“I’m overwhelmed by your generosity, my lord.”
Maxim caught the sarcasm in her statement and lifted himself to his feet. “I’ve overstayed my welcome, it seems. The air grows chilly once again.”
The hearth gave off more warmth than it had all day, but Elise shrugged pertly, ignoring his subtle meaning and the green eyes that rested upon her. “As you please, my lord.”
Taking up his cloak, Maxim stepped to the doorway, but paused there to glance back at her. “You’ll need slippers and shoes to keep your feet warm. There’s also a shoemaker in Hamburg where you may acquire what you have need of.”
“Will I be going with Fitch and Spence?” she queried innocently.
“Indeed, no!” Maxim answered with a short laugh. “You’ll have them locked up in a goose cage within moments of your arrival. I shall do the honors myself.”
“Am I then to be presented as your prisoner? If that be the case, you can hardly expect me to abide a fitting while you’re present.”
“You needn’t fear, madam. I shall be elsewhere. I’m sure the dressmaker knows how to keep you well enough.”
Elise slumped back in her chair and frowned petulantly. What kind of woman was this dressmaker anyway that he could be so confident about leaving her?
Maxim turned to leave, but she bade him pause once more.
“A moment, I pray you, my lord.” She twisted her thin fingers worriedly as he faced her. “I should like to announce that I’ve hired a cook for us.”
The handsome brows gathered into a suspicious frown. “Indeed? And where did you find this cook?”
“Nicholas allowed me to have his.”
“No doubt after much sugar-coated pleading on your part!” Maxim snapped, and wondered why his anger was so easily roused. “Nicholas would not let his cook go to me without a promised sweetmeat, which you seemed ready and willing to give him . . .” His voice sharpened with the accusation. “Even while I was here!”
“You’re only afraid of the coins you might lose,” she charged with a flippant toss of her head. “You do not consider we might have starved to death waiting on you to find us a cook! I think Nicholas conveyed a most compassionate trait in allowing his cook to come to work for you.”
“You think!” Maxim barked. Why, you can’t even see that Nicholas means to have you . . .”
“As his wife!” Elise finished sharply, flinging herself from her chair. Instinct told her that he would say otherwise.
With ponderous steps Maxim strode back to her until he stood close before her. He leaned down slightly until his eyes fairly blazed above her own, and as he gave her answer his reply built to an angry shout. “You mean as his mistress!”
Her own eyes flashing, Elise pushed with all of her strength against his hardened chest, but Maxim remained obstinately stubborn and the best she gained was the loss of her wrap which slid from her naked shoulders. Even so, the proximity of such an outrageous fiend made her oblivious to her own appearance as she slowly pounded his chest. “Get out!” she demanded. “Be gone from here!”
Maxim’s eyes swept downward to where the delicate chemise molded itself to the full curves of her bosom. The soft, pale peaks strained against the gossamer thinness of the garment, making him aware of her womanliness. The fact that she could so casually reveal herself to him made him inexplicably furious. Was she such a bold wench then? Unchaste? Wanton? If she displayed such a lack of modesty with him, what treasure would she allow Nicholas to view?
His ire was quickly surmounted by a swiftly growing passion which only heightened his anger. His cheeks tensed as he struggled against his needs. Still, the hot blood flowed into his loins and started his pulse pounding in his ears. He had seen her in the early afternoon as a properly groomed lady, all soft and warm and beautiful, and he had found her stirringly appealing. Now here she was a fiery, sultry vixen who whet his appetite no small degree. Her breasts gleamed with the luster of pearls, luminescent where bathed by the firelight and darkly shadowed in the deep valley between those pale orbs. He was suddenly possessed by a raging desire to seize the wench and ease his long-starved passions with her.
Clenching his teeth, Maxim leaned closer until Elise’s entire vision was filled with his snarling face. Even then he had to steel himself against violence as her heady fragrance invaded his being and wafted through his senses. “Do you think me a bloody eunuch, wench?” he questioned harshly. “Cover yourself before I spill your virgin blood!”
