“Did those vows include flirting with every man who paid you a compliment?”
I half-shrugged and shot back, “I know they sure as hell didn't include getting friendly with some teenager.”
He frowned. “What is a teenager?”
Right. That was a fairly modern concept. I closed my eyes. “Why do I even bother?”
Suddenly, hands were on my arms, fingers digging into my flesh. My eyes flew open to find Gracen staring down at me.
“Were you jealous?” he asked. “Seeing me dancing with Alize St. James?”
“Yes!” I spit the word out. “I was jealous. I didn't like the way she looked at you, and I hated seeing you with her. Dancing with her. Talking with her.”
His mouth twisted slightly into a dark sort of smile. “Good. Because I hated seeing you with those men. You are my wife, and I will damn the entire world to hell if it means I get to keep you.”
I had a moment to feel surprise before his mouth was on mine, hands moving down to clutch at my waist. There was something different about his kiss, his touch, something that made my insides twist.
“You are mine, Honor Lightwood.” He punctuated the statement with a bite at my jaw. “I do not care if it is not fashionable in your time to say such things. You are mine.”
It wasn't only words. I could feel it in his touch as he pushed me against the wall, as he rocked his hips against me. I dug his fingers into his hair, pulling him back so we could see each other.
“You're mine too, Gracen Lightwood.” My voice was breathless, but I made my words as firm as possible. “And don't you forget it.”
He pushed at my skirts, his hands finding my ass, gripping it, lifting me. I wrapped my legs around his waist, trusting him to hold me up even as my fingers scrabbled against the heavy wooden door, seeking for any sort of purchase. I felt his knuckles brush against my thigh as one hand moved between us, the other supporting me at the small of my back.
“I need to be inside you.”
I nodded, my own yearning as intense as his. I cried out as he drove into me with one hard thrust. His mouth covered mine, swallowing every whimper and curse that escaped as he pounded into me, each stroke more brutal than the last. We'd had no foreplay, nothing to prepare me, and every thrust was a delicious mixture of pain and pleasure, setting off a spark that rapidly turned into an inferno.
My entire body stiffened as I came, and I bit down on his bottom lip. He grunted, hips jerking against mine. I tasted the tang of blood, felt him release inside me, each sensation only adding new heights to what I was feeling. He leaned against me, mouth against my ear, bodies still joined.
“You belong to me, my love. Always.”
Chapter 19
News was slow. Like rip my hair out slow, and that was saying something considering that I'd been in the service. When overseas, letters could take forever to arrive. Or, at least, it had seemed like forever…until now. I'd never really thought about how much longer it would take to receive mail when it had to be carried by horse or on foot, then by ship, then again by horse or man. The twenty-first century was all about instant gratification, and what we called “snail mail” was already on its way out – if it wasn't already obsolete. Here, the telegraph hadn't even been invented yet.
The days dragged on, one blurring into the next as I alternated between wandering around the mansion, bored out of my mind, and accompanying Gracen to various functions...pretending not to be bored there. He and I had come to an unspoken agreement where we would occasionally play nice with the locals, but always made sure that it was clear that we were both off limits for anything more than casual flirtations. It curbed the jealousy and kept things from getting too tense between us.
It didn't, however, stop either of us from wondering if we were doing any good here, or if we were just spinning our wheels.
November had just passed its midway point when I found myself in the library, trying to find a book written in English, and a commotion outside caught my attention. I reached the window in time to see a man jumping off the back of an exhausted-looking horse and running for the door. I doubted it had anything to do with Gracen or me, but needing a break from the monotony, I left the library and headed toward the front of the house.
To my surprise, I found Gracen talking to the stranger. Their faces were tense, and even though they were speaking French, their tones told me that whatever news the man had brought wasn't good.
Gracen glanced at me, his eyes confirming my suspicions. He looked back at the man and thanked him before turning to me. Without a word, he took my arm and led me back the way I'd come. Once in the library, he closed the double doors and pulled me back to the farthest corner.
“Did word get back home?” I practically whispered the question even though we were alone.
Gracen shook his head, but his expression kept me from feeling too relieved. “News from the war.”
I frowned, trying to remember if there had been any major battles in the fall of 1775, but I couldn't think of any. Then I remembered that I needed to be thinking back to the previous month, and something came to me. It hadn't been a battle, but it was definitely something that had gotten the attention of Europeans.
“Falmouth.”
Gracen nodded. “What do you know of it?”
I thought it was a little strange that he asked me rather than sharing what the courier had said, but I didn't argue. Instead, I tried to recall everything I knew about the event.
“October eighteenth or nineteenth, British captain Henry Mowat sent word to Falmouth, Massachusetts that he was there to...well, to punish the town for their part in the rebellion. I think the phrase my brother said Mowat used was ‘execute a just punishment.' He thought they'd been aiding the Continental Army.”
I could almost hear Ennis's voice as he talked about it on a family vacation to Portland, Maine – the modern-day city that stood where Falmouth had been. I rubbed my hands on my skirt, my palms tingling as my past, present, and future all tangled together.
“The town asked for mercy,” I continued. “Mowat told them that if they all swore allegiance to the king and surrendered all of their weapons, he'd spare them. Rather than agreeing, the people began to move out. The next morning, just as his deadline passed, he ordered his ships to fire on the town. When the destruction didn't satisfy him, he sent his men in to make sure the town burned. Afterwards, Mowat left, leaving virtually everyone homeless and having to fend for themselves in the coming winter. And winter in that part of the country comes early, leaves late, and is brutal even with shelter.”
I looked at Gracen now and found his face a blank mask. Annoyance flashed through me. These were his people even more than they were mine. For me, this had already happened, and these people were already dead. For him, these were his countrymen being attacked. I'd expected more of a reaction.
“Is that what the courier said?” I asked.
“It is.” He seemed to be speaking carefully, choosing specific words.
“And you don't believe him?”
“I asked him what the English response was to the news,” Gracen said. “And they are claiming that it is rebel propaganda.”
I scowled. “Does that really surprise you? Why would they admit that one of their officers did something like that? It would only make them look bad.”
“Admiral Graves is reported to have ordered the attack,” Gracen continued slowly. “And his superior issued a statement that said Graves must have had a good reason for his actions. I cannot say that I disagree.”
“A good reason?” I laughed, hearing the bitter edge to the sound and hating it. “Look, I might not be from this time, but I know war. There can be all kinds of reasons for going into it, and some of them can seem pretty good, but going after civilians like that...we're not talking about going through a town to find specific supporters. We're talking about retaliation on innocent people.”
Something Ennis told me suddenly came back to mind. “Did the couri
er say what the French government's response was?”
Gracen shifted, his eyes sliding away from me.
“The foreign secretary had something to say about it, didn't he?” I pressed. I wasn't going to offer it unless Gracen said he hadn't heard, but based on his behavior, I was pretty sure he knew what I was talking about.
“The courier reported that the foreign secretary said he didn't believe it.”
I gave him a mild look. “My brother quoted to me exactly what the French foreign secretary said, and that wasn't it. He said, 'I can hardly believe this absurd as well as barbaric procedure on the part of an enlightened nation.' He called it barbaric. Hardly the sort of word one uses for disbelief.”
“I believe in the cause,” Gracen said. “But I know British officers, and I cannot believe that they would attack unprovoked. You were in the army. How can you believe that someone would behave in such an unseemly manner?”
I blew out a breath. “I can't make a blanket statement about officers because I've known good ones who would turn against their own to protect the innocent from something like that, but I've also known ones who take advantage of their position and wouldn't hesitate to destroy a town just because they felt like it.”
Gracen folded his arms over his chest. “I believe that we should give gentlemen the benefit of the doubt.”
“Are you kidding me?” I fought to keep my temper in check. “You're really going to pull that upper-class bullshit? I don't care if someone's poor or rich, royalty or the son of a fucking garbage man. Unless you know Mowat personally, then I don't give a damn about what his background or lineage or whatever means.”
“Wars are fought with dignity, Honor.”
I shook my head. “You can tell you've never actually been in one. It doesn't matter when it's fought, war is ugly. Yes, most soldiers are noble and follow the rules, but there are also some who lie and rape and murder because they want to. And there are causes that are worth fighting for, but it doesn't make the death and maiming and horror of battle any less sickening.”
His entire body was stiff. “I do not need to have fought in a war to know what it is like.”
“There's knowing it in your head, and then there's having experienced it,” I said, softening my tone. “It's not a bad thing not to have gone through it.”
He shook his head. “But I cannot understand it.”
“No, I'm sorry, but you can't.”
He gave me a curt nod. “Then I suppose you shall have to retain your opinion, and I shall retain mine.”
I blinked at him. “Are you telling me that you don't believe me?”
He raised an eyebrow, and that was answer enough. Myriad emotions flooded me. Some anger, but mostly betrayal and hurt.
“I need some air.”
I hurried out before he could try to stop me, but when I didn't hear him calling after me, I knew he wouldn't have even tried. My eyes burned, blurring my vision as I left the house. The sounds and smells of Paris surrounded me, but all I could register was his disbelief. I made my way down the sidewalk, barely seeing where I was going. I could feel eyes on me as I pushed past people, and as soon as I saw an empty street, I ducked down it, realizing after a few steps that I was actually in an alley. Shadows covered me, and the lack of sun made me acknowledge how cold it was, but I didn't turn back. I couldn't go back right now. I had to sort out what I was feeling and what I was going to do about it.
I wasn't aware that I wasn't alone in the alley until my vision went dark. The last thing I remembered was feeling a sharp blow to the back of my head, the sensation of falling, and then...nothing.
Chapter 20
Why did my head hurt?
And why was it dark?
My eyes were closed. That answered at least one of my questions.
As I forced my eyes open, however, I found that answering one question didn't prevent me from having dozens more the instant I saw my surroundings.
I was still wearing my eighteenth-century dress, but that didn't mean anything. I'd come into the past wearing my twenty-first-century uniform, so I had no reason to think that if the reason I'd lost consciousness was because I was going home that my clothes would tell me anything.
I looked around, and wincing pain shot through my skull. Unless I was mistaken, I now knew what had made me black out. What happened next, however, was yet to be seen.
I was in a dark room.
Again, not helpful.
And my wrists were tied.
Fuck.
Then I realized that even though I couldn't see much, I had other senses. Like the skin beneath the restraints. Which I could now tell weren't zip ties. One point toward me still being in the past. Some of the knot around my heart eased.
The fact that my wrists were tied was another bit of evidence that I hadn't returned to my own time, I realized as my head continued to clear. If someone had tied me up, that meant I'd been knocked out on purpose, and that the same person who'd done it had tied me up too. If I'd somehow gotten knocked out in the past and woken up in my original time, the chances of someone finding me and tying me up were pretty slim.
So I was still in November 1775. In France.
While I was thrilled that I hadn't lost my husband, I knew that meant I was in some serious shit.
I slowly sat up straighter, my head swimming at the motion. I could taste the fear in the back of my throat, and I fought to keep it down. A little bit of fear could be a good thing, keep some adrenaline in my system. Panic, however, was bad. It would keep me from thinking clearly, make me prone to irrational decisions.
Like giving up everything I knew so I could marry a man two hundred years in the past.
I would've laughed at the irony if I hadn't been trying not to freak out.
I forced myself to look around, to analyze my surroundings. I was in what seemed to be some sort of cellar. It was devoid of what would typically be present, so it was difficult to tell, but the darkness and absence of windows gave me the inkling I was underground. I could feel some give under my feet, which made me think the floor was dirt.
And also made me realize that I was tied to a chair.
I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but I supposed I'd know more when I figured out who had brought me here. It could've been someone French who didn't like me or Gracen because they thought we were British. Or it could've been someone who'd simply wanted to take advantage of a woman on her own.
Both of those seemed to be a bit coincidental, but both options were better than what I suspected the truth to be. That it had something to do with what Gracen and I were trying to do.
I startled when a door banged open. A man strode down the stairs, his features obscured by shadows. He was a big man. Not tall but still large. He carried a lantern in front of him, but I didn't know if that was because it was night, or just that it was dark down here.
“Good, you're awake.”
Those three words were enough to tell me that he was English, his accent thick enough to make me suspect he wasn't a colonist. Which actually made my pulse pick up more than it would've if he had been a Frenchman.
“What do you want?” I asked, my voice steady but not confrontational.
“You are Honor Lightwood, ain't you?”
Not high class British.
I nodded in answer to his question as he set down the lantern on a table that I could now see. I was in a cellar, I confirmed. Jars of food were stacked on the shelves, along with other things I couldn't see well enough to name. I could also see my captor more clearly, and wished I couldn't.
He was only a couple inches taller than me, but broad, muscular. Shaggy gray hair and weathered skin made me put him in his sixties, but then I factored in the bad health that his rotting teeth hinted at and dropped the age estimate by a decade or so.
“Harry Pasternak, at yer service.” He gave me an expectant look.
I raised my eyebrows. What the hell did he want me to say to that?
&nbs
p; “Let me talk then.” He came close enough for me to smell him, and it wasn't pretty. “You and your husband ain't French. And you ain't English.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” I muttered.
He looked confused for a moment. “Name’s Pasternak, I told ya.” He shook his head. “Anyway, your husband's family is English, loyal to the king. Somehow, he don't seem to have gotten that message.”
A flash of fear went through me. “I don't know what you're talking about.”
“Don't you?” Before he could add anything else, the door at the top of the stairs opened.
We both looked up as a young woman with short strawberry blonde curls and charcoal gray eyes came down the stairs, reluctance clear in her every step. She was about average height, a bit curvier than normal, and a sweet, plain face. A face that currently wore the sort of beaten-down, blank expression that, even in my current predicament, made my heart hurt.
“Quit dawdling about, you lazy cow!” Harry snapped at her. He grabbed her arm, roughly yanking her down the last couple steps. The girl released a small yelp but didn't try to pull away. “Just give her the water and then get yer arse to my bed, Celina. Don't make me have to come find you again. I won't be as nice as I was last night.”
When the girl – Celina – stepped closer, I could see bruises on her wrists and around her throat, fresh enough for me to know they'd come from the day before. I ground my teeth.
Fucking bastard.
She held a glass to my lips, her hands trembling enough to spill some water down my chin. I gulped what made it to my mouth, realizing for the first time that I was parched. As soon as I was finished, Harry shoved her in the direction of the stairs. She hurried up them, though I was fairly certain she didn't want to be going to his bed any more than she wanted to be down here with us.
“Now, let's return to our conversation.” He ran the back of his hand down my cheek.
“I don't know what you want me to tell you.”