Bound in Moonlight (22 page)

What he wouldn't give to get that little cunt alone and teach her a lesson—teach both of them a lesson, she and that meddling cur, Rexton. As if Rexton's treatment of him last year weren't outrageous enough—having his room searched, trying to get him banned from Slave Week—he had set out this year to deliberately show him up and make him a fool in front of the others. The only man here wealthy enough to outbid Dunhurst for the coveted Rose, he had done so for the sole purpose of keeping her out of Dunhurst's hands. Dunhurst had ended up with Lili, who had somehow—he still couldn't fathom it—turned the tables and humiliated him most extraordinarily.

In the letter Lili had left for him to find in the morning, she'd promised to tell no one of his debasement at her hands, provided he was “a good boy” for the remainder of Slave Week.
If I even suspect that you've hurt one of the slaves,
she'd written,
every soul here will find out exactly what happened in your chamber that night
. She had warned him, after that incident with Saffron losing the footrace, that she had come very close to following through on her threat, and that he'd better toe the line, or else.

The problem was, Lili wasn't the only one who knew what had happened that night. There had been a witness—Rose. Dunhurst had enough friends here to know that he would have more than likely been warned had she started telling people what she'd seen, but what would happen once they were both back in London? She would convey the juicy tidbit in a snickering whisper to some friend who would whisper it to three or four other people, and so would begin the inexorable decay of his reputation. Before long, they'd be calling him Bum Boy and Miss Freddie—behind his back, if not to his face.

A glimmer of light emerged from the woods. Dunhurst lowered his glass slowly when he saw that it was Rexton alone. The viscount started retracing his steps across the lawn, only to pause with an arm braced against a tree and his head down. He remained like that for about half a minute, then turned and headed back toward the path.

“No,”Dunhurst whispered.

As if Rexton had heard him, he paused again, raking his hands through his hair. He spun around and strode purposefully back to the castle.

Dunhurst smiled.

Eleven

O
NE MORE DAY, Caroline thought as she sat in the pitch-black stable amid a pile of straw. Tomorrow would be the last day of Slave Week. If she could put up with all this—with
him
—for just another twenty-four hours, she would be able to start her life anew.

Rexton had tied her leash to the ladder leading to the hayloft at the rear of the cavernous horse barn. The leash wasn't locked onto her collar, just clipped, and he had left her hands unbound. If she wanted to, she could untether herself with ease, but what would be the point? Were she to be caught walking about alone and unrestrained, she would be sent home empty-handed. And it wasn't as if the leash were causing her any real discomfort. It was long; she had room to move about, and to lie down in the straw—assuming she would be able to get back to sleep.

The horses in the fourteen stalls lining the stone-paved central aisle had awakened, nickering and fidgeting, when Rexton brought her here. Some of them were still awake—she heard hay being munched, and the occasional equine grunt—but most of them seemed to have settled back down.

The earthy barn smell was an unpleasant reminder of what Rexton had done to her in the Nemeton. The clean, refreshing anger she had harbored toward him after that had retreated somewhat in light of Narcissa's revelations—only to be renewed in full force when he dragged her here and tied her up like a dog simply for having shown him a bit of kindness.

In truth, she was grateful to him for having left her here. It was an instructive reminder of the contempt in which he held her. She had begun to weaken toward him again, after having finally learned to feel as little for him as he felt for her. She would not make that mistake a second time.

Light wavered through the gaps in the main double door at the far end of the aisle. It would appear Lord Rexton had second thoughts about leaving her here.

It doesn't matter,
she told herself.
Don't soften toward him. He doesn't deserve it, and you'll only bring yourself pain.

The door creaked open. Lord Dunhurst entered, holding a lantern in one hand and his walking stick in the other.

Caroline bolted to her feet.

The burly marquess, who was in his shirtsleeves, smiled coldly as he sauntered toward her. “You look different without the face paint,” he said. “Younger. One could almost believe you're the pure, sweet little maiden you pretend to be, and not the whore we both know you are.”

