Page 51 of Lord Carlisle's Enticing Lure
And failed.
No. No, no, no.
Awake, her pulse pounding, she understood she was undