Chapter 19

Lori paused her frantic pacing and glanced down at the scrapes and bruises on her knuckles, frowning at her own stupidity.

She should have stopped abusing the door far sooner than she had—especially as she suspected that Lord Severn wasn’t even out there to hear her pounding and shouting—but it had been the principle of the thing. Now she had swollen knuckles for her stubbornness.

The sound of a key turning in the door lock made her turn.

“Hello, Miss Fontenot,” Gregg said, grinning from the doorway.

“Where is Severn?”

“He’s not here. I’m to take care of you until his return.”

“And when is that, pray?”

Gregg shrugged. “He doesn’t answer to me.” His smile broadened. “Or to you.” He stepped back and gestured to the doorway. “Come with me.”

Lori frowned. “Where are we going?”

“To your new quarters.”

She considered arguing, just for the sake of it, but then decided she’d rather be anywhere else than in his lordship’s private chambers.

Gregg walked slightly behind her and directed her through a series of turns and through several doors before they stopped in front of a black door strapped with wide iron bands and studded with big nail heads, like something you’ve find in a medieval prison.

Gregg inserted a large skeleton key into the lock. “This suite is called the Queen’s Chambers.” He turned the handle, flung open the door, and gestured for her to enter.

“Why is it called—” Lori broke off when she’d taken five steps into the room. “My God!” She stared in fascinated horror at the walls, which were festooned with manacles, whips, crops, and other less immediately identifiable paraphernalia. In the center of the room stood the most massive four poster bed she’d ever seen. It was black wood with black leather bedding, and there were chains and iron rings set into the frame.

Lori spun toward Gregg. “You can’t mean to leave me in here !”

“Aye, this is your new home until his lordship says otherwise.”

Lori wrenched her gaze off one especially wicked looking whip and opened her mouth.

“I’ll answer no questions about Lord Severn, so don’t even ask.” His normally amused expression had fled, replaced by a stare that was as cold and hard as a gaol cell.

She swallowed down her flood of questions, instead saying, “Somebody needs to send word to my housemate, Lady—”

“Sedgewick,” he interrupted, an odd light glinting in his dark brown eyes. “And don’t you worry your head about that, Miss Fontenot. It has already been taken care of.”

“What do you mean?”

“Never you mind.” He turned and went to the door.

“Where are you going?”

“Somewhere else.”

“When will his lordship return?”

“When he gets here.”

“Wait!”

He turned. “Yes?”

Lori discarded the brave front that had become harder and harder to maintain. She also discarded her pride and begged, “Please, Mr. Gregg. You don’t have to do this. Let me go. Don’t leave me here. This is—”

He opened the door and then shut it in her face.

“Mr. Gregg!” she shouted.

The only answer was the sound of the key turning in the lock.

The fear she’d been feeling exploded into anger. He thought she’d sit here and behave? She glanced wildly around the room. The window was barred and there was only the one door. The suite was composed of two rooms: a small sitting room—if you could call a room that had whips and weapons and lord-knows-what hanging on the walls a sitting room—and the bedchamber.

Staring at all the implements only served to make her woozy, so she turned away and stared at the bed, instead.

That wasn’t much better, except… “Aha!” she muttered. Smiling, Lori marched across the room and yanked on the thick black velvet servant cord beside the big four poster. Then yanked again. And Again.

It took ten minutes before key turned in the lock and Gregg entered. He gave her the same smirky look. “You have been a bad girl, Miss Fontenot.”

She crossed her arms and seethed. “I am not a girl.”

He snorted, opened the door wider, and gestured a man with a ladder into the room.

Before she could ask what was going on, the man set the ladder beside the velvet rope she’d just been yanking non-stop, scaled up the rungs, and quickly disconnected the servant pull.

“Isn’t that a bit excessive?” she demanded as the man carried the ladder and bell pull from the room. “What if there is an emergency? A fire? How am I supposed to summon anyone now?”

“You can yell through the door. There will be somebody stationed outside your room at all times.”

“Please,” she pleaded softly. “Do not do this.”

He lifted one eyebrow at her but didn’t say a word before closing and locking the door.

“ I will see you thrown in gaol for this!” she shouted.

Silence was her only answer.

***

Mr. Gregg returned at midday, accompanied by a maid bearing a tray, and again at dinner. Both times he behaved as if Lori didn’t exist when she pelted him with questions and demands.

Lori hadn’t had the heart to abuse the poor maid, who’d looked as terrified as a mouse, and ate both meals more for something to do—there was nothing to read and nothing to write with—than because of any real hunger.

The implements on the wall had held her attention for no more than an hour and soon she was pacing the room like a caged animal—quickly having passed through the stages of fear and worry and rage and now deeply mired in boredom—when the door opened and the maid entered to exchange a tea tray for Lori’s dinner tray.

Gregg followed behind the girl and was holding two books and what looked to be a cloak— her cloak, in fact—over his arm. “This, I believe, is yours. And these are for you.”

Lori took the cloak, trying not to smile at the thought of what she’d left in the inside pocket. “Thank you.”