“You'd best leave before Lord Rexton returns,” she said in as even a voice as she could muster. “He just went to get some . . . some blankets. He'll be back any—”

“It doesn't surprise me that you are a liar.” Setting the lantern on the floor, he set about unscrewing the ivory handle of his walking stick. “I must say, however, that I would have expected someone like you to be a bit more skilled at it.”

“It . . . it's true,”she said as she strove, with jittery fingers, to unhook the leash from her collar.

“Liar!” He pulled from within the walking stick a straight black truncheon and swung it at her arms.

Pain cracked through her; a scream filled her ears. He swung again and again, as she collapsed into the straw, covering her head. Ribs crunched. Her shoulder bloomed with pain. The horses were all awake now, several neighing in alarm and one or two kicking at their stall doors.

She looked up and saw him untying her leash from the ladder, having set aside the truncheon, which she realized was made of India rubber. This, then, was the weapon he had used on Dahlia, the one they couldn't find in his room because it had been secreted in his walking stick all along.

“You can't do this,” she said as he yanked on the leash, pulling her to her feet. “I'm not wearing the Black Heart. When Rexton finds out what you've—”

“He won't.”Turning,Dunhurst reached for one of the tools hanging on the wall nearby—a hay knife over a foot long.

She grabbed the hand that was holding her leash and bit down to the bone.Bellowing in pain, he dropped the leash.

Caroline sprinted toward the back door to the stable, which was only a few yards away. He seized her shoulder and turned her to face him, pressing the big knife to her throat as he backed her against the wall.

“When Rexton returns in the morning,” Dunhurst said, “he'll find you gone. He'll search for you, but you won't turn up. He'll assume you had enough and ran away—they all will. They'll all go home, never suspecting they'd actually left you here, buried deep in the woods where no one will ever—”

She kneed him in the groin, sharp and hard, as Aubrey had taught her. He doubled over, but as she turned to flee, he shoved the knife into her.

Caroline staggered away, looking down in dull shock at the blade sticking out of the left side of her belly. She turned toward the door, only to feel him clutch at her hair. Summoning all the strength at her disposal, she grabbed the knife handle with both hands and yanked it out, blood spilling onto the stone floor.

Dunhurst spun her around. She lashed out with the blade.He stumbled back, howling as he covered his bloodied face with his hands.

Caroline ran from the stable, one hand pressed to the agonizing wound in her side, the other gripping the knife. By the lamplight from the stable, she could see a dirt path disappearing into dense, black woods.

“You little bitch!” Dunhurst screamed as he came after her. “Fucking little cunt!”

She darted into the woods, making her way as quickly as she could through the tangled underbrush. She stumbled along frantically for quite some time, but just as she'd concluded that he wasn't tracking her anymore, she heard him behind her, closing in. She veered off toward the sound of a gurgling stream and waded through it, reasoning that Dunhurst would hesitate to cross it in his shoes. She found a huge tree and crouched down behind it, grimacing in pain. He lumbered through the woods in the opposite direction, cursing and threatening her.

After a period of silence, he yelled from a distance, “You won't get far,with that hole in your gut. You'll never even make it out of these woods. And in a few hours, when the sun's up, I'll come back and find you and bury you good and deep.”

Caroline waited a while longer, and then she hauled herself unsteadily to her feet. She knew she had to get back to the château before she bled to death, but she was so woozy and disoriented that she just ended up wandering aimlessly. Time and again, she tripped over rocks and fallen limbs, but clambered back to her feet and carried on. As dawn broke, she headed in the direction of the rising sun, thinking the château must be to the east, but the woods only grew thicker and more difficult to navigate.

She leaned against a tree to catch her breath. The knife wasn't in her hand anymore; she must have dropped it somewhere. She looked around; the trees swayed. Her head hit the ground.

Get up,
she thought blearily.
Get up.
But her body was so heavy, and the ground felt oddly soft beneath her, like a feather mattress. Her heart thrummed in her chest, and she felt strangely cold. She was soaking wet—that was why.

Caroline looked down at her shift, dark with blood.

Not like this,
she thought.
Please, God, not like this.

