Chapter 2
M adame Noir had arrived to make a selection for her evening’s entertainment.
Raine watched the black-clad figure step through the cell door. Hidden beneath a nearly opaque, ebony veil and layers of midnight-hued silk, she moved with an odd hesitant grace. A black velvet cape covered her shoulders and long black gloves encased the slender hands holding her skirts above the stagnant puddles on the floor.
Armand followed her, his face flushed and his ridged brows lowered in displeasure. Beside him shuffled a huge monolith of a man bundled against the cold, a thick cape draped over his massive shoulders and a woolen scarf wrapped about his thick neck. The eyes beneath the brim of his hat were sharp and piercing.
Silently Raine cursed the fates. Why couldn’t she be accompanied by someone like Pierre? Big, but dull-witted and slow.
She turned and spoke to her man, stopping in front of the torches. The backlighting revealed her profile through the heavy veil; a slender throat, a sharp-angled jaw, a patrician nose. The men who returned from a night in her “care” swore she never removed that veil. No one had ever seen her face—even Armand—and no one knew her real name. She always registered under the pseudonym “Madame Noir” at the hotel she used for her entertainments.
She finished her whispered conversation and turned toward the prisoners. With what looked like a conscious gathering of purpose, she came toward them, her attendant shadowing her. She paused before the colonist.
“Too old,” she murmured in exquisite, aristocratic French and continued circling the room. She stopped in front of the Prussian. He lifted his wet head and gazed at her with dull, hopeless eyes. “This man will die if he is not made warm,” she said.
“Yes,” Armand agreed uninterestedly. “A Prussian.”
She remained studying the shivering man.
“But I might have a desire for a Prussian someday,” she said quite calmly, and moved on.
Immediately Armand barked out an order that the Prussian be taken down, dried off, and fed. In another, one might possibly mistake Madame Noir’s comments for compassion, Raine thought cynically. She moved toward the English youth.
Armand scuttled to her side. “He’s new, Madame. English. Young. Feel.” He chattered like an auctioneer. “Go ahead. I have never known you to be shy.”
She lifted the boy’s chin. His lower lip trembled.
“Very young.” She sounded uncertain. “But English, you say—”
“Please! I come from a noble family. I cannot be used so!” The youth sobbed. “I am not the one you want! I am not the one—”
“I am.”
Madame spun around at the sound of Raine’s calm voice, her veil swirling about her shoulders and settling like the dark wings of a nighthawk. She cocked her head sideways, increasing her resemblance to a small, sleek bird of prey.
“Monsieur is English?” she asked, interest sharpening her inflection.
“Aye.” He watched her carefully. “English. You have a taste for Englishmen, Madame?”
Behind the heavy veil he thought he saw the glimmer of her eyes. He forced himself to stand still and turned his palms up, inviting her inspection. “I’m your man.”
“Perhaps.”
Armand hurried over. He grabbed a handful of Raine’s hair and jerked his head back.
“Here, Madame. Come. Examine. Look. I know Madame is most careful in making her selection.”
She came within a few feet. Her heated scent filled his nostrils, unexpectedly stirring his senses. A woman’s perfume. Without warning, sensual images from his all-but-forgotten past ambushed him, flooding his mind, filling his thoughts.
Musk and flowers, cleanliness, and dark promise. Womanly and virginal all at once. Straining bodies, sweet aftermath. The sudden sensual memory stunned him with its force.
He closed his eyes, breathing in deeply through his mouth, tasting as well as scenting her. He hadn’t been in the same room with a woman in five years, having hidden in barns and cave during his short freedom. Yet could that alone account for the thickening in his loins?
This woman was a bawd, a profligate jade, a byword for pollution, and while he’d once been a randy youth eager for most any sexual sport he’d never added perversion to his extensive list of vices.
Yet the mere scent of her stirred him.
“Touch him,” Armand urged.
Did she hesitate before reaching out? Did she note the uncontrollable forward cant of his body in anticipation of her hand? Her gloved fingers brushed his naked skin. He forgot everything else.
