased question from the duke as to how soon ahead of them he'd
arrived, remained wisely silent as Brett bade him good-night and marched
Ashleigh firmly upstairs.

Once
there, he did not take her to the chamber she'd shared with Megan when they
were in London in late spring, but instead, led her into a large,
well-furnished bedchamber done in a masculine style, with its colors in varying
hues of brown and dark blue. Shutting the door behind them, to Ashleigh's
dismay he then locked it and pocketed the key; then he turned to her with eyes
that glittered with impending menace.

Now
that they were away from where other ears might hear, Ashleigh felt she dared
risking speech. She
had
to know his intent. Swallowing past the growing
lump in her throat, she turned apprehensive blue eyes upward. "Brett, I
know you must be ang—"

"Shut
your lying little mouth, you false bitch!" he snarled, roughly undoing her
cloak. "Your charming little note said all I need to hear from
you—ever!" He began to untie her bonds, the grim line of his mouth offset
not a whit by the white lines that formed around it and the faint tick in his
jaw muscles as he strove to hold his temper in check.

Then,
as she rubbed at her sore wrists where the rope had been tied, he reached for
the buttons of her smart little riding jacket.

Ashleigh
took a step backward in alarm, her wide eyes flying to his face. Did he mean to
undress her? Was he going to force intimacies upon her while in this forbidding
mood? For it would be force he would have to use; she couldn't begin to think
of giving him willing access to her body with things as they were between them
now.

But
Brett avoided her eyes and merely jerked her toward him and removed the jacket;
then he spun her around and started on the buttons at the back of her habit.

"Brett,
I—"

"One
more word—just one—and I'll make you wish you'd never been given speech,"
he spat. Then he was pushing the habit down around her waist, her hips, her
thighs, until it fell at last in a heap about her ankles.

This
done, he began to divest her of her undergarments, finishing the shameful
disrobing by throwing her heedlessly on the bed where he pulled off her boots
and rolled down her stockings.

While
he accomplished this, Ashleigh remained carefully silent, but had all she could
do to push back the tears of fright and despair that choked. Unbidden, her
thoughts flew back to an earlier time of humiliation and fear at his hands.

Finally,
when she lay cowering and nude on the large tester bed, he stood looking down
at her from his great height, his turquoise eyes gleaming with naked anger.

"I
don't think you'll be going anywhere without your clothes," he sneered,
"but just to make sure..." He retrieved the discarded scarf and began
to bind her wrists again with it instead of the rope, oblivious to Ashleigh's
moan of distress at the act. Then, almost as an afterthought, he pulled the
bed's coverlet over her trembling form; this done, he blew out the lamp and
headed for the door.

After
he had unlocked it, she saw him turn toward her in the light given off by a
pair of candles in a sconce in the hallway. "Sleep well, Your Grace,"
he mocked, then shut the door, and a moment later, a soft click told her it was
locked.

Exhausted
as she was, Ashleigh lay awake for a long time, unable to sleep. Myriad
questions kept assaulting her brain, tumbling her thoughts about. What did he
intend to do with her? Surely he couldn't keep her locked up like this
indefinitely? Didn't he realize Patrick and Megan would tear London apart to
find her? But would they know she was here? What if Brett kept her whereabouts
hidden when they came to his house? And how long would Brett keep her from
speaking, from trying to explain to him what had prompted her to leave? For she
felt she could thereby perhaps gain enough of his understanding, if not his
sympathy, to convince him to let her go.

She
realized now she'd been wrong to leave the way she had, that she ought to have
found the courage to face him and give him a fuller explanation. But her newly
found awareness of how she felt about him, of her love, hadn't allowed her to think
very clearly; she'd been too frightened of the vulnerability caused by her own
feelings to consider his.

Well,
now he would make her pay for it, and in spades! She had few illusions about
what he was capable of; she'd sensed those barely leashed, flammable emotions
smoldering just beneath his surface. No, he would not easily come around to
feeling sympathy for her!

But
somehow, she convinced herself as she at last felt her eyelids begin to grow
heavy, she must find a way to convince him—that, or thwart him and find a means
of escape.

Oh,
Patrick,
she
cried silently to the darkness....
Megan... someone, please find me... I'm
frightened....
She drifted off into an uneasy slumber.

* * * * *

Ashleigh
awoke the next morning to the sound of her door being unlocked. She had been
sleeping fitfully, especially in the hours after dawn when her half-awake state
was fraught with unsettling dreams of a man wearing an executioner's hood
standing over her unclothed body, holding an ax.

She
had little trouble, therefore, owing to the lightness of her slumber, in coming
fully alert when Higgins entered the chamber. Recalling instantly where she
was, she brought her bound hands before her to jerk up the coverlet that had
slipped below her shoulders during the night. Willing the blush to leave her
cheeks, she then turned her eyes to the manservant carrying a tray toward a
stand beside the bed.

Smelling
the aroma of hot chocolate and freshly baked scones, Ashleigh realized she was
famished. "Oh, Higgins, how very kind of you," she said. "That
smells delicious!"

The
narrow-faced valet flushed with apparent pleasure at the compliment, but kept
his eyes doggedly on the tray as he set it down and said, "Merely
following orders, Your Grace." He turned about and headed for the door
before pausing and adding, "I'm also to prepare you a bath—" he
gestured to an adjoining dressing alcove partially hidden by a blue-and-gold
coromandel screen "—over there."

"You
are
to prepare my bath?" Ashleigh asked in astonishment. When she and Megan
had been here in the spring, a bevy of kitchen help had performed that service,
for it involved the menial task of hauling heated water up a steep flight of
stairs, something a servant with the status of Higgins should not need to do.

Higgins
turned; his face flushed pink, and instead of looking at her, he proceeded to
stare at a point somewhere on the wall above her head as he responded.
"I'm the only one here, Your Grace. The London staff have been given
several days' holiday."

"Oh,"
murmured Ashleigh, unwilling to examine what that implied.

"So,
if you'll excuse me, Your Grace, I'll be going downstairs to fetch your
bathwater while you enjoy your breakfast."

Ashleigh
watched as he unlocked the door, exited, then shut it behind him; a second
later she heard the click of the lock. Now it was her turn to flush as she
imagined what the manservant must be thinking, being as involved as he
obviously was in her incarceration. Then she realized he probably didn't know
about her wrist bonds or her nakedness under the coverlet and would wonder why
she hadn't begun to consume her breakfast when he returned. Her flush increased
as she realized she'd be forced to tell him!

Determining
not to allow such a humiliating situation to come to pass, Ashleigh thrust her
bound wrists up before her and began to work furiously at untying the knotted
blue scarf with her teeth. She only managed to tighten it further, and as the
seconds ticked by, she cursed the quality of silk that allowed it to shred so
easily while stubbornly refusing to become unknotted. At last she felt herself
making some headway, however, and she forced herself to remain calm so that her
small white teeth could operate efficiently.

Finally
the knot loosened, and she tore her hands free at the same moment that she
heard footsteps outside the door. Then as she reached for the tray at the
bedside, a second panic set in; if she extracted her arms from the coverlet,
Higgins would realize she wore nothing underneath!

Several
seconds later, as Higgins walked into the chamber carrying a pair of steaming
buckets of water, he came upon the new duchess of Ravensford wearing a blue
silk shawl over her shoulders as she nibbled daintily on a scone.

Ashleigh
finished her breakfast while Higgins made three more trips for water. Then,
when he informed her the bath was ready and she was expecting him to withdraw,
she was surprised when he went to a large armoire across the room and proceeded
to empty it of the dozens of pieces of male attire it contained.

"Wh—what
are you doing, Higgins?" she stammered.

Higgins
had the grace to flush deeply as he replied, "I'm terribly sorry, Your
Grace, but I've orders from His Grace to remove every article of clothing from
this chamber before I leave."

Now
it was Ashleigh's turn to flush deeply.
Higgins knew!
He knew not only
that she was being held here against her will, but that she was being kept
stark naked in the process, not even allowed to wrap herself in her husband's
shirts for modesty's sake!

Higgins
left a few minutes later, laden with a huge pile of the duke's clothing, and as
she heard the key turn in the lock, Ashleigh began to seethe with frustration
and fury. So that was the way of things, was it? Not satisfied with kidnapping
her and frightening her half out of her wits, her husband intended to humiliate
her beyond decency in front of a high-ranking servant! Oh, he was
despicable!
He was an
unfeeling brute,
a worse husband than—

Suddenly
she broke off her mental tirade, focusing on one word she'd used...
husband.

She
glanced down at her left hand, seeing for the first time in twenty-four hours
the ornate gold wedding ring he'd placed on her third finger two days before.
Hands trembling with rage, she wrenched the glittering band from her finger and
hurled it across the room, where it landed with a metallic clink against one of
the brass andirons in the fireplace, then rolled somewhere out of sight.

"So
much for past mistakes!" she muttered to the empty room before throwing
back the coverlet, sliding off the bed and marching straight for the dressing
alcove.

Moments
later she was soaking lazily in a steamy, rose-scented bath, her heavy mass of
hair tied high on her crown by the blue silk scarf. She was just deciding to
let the warmth of the water soak away her tension before beginning to scrub
with the large bath sponge that had been provided on a short stool nearby, when
she heard the door to the bedchamber open. Thinking Higgins had misjudged the
time a woman might need to complete her bath, she called out anxiously,
"Oh, please, Higgins, I'm not finished yet!"

"It
isn't Higgins," said a biting male voice that was all too familiar.

With
a groan, Ashleigh sank deeper into the perfumed water, just as Brett's
impeccably attired profile came into view beside the screen.

"Wh-what
are you doing h-here?" she stammered as she eyed his tall, booted form
over the high rim of the brass tub. In addition to shiny mahogany riding boots,
he wore a hunter-green riding jacket over a white shirt whose snowy stock appeared
dazzling beside the bronze of his summer tan; an unadorned white waistcoat and
snug, thigh-hugging, buff-colored breeches completed the image. Unprepared as
she was for the sight of him, his stunning virility nearly took her breath
away. He was oh-so-unspeakably handsome with his dark chestnut hair curling
negligently just above his collar and a lock of it falling rakishly over his
forehead!

Then,
as the turquoise gaze met hers, Ashleigh realized he'd caught her staring and
hastily looked away.

An
unpleasant, sardonic burst of laughter broke from his throat. "Did you
really think I'd ask your permission to visit you in your bath?" As he
uttered the final word, his eyes roamed freely, quite slowly, and, yes,
deliberately—insultingly, Ashleigh thought—over her naked form beneath the
water, for he was very close to the tub now, and could command such a view from
his towering height.

Crossing
her hands self-consciously over her breasts in embarrassed anger, Ashleigh felt
heat rise to her face and knew it had nothing to do with the water's warmth.
"If it has been your wish to shame me, Your Grace, then know that you have
done so, and please leave." Eyes that had gone violet with emotion met his
for a brief second, then lowered beneath a sweep of sooty lashes.