Love's Savage Bonds (2 page)

“Yes, well…” The Major hemmed and hawed
as Catherine stared at the floor.

“A bad seed,” the woman repeated
enthusiastically, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “Do you know? He killed
two men making his escape from England.”  At that, she gave Catherine a
sharp look and moved off.

Once more, the portrait came, unbidden,
to intrude on Catherine’s thoughts. She needed no old wives gossiping to tell
her that Charles Redmond  was dangerous… but she wondered if an old biddy
like the Major’s sister, or a shrew-tongued servant like Mrs. Williams could
have any idea just HOW dangerous. Life and limb were one thing—  any man
could learn to threaten those; even Philip. What Charles’ eyes seemed to
intimate went much, much deeper than that.

Miss Cathcart stared after the woman,
and tried to think of something to say to the horribly embarrassed Catherine,
but the Major interrupted, gently but firmly.

“No more interrogation now, my dear.
Lady Catherine has other guests, you know.”

“Oh, of course!” Miss Cathcart gushed.
“It was
so
lovely to meet you.” Catherine caught the Major’s eye just as
Miss Cathcart recognized someone across the room, and Catherine took the old
soldier’s arm for a few moments of private conversation.

“I apologize for my sister,” he began,
but Catherine waved it away.

“Nonsense. It was my housekeeper who
instigated the unpleasantness.”
 As she often seems to do when I’m
around!
“Your sister’s curiosity was only natural. But… Major, I wanted to
ask you something.” She paused, as though making up her mind, and went on.

“Major… do you think that… this…” here,
she gestured about the fine, big room… “Is truly what my father wants for me?”

“Now, Lady Cath—“

“I’ve told you, Major,” Catherine
smiled. “Just ‘Catherine’.”

“Well, miss,” the major avoided the
awkwardness, “your father is the finest officer I ever served under.” The flush
of pride in his face was followed by a darkening of his countenance. “But he
was also the most honest.”

“And why should that fact bring a frown
to your face?”

“Well, your father never enriched
himself with plunder, the way so many of the officers did. There’s no country
mansion or hunting lodge ahead for him. Nothing but a Colonel’s half-pay
retirement… and, sadly, no rich dowry for his daughter.”

”Oh, but Papa knows I don’t need such
things!”

“Nevertheless, I know it preyed on his
mind—that question of just how you were to be provided for. And I know he was
most pleased at the thought that your new husband could provide for you so
well.”

Catherine sighed. “He does that.” She
swept a hand down the front of her dress, the jewels’ glint seeming somehow
dull and lifeless to her. “It’s just that I…” her voice trailed off.

“He’s not… he’s not treated you badly?”
The old man’s face tightened, and Catherine experienced a reassuring flash of
what it must have been like for Father to have this man at his side.

“Oh, heavens, no.” Catherine hastened
to correct the misapprehension. “No, he’s always been… very... gentle with me.”
She thought of the softness of her husband’s hands, and the way that even the
most intimate touch of his had a tentative... or was it  casual?... 
way about it. “He… he takes very good care of me.”

“Well, see that he does,” the old man
admonished. “And should you have any troubles at all, you know where to find
me.”
Catherine blinked back tears. “Yes, thank you.” She went up on her toes to
plant a grateful kiss on the old soldier’s cheek.  As he went to rejoin
his sister, Catherine looked around for Philip, saw him once more engrossed,
and decided she had been on display enough for one night, and quietly mounted
the stairs to her room.

**********

"Has everyone else gone to
bed?"

Catherine leaned back in the chair at
her nightstand, her silk nightgown a welcome relief from the constricting ball
gown. Molly, her young maid, had just loosened the elaborate arrangement of
Catherine's hair, and had let the dark tresses flow into her hands as she took
up the brush and began to brush her Mistress' hair.

"Yes, ma'am. Your husband just saw
Colonel Lefanu out."

Thank God for that.
Catherine closed her eyes, and relaxed back into
the gentle rhythm of the maid's brushing. Usually, ten minutes of this
treatment had Catherine fully relaxed and ready for sleep... but her mind was
restless, and as the girl smoothed Catherine's dark, silken hair about her
shoulders, she sat straight up in the chair.

"Just pin it up, Molly,"
Catherine told the girl. "I think I'll sit up and read for a bit."

"Yes, ma'am." Catherine
picked up her book as the girl's skilled fingers gathered the heavy mass of
hair and wound it atop her head, securing it artfully with a single pin.
Catherine smiled, nodded dismissal, then settled back into her chair as the
girl departed.

Drowsiness would not come, though. The
book did nothing to hold Catherine's attention, and sleep held no attraction
for her. She closed her eyes, trying to will herself to sleep, but Charles
Redmond’s portrait kept tumbling before her eyes.

She looked down at the book: a woman’s
reminiscences of travels through India, which Catherine had enjoyed comparing
to her own.

India
.
That
was it. That was what haunted her about the painting of Charles Redmond.

In India, Catherine had quickly come to
realize that there were things about the intimate life of man and woman that
she had never dreamed, but which teemed beneath the surface of that wild,
exotic country. It felt to her as though every native man or woman that she met
must be possessed of carnal skills and secret knowledge that both terrified and
intrigued her.

