Indecent: 15 Erotic Victorian Romance Story Box Set (7 page)

Chapter 2

Lord Darlington stood up and motioned for me to do the same.
I remained seated, my entire being in shock at what I’d just heard. I yelped as
he grabbed me by the armpits and wrenched me to my feet, lifting me into the
air and holding me at his eye level as I kicked ineffectually at the air.
“Unhand me!” I snapped, pulling at his arms. He merely let me dangle as if I
were nothing more than a squirming kitten about to tossed into a river for his
wicked amusement.

Slowly I tired, falling limp in his arms at last. Only then
did he move me until my face was so close to his, I could feel his hot breath
on me. “You will learn to obey me or you will face the consequences,” he
whispered. “I will set you down momentarily and you will follow me in silence
to my carriage. Do you understand?”

“I’ll never go anywhere with you.”

“Very well. Do not say you were not warned.”

He set my feet on the ground but as I tried once more to
squirm away he pushed me against the table, his hand in the small of my back,
pressing my chest into the table. Reaching down, he ignored my screams of
protest and bunched the hem of my skirt in his fist. “Let me go at once!” I
screamed.

“You will learn your lesson first,” he replied, pulling the
skirt upwards until my legs were exposed. I kicked back at him but he did not
react, it was as if I was attempting to kick out at a tree trunk or a wall of
stone for all the effect it had.

“What are you doing?” I asked, still fighting to escape him.

“Teaching you something important,” he replied, the hand in
the small of my back taking hold of my skirt, holding it raised. My face
blushed deep red as I realised he was no doubt gazing at my drawers. I looked
behind me in time to see him raise his hand high in the air.

“Please,” I began but got no further.

“It is too late for please,” he replied as the hand whipped
down through the air and landed on my right buttock with so much force I let
out a shriek of agony.

He let me go but I could not move at first, the pain
excruciating and spreading through me in waves that seemed never ending. I was
weeping as he took my arm and led me slowly from the dining room into the
hallway. The household staff were nowhere to be seen. I wondered if they’d fled
with my parents.

My bottom was still stinging as he lifted me into his
waiting carriage. Bitter tears ran down my cheeks as he tapped on the roof and
the wheels began to turn. Through the window I watched my home vanish into the
distance before I finally sat back and closed my eyes, my soul in torment.

“Have you finished crying?” Darlington asked.

“I hate you,” I replied, turning to look at him. That awful smile
flickered across his lips again.

“Hate me all you like. It will change nothing.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“To my home. I’m told it needs a woman’s touch.”

A look crossed his face, a look of distance and sorrow. As
soon as he noticed me looking at me, he turned and stared out of his window at
the fields beyond, not looking back for some time. I sat back and did my best
not to cry.

It was some hours before we turned off the road onto a
private track, passing between two iron gates and between overhanging trees
that combined with the setting sun to fill me with the sensation that I was
passing from light into darkness. A minute later we turned a corner and I saw a
house lit by lanterns. Flames licked at the corners of the building as if it
rose from the fires of hell, a home built from brimstone fit for a devil as
wicked as the man beside me.

The carriage drew up and a butler ran to open my door.
“Welcome back Lord Darlington,” the butler said as he stepped down after me.
“How was your journey?”

“Tedious,” Darlington replied. “I’ll take a brandy.”

“And your guest?”

“Take her to my room.”

“Very good my Lord.”

I followed the butler meekly inside, looking around me at
the dark wood of the hallway, the portraits of stern men scowling down at me as
I was led upstairs and along a marble floor to the end of a corridor. The
butler unlocked the door and stepped aside. As soon as I crossed the threshold,
he pulled the door closed and before I could even turn, the key was turned in
the lock and I was trapped.

A single candle was alight on the bedside table. I took it
up and looked around me, fresh tears running down my face. Heavy curtains
covered a window that was as firmly locked as the door. By my side was a four
poster bed and I sat on the edge of it, the candlestick shaking in my hand,
shadows flickering on the wall before me. “Happy birthday,” I muttered quietly
before setting down the candle and lying back on the covers, my chest hitching
as I sobbed uncontrollably.

I do not know how long I lay there but eventually a key
turned in the lock and the door opened. Lord Darlington stood silhouetted in
the doorway, looming over me as he tossed his cape aside and stepped into the
room. He did not acknowledge me until he had locked the door behind him once
more. Finally he turned to face me, the edge of his face lit only by the
spluttering remains of the candle.

“How do you like your new home?” he asked, taking a step
towards me.

“I want to leave,” I replied, wiping the tears from my
cheeks.

“You do? And pray, where would you go?”

“Anywhere but here.”

“I do not believe you,” he said, leaning down towards me,
his brow furrowing as he examined my face. “I have known many such as you in my
time. You want the pleasures of adult life with none of the responsibilities.
In time you will learn that such things go hand in hand.”

He took my hand in his and lifted me to my feet. “Come with
me. There is something I wish to show you.”

He had barely turned from me when there was an almighty
crash downstairs followed by the echoing crack of a gunshot. His expression
changed immediately from avaricious hunger to cold darkness, his lips pursing
and his eyes narrowing. “Under the bed,” he whispered. “And do not move until I
return.” There was a second gunshot and then a scream that chilled my blood
filled the air. “Quickly now!” Another shot and the scream ended in an instant.

I sank to the floor and slid underneath the bed, barely
fitting between the dark wood of the bed frame and the varnished floor. “I will
return,” Darlington whispered, kneeling down and kissing my forehead.

“What is happening?”

“Keep silent if you value your life,” he replied, turning
and unlocking the door. I caught a glimpse of a figure on the landing, pistol
held outstretched. “My Lord, they are here,” the figure hissed.

“Come,” Darlington replied. “We must get to it before they
do.”

He turned and shoved the door closed, the key scraping home
in the lock and leaving me alone once more. I listened in terror as the sound
of gunshots rang through the house. I heard a voice cry out, “Darlington! Give
us what we’re owed and we will leave in peace.”

“Come and collect your dues my friends,” Darlington cried
back from somewhere downstairs, his voice muffled by the distance. A silence
fell, lasting many minutes, my ears ringing throughout as I yearned to hear
something, anything at all. At last there came the sound of heavy footsteps up
the stairs and then along the landing towards my door. The sound ceased and a
key was inserted into the lock, turning slowly until the door was opened.

“Come on out,” a voice said and I glanced out from under the
bed to find myself looking at a wretched man of around fifty, his face coated
in dirt, greasy brown hair stringy and lank, his body encased in a long black
coat that looked older than him, two buttons missing, replaced by ragged string
which held it closed. Around his wrist the remains of a handcuff chain dangled
and gripped in his mud caked fingers was the only clean thing about him, a
shining metal pistol pointed directly at me. “Your fiancé wishes to speak to
you.”

I shook my head, unable to speak, my nerves shot to ribbons.

He sighed and took a step towards me. “I will be the last
thing you will see in this world unless you come out from under that bed this
instant.”

The cold end of the pistol was pressed to my forehead and I
saw a tremor in his finger as if on the verge of squeezing the trigger.

“All right,” I said, my voice barely a croak. “All right.”

He stepped back as I crawled out from under the bed. He
grabbed my arm and began leading me from the room. “That’s better,” he grinned,
revealing a mouth full of rotten teeth. “All civilised like.”

Tugging me down the stairs I let out a gasp at the sight of
a body in the hallway, blood pooled under the corpse of a servant whose name I
had not even had time to learn. I had never seen a body before and the sight
broke me. I began to weep uncontrollably as my captor merely stepped over it as
if a mere inconvenience such as a log left across a woodland path. I skirted round
the body as best I could, tears blurring my vision as I was taken through a
doorway into a drawing room where Lord Darlington sat bloodied and bruised in
an armchair, hands bound behind his back, three men as filthy as my captor
standing over him with their pistols drawn.

“Won’t you sit down,” the man by my side said, pushing me
down onto the sofa by the fireplace. “There, isn’t that nice? The happy couple
together.”

“What have you done to her Spires?” Darlington asked. The
butt of a pistol whipped through the air, brought down on his forehead by the
man nearest to him, landing with a sickening thud.

“Shut it,” the pistol wielding thug said.

“What have you done to her?” Darlington asked again.

“Nothing,” Spires replied, leaning down and brushing his
hand through my hair. I recoiled from him, a waft of stench hitting me as his
hand moved down my cheek and onto my chest. He gave my right breast a rough
squeeze before stepping back. “Nothing yet at least.” He grinned at me before
turning back to Darlington.

“Where’s our share?” Spires asked.

“I told you. I lent it to another.”

“That was eighteen years ago!”

“He has yet to repay me.”

Spires bristled. “Do you have any idea what life is like on
a prison hulk?”

Darlington shook his head. “You should have got out when I
did.”

“Do not tell me what I should or should not have done.”

“You never were good at listening were you?” Darlington
smiled. “Following my instructions for example. Remember when I spent months
attempting to show you knotcraft and you grew bored every single time, told me
all that mattered was boarding and raiding?”

Spires took a step towards him, pistol outstretched. “I grow
tired of listening to your prattle. Either give me what I’m owed or I shoot you
dead in front of your blushing bride to be.”

“I only mention knotcraft,” Darlington continued, seemingly
oblivious to the barrel of the gun waving in front of his face, “because if
you’d paid more attention to my instruction, you might have learned how to tie
ropes that could not be worked loose as easily as these.” He brought his hands
out from behind his back, tossing the useless rope to Spires. Before the
villain could react, Darlington was up and had snatched the pistol from him.
The three men standing over him began to move but Darlington was faster, firing
the pistol at the first and catching his gun as it fell to the ground.

Turning to the second, Darlington ducked in time for a shot
to fire over his back, a bullet embedding itself in the wall behind him. He
twisted and returned a shot, the second of the three men joining the first on
the floor before I’d even had time to take a breath. The third man turned to
run, crashing into Spires and falling headlong onto the floor at my feet. He
turned in his place and aimed his pistol at Darlington. “Look out!” I cried.

Darlington spun in time to see the villain on the floor
pulling the trigger. He leapt sideways, landing on the far side of the table.
The shot shattered the window, the wind blowing the curtains towards us all.
Darlington sprang upright and was over the table in a second, sliding across
the varnished wood and landing beside me. “Won’t be a moment,” he said to me as
he picked up the man on the floor and tossed him straight out of the broken
window. There was a scream and then a thud. Darlington ran to the window in
time to see the fellow limping away across the grass, Spires by his side.
Neither of them looked back.

I realised I had been holding my breath throughout and
finally let out a sigh just as the two dead men on the floor drew my eye. I
felt myself grow faint once more as I looked at them. “Come,” Darlington said,
“this is no place for a lady.”

He took my shaking hand and led me from the room, shielding
my eye from the dead man in the hall as we made our way back upstairs. “Rest a
while,” he said when we reached his bedroom once more. “No more will happen
tonight.”

“Are you certain?” I asked, sitting on the edge of the bed
as he let go of my hand. I felt a strange sensation when he stood back, that of
loss, as if my hand had somehow belonged in his and now felt abandoned.

Darlington frowned at me. “I will check the grounds with a
couple of stout fellows I can trust.” He reached the doorway and looked back in
at me. “I think I can trust you enough to leave the door unlocked this time,”
he said before turning and walking swiftly away.

I was silent and still for some time, trying to calm my
overworked nerves. Eventually I grew tired and climbed under the bedcovers,
surprised by how soft they felt on my skin. I’d never gone to bed fully dressed
before but I lacked the energy to search for nightclothes. With my head on the
pillow I closed my eyes. Lord Darlington’s face appeared in my mind, the look
in his eyes as he’d leapt from the chair in the dining room, the speed with
which he’d moved, far faster than I would have thought possible for a man his
size and age. A slight fancy entered my mind, the thought of him dispatching a
roomful of villains before taking me in his arms and planting a kiss on my
lips. With a sigh and that vision playing over and over in my head, I fell
asleep.