“I’ve taken the liberty of removing your pen knife and coin purse from the cloak pocket. You will get it back when his lordship releases you,” Gregg said, smiling in a way that made her want to hit him. He held out the books, and Lori gave them a suspicious look. “I just thought you might be bored.” He shrugged and began to retract his offer. “But if you aren’t—”

“No! I want them.” She reached out with both hands and took them from his unresisting fingers. A quick glance at the spines showed one to be a traveler’s account of Italy and the other a history of Massachusetts.

When she looked up, Gregg was already closing the door.

“Wait!” she called out.

He paused.

“Thank you.”

“You are welcome.”

“Might I also have a newspaper if there is one?”

Gregg hesitated and then nodded. “I’ll have one sent up with your breakfast.”

“Does that mean Lord Severn won’t be returning tonight?”

Again, he hesitated, and then said, “I don’t believe so.” The hard, almost satyrish, angles of his face softened slightly. “Try to get some sleep, Miss Fontenot.”

Lori stared at the door long after it closed and then set down the books. She was simply too agitated to read. Instead, she resumed pacing, her mind racing from subject to subject, always returning to the two worries that consumed her the most: how was she to get her story to David, and what would happen to her novel if she did not deliver.

When the clock on the mantle chimed two in the morning, she sighed and climbed onto the gothic black leather bed. She had expected to toss and turn, but she must have fallen asleep immediately because the next thing she knew a pale gray light was filtering between the heavy black velvet drapes that covered the room’s only window.

Lori stared up at the canopy, her thoughts no longer in the same turmoil as the day before.

It was impossible to deny the truth of her situation: she was being held hostage in a brothel by a man who had been her lover.

Lori bit her lip as a memory of her abandoned behavior flickered through her mind’s eye.

“Oh, God,” she murmured, closing her eyes and squeezing them so hard that she saw stars instead of the erotic images that had burned themselves into her brain.

Did she really possess such antiquated notions of morality that she regretted taking a lover? Hadn’t it been Lori who’d said to Freddie and Serena—the two women she’d always been closest to in her small group of friends—that there was no shame in enjoying sensual pleasure. Just like any man.

Well, it was time for her to take her own advice.

Lori forced her eyes open. “I refuse to be ashamed for what I did.” The words were loud in the quiet room and Lori wasn’t sure exactly who they were for.

Besides, engaging in carnal acts with Lord Severn was hardly her most pressing concern at this point. There was also the not insignificant matter of how she was going to escape.

She absently chewed on a broken fingernail, considering her options as she glanced around the gaudily appointed room, her gaze lingering on an especially medieval looking whip and manacles that appeared to be lined with thick black fur.

Who would have guessed there was a room even more vulgar than the bedchamber Severn used for his amours. Did he use this room, too? Did he use the implements that covered the walls? What did he do in this massive black bed?

The possibility that he used this room to have sex with other women caused a confusing and twisted ripple of desire and jealousy to assault her body.

Lori scowled at her reaction to his prurient behavior, and then was immediately irritated by her knee-jerk shame. Hadn’t she just finished convincing herself that there was no shame in sensuality? Wasn’t it natural that she would respond in such a way? It didn’t mean there was anything wrong with her.

She shoved back the bedding, swung her feet to the floor, and shrugged into the gaudy dressing gown she had worn yesterday.

The room’s only portal to the outside world wasn’t just barred, it also faced the river. The pier, which had been empty the night before, was today crawling with dock workers. Lori squinted at one man who wasn’t working, but just leaning against one of the pier posts. And staring right up at her.

Lord Severn had posted a guard outside her room!

There truly was no escape. She was his prisoner. His to do with as he pleased.

Yet again she experienced a pleasurable tingling between her thighs.

Wonderful. She was Severn’s prisoner and secretly lusting for him.

Not so secretly.

She caught a glimpse of her scowling face in the mirror on the opposite wall and her expression turned to horror.

“Good Lord!” Lord Severn had removed much of the face paint two nights earlier, but not the kohl around her eyes. She’d gone to bed last night without even looking at herself or washing her face. The black had smudged and her hair—which his lordship had loosed—sprang out from her head like so many black snakes.

And then there was the emerald and gold dressing gown.

It clung to her body like oily green water. She might have been nude, her nipples hard and puckered against the fine silk.

Lori groaned.

No wonder that cad Gregg had been staring at her.

She wanted to yell and scream at somebody, but the person responsible for her current situation was none other than the fool in the mirror.

She had strolled right into Lord Severn’s clutches as easily as a child who’d been offered a sweetie.

Fool! Fool! Fool!

Lori wanted to deny the accusation, but she couldn’t. This was all her fault. She was such an idiot.

The jingle of a key in a lock was like the lighting of a fuse and she rushed the door, the sudden, desperate need to escape overriding any rational thought.

Rather than a maid with a tray, she slammed right into a rock-hard chest.

“My, my, my,” a deep voice rumbled beneath her cheek as arms like steel bands tightened around her waist. “Look who is excited to see me.”