Elise’s breath caught in a shocked gasp, and she stumbled back with flaming cheeks, snatching the fur robe around her shoulders. Only then did she dare raise her gaze, shamed by a rebuke that made her painfully aware of her own carelessness.
Maxim still glared at her as he battled his desires. His lean nostrils flared above tight lips, from whence came harshly rasped words. “I went to England for a bride, and if not for you, I would have had me one, willing and warm. Now I have a man’s need roiling in the pit of my belly, and unless you be wary, madam, you will find yourself serving my needs. I’m not one to abuse a lady so, but now that Arabella is forever lost to me, any wench will do.” His steely green eyes bore into her. “As you may be aware, madam, many a belated vow has atoned for a gentleman’s ravishment of a reluctant maid.”
He turned sharply and stalked from the room, leaving Elise staring after him in awed amazement until the fires of her own rage ignited into unparalleled fury. Following in the path of his footsteps, she went to the door and slammed it closed.
How dare the man threaten her with rape! She dropped the bar in place across its plank.
Did he think her some easy strumpet to abide his crude exercise of rutting manhood? She paced to and fro in front of the hearth.
By heavens, he would hear from her on the morrow! She would chastise him with a volley of verbal attacks that would rend that strutting cock to the core of his conceit!
Chapter 11
THE FORMER MARQUESS sat the back of his horse with his hands resting on the high pommel of the saddle. Below the wooded bluff whereon he had paused, a river meandered peacefully between ice-crusted banks. On the far shore, patches of snow sparkled between growths of evergreens, and now and then a small, furry creature could be seen scurrying about in a perpetual search for food.
Maxim raised his head and watched a small flock of birds flit and swoop on the airy rushes of wind above the vale. Beyond their darting flights the sky was an azure blue. Only an occasional cloud scudded past to cast its shadow upon the land as the southerly breezes blew warming gusts through the treetops and out across the snow-bedecked meadows and forest glades. Maxim’s gaze ranged far and wide, but he saw little of what met his eyes, for his mind was turned inward upon a memory. He had seen sapphire eyes alight with fire and auburn tresses cascading in glorious splendor over a scantily clad bosom, and the visions of her beauty haunted him. He was a man snared by a trap of his own making. The heat of a lengthy abstinence had thrust him to the very brink of restraint, and only by dint of will had he hauled himself back from that abrupt precipice, crushing the urge to sweep her into his arms and carry her to her bed. The fact that he had reacted with such intensity and threatened her with rape left him struggling with a painful chagrin.
Maxim forced his meandering thoughts to a more agreeable subject, his once-cherished betrothed. Now there was one who by her sweetness and quiet reserve merited his attention! No one argued that Arabella, by nature, was the epitome of a genteel lady and a serene beauty. His mind had always found succor when he sought out the memories they had made together, and he almost relaxed as he waited for his tensions to dissolve. Instead, he found himself grasping for images of her soft, gray eyes and the silken curl of her light brown hair. The visions were vague and indistinct. The curve of her lips escaped him. The shape of her nose and the curve of her chin shifted in a confused blur as he tried to evoke her visage. A weak smile of acquiescence was all he could recall of her response when he had presented his case for marriage to
Edward. The memory stirred nothing in his breast, let alone in his loins. What eldritch wisdom had Nicholas been privy to that had allowed him to sense this pallid reaction, while he had himself been convinced that a raging passion, worthy of the risk of death, had goaded him? Was it for revenge alone that he had sought Arabella’s abduction, as Von Reijn had suggested?
Cautiously, as if he sought to pluck a red-hot coal from amid the glowing embers of his mind, Maxim tested the accuracy of his recall of a momentarily glimpsed view of lustrous breasts nestled in the careless cover of a fur wrap, and pale peaks erect with a chill. His will betrayed him, and his memory expanded to a broad spectrum of visions that came at him from every quarter of his mind. He could see his charge’s lips drawn tight in a sneer, then soft and gently parted as she slumbered. In his mind her russet hair spread out like a dark halo over her pillow. Her lashes rested like soft shadows on her cheeks or were flung wide, fringing deep blue eyes that smoldered dark with anger. He could imagine the set of her tensed jaw as she berated him and the slender column of her throat, from the lobe of her ear to a pale shoulder and the soft roundness of her breasts as she stood boldly before him and answered his objections, point for point.
