But his lordship was sweating. Beads glistened upon his wrinkled brow and dripped from his high-parted periwig.
Not even the Marquess of Grisdale could escape Carolina’s heat. His blood gave him power and privilege, but he was still a mere mortal like the rest of us. He sweated. He pissed. And he bled.
“You confess to stealing my horse?” His hand tightened around my arm.
“Yes, my lord. I was anxious about meeting you and went for a ride to calm my nerves.”
“Virtuous girls bred to proper living don’t take rides into the wild alone. Imagine what would’ve happened had I not tracked you. I daresay you might have been ravaged by a pirate!”
Realization cleaved through my chest. By stealing his horse, I’d unknowingly led the soldiers right to my father. If it weren’t for me, he would be safe on his ship, free from the clutches of a town that salivated to see a buccaneer hanged.
The bitter taste of regret hit my throat, and my eyes burned with tears. The flood of guilt blurred my vision, and I couldn’t stop the wetness from searing my cheeks. The devastation was too powerful, the pain too big to hold.
“I was foolish.” I wiped my face on the sleeve of my gown, and more tears shook free.
“How touching.” He stroked his thumb along my upper arm. “My betrothed sits upon a stolen horse, crying with remorse for the poor choices she made.”
“Betrothed?” I choked on a sob.
“Indeed. I made an offer just this morning.”
He could shove his offer up the hole upon which he sat.
“I shall return home at once and accept my punishment.” I tried to pull from his grip, a useless effort. “Remove your hand from my person, if you please.”
“I’ll accompany you.”
“Not without a chaperon, my lord. It’s not allowed.”
“Do you see a chaperon in the vicinity?” He gestured at the surrounding woodland and scowled at my appearance. “You look like you were attacked by a pack of ruffians.”
“I just lost my way is all.”
“I’ll see to your safe return.”
I flexed my hands around the reins.
Above the canopy of trees, dusk deepened into ribbons of purple. Every second I spent with this grabby, cross-eyed addle pate was another moment my father sat in the gaol, awaiting a fate I wouldn’t accept.
“You’re a busy man, Lord Grisdale.” With a hard yank, I freed my arm from his grasp. “I must refuse and insist that you return to where you are most needed.”
“No one refuses me.” His eyes narrowed with a thousand blade-sharpened threats, all of which promised unspeakable pain. “Insolent little bitch.”
I saw his arm assail too late. The back of his hand slammed into my cheekbone with excruciating force, and the impact knocked me from the saddle.
The ground crashed into my back, jarring me so viciously I couldn’t move. Spots dotted my sight, then nothing at all as unconsciousness swallowed my senses.
I woke in a haze of pain. The scent of earth tickled my nose. Dead leaves crunched under my twitching body. I was still in the forest, lying on my back with hard dirt beneath my head. But my hands…
I twisted my wrists, yanking on the rope that restrained my arms above my head.
Blinking rapidly, I cleared fresh tears from my vision and stared up into chilling eyes.
“Do you know how I bring naughty little girls in line?” The marquess stood over me, tapping his cane against his leg. “A decent beating is most effective.”
“The countess will see to my punishment.” My voice scratched like sand in my throat. “You needn’t trouble yourself with—”
“Silence!” His roar shook the sagging skin on his cheeks. Then he straightened, drew in a regal breath, and composed his smile and his voice into polite refinement. “As it was my horse you stole, it will be my welts upon your fair flesh.”
As Lady Abigail’s disobedient daughter, I was accustomed to discipline. For propriety’s sake, my punishments were always dispensed in the presence of a lady’s chaperon. And usually delivered with a strap. Never a cane.
If I were found alone with the marquess, it would ruin my reputation. I didn’t care about that, but as his gaze made a sluggish, skin-crawling voyage over my person, this felt alarmingly, decisively wrong.
“Roll over.” Bending down, he whacked the cane against the soles of my bare feet.
Biting pain bowed my back and hurled me into a fog of righteous fury.
“God damn your blood!” I wheezed, thrashing against the restraints on my arms. “Untie me! It’s getting dark, and the countess will be worried.”
“The countess answers to me.” He lowered to his knees and shoved my skirts up my legs, baring skin that had never been seen by sun or man.
“What are you doing?” I kicked and screamed, helpless to stop him.
He exposed my body all the way to my waist, and I could only stare in horror, the humiliation more than I could bear. The way he leered at my womanhood struck fear so deep in my heart I no longer felt it beating.
“Your beauty confounds me.” He caught my upper thighs in a bruising grip and forced my legs apart. “Untamed and untried, snarling and writhing like an unlicked cub.”
“A pox on your eyes.” My pulse exploded, shooting feverish chills across my flesh. “God’s wounds, cover me!”
“It’s not consistent with reason that a lady invokes God by vain and careless swearing.”
“By God’s feet, his tongue, and all his unmentionables, may he refuse you and condemn your soul to hell.”
His forearm landed across my hips and pinned me to the ground.
“You will roll over.” He pressed the tip of the cane against the private place between my legs. “Or you’ll bleed in ways you’re only beginning to fathom.”
The shivering started in my belly and spread to my limbs. By the time I wriggled onto my stomach, I was trembling so violently I had no control of my tongue. It flopped between my chattering teeth and filled my mouth with blood.
With my backside exposed to the air, I clenched every muscle, bracing for the strike. But when it came, I wasn’t prepared. Without the buffer of clothing, the blow crashed into me like fire, penetrating deep into muscle and bone and robbing my ability to scream.
The agony throbbed through the next hit, and the next. The crack of the cane landed hard and fast, with no breaks in between and no sign of stopping.
“No! Please, stop!” I dug in my toes and scrambled away on elbows. “I beg you. Stop!”
He stayed with me, smiting my backside with unleashed brutality.
“You’re stronger than my other wives.” He pressed a shoe onto my back, holding me immobile. “They swooned upon the first cut.”
“Wives?” My voice broke on a guttural sob. “But you’re a widower!”
“Indeed, I am. Three times over.” His hand gripped my behind, squeezing abused flesh. “Perhaps, you’ll be the one I keep.”
My stomach heaved. Saliva pooled around my gums. My chest convulsed, and everything came up in a spray of vomit. It saturated the dirt and clung to my hair and chin in strings of slime.
His touch vanished, and the cane swung again, harder and more intense than before.