Lori glowered up at Lord Severn. “You—you swine! Unhand me!”

He released her so suddenly that she staggered back and would have fallen if he’d not reached out and steadied her.

She slapped his hand away. “I thought you’d left.”

“Not yet, love, but soon. I’m sorry I couldn’t be with you last night, but—

“I didn’t want you with me! You odious, arrogant, bas—”

“ Shhh . Gently bred ladies don’t call their lovers such names.”

“ Lover!” she shrieked.

He winced. “Darling, if you don’t moderate your voice then I’ll be forced to—”

“To what?” she yelled even louder. “Just what will you do? Tell me, my lord!”

“—put you over my knee and spank you.”

Lori backed away from him, until she was stopped by one of the posts on the massive bed. “You wouldn’t!”

“Would, too.”

“I dare you to even try to come near me. I will scratch out—”

“Ooh, I just adore a dare.” He closed the distance between them with breathtaking speed, not stopping until his body pinned hers against the post. “And I’ll tell you another thing I would adore, Lorelei. And that is spanking that lush bottom of yours.” His thin lips curved into a hungry, taunting smile. “And so would you.”

Her jaw sagged. “I would nev—”

“Hush. Now, listen to me. The sooner you accept your position here, the better it will be for you. Because I am not letting you go until your life is no longer in danger.”

“In danger from who?”

He frowned. “Shouldn’t that be whom ?”

“Lord Severn. If you believe I find this amusing then, you are—”

“You don’t need to know the name of the person who sent the ruffian after you. All you need to know is that you are in danger.”

Lori wanted to scream and stomp her feet, but she knew that would only amuse him more. “I will stop investigating the story if you let me go,” she said in an admirably calm voice.

“That is a lie.”

She opened her mouth to deny it.

“And even if it is not a lie, it does not matter. This is no game you are involved in, Lorelei.” He lowered his hands on to the thick wooden post behind her, until his body was caging hers, their torsos pressed tightly from hips to chest.

Lori made a sound like a startled hen. “I can’t believe you would use your superior physical strength to intimidate me, my lord.”

“Believe it.” He bent his head, until his face was barely an inch from hers. “Or do you need further convincing? I could overpower you in other ways if you need further—”

“No—no, I believe you.”

He pouted. “That is too bad. I was looking forward to showing you how cruel, unfair, and inventive I can be.”

“You are despicable.”

“Yes, I am. But not for the reasons you think.”

She blinked. “What do you mean?”

His eyes, which had begun to darken, roamed her face. “I mean that I want to stretch your naked body out across this big bed and finish what I started the other night.”

“You didn’t f-finish?” she gasped, thinking she would not have survived much more.

“No, I did not. My goal is to kiss, lick, and/or suck every inch of you.”

Lori squeaked.

The hunger blazing from his eyes caused an explosion of flutters in her chest. “I want to see just how wet I can make you. And I want to give you so many orgasms that you beg me for mercy.”

“You—you wouldn’t dare.” She’d meant to sound outraged, but she could tell by the amused glint in his eyes that she’d failed miserably.

“No, I wouldn’t. At least not today.” His smile slid away. “Not because I lack the desire, but I don’t have the time. I’m afraid I must go.” He stepped away and it was all she could do not to reach out and grab him and pull him back.

She tucked her willful hands behind her to keep them from disobeying and said, “Where are you going?”

“To a house party.”

“A house party ?”

He winced at her shriek. “Yes. Will you miss me?”

“You cannot be serious! You are keeping me here while you go to a house party ?”

“I am very serious. But it will be Mr. Gregg who will do the keeping until I return.”

Lori was so angry that silver sparks filled her vision. Never had she wanted to hit anyone so badly. She clenched her fists, forced down her fury, and prepared to demand—or even beg—that he let her go. Instead, what came out of her mouth was, “Whose house party?”

She briefly squeezed her eyes shut as she bit back a howl of fury. What on earth was wrong with her? Now she wanted to hit herself .

He chuckled at her question. And then proceeded to ignore it entirely and say, “Try to behave yourself. Mr. Gregg doesn’t have my sense of humor and won’t be amused if you—”

“Somebody will come for me, my lord.”

“I doubt that. But if they do, Mr. Gregg will convince them you are not here.”

Lori ground her teeth. “How long do you plan to keep me prisoner?”

“I am not sure.”

“Meanwhile, you’ll be galivanting all over the country attending house parties.”

His grin spread slowly across his face. “You are jealous.”

“And you are an arrogant arse,” she shot back, outraged that the odious man was right.

He laughed. “If it is any consolation, I wish I could take you along with me, sweetheart.”

“You are a loathsome, conceited, odious—a poltroon !” she finished lamely.

“A poltroon?” His eyes shone with amusement. “There is one I’ve not been called before.” He strode toward the door, pausing and turning after he had opened it. “Be a good girl while I’m gone, Lorelei.”

“Go to hell!”

He laughed again. And then shut and locked the door behind him.