His breath caught. He backed away. Not because he abhorred her touch. Just the opposite. Because he wanted it. Her fingertips fluttered down his chest to his belly to where his breeches hung low on his hips. He shivered, willing her hand to slip lower still, waiting for that intimate touch, aching with arousal, heedless of the spectators.
Her gaze dropped to the evidence of his arousal. Abruptly, she snatched her hand back, like a maiden.
“Madame wished a challenge?” Armand was asking. “Here is such a one. Arrogant. Young. Healthy.”
“I don’t think—”
“Forgive me, Madame.” Her servant lumbered forward.
“Yes, Jacques?”
“I believe this one would suit very well.”
Raine studied the mountainous Jacques. Since when did a servant advise his mistress on her sexual requisites? She did not reprimand him, however, but only hesitated before gesturing toward the English boy.
“Perhaps him,” she said, and it sounded to Raine as though she was asking. “He is—”
“Very young,” Jacques finished, his tone cautioning.
Raine ground his teeth in frustration. She had to pick him. She must .
“I will be whatever Madame wishes me to be.” He forced the words out between his lips, surprised at how easily they came, how facilely he abdicated the last shreds of his pride. “I will do whatever Madame wishes me to do.”
He held his breath.
“All right,” she finally said. “I’ll take him.”
Jacques nodded approvingly.
“Very good,” Armand said. “I’ll send two guards with you.”
“Not necessary,” Jacques said, handing Armand a heavy-looking velvet pouch. Raine blessed the man’s self-assurance.
“But it is, Monsieur,” Armand argued. “I know this man.”
Madame made a dismissive movement with her hands. “Has there ever been a problem before?” she asked coldly. “I do not wish spectators at my sport. I desire … privacy with him.”
“I understand, but Madame, you must see that if this man should escape—”
“Do you dare to press me?”
“Non , Madame!” Armand assured her, hauling a thick set of keys from his belt and opening the lock that held Raine manacled to the wall. “Still, I fear this one.” He fastened a length of chain between Raine’s manacles. “I have the solution: The guards will ride post, on the back of the carriage. You will have privacy. I will have peace of mind. This is sensible, yes?”
Armand jerked Raine forward and handed the end of the chain to Jacques.
“If you insist,” Madame said, irritation vibrating from her slender form.
She stalked from the cell, her skirts rustling. Armand hurried after her, barking for the guards. Raine, who’d kept his head bowed throughout the proceedings, glanced up and found Jacques watching him.
The huge man shrugged off his cape, throwing it over Raine’s naked shoulders, robbing the act of charity by saying, “I will chain you in the coach across the seat from her. If you hurt her … If you so much as blow your filthy breath in her face, I will rip off your head and piss down your neck. Comprends?”
Raine’s lips curled back. “I assure you, your mistress is safe with me.”
“Good. Be civil, be wise, and all shall go well for you. Better than you imagine.”
Raine could not keep the derisive sneer from his face. “Your largesse undoes me. I wonder if hers will.”
In answer, Jacques shoved Raine between the shoulder blades. He propelled him through the door and down the low corridor toward a flight of stairs leading up to the prison’s receiving yard. There, just outside of the gates, waited a closed carriage. The prison guards were already perched on the footmen’s steps at the back. Armand stood beside the open door.
Any attempt to flee now would be futile. Choking down his frustration, Raine shuffled across the yard through the open gates. Outside, he stopped, unable to help himself, and lifted his face to the weeping sky. He drew breath outside the prison walls and closed his eyes.
“Go on, son.” Jacques’s voice was surprisingly mild. “Get in.”
Raine hefted his chains and flung them in onto the floor of the carriage. Jacques reached past him, snapping a padlock through the links and locking them to a bolt on the floor. Damn the man’s caution!
Unceremoniously Raine climbed into the carriage. Across the carriage, bootheels scrabbled against the floorboards. She’d already entered. He peered through the dim interior.
She was almost indiscernible in her black gown and heavy veils, being tucked as she was as far back into the corner as possible.
As though, he realized, she was scared to death of him.