Chapter 26
Chapter twenty-six
Even more unpleasant than the ropes digging into Juliet’s wrists was the soiled linen taste of the gag Charles had shoved into her mouth.
And those weren’t even the worst of her woes, because she had ten icicles for toes and soaking, muddy stockings on her feet.
The cut on her neck still stung, but at least it had stopped bleeding.
The look of ecstasy in Charles’s eyes as the knife had pierced her skin would forever be seared into her memories.
She had feared he would slice her open right there in Eric’s kitchen.
By the grace of God, a noise had startled him, and he’d halted.
Unfortunately, he’d then dragged her out of The Pink Petal and down the dark, practically empty streets to these hideous rooms. The few individuals they passed, either couldn’t see that he held a knife to her throat or were simply too jaded to care, making someone with Eric’s ethical conscience even more remarkable.
Juliet had seen the person who’d made the noise in the kitchen. The young woman had ducked back into the shadows before Charles noticed her. Hopefully, whoever she was, she sought out Eric and told him what she’d witnessed. The second he knew Juliet had been abducted, he would come looking for her.
Please let him find me soon, Juliet prayed, because Charles had grown increasingly erratic, binding her to a chair, then pacing and mumbling under his breath. At least if he was frantically moving, he wasn’t touching her, thank goodness.
Once again, Juliet berated herself for being a na?ve ninny.
Her original impression of Charles was wrong on every account.
She’d gone from thinking he was a handsome gentleman to believing him to be a cowardly, arrogant arse.
But the truth was even worse than that. He was sick and depraved.
Perhaps it was fortunate that she hadn’t eaten much in the past twenty-four hours, for if she had, she might be casting up her accounts due to the innumerable deviant paintings decorating the walls and a display of grotesque statues.
It wasn’t that she found the shackles attached to the headboard of his unmade bed in themselves bothersome, it was more Charles’s cruelty that unnerved her.
Charles’s pictures were nothing like the naughty ones in The Secret Life of Gentlemen, where men and women engaged in sensual acts of all sorts.
The illustrations in the book stoked Juliet’s curiosity and made her ache with need.
Expressions of mutual enjoyment and bucolic scenery added to her fantasies.
But Charles’s massive collection was filled with violent images of women with terrified looks on their faces, screaming into dark abysses as men twisted them into odd shapes. There were blood, sharp weapons, demons, and fire, all of it nightmarish and diabolical.
As far as Juliet was concerned, men and women could engage in whatever they wished as long as the acts were consensual. But consensual did not describe what covered the walls surrounding her.
Since the artwork, if one could call it that, was everywhere she looked, she fixed her gaze on the floor, while willing Charles to have an apoplexy.
He halted in front of her.
She made the mistake of looking at him.
He bared his teeth in a grin that was so disturbing, she felt as if an arachnid was crawling up her back. Her instincts told her to run, which was an impossibility—ropes anchoring her to the chair, and all.
Charles approached, lifted her chin, and stared into her eyes. His pupils didn’t dilate, and he appeared deranged.
Because he is exceedingly, unequivocally, a boiled-brained gull.
“How could you?” he asked, his spittle spattering her cheeks.
Since there was a gag in her mouth, Juliet couldn’t respond, not that she knew what to say to appease the monster.
“With the son of a whore,” he growled. “A bloody pugilist when I’m heir to an earldom. I will be one of the most powerful men in England. And you were with him after you humiliated me by kissing that villain who roams the city at night, making fools of the aristocracy.”
They make fools of themselves without any assistance from Knight Roamer, thank you very much.
At least he didn’t seem to know that Knight Roamer and Eric were one and the same.
His eyes widened until he resembled an owl. Thereupon, he wrinkled his nose and snorted.
Well, pooh. Juliet winced, suspecting he’d just made the connection between Eric and the avenger.
She’d just made one of her own. Charles must have been the man she’d seen duck behind the settee when she’d entered the brothel, which could only mean one thing—he visited The Pink Petal.
Not that she was surprised because deep in her heart she had known he had a predilection for such things.
Many men did. Not that there was anything wrong with it as long as the women in their lives didn’t care and they treated the prostitutes well.
But Charles’s predilections went way beyond the joys of tupping.
Besides, she, for one, cared, and she wanted to be the center of the world to the man she loved—Eric Stone, to be precise.
“That bloody pugilist who sulks around the whores and threatens me is the same one who dons a disguise at night,” Charles said. “How did I not figure this out sooner?”
He would find them and then make Charles rue tormenting her.
“How dare you send a letter breaking our engagement?”
Since this was what it was like talking face to face with Charles, she’d done the correct thing.
“I’ll tell you what is going to happen next.” Charles leaned close, his sickly-sweet breath blowing across her cheek. “You are going to say that the reporter from The Daily Dispatch of London is wrong, and that Knight Roamer was working with the bandits.”
She’d known Charles would do something vengeful since his fragile hubris wouldn’t be able to handle the humiliating aftermath from the article. She simply hadn’t realized he was a lunatic who would abduct her at knifepoint and carry her off to a reprehensible torture chamber.
“You will say that you kissed me to thank me for saving you.” His chest puffed—the delusion fool. “Yes, that shall do. Then you will say that you were with your sister in the country, hiding from the villainous Knight Roamer this entire time, so you were never compromised. And then we shall marry.”
The devil I will.
“Do we have an understanding?” he asked.
She glared at him.
Mumbling obscenities, he turned his back to her and strolled to a side table.
He picked up a knife and held it high. Sunlight streaming through a nearby window reflected off the long, thin blade.
This weapon looked as though it had been designed to rip through flesh and was much more ominous than the bread knife, which hadn’t exactly filled her with warm, fuzzy thoughts while it was puncturing her flesh.
She refused to show how truly terrified she was, so she met his gaze as he hovered over her.
“Do not make a sound, not even an inkling of a peep.” He pressed the knife to her neck and removed the gag with his other hand.
She swallowed and then licked her lips as the gag tumbled to her lap.
“Answer me, you traitorous little wench. Do you understand?”
She wanted to spit in his face, but since she did not relish being disfigured, she had no choice but to nod.
“Repeat the story you are going to tell everyone,” he demanded.
How in the dickens was she to speak if she didn’t make a peep? She sighed. “What were you doing in a brothel?”
He growled. “What the bloody hell were you doing in one?”
He knew exactly what she was doing there. She would not confess to it out loud, giving him an excuse to bellow and call her names.
He squeezed her chin between his thumb and index finger. “Answer me, you unfaithful trollop.”
It seemed that no matter what she did, he was going to yell and insult her, so she might as well find her pride and fight back. The only weapon at her disposal was her brain. If only she were as intelligent as her sisters.
“Do not cower,” Maria would tell her. “Men like Charles are chicken-hearted cowards.”
“Look into his soul and find his motivations,” Emily would say. “Then, expose any hypocrisy and be sure to call his bluff.”
Embracing her sister’s strength, Juliet stared into his soulless eyes.
“My lord, I broke off our engagement before I pledged my heart and body to another man. You cannot say the same. How many times were you unfaithful?” She slid her gaze across the room.
“What sickness ails you, that you surround yourself with this?”
He slammed his hand on the back of the chair. At the crack of skin against wood beside her ear, Juliet winced.
Swallowing her fear and fighting the quiver spreading through her muscles, she feigned indifference to his temper. “Are you so intimidated by women that you must resort to violence to exert control over them?”
For a moment, he simply blinked. Then, he retreated to the opposite side of the room.
Brilliant, Juliet, she congratulated herself. She’d broken him. Perhaps he would even curl into a ball in the corner and mourn the loss of his manhood.
To her horror, he whirled, throwing his arms wide, knocking paintings off the wall.
They crashed to the ground, some of the frames splintering.
Like a wild animal, he continued to rage.
All around Juliet, paintings flew, porcelain smashed, and obscenities echoed, the sound of destruction deafening.
The knife whizzed past her head, barely missing her cheek. Another followed.
Juliet fought to free herself from the ropes. Attempting to shame Charles had made matters worse, and now she was in mortal danger.
Where are you, Eric? she wondered. And then something hard smashed her cheek.