And that was what she felt when she
looked at the portrait of Charles Redmond:  terror and intrigue… and a
sure sense that his knowledge of the ways of man and woman was very deep
indeed.

Catherine sighed, and tossed the book
aside.
I’m not sleeping anyway. Might as well make some tea.
Mrs.
Williams would be appalled at the idea of her rustling about in the kitchen
without supervision, which made the idea all the more appealing.

Catherine picked up a small candle, and
quietly made her way down the dark stairs, turning toward the kitchen… then
stopped as a noise from down the hall came to her ears.

Philip’s study? What on earth would
he be doing there at this hour?
She was tempted to simply continue on to the kitchen, but he’d certainly hear
her, so she might as well at least look in on him.

She stepped to the door, seeing light
flickering from underneath it. She pushed on the door and peered inside.

“Philip?” Across the room, a small
lantern was set at one end of Philip’s desk. The rest of the room was in
wavering darkness, but there was no sign of her husband. She set down the
candle on the sideboard.

“Philip?” she repeated, stepping all
the way into the room… when she heard the sound of the door closing behind her!

As though it had materialized from out
of the ether, a man’s enormous hand clamped itself over Catherine’s face; the
palm sealed her lips closed, and she could feel fingers of iron pressing into
her cheek as she was pulled backwards.

The feel of his hands was so different
from that of Philip's that they might have been different species altogether.
Where she could easily shake free from her husband's grip should she choose,
these hands were as inescapable as fate. It was as though she were in the
power, not of a man, but of a monsoon— a force of nature, such as she had
experienced in India: so completely overwhelming as to render even the thought
of resistance pointless.

 The hand over her face pressed
her back until her head came to rest against a thickly-muscled chest. Wildly,
she tried to cast her eyes up to look behind her to her attacker, but his face
remained lost in the shadows.

She heard a rustle, then the snap of
fabric rending, and she gasped as the hand slipped from her mouth.

“Not a sound, girl.” A resonant voice
in her left ear, and she winced as her arms were pulled behind her with
terrifying ease.

His fingers went to work: for all their
evident size and strength, they were deft and sure. Catherine felt a length of
the thin, plush cord which he had evidently pulled from the curtain rod wrapped
around her bare wrists. Its bite was not cruel, but it was unyielding as he
bound her tightly, passing the cord over itself to cinch her hands in a tight
hold. Her wrists crossed over each other, her hands waved uselessly against her
back.

“P… please…” Catherine couldn’t decide
if she faced greater danger by defying him, or by not trying to save herself by
raising the alarm.

“I told you to keep silent.” The voice
was low, and not loud, but didn’t need to be to penetrate Catherine to the
marrow.

There came a sharp tug, the sound of
fabric ripping, and Catherine realized that he'd torn a strip from the skirt of
her nightdress! She took a breath, readying an outraged protest in spite of his
warning, when she felt her mouth covered by a wide band of the silk!

Not even her fear was greater than her
outrage as Catherine squalled a muffled protest against this treatment. She
felt the cloth press firmly against her lips, the pressure making it hard to
move her jaw. She tried to throw her head to one side, to free her mouth from
the binding, but his strength was too great, and he succeeded in wrapping her
head tightly; the silk followed her face's contours, and bit tightly into her
cheeks.

Catherine squirmed, and kicked
backwards, her bare heel bouncing harmlessly off a soft leather boot.
Undeterred, her shadowy assailant continued to wind the cloth around her mouth,
a second layer now atop the first, muffling the struggling girl’s cries.

Stay calm,
she told herself.
If he meant to kill me, this
cloth would be about my throat.

She felt the band around her head
tighten even further as he fastened a knot, catching the downy hairs at the
nape of her neck; her mouth was as well stifled as she could imagine it being,
her attempts to cry for aid reduced to subdued whimpers.

She made another futile yank at his
arm, and tried once more to kick back at him. Her captor lightly avoided the
blow, and chuckled.

"What a hellcat I seem to have
caught here. Let's have a better look at you." And with that, he spun
Catherine around to face him, sending her at the same time staggering backwards
out into the light, her back against the opposite wall.

As the bound girl stumbled out of the
inky shadows, the pin in her hair came free, and as she faced her attacker for
the first time, the mass of dark tresses fell loosely about her shoulders and
over her breasts, a cataract of liquid midnight, framing her face, and gleaming
in the flickering lantern light… and as she stood helplessly glaring back into
the shadows, she heard him give a sharp intake of breath.

"By God..." came the plangent
voice... "Doesn’t my brother just have the devil's own luck in
everything!"

Brother?
Catherine had barely thought the word when the man
stepped out into the light, and she found herself staring with horror into the
black eyes that had so often gazed down at her from the portrait in the hall:
her husband's brother, Charles Redmond.

Now she shrieked into her gag,
desperate with fear, kicking out blindly, sending a chair toppling over with a
loud crash, as she tried to race past him; his iron grip on her arm stopped
that.

"Damnation!" the man cursed.
"Now you've done it! The house will be up in no time." He paused,
looking in frustration about the room.
Whatever he came for, he's not found
it yet.
Catherine somehow felt this to be a small triumph.