Maxim cursed beneath his breath as he realized what those impressions extracted from him. Anger and frustration spiraled upward with the awareness of his desire. He fought against this burgeoning attraction that left him both outraged with himself and shaken by its swift encroachment into his life. Who was this waspish maid to be ever in the way, ever testing, ever trying his patience, ever thwarting him? He had no need for her to entangle his mind with her winsome looks and softly curving form. He was a man without a country, an outcast to the world, and before he could claim his worth and his place in society again, he had to set his affairs in order, or perhaps die trying. He had no time to be preoccupied with cravings that left him rutting after a reluctant and headstrong minx. Like a small, vindictive snipe, she would only turn on him again, rejecting any advance he would make.
The black stallion pranced in sudden apprehension, seeming to sense his master’s vexation. Maxim touched his heels against the trembling flanks, and the animal leapt forward in an abrupt release of energy. The steed stretched out into an easy canter that swept away the troubling turmoil that roiled in Maxim’s mind, and for a time they followed the level ground at the top of a bluff. The ridge lowered, and they passed through a widely spaced copse of evergreens. The stream, released from the steeply confining barrier of the cliffs, lent its overflow on the low far shore to form a marshy pond where tall, ice-bound rushes twinkled and glittered beneath the bright rays of the sun.
Slowing Eddy to a walk, Maxim deliberately directed his attention to the hunt. He nudged the stallion across a shallow expanse in the frigid water where a series of ripples gave evidence of a rocky base that would permit a crossing. Upon gaining the far bank, he dismounted and tied the steed beneath an ancient oak which spread its barren branches across a narrow glade. Slipping the bow from across his back, he braced the end in a soft-booted instep and, in one easy motion, strung the weapon. He nocked a blunt birding arrow and, with practiced, silent tread, made his way toward the pond where a muted gaggling gave evidence that a flock of late geese were feeding in the open water at the edge of a growth of reeds. Drawing the bow, he sent the arrow unerringly on its way. A gander took the blow, flopped once, and slowly spread its wings to float in still repose upon the surface of the breeze-riffled water.
Maxim retrieved the goose, tied its legs with leather thongs, and secured his prize behind the cantle. A movement in the trees across the stream caught his eye, and as he scanned the low brush that bordered the bank, a stag in its third season or so stepped out, cautiously surveyed the area, then lowered his head to drink from the river. Streams of light from the mounting sun lit the mists of the icy glade, seeming to bring each color and sound to the perfect pitch of excitement. Maxim went down upon one knee and, setting an arrow with a sharp broadhead to string, took the shot from beneath Eddy’s neck. The stag coughed with the impact as the shaft pierced his heart and leapt forward, then crumpled to his knees and collapsed, felled in one swift stroke.
Maxim considered his fallen prey, musing in rueful reflection. If not wary, he could be taken down by the cruel arrows of that enticing little vixen. Indeed, she would lead him about by the nose as she did that great oaf, Von Reijn, and where would he be but cast upon the rocky crags of frustration’s shore and left to flounder on the reefs of despair?
Elise drummed her fingers against her hips as she stood with arms akimbo in the great hall. She had primed herself to lay the sharp side of her tongue upon the pompous pride of the lord and master of this crumbling keep, and was raked with peevish disappointment to find him gone.
“And where has Lord Seymour hied himself this early morning hour?” she demanded of Fitch.
“ ‘Is lor’ship’s gone a-huntin’, ’e ‘as. Gone out ta fill the larder wit’ fresh meat for the cook,” the man replied. He had been around the girl long enough to sense when she was annoyed about something, and in an effort to lighten her mood he pointed out the fact of their much-improved state of circumstance. “Aye, ye can be sure whilst ‘is lor’ship is ‘ere, we won’t be starvin’. An’ for yerself, mistress, the master ‘as bade me tell ye ‘e’ll be takin’ ye ta ‘Amburg when ’e comes back ‘round the noon hour. ’E asked for ye ta kindly be ready.”
“As his lordship commands,” Elise returned with ill-feigned meekness.
Her testy reply made Fitch wary of testing her disposition. He hastily made his excuses and took his leave, seeking out the security of the stable. There, he began to groom the lady’s horse as his lordship had bade. Hopefully, by improving the nag’s appearance, he could lift the maid’s spirits and thereby prevent another confrontation between his master and his charge.
Elise had no immediate desire to return to her chambers or to garb herself in finery. It would be a while yet before the Marquess returned, and she felt in need of a short respite in which she could detach herself from the keep and roam the hillside at her leisure.
Her dream of the previous night came back to haunt her as she donned her cloak. She could not place any degree of reliance on the meanderings of her mind, nor could she accept any part of the dream as truth until she could delve into the matter. She had no real evidence that her father had been seized by the Hansa, yet the chance of such a coincidence happening was well within the realm of possibility, for he had gone to the Stilliards frequently in the months prior to his abduction. She would have to keep an attentive ear and eye upon those cities she visited, in the hope that she would glean some small bit of knowledge about her father.
Pulling the woolen hood of her cloak over her head, Elise stepped out onto the front stoop and looked about. Though the sun was shining brightly, reflecting off the windows and patches of crusty snow, blustery winds chilled the air and gave strong evidence of the crispness of this early December morn. Slowly she descended the steps and made her way across the courtyard. No hue and cry was raised as she crossed the bridge, and once past the moat she followed a path along its edge where the castle wall gave protection from the frigid blasts of air.
On a sun-swept hillock Elise paused, seeing her way barred by thick brambles and briars. Clumps of snow weighted down the dense thatch of grass growing beneath the thorny bushes and she could see no sign of a trail though her gaze ranged far afield. Finding no haven to tempt her progress, she turned back upon the path, but a sharp prickle against her ankle made her pause. She lifted her skirts to pluck the thistle from the top of her hide shoes and flinched as the tiny barb pricked the flesh of her finger. She stared at the tip of the digit as her mind began to roam along a devious course, and a slow, wicked smile began to grow and widen. Of a sudden she wondered how the mighty lord of the castle keep might react if he found spiny barbs in his bed. Oh, what sweet revenge she could extract from him, and there would be no need to place herself in jeopardy or to
suffer any qualms about him overtaking her in her flight to safety. She would be securely ensconced in her chambers with the door well-bolted and braced against his intrusion.
Laughing aloud, Elise raised her skirts, unfastened a string tie, and shook herself out of her petticoat. The quickest way to gather the burrs was to whip a cloth over the grass and bushes, allowing them to attach themselves to the piece. It was certainly a less painful method than picking them separately. In no time at all she had gathered enough to meet her purpose, and she wrapped the undergarment into a ball to protect herself from the discomfort of the tiny barbs as she hurried back along the trail. She must hasten now. Maxim could return at any moment.
Once more Elise crossed the courtyard and assured herself that both Fitch and Spence were out of the keep before ascending to her chambers. Fetching the comb Maxim had deigned to give her from her chambers, she continued her climb to the third floor. Stripping the furs from the bed and turning back the sheet, she set herself to her labors. Carefully she combed the burrs from the petticoat and shook them over the coarse ticking of the mattress, liberally covering the surface. When this was done, she spread the sheet and replaced the furs exactly as they had been.
Tiptoeing stealthily to the door, she assured herself that the passage was clear before she left the lofty chambers. It was time now to get ready for the trip to Hamburg, and she wasted no moment in her haste to do so. Her mood had taken on an impish bend, and she was quite happy and pert when, some time later, Maxim rapped on her chamber door.
“I’m coming,” she promptly called and, catching up her cloak, swung open the portal. She paused as his eyes swept down her, taking in every detail, and a curious, questioning quirk lifted her brow as he met her gaze. “Next time you undress me, my lord, at least leave me my shimmy,” she chided. “ ‘Tis rather drafty in the hall.”