Regency Rogues Omnibus (115 page)

Which was splendid with him, because he did not fit well within the constraints of English society, and he easily shrugged off those strictures he could. He thought, perhaps this was a small part of his unexplained fascination with Arabella. She was completely unfettered. No cosmetics or supposedly stylish kinky curls, the woman of this age wore, with the accompanied mountains of petticoats, jewels, and overpowering perfumes. He told himself that his gutlessness in attempting to have a relationship with a woman, since his injury, was in fact his dislike of all the unneeded feminine trappings English women enlisted. And even in moments of complete self-truth, he knew it was partially true. If he had still been of moderately good looks he would have found the English high ladies, with all their style, unappealing.

Arabella began to thrash again, muttering incoherently and causing Darth to return to her side, where he sat beside her and placed a palm to her cheek, which calmed her immediately. He stayed beside her the entire night keeping cool compresses to her forehead. One time going so far as to restrain her during a particular dementia, where she cried out. “Please don’t hurt me!” Then she struggled mightily, for one so small, as if she were being attacked in some horrendous way. It ended with her terror driven screaming. Then she collapsed with heart wrenching whimpers as he told her repeatedly that she was safe. Finally, her fever seemed to break, and she slipped off into a more normal slumber about dawn.

Wearily Darth bathed Arabella one last time, and then he pulled the sheets and coverlet up to her chin. Afterward seeking the fire, which he stoked with more wood. There would be no sleep for him that morning, he considered tiredly as he sat on the Queen Anne settee facing the fireplace. He propped one of his long legs up on the opposite cushion from where he sat with his dark thoughts and even darker intentions.

He was not entirely certain when it had happened. When he had stopped thinking of the idea of owning Arabella as an absurd notion and started entertaining it as his intentions.

Chapter Five

Arabella came awake with a start. She was groggy and confused with a dull pain in her temple. Her first coherent thought was anguish over Nicholas, which drove her from the bed in disorientation. “Nicholas,” she cried.

“You are forbidden to speak another man’s name!”

Arabella nearly screamed at the sound of a man’s voice so deep and filled with anger. She’d not seen him, she had not even seen where she might be. She nearly fell, but reached her hands outward instinctively and caught hold of the back of a settee in front of her. A settee that she had not known was there. It was then her muddled gaze focused on the large profile of a man sitting below her, on the same settee she held onto. For dear life.

It was him
, Arabella realized in shock as he turned his head to face her. It was the fearsome spellbinding Lord Peregrine, and then she remembered why it was she knew him at all. He owned her!

“My name is Darth and that is the only man’s name that will come from your lips. Tell me that you understand me properly.” Lord Peregrine snarled these words with his marred face twisted into a frightening mask of anger, illuminating the predatory gleam in his gray eyes.

Arabella gulped fearfully and began to turn. She would run from the mad man with his barbarous veneer and his wicked intentions. But suddenly Lord Peregrine groaned, with a harsh anguished sound, and Arabella saw from the corner of her gaze that it really was pain she could see on his scarred face, and perhaps not complete anger. He seized his face into his hands bending forward, and still she thought to run, especially while there was a chance to escape him.

Pain,
the word sliced through Arabella’s mind, stopping her forward motion. She could not leave him in pain, she could never leave another human being in pain. She forced herself around the settee, realizing then that she was naked. Only at that same moment Lord Peregrine moaned again, a horrible sound, and she forgot her unclothed state as soon as she had thought of it. Moving swiftly to his side Arabella placed her hands to Lord Peregrine’s hands and she pried them away from his face.

“Lay back, my lord, I am a healer and I would help you.”

“There is no help when it comes on me.” Darth hissed through gritted teeth.

“Then it cannot hurt for me to try,” Arabella insisted, pushing him backward, until his head lay on the arm of the settee. It was an easy accomplishment in his suffering. His eyes were clenched against obvious agony as she began to massage his temples with some firm circular motions. She massaged along his scar, up into his scalp, and then down his cheek, especially around his eye. It looked as if he had been sliced with a sword. However, by the look of the scarring, she could tell it had been years ago.

“It grips you most when you are tired,” Arabella stated firmly, knowing that tension would serve to draw up the scarred flesh tightly, inflaming it. She had seen injuries of its measure before, although not in the face, when working with her mentor Lady Serena on the island of Jamaica. Lady Serena was an elderly black woman, a native of the island, and considered a black magic shaman. What she really was, was a native doctor of herbs, but she said that she never minded the superstitions surrounding her, if it let her help more people.

“Have you tried heat?” Arabella asked, noting that Darth had relaxed slightly.

“It does not work,” he replied through gritted teeth.

“Then we will try cold. I will be right back, do not move.” Arabella looked around the large room and spotted the water basin. She went to it and found there was a cloth, which she got damp. On her return, she stopped long enough to pull a flat linen from the bed to wrap around her naked body, before she returned to Lord Peregrine’s side. He lay on his back with his hands in fists at his sides and his eyes still clenched tight against the pain. Quickly, Arabella placed the cold cloth over Darth’s face and stepped behind him to place her hands on his neck, which was coiled stiffly with tensed muscles. She began to massage his neck and shoulders as she talked, trying to relax him.

“A healer must use whatever they have available, Darth.” It would make him feel better to hear his given name, she decided. “So I tell you this will work, but I have something in my herb satchel that will help you much more, and I will give it to you and show you how to take it for the next time this happens.” She understood that she was rambling in her concern, nevertheless, Darth’s muscles were loosening beneath her fingertips. “You must always strive to obtain your rest, which will help also.” Arabella moved her hands up the sturdy column of Darth’s neck, and then under his chin massaging deeply. “Oh, I have just thought of a cream that I will give you. It will help to keep your skin pliable.” Her fingers deftly found the pressure points behind Darth’s ears, then she moved her fingertips back up to his temple. She heard him sigh in relief, applying the pressure points seemed to have worked. “My cream smells of jasmine, however, I will mix yours with a more masculine scent, sandalwood perhaps.”

