Bertrice Small - Captivated

"No! No…" She shook her head as she backed awayfrom her father and his perfidious lies, from Gerard and his heinous plans.

"Summerville saved your ass," Gerard said.

"And kicked yours all to hell," Victor interpolated smugly. "Killed your plans. Destroyed everything you worked for. Got the girl and the plantation, too. Couldn't have asked for a happier ending."

"Until you get your hands on the cards again," Gerard spat. "Until the idea of fast money lures you out of hiding and Lady Luck seduces you all over again. And she will, because you, my friend, are a goddamned sucker."

Omigod, omigod, omigod… Gerard her father's debtor. Not Court. Not Court. Court didn't buy her. Court saved her. Saved her father, saved Oak Bluffs…

Omigod…

She backed out of the arbor blindly. Omigod…

And what if Court had been listeninghad been watching…?

Omigod…

She couldn't get away fast enough. And she couldn't get out of earshot, either.

Her father was determined to enrage him; crazy, when Gerard had lost everything. Gerard would kill him.

She didn't care. She didn't care. Her father had just lost her, too.

"No," Victor taunted. "You're the dupe, believing I would let you come within inches of Drue, would let you step one foot on Oak Bluffs. You gull. You butt. You goat."

"You son of a bitch!" Gerard roared.

"You bastard" Victor goaded, his voice taut, controlled.

She heard a scuffling, a thump, as if Gerard catapulted himself at her father. And then a shot into the echoing silence that reverberated all over Wildwood.

All inside her.

Father Tears streamed down her face. She didn't care, she didn't. The betrayals were too crippling.

She didn't want to see. She didn't want to know.

She hoped they'd killed each other.

Father…

Pulling the shreds of her dress around her, she turned and ran.

Court had removed himself from her completely. She hadn't seen him for days after the incident in the arbor and she was feeling very irritable.

At first, she hadn't wanted to see him, not after that night. Not after her father had wounded Gerard so seriously. He lay recuperating even now in the surgery of a Dr. Boulois of St. Faubonne, and according to her father, he and Court had exacted a promise from Gerard that he would leave St. Faubonne Parish and relinquish any idea of contacting her again.

"Oh, he will run his little businesses in New Orleans," her father told her a week later, coming to visit when he was certain her anger had died and that she would forgive him. "And he will find eventually another wealthy dupe, another innocent girl, you can be sure of that."

She wasn't quite in the mood to forgive. She felt ill-used, as if she had been nothing more than a puppet, caught between her father's cupidity and Court's avarice.

Nor did she like her father's assessment that reduced her feelings for Gerard to those of a raw, simple-minded, green girl.

"You knew how much I cared for him…" she said testily.

"Exactly," Victor said. "I owed him so much money; I was sure you would marry him just to cancel the debt, but I could not have that upstart parvenu in possession of property that has been in my family for generations."

"So you sold me to Court," Drue interpolated, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice. "He's probably the only one in the whole of St. Faubonne who could afford you and me."

"It's an excellent match, my dear. I knew what I was doing," Victor said breezily.

"I wish you had told me," Drue grumbled, but in point of fact he had: She'd be taken care of, he'd said of one of the advantages of her marriage to Court, and he had been so right. He had no idea how right.

"You were in love with that bastard," Victor went on. "You would have defended him to the death and married him to spite me."

She clenched her fists. She probably would have. She probably wouldn't have seen the vast, eager scheme behind Gerard's sensual seduction of her. She certainly wouldn't have believed her father's interpretation of it.

And so Court became the villain.

And Gerard had been so enraged, he probably would have done anything to dishonor Courtif she had been willing.

Willing. The key, the prime word. Willing. There had never been a woman so willing as she, once she comprehended the depths of her body as an instrument of pleasure.

The real point was, Court had read both of Gerard's notes. Court had been in the arbor, listening, watching. Assuming.

"And that beast did try to kiss you" Victor added somewhat righteously.

And then getting her father to do his dirty work. "So you tried to kill him thus the code of honor has been satisfied," Drue finished caustically. "And it doesn't give you one moment of pain that you allowed Gerard to get such a hold over you?"

"Oh, no… never think that. I was in absolute turmoil before Court agreed to marry you. It was the most humiliating thing, the deepest secret. And I let Gerard believe until the very last that a deal for Oak Bluffs was possible. I thought that was clever, actually. That way, Gerard had good reason not to expose my depravity. And after it was over, he still didn't want to lose you. Of course, down the line, he might well have used the fact that he had held my notes to hurt you and Court, but to what harm, after he had been paid off? The marriage was irrevocable, and the best he could hope for was that you still loved him and might consider running away. But I never thought you'd do that. Too much was at stake. So it was just a matter of time until it was completely over, and it happened sooner than I ever thought, I'll tell you."

He was as smooth as glass, her father: everything slipped off him. Gerard was right, she thought. The cards would get him again, and nothing, not even the possible loss of Oak Bluffs, would stop him because he had the ability to slough off what was distasteful, and focus on the pleasurable.

And what was more pleasurable than seeing his daughter married, a dynasty created, his enemy vanquished, his coffers full of money and his plantation out of debt?

For the moment.

"So you see, my dear, everything worked out just fine," he said, as he took his leave of her.

For you, she thought. Always for him. Even when he lost, he won. And he always had someone to clean up after him.

Her. Court.

But what had Court gained? A reluctant wife whom he'd taken on at the cost of doing business with her father, even knowing that her heart belonged to another man.

And who believed it still, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. He might never again come to her, and she felt the thought of that as keenly as the cut of a blade.

No. She wasn't going to let that happen.

How did her father do it? Even when he lost, he won.

Was she not her father's daughter?

She hadn't lost yetshe was going to be married to Court forever.

She had all the time in the world.

But Court didn't make it easy. He spent all of the succeeding week at Oak Bluffs, and the nights at the St. Faubonne planter's hotel, and she knew immediately that winning him was going to take some drastic measures.

Besides, she was getting more than a little annoyed that he was avoiding her.

She needed a plan. She couldn't just continue to walk around Wildwood naked when he was already exercising that monumental control of his to shut her out.

Her nudity would not seduce him now. He was too angry to allow himself to want her.