My Lady Captive

My Lady
Captive

By Shirl
Anders

Smashwords
Edition, My Lady Captive, published by Shirl Anders/ Allure
Books

at
Smashwords

Copyrighted©2001 by Shirl Anders.

This ebook is licensed for
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you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. The
characters, incidents, and dialogues in this book are of the
author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any
resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is
completely coincidental.

Blurb
:
m/f, HEA
.
This is the third erotic romance adventure in the continuing six
book Regency series, the Archangels. Lord Wyndham Hawkenge dares to
save the young widow, Orelan, from the hedonistic grasp of Alexei
Tropov. Wyndham and Orelan, both become snared in the carnal halls
of Valcourt, players in Alexei's sexual games as Wyndham tries to
find a way to free the young widow he once dared to  kiss, but
now commands so much more from.
HEA.

By Shirl
Anders

Chapter One

“Here–here, Drummond. Congratulations, your
wife must be pleased,” Wyndham the Baron of Hawkenge toasted to
those gentlemen, gathered in the intimate and comfortable study of
the new father Drummond, who was the Duke of Kittridge.

“My wife Gabriella wears her heart in her
eyes gentlemen,” Drummond said, responding to the toast with a sip
of Scottish whiskey. “For her to have been denounced in public as
barren and now this. Well, I must say that even I am pleased.”

Wyndham tilted his head to hear Lord Harrison
rasping a saturnine reply. “You simply revel in the fact that it
proves to everyone you are still a stallion at the age of
fifty-one.”

The group of five gentlemen, each of them
former spies for her Queen’s own, all chuckled as they sipped their
whiskey.

“I believe that each one of us comprising the
Archangels, should be officially declared, by us of course, as the
little chit's godfathers,” Lord Radford drawled, tilting his dark
head raffishly, so that the gaslight chandelier caught the satin of
his black eye patch in a piratical manner.

“You presume the gender already?” Drummond
asked with a drawl, flicking his cigar into the crystal bowl beside
his hand.

“I for one, will be down on my knees praying
that the wee bairn is a lass and not an ugly brute such as
yourself,” Brynmore, their Scottish Archangel jested.

“Here-here,” Saxonhurst pronounced, turning
Wyndham’s gaze to the last of their cloak-and-dagger group, as
Saxonhurst finished his toast. “Here is to a girl child as lovely
as Drummond’s wife Gabriella already is.”

Wyndham watched Drummond pursing his lips,
then he smiled slowly. “Just to set all the accounts correctly,
before we attend to the business I have brought you here for, my
wife Gabriella has pronounced that each one of you is to be
declared an uncle and nothing less.”

“Of course,” Harrison rasped with a
serpentine twinkle in his sharp black eyes. “I would expect nothing
less from the oh-so lovely lady.”

Wyndham eased his injured leg more firmly
upon the stool in front of him, hiding the grimace of pain the move
cost him, behind a weary, but unstrained look. It did no good to
bemoan the consistent presence of pain. Just as he had been wounded
in the battle at Waterloo, Brynmore had lost the hearing in his
right ear to cannonade, and Wyndham knew that burst eardrum
afflicted the man.

Then there were of course Saxonhurst,
Radford, and Harrison who had all suffered injuries on a last,
badly botched spying venture, while he and Brynmore had been sent
to Waterloo. All of them had lost something trying to defeat
Napoleon, even their leader Drummond, unscathed physically, had
lost a reason for his place in society, when they had returned to
England. That was until Drummond had reunited with Gabriella this
last year. Wyndham thought they were all a bit like that though,
lost . . . at odd ends. War did that to a man, reshaped his
priorities, or more, his values.

“Now, gentlemen, to the reason for your
presence,” Drummond said, leaning back in his chair to eye them all
speculatively within a razor-sharp quality he had. “First the
background.”

It was beginning to sound like an assignment
just as in the old spying days, Wyndham thought, as he leaned
forward and listened to Drummond continue.

“This meeting pertains to the young widow
Orèlan Becou, stepdaughter to the late French Ambassador to Spain.
As we all know, Napoleon had Orèlan’s stepfather Ambassador Becou
and his wife killed for treasonous acts, before the end of the
Spanish War. Furthermore, each of you is well aware of what Orèlan
did, after her stepfather’s death, to help Wyndham recover
important international dispatches, at great risk to herself, from
the Russian, Alexei Tropov.”

Wyndham tensed, watching as Drummond paused
to take a puff of his cigar.
Orèlan
, his mind raggedly
echoed, as Drummond continued. “That same Alexei, gentlemen, who is
now Count Tropov and setup as royalty in St. Petersburg, is now in
possession of one Orèlan Becou at his impregnable estate of
Valcourt.”

“Valcourt!” Wyndham snapped. “That is nothing
but a depraved miniature Russian Court, Alexei has set up with
himself as the head despot.”

“Really, Wyndham,” Radford drawled. “What a
thing to say about your very good friend, Alexei.”

“We were
never
friends,” Wyndham
snapped. “Only what pretense forced me to be.”
Christ,
he
gave away too much with his venom,
Wyndham realized, moving
automatically to sidetrack the slip, yet still certain that
Drummond’s keen mind would not so easily be diverted, as he
finished wearily. “Damnation, Orèlan cannot be much more than
twenty-one. How could she be a widow already?”

“Truth be told-,” Radford drawled.
“Mademoiselle Becou was a ripe peach ready to be plucked, when we
knew her at sixteen.”

Wyndham rubbed his injured leg with a nervous
tight gesture, willing his features to remain dispassionate at the
heated reprimand he would have liked to have thrown out. The one
and only time he had met Orèlan, she had delivered those dispatches
as her father would have wished, at great risk to herself. And he .
. .
he
had kissed her. A mere girl of sixteen . . . so
beautiful, and he'd simply seen her and taken from her. Lord, but
he disliked himself for that. He disliked himself for his desperate
need to feel alive at the time, in the face of all the death and
subterfuge that surrounded him, making him wonder who he really
was. However, he had frightened her. She had been too young for his
blatant lust then. Now she was a woman.

“Wyndham, we will need you to go into
Valcourt and bring Mademoiselle Becou out. By any means necessary,”
Drummond said with an unscrupulous look. “I thought perhaps you
might insist upon the assignment,” he finished.

“I do,” Wyndham answered tightly.

“It is the least we owe the young woman and
especially her stepfather,” Harrison rasped.

“Who will back Wyndham up?” Saxonhurst
asked.

“No one,” Wyndham replied tersely. “No one
can enter Valcourt, but myself, or it will never work.”

“Really . . . ,” Radford began with a
sarcastic sound.

“I said
no
one,” Wyndham responded,
sharply interrupting him.

“Bluidy hell, man, you’ll at least be needing
an escape route. Once you get the lass on the outside,” Brynmore
said.

At this statement, Wyndham nodded, soberly.
‘That I will accept.”

“How long has she been there?” Saxonhurst
asked, with his soulful brown eyes full of meaning.

Wyndham tensed as Drummond answered.

“Thankfully only one week, before we became
apprised of the situation. It seems Orèlan was in Paris trying to
see about recovering her stepfather’s estate, when Alexei arrived.
The next anyone knew, she was placed with Alexei under suspicious
circumstances when he returned to St. Petersburg.”

“He knows,” Wyndham stated grimly.

“It would appear that Tropov could be seeking
revenge for those dispatches of her stepfather’s that she managed
to lift from his residence in San Lupè,” Harrison rasped. “We
understand his government was very displeased to lose them and he
tottered on the assassination lists, until he managed to
reestablish himself brilliantly in Vienna, at the treaty
negotiations.”

“The man got them back Yugoslavia, did he
not?” Brynmore asked.

“He did indeed, and now it is as Wyndham
states, he is a minor Russian despot in St. Petersburg. A
hedonistic one, I am given to understand,” Drummond replied.

Yes,
Wyndham thought grimly, he knew
Alexei’s depravities too well and one week was too damn long for
any young woman to be in Tropov’s company. But Alexei would play
with Orèlan in the beginning . . . he always played first. Wyndham
could only hope that Alexei had not changed that much.

Chapter Two

When Wyndham caught his first sight of Orèlan
in the white and gold marbled front salon at Valcourt, he was
momentarily rocked back on his heels by the vision of her exotic
beauty. Nevertheless, he allowed none of his intense feelings to
show other than an involuntary tick on the left side of his firmly
placed jaw. The presence of that tick was forced, because a swarthy
Arabic man, at the beset of Alexei Tropov, was lewdly groping the
lovely Orèlan.

That Arab had one diaphanous sleeve of
Orèlan’s plum-colored gown shoved down to her elbow, as he burrowed
his ugly mustached face into the supple pillows of her bosom, while
he forcefully held her against the wall. Orèlan struggled
helplessly beneath him, but the Arab had her wrists clamped behind
her back as Alexei watched, from a haute but relaxed pose, sitting
in a gilded chair, laughing as he quipped. “Struggle, my beautiful
puta
, that will only cost our most esteemed Sultan more
rubles to bed you, if I allow him.”

The sound that escaped Wyndham’s throat was a
low human snarling. He ignored the jarring pain in his right leg
and stalked forward, surprising everyone, when he seemed to come
out of nowhere to grab the Arab from behind and literally shove him
across the room. His voice, when he spoke was a low dangerous hiss.
“I have come to claim my marker, Alexei.
This
woman is
mine!”

The Arab hit the far wall as Wyndham quickly
grasped Orèlan by her slender bare shoulders. He tried to gentle
his hands as he pulled her forward, whispering intently beneath his
breath into her startled face. “Kiss me now, you spit fire, as you
would no other.”

“Wyndham!” she cried out, with a desperate
and emotion filled voice as she flung herself the rest of the
distance to him, just as his mouth came down roughly over her
mouth.

“Bravo!” Alexei sneered behind them.

Wyndham ignored Alexei as he took his brazen
kissing of Orèlan’s lush lips and propositioned it into bedroom
passion. Bending her flowing body over his arm as she clutched his
shoulders and opened her honeyed mouth to his advancing tongue.

She was more the woman now, in the six years
since he had seen her last. Tall, opulently curved at bosom, belly,
and hips. But her mouth was the same. It had always been a sensual
wish. Any man who looked upon her pouted lips could do nothing less
than desire to ravish their erotic plumpness. She mewled, a soft
ardent sound in the back of her throat.
Thrilling.
It was
surrender, pleasure, and desire mixed as he twisted his larger
tongue around the dainty petal of her tongue, while his free hand
curled into the thickness of her black-sable hair. He was lost
again . . . that quickly, even when he knew that he needed his wits
about him.

“If you were to insure that she pays
completely for her misdeeds to me, I would consider it, my most
deviant friend,” Alexei’s disembodied voice sounded through the
flames of Wyndham’s passion.