Page 12 of Brutal Serpent

“I am taking my new Viscountess home to Rosewood Manor immediately,” St. Erth said.

“Certainly,” Papa said, his smile stretching from ear to ear. It could not be more obvious that he saw the Viscount’s money for me as a good trade. “Take her whenever you wish. If you would just sign these papers before you leave. . .”

My new husband’s mouth curved up, slow and wicked.

“I don’t think I will, Wendover,” he said, reaching out to take my hand in his big one.

“Why not?” Papa asked sharply.

“Because,” St. Erth said, and suddenly he seemed to loom over Papa. It was bitingly, painfully clear how powerful andstrong my new husband was. “I have no interest in helping you keep your lands. I plan to take them away from you.”

Papa and Mama gaped uncomprehendingly at him.

“At one time, you had a mistress,” St. Erth said flatly. “Her name was Arabella. This mistress you abandoned when she got sick. Instead of spending her dying days with the comfort and nursing you promised, she spent them in a dirty cheap boarding house. Her son had stowed away as a cabin boy and came back on land to find his mother dead.”

The Viscount then smiled, and the beauty of his face was almost disorienting, the shadows of sun low in the sky making his face look unearthly and devilish.

“That son was me and his revenge is mine. Your daughter Catherine will be taken and fucked to bear the heir that will force you from your home soyoucan spend your aging days penniless, poor, and desperate.”

My parents looked frozen in shock, useless stuttering pleas falling from their lips, and my new husband grabbed me by the wrist and yanked me painfully after him and tossed me bodily into the waiting carriage.

CHAPTER 7

St. Erth

Catherine scuttled away from me in the carriage, her little rosebud mouth trembling. She pulled her legs as far away from me as she could, twisting them to the side so she wouldn’t accidentally brush mine.

As if that could keep her safe.

The London air felt hot and stifling and I was glad to be leaving the city.

“We’ll be at Rosewood Manor tomorrow,” I said.

“Yes, my lord,” she replied in a low voice.

There was silence as we bumped through London’s shitty roads and out to the open country.

I stared out the window at the countryside, and did not speak to her. I felt a dark, vicious pleasure in my new possession. My mind kept going back to the moment when I had reached into her bodice to take out the snake, the little strangled gasp I had heard as my fingers brushed by her tight little nipple.

“Is—is revenge the only reason you married me?” Catherine asked suddenly.

“Yes,” I said coldly, expecting to see surprise on her face.

But she only tightened her lips further and deliberately turned her face away from me.

Catherine must have somehow guessed. My stomach clenched watching her look away from me. Her wedding gown was pure white with a high neck and chiffon ruffles, but it was made of thin fabric and when the summer breeze blew into the carriage it pressed the dress around my wife’s curves, the soft roundness of her pert breasts and supple roundness of her thighs. Although she was small, she was perfectly curved, and I could feel my cock twitching in my breeches as she put a hand up to brush an errant lock of hair off the ribbon of her bonnet.

“I married you for one thing only,” I said brutally. “To produce an heir to ruin the Wendovers. Your only function to me is as a warm cunt to fuck and womb to fill.”

She looked shocked at my words. Probably had never heard them before, and certainly not from a gentleman.

But I’m no gentleman.

I’m the man who is going to ruin her.

I expected her to cry, maybe beg for mercy, but she only set her chin and fixed her eyes resolutely out the window. I didn’t look away. It made no part of my plans for the Viscountess to be comfortable.

The county of Somerset was damp and windy, but I didn’t even notice the beauty of the sweet green rolling hills and farms outside the coach window.

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