Lorraine Heath - Midnight Pleasures with a Scoundrel

“I don’t understand.” Her words were slurred and came from a far distance. “You can’t think you’ll get away with this.”

“It’s all about the thrill, my dear,” Rockberry said. “The excitement that we might get caught. And if we do”-he shrugged-“we have power and influence. Someone might slap our hand, but no one cares about the daughter of a viscount whose title died with him.”

“James cares.”

He snorted. “The son of a thief? Do you really think his word will carry any weight? Especially after I explain that during our stroll through Greystone’s garden, you suggested we slip away for something a little more intimate. That you wanted to experience a night with the society. That you begged me…”

She tried to shake her head but it sat so heavy on her shoulders. “James will know you’re lying.”

“But what of my peers? I’m a lord now. I’ll be tried by my peers. And that, too, my dear, is part of the fun, the pleasure, the excitement. Fooling people into believing me.” He released a harsh laugh. “Like your sister, Eleanor. I do believe she expected me to drop down on bended knee last night. And Elisabeth. When my brother brought her to us, it added a new element to our fun. She tried to fight, as I’m sure you will as well. But in the end…” He drew in a deep breath that sounded like satisfaction.

She wanted to claw out his eyes, tear away his mouth so he couldn’t continue saying these ugly things. “James will kill you.”

“Mmm. Yes. He might try, but right now he’s still following Eleanor through Cremorne Gardens. Did he really think we’d rendezvous there and go elsewhere? No. We always meet at the same place on the outskirts of London, where no one will bother us. And your Inspector Swindler will never find us.”

“You misjudge how good he is.”

Sitting beside her, he removed the pins from her hair. She wanted to move away from him, but her body wouldn’t listen to her commands.

“No, my dear, you misjudge how skilled he is.”

He buried his face in her hair and sniffed, while the other two gents sitting across from them chuckled. She could see their smiles like some sort of obscene painting. She hated it, despised them.

“I don’t know why my brother went to Scotland Yard when he discovered you following him. Or was it Eleanor? Doesn’t matter. I think his conscience was beginning to eat at him. Stupid clod.”

It occurred to Emma, in the back of her mind where she was struggling to stay clear-headed, that he was telling her too much. As though it didn’t matter what she knew. Did he think she’d forget?

Then she remembered that his brother had killed a woman. Or so he’d claimed. Perhaps it was the man holding her who’d done the deed. Perhaps he meant to see her dead as well.

Somehow, she found the strength to break away and reach for the door, but they grabbed her, wrestled her to the floor, pinched her nose-

As she choked on the too sweet liquid they were pouring into her again, she snatched at her memories of James. If she was going to die, she wanted her last thought to be of him.

As they traveled into a less populated area, Swindler was aware of the carriage slowing, the driver increasing the distance between the two vehicles. Where the bloody hell were they going?

The carriage suddenly came to a stop. Swindler didn’t wait for the footman to open the door. He did it himself, leaped to the ground and glanced around at a good deal of nothingness. The others joined him.

“They passed through a gate a short distance back, Your Grace,” the driver said as he climbed down and joined the footman who’d already disembarked and was relighting the lantern they’d extinguished in hopes of not being noticed as they followed Rockberry.

“Let’s go, then,” Swindler said.

Claybourne grabbed his arm, stopping his forward movement. “Do we have a plan?”

“Get Emma out alive and I don’t care who the hell dies in the bloody process.” Breaking free of the hold, Swindler began running toward the gate.

“I do hope he’s not including us in the ‘who the hell dies’ arena,” he heard Greystone mutter.

“I wouldn’t be so sure if I were you,” Dodger responded. “I do believe the man’s in love.”

Love didn’t seem a strong enough word for what Swindler felt for Emma. He only knew that if she was harmed, he’d never forgive himself, and if she died, his entire life would be meaningless.

It was a lovely residence. Too lovely for what Emma knew occurred here.

One of the swells had carried her from the carriage, because her legs had been as substantial as jam. Rockberry had yelled that they’d given her too much. Whatever it was, she feared he was correct. As she sat on a chair in the entrance hallway, her stomach was roiling and she thought at any moment she might be ill.

“Come along, dear,” she heard a soft feminine voice say.

Where had the lady standing before her come from? Another was with her, helping her to her feet and assisting her up the stairs. The blond introduced herself as Helena. The dark-haired woman was Aphrodite.

In a bedchamber upstairs, they began removing her clothes. She tried to resist, to shove them away, but her limbs had no sturdiness to them. Someone was brushing her hair. Why were they doing this?

She tried not to imagine how Elisabeth had felt, how frightened she’d been. Or had she thought she was being prepared to become Rockberry’s bride? Oh, she despised these people. No matter how much wine they gave her, they could not drown out that single bit of knowledge, that hammering conviction. These people had hurt Elisabeth. Now they meant to harm her. She would fight them.

If only she could think clearly. If only she could regain control of her limbs. She wanted only to curl up and go to sleep, but the ladies wouldn’t let her be.

Emma thought of James. Would he ever look at her the same if Rockberry touched her? Would he be consumed with guilt because he’d left her unguarded? He suffered enough because of his father. She didn’t want to add to his burdens.

When the ladies- what were their names again ?-had her prepared to their satisfaction, they draped the softest of silk around her. It felt so wonderful, wrapped her in a cloud. She almost forgot what it heralded. Then they began to escort her somewhere. She was vaguely aware of hallways and passages, candle flames flickering. She wanted to remember what everything looked like so she could describe it to James later. Maybe he could find it. But nothing seemed to stick in her mind. Whenever she saw something new, whatever she’d seen before disappeared from memory.

They were no longer walking, simply swaying. She realized she was in a large, cavernous room. Pillows were everywhere. Here more candles provided a soft light. Some might have even considered it romantic. She could hear chanting. Men in red robes, Satan’s followers, stood in a circle around her. Hoods kept their faces in shadows. She had little doubt they were the wicked, the beasts who had taken advantage of Elisabeth-and now had plans to harm her.

She was vaguely aware of the silk slithering down her body. She wanted to pull it back up from its place on the floor but it was so far away. And her limbs seemed incapable of following commands, as though they were somehow detached from her thoughts.

“Kneel,” Rockberry ordered.

She focused on his voice, focused on his face. He was one of the men who’d hurt Elisabeth, had destroyed her. She fought back the lethargy. “No.”

“Kneel. Down.”

“No.”

He laughed harshly. “Your unwillingness will not prevent what is to come. Kneel.”

“Rot in hell.”

She could see the anger contorting his features, knew things would probably go much worse for her, but she was beyond caring. She’d not willingly follow him into hell. She’d not even follow him into heaven. She refused to become his slave, his concubine. Whatever he offered, she wanted nothing to do with it.