Darius wove his way along the forest floor as the sky lightened, occasionally pausing to pull back his lips and taste the air as he homed in on the scent of blood—human blood. As the smell became overpowering, he saw a patch of something white amid a feathery sea of ferns.

It was a woman, the one called Rose who had been tied to the Great Oak in the Nemeton the day before, lying curled up on her side with her eyes closed and her arms wrapped around herself. Her skin was as pale as her linen shift, or the top half of it, the bottom being, to his feline eyes, nearly black. The source of the blood appeared to be a still-seeping wound on her left side. Livid bruising mottled her left forearm and shoulder. Her legs, and to a lesser extent her arms, were covered with scratches. Darius could see her chest moving with every rapid, shallow breath. Given how much blood she'd lost, it was a wonder she was still alive.

She wouldn't be for long. If the bleeding could be stopped, she might have a chance, but it would not stop on its own.

For Darius, cursed as he was with the power to wrest life from imminent death, there was never any right thing to do in a situation like this. To heal this woman would be to circumvent the natural course of things, which could have unforeseen consequences. Of more immediate and personal concern, however, was the possibility that his “gift” would be discovered, putting him at the mercy of anyone with an ailing loved one. It had happened before, turning him into a virtual slave trapped in a nightmare of pain and infirmity, for every healing took its toll on him; the worse the malady, the more depleted it would leave him. It was to escape such a hellish existence that he'd left his homeland and journeyed halfway around the world, where the djinn were unknown and he could live in peace and solitude. Even his fellow Follets here at Grotte Cachée had no idea that Darius could cure illnesses and mend injuries. He had learned the hard way that there was no one, human or Follet, in whom he could safely confide.

Were he to stop this woman's bleeding, he would be risking much. On the other hand, experience had taught him that if he did nothing—if he walked away and let her die—it would leave him in a torment of guilt.

Darius turned his head this way and that, focusing his hearing for any hint of a distant footfall or voice. He sampled the air for the scent of a human other than this one. Nothing.

He mewed. Rose didn't stir. He moved close to her face and let out a strident yowl. Her eyelids fluttered, then stilled.

He sat down, held his breath, and willed himself into human form. The transformation was instantaneous, and as jolting as always. He kept his eyes closed, his hands braced on solid earth, until the vertigo let up, which only took a few seconds. Filling his lungs with air, he opened his eyes, blinking at the sharp, jewel-like colors all around him.

He turned Rose gently onto her back and stroked her cool, waxen face, sensing an emptiness that told him she was, indeed, entirely unaware of his presence. Holding his hands just above her body, he trailed them downward, noting the two broken ribs he would have to deal with when he was done with the other—if he had the strength left.

The wound in her side, which had been made by a large knife, had nicked her spleen—hence the incessant bleeding. Closing his eyes, Darius concentrated all his vital energy on the ruptured vessels in the little organ, sealing them as if by cauterization, his hands growing hot and quivery as he worked. That done, he joined the incised tissues,working upward from the spleen to the skin, which sealed together quite nicely. She would be left with a scar about three inches long, but over the next week or so, it would fade away to nothing. Of course, the blood loss would leave her in a weakened state for some time, but she would survive.

He took a moment to knit those ribs, then fell back onto the ground, shaking and depleted.

Rexton stood in the stable, staring in bewilderment at the spot where he'd left Caroline tied up. She was gone, with no sign that she'd ever been there except that the pile of straw he'd left her sitting in had been spread out, for some reason, over that section of the floor.

He grabbed a rake and pushed back the straw, some of which stuck to the volcanic stone blocks with which the aisle was paved. Crouching down, he touched the stone; it was wet. In a corner, he found a wooden bucket with a damp wash rag slung over it.

Where the devil was she? Why had she washed the floor? If only he hadn't gotten so bloody foxed last night. His head felt as if it were being squeezed by a pair of giant hands, making it impossible to think.

He stood up to find a gray cat watching him from just outside the open rear doorway. He'd seen it before; Inigo called it Darius. It sniffed at a leaf, one of many scattered over the dirt path that led away from the stable.