“No, jasmine,” Darth murmured, catching her wrist and bringing it up to his nose to inhale. “Like you.”

Startled by the gesture, Arabella was brought fully around to her circumstances. She twisted her wrist from Darth’s strong grasp and stepped backward. The seizure was gone now, she could see that.

“Do not stop,” Darth said, however he sat up, swinging his long legs to the floor as he turned his head to look at her. A short distance because he was so tall.

“But I think you are better,” Arabella replied taking another step backward with her hand jerking upward to clutch the edge of the linen wrapped above her breasts.

“I am, and I thank you. I would never have believed it, Arabella. It seems it is another reason I find that I am certain now I have made a wise investment.” Darth actually smiled and it made his brutal face turn appealing with a heady sensual quality to it.

“Investment,” Arabella gulped. Truly frightened now. Taking another step backward, she wondered now how wise it had been not to take her chance to run. Only she could not ignore her nature and her nature did not allow her to leave a person, any person, in pain if she could help it.

“Do not take another step away,” Darth suddenly ordered and clearly Arabella understood that he meant her faltering retreat. “My investment of now owning you,” he finished.

Arabella’s heart froze as Darth’s words hung heavily in the room, although, his lordship did not seem to feel that way. He looked satisfied. “There has been a mistake, your lordship,” she whispered.

“Darth.”

“Darth, then. There has been a terrible mistake.”

“I see none, but the paper right here, which states quite clearly that one Arabella Ormonde belongs to me. Tis even dated.”

Arabella wanted to scream at him, to tell him that she was from a good and decent family. She was no slave that he seemed more than willing to accept her as. But suddenly, she remembered Victor’s last words to her as she fought with him in the hallway of the inn. “Keep your mouth shut or Nicholas dies!” Arabella felt tears forming as she fought them back.
Sweet Mary
, what was she to do, standing with only a linen to cover her beneath Lord Peregrine’s indomitable presence, and he believed he owned her and she could not tell him differently. She would not risk Nicholas’ life.

“I am a healer and I can cook or work at any labor. I would work very hard for my release,” Arabella stated, lifting her chin.

At her statement, the indomitable earl merely stood and looked down at her. Evil incarnate. The entire motion making Arabella want to turn and flee, but even she with her less than worldly ways realized there was nowhere she could hope to escape a powerful lord such as Darth was.

“That is accommodating, Arabella, but not helpful to me. I have more intimate duties in mind for you and incidentally there is no clause stated in these papers for release. Tis lifetime enslavement.”

Enslavement!
Arabella stumbled backward at the word ... At the intentions.

Chapter Six

Darth’s hand snaked forward, grabbing the edge of the linen between Arabella’s breasts. “I told you not to step backward again,” he uttered, pulling Arabella and the linen closer. Darth realized that he had to prove his dominance early on if he hoped to mold Arabella.
And, he did.
With each moment he was close to her, he found himself more determined ... if not crazed

“You are afraid of me?” he asked flatly looking down at her.

Arabella jerked her gaze away from Darth’s impaling gray eyes. “Of you, not your scar.” Arabella wondered with feverish thoughts why she had thought to clarify. Perhaps it was some inner self-preservation which read Darth’s diabolical intentions and she sought to soften the blow upon herself.

Darth was staggered at Arabella’s response. It was true that she was afraid, he could see it. He expected it. However, she did not seem in anyway appalled by his visage. And that excited him. “That is proper, Arabella. It is just the way I would have it in fact.” Darth pulled Arabella closer still, taking her chin firmly in his wide hand, pressing upward, until she had no choice but to look at him. “Are you a virgin, Arabella?”

Arabella’s eyes widened at the implication as trembling fear coursed through her belly and both of Darth’s hands tighten around what they were holding, as if anticipating her flight. She would not tell him! If he intended rape, well then, he would have to live with the consequences. Because it would be rape. She would fight him with all her power, so he knew it for what it was.
Sweet Mary
, she had no hope of winning against his strength, if that were his intentions, and why else would he ask her?

“I cannot abide stubbornness from my property, Arabella. Tell me at once or I will be forced to punish you!”

Arabella was petrified, yet she would not let Darth see her fear as she stared up at him with defiance. “Rape me if you will, you
beast
.”

Oh my God
, why had she said that? Darth flinched. Arabella knew her last word had hit its mark and she was surprised that she did not feel more satisfaction at hurting him as he was intent on ravishing her.

Darth pulled once forcefully with the hand that held the edge of the bed linen between her breasts, ripping it away without warning. Arabella was so stunned, she did not even scream as he grabbed up both of her wrists and placed them together in one of his broad hands. Clamping his fingers around them tightly he began to pull her along behind him. “Rape, Arabella? There will never be rape between us. You will be willing, I can assure you!”

Darth pulled her to a dresser, where he opened a drawer and rifled through its contents with his free hand. Arabella finally found her wits and thought to escape him, twisting her wrists and panting with the effort, until he squeezed his hand even more. He was strong as seen in his powerful body stretched tautly beneath the silk of his white shirt.

She yanked again, screeching, “Let me go!” But he did not budge. He was like a sturdy oak tree, immovable to her smaller frame and she saw, with alarm, the two belts he pulled from his drawer. One was a two-inch leather strap and the other was a much thinner trouser tie.