“I thought so too, my lord,” she said.“But alas one is unable to explore too far. The boats will be leaving again soon, I expect.”
He laughed softly and came to stand directly in front of her. “Nicely said, Kate,” he said, “but you know you will not get away from me so easily this time, my dear. You have been avoiding me.”
“Yes,” Kate said flatly, “I have.”
He laughed again. “I recall telling you that I like my women docile,” he said. “I am not at all sure that I do not make an exception in your case. At least at the start, Kate. Your spirit excites me. I shall tame it, of course.” One long finger came beneath her chin and tilted up her face. “You will be both docile and obedient eventually, I do assure you. But I shall allow you some rein at first. The taming of you will make the possession the more satisfactory.”
Kate made no attempt to resist the pressure of his finger. She gazed boldly back into his eyes. “I have been both docile and obedient, my lord,” she said. “The man was my husband. It was my duty to bow to his will, and I did not shirk my duty. When he died, I was of age, though I did not have the means with which to support myself in independence. I took employment so that I would never again owe obedience to any man. I belong to myself, my lord, and if I give myself, it will be because I choose to do so.”
“Then you will choose to give yourself to me, madam,” he said, his eyes roving hotly over her face, “or submit to being taken. We can have pleasure together, Kate, if you do not make it necessary for me to hold you down while I take mine alone.”
“Believe me, my lord,” she said, her heart beginning to knock against her ribs so that she could hardly draw breath with which to speak, “I will never take pleasure from any encounter with you, and I shall see to it that you take none from me. If you will remove your finger from beneath my chin, I shall make my way back to the company and the boats.”
“Brave words, my dear,” he almost whispered, so that Kate could have sworn that she felt the fine hairs at the back of her neck stand on end. “We will remove ourselves from the path. Your champion is like to come panting along at any moment, and I choose not to be interrupted this time.”
He took her by the upper arm in a grip that she knew with a sinking of the heart she would not be able to break away from. It seemed as he moved her at speed away from the path and into the cover of the trees that her toes scarcely touched the ground beneath her. Kate had never been a screamer. It did not occur to her now that if she did scream, she would probably be heard at the lake. She was too busy using the only weapon she had left at her disposal: her brain.
He did not take her far. He was too impatient to take his pleasure of her at last. Kate soon found herself with her back against a tree and a very heavy masculine body holding her there. She could feel just how aroused he was. She was horribly reminded of Giles. She felt nausea.
And then she was fighting desperately and silently, the only sound her breathing and his. Her bonnet was gone and the left side of her hair was around her shoulders. And her shoulders were bare; her breasts too. Her dress was around her waist, around her elbows. But she was scarcely aware of her growing state of undress. She was furiously avoiding his hot, wet mouth, which clamped itself over hers until she managed to shake it free and which then took possession of her throat until she squirmed away from it and found it at her breasts.
Her brain. Think. She was no match for his strength. He was merely playing with her at present, enjoying her squirming discomfort, aroused further by it. In another few moments, when he tired of the game, he would have her beneath him on the ground and she would be totally helpless. She would become his woman, the Marquess of Uppington’s whore. He would take her quickly and almost impersonally, as Giles always had, and leave her feeling soiled and worthless. A man’s sex toy merely. Think!
“Enough now,” he was saying, his breath hot against her ear. “Enough. Stop fighting me, Kate. I don’t want to hurt you.”
It hardly seemed ladylike. If she were calm and could think about it rationally, she would consider it more unthinkable even than killing the man. If only she were not fighting for her very sanity, she would put the idea from her mind with a blush. Most ladies would not even give the idea a thought if their lives were at stake. Most ladies would not even know of the possibility.
As the Marquess of Uppington eased his weight away from her so that he might coax her to the ground, Kate’s knee jerked up with all the force her terror and fury could muster. She closed her eyes tightly as he doubled up and gasped.
When she opened them again a few moments later, she found herself looking at the indolent figure of Sir Harry Tate propped against a tree a short distance away, his arms folded across his chest, for all the world as if he had been there for an hour or more.
“How long have you been standing there?” she asked breathlessly.
“Oh, long enough, Mrs. Mannering,” he said with his customary drawl. “Quite long enough to discover that you are no lady, ma’am. For shame!”
Kate’s nostrils flared. “Would it have been more ladylike to submit to my fate?” she asked.
“I rather think that if we wish to argue over the qualities of a true lady,” he said, pushing his shoulders away from the tree and sauntering toward her, “we should remove ourselves, my dear Mrs. Mannering. I do believe your lover needs time alone in which to recollect himself. That was a low blow, ma’am. Quite literally.”
Kate looked down in some panic at the man at her feet, who was still doubled up and drawing noisy, labored breaths. She did not resist when Sir Harry took her hand in a very firm grasp and drew her away at a brisk trot. They had been dodging trees for all of two minutes, in fact, before she finally hauled back on her hand and found her tongue again.
“Where are we going?” she asked. “This is not the way back to the lake, sir. And where is the path? We were not so far from it to start with.”
“I am not taking you back to the lake just yet,” he said, his manner somewhat brisker than she had ever known it before. “Would you like the company to observe your present disarray, Mrs. Mannering?”
She looked down at herself. She would not have been surprised to find her dress still down around her waist. She certainly could not remember pulling it up to cover herself decently again. But the sash that pulled it in beneath her breasts was hanging loose, one of her shoulders was still bare, the same shoulder was covered by her hair, and her bonnet was gone—in Sir Harry’s hand, she saw in something of a daze.
“And if you had a mirror and could see yourself above the shoulders, you would doubtless swoon quite away,” he said, the sneer she was more accustomed to back in his voice. “You look as if you have been indulging in a thorough roll in the hay, my dear.”
“And where were you when I needed you most?” she fumed, hiding her embarrassment in bluster. “Leaning against a tree enjoying the show?”
“On the contrary,” he said with a sigh. “I was about to do something quite out of character, Mrs. Mannering. I was about to exert myself by hailing Uppington and demanding that he unhand you.”
“Oh, wonderful!” said Kate, lifting her arm and eyes to the sky as if inviting the clouds to applaud. “Were you going to say please, sir?”
He considered. “Probably not,” he said. “It would have weakened the effect of the command, do you not think? ‘Unhand the wench, thou villain, please!’ No, Mrs. Mannering, I believe I would have had to forget good manners for the occasion. Of course, all was quite unnecessary. It seems you are perfectly capable of looking after yourself. And now I think of it, it strikes me that I was singularly fortunate not to suffer a similar fate to Uppington’s on a certain memorable afternoon in a cave that we agreed was not quite impressive enough to be a smugglers’ hideout. I would not have been at all amused.”
“Everything is a joke to you, is it not?” Kate said in fury. “What happened this afternoon was not a joke, sir. I might have been ravished. I certainly believe Lord Uppington had something more than a mere kiss on his mind. And being a man, and a heartless, unfeeling one at that, I do not suppose you have any idea of what such a fate can mean to a woman. It would be worse than death. I know people joke about the fate worse than death, but it must be men who make a joke of it. It would be worse. I could not have lived with myself if . . . if . . .”
