Beyond the Highland Mist
Page 9

His eyes dropped from hers, searched the water line and probed below it. He grinned at the sight of her rosy nipples before she crossed her arms and hugged herself tightly.
“Methinks he doesn’t do so badly for himself,” the man murmured. Then, dragging his eyes from the water to her flushed face, he commanded, “From this moment forth, your name is Janet Comyn.”
Adrienne shot him a haughty look. “My name,” she snapped, “is Adrienne de Simone.”
Crack!
She raised a hand to her cheek in disbelief. A maid cried out a muffled warning.
“Try it again,” he counseled softly, and as soft as his words were, his blue eyes were dangerously hard.
Adrienne rubbed her stinging cheek in silence.
And his hand rose and fell again.
“Milady! We implore you!” A petite maid dropped to her knees beside the tub, placing a hand upon Adrienne’s bare shoulder.
“That’s right, give her counsel, Bess. You know what becomes of a lass foolish enough to deny me. Say it,” he repeated to Adrienne. “Tell me your name is Janet Comyn.”
When his beefy hand rose and fell again, it came down on Bess’s face with fury. Adrienne screamed as he struck the maid repeatedly.
“Stop!” she cried.
“Say it!” he commanded as his hand rose and fell again. Bess sobbed as she crumpled to the floor, but the man went down after her, his hand now a fist.
“My name is Janet Comyn!” Adrienne cried, half rising from the tub.
The Comyn’s fist halted in midair, and he sank back on his haunches, the light of victory gleaming in his eyes. Victory—and that disgusting slow perusal of her flesh.
Adrienne flushed under the sheer lechery of his pale eyes, and plunged her upper body back into the water.
“Nay, he doesn’t get a bad bargain at all. You are much more comely than mine own Janet.” His mouth twisted into a smile. “Would that I had leisure to taste such plump pillows myself, but you came just in the nick of time.”
“Came where?”
“Came from where is my question,” he countered. Adrienne realized in that instant that to underestimate this brutish man would be a grave mistake. For behind the slovenly manners and the unkempt appearance was steely mettle and rapier sharp wit. The flabby arm that had felled the blows couched muscle. The pale slitted eyes that wandered restlessly didn’t miss a beat. He hadn’t punished Bess in rage. He’d beat her in a cold, calculated act to get what he wanted from Adrienne.
She shook her head, her eyes wide with confusion. “Really, I haven’t the faintest idea how I got here.”
“You don’t know where you came from?”
Bess was sobbing softly, and Adrienne’s eyes darkened as she watched the maid curl into a ball and surreptitiously try to inch away from the Comyn. His hand shot out and fastened on the maid’s ankle. Bess whimpered hopelessly.
“Oh nay, my pretty. I may need you yet.” His eyes swept her shuddering form with a possessive leer. Adrienne gasped when he ripped Bess’s gown and proceeded to shred it from her body. Adrienne’s stomach churned in agony when she saw the great welts rising from the maid’s pale flanks and thighs. Cruel, biting welts from a belt or a whip.
The other maids fled the room, leaving her alone with the weeping Bess and the madman.
“This is my world, Adrienne de Simone,” he intoned, and Adrienne had a premonition that the words he was about to utter would be carved deeply into her mind for a long time to come. He stroked Bess’s quivering thigh lightly. “My rules. My people. My will to command life or death. Yours and hers. ’Tis a simple thing I want of you. If you don’t cooperate, she dies. Then another and still another. I will find the very core of that foolish compassion you wear like a shroud. It makes you so easy to use. But women are that way. Weak.”
Adrienne sat hunched in silence, her labored breathing an accompaniment to Bess’s weary sobs.
“Quiet, lass!” He slapped the maid’s face, and she curled into a tighter ball, weeping into her hands to smother the sound.
One day I will kill him with my bare hands, Adrienne vowed silently.
“I don’t know how you came to be here or who you are, and frankly, I don’t care. I have a problem, and you’re going to fix it. If you ever forget what I am about to tell you, if you ever slip, if you ever betray me, I will kill you after I’ve destroyed everything you care about.”
“Where am I?” she asked tonelessly, reluctantly voicing one of the questions that had been bothering her. She was afraid that once she started asking questions, she might discover this really wasn’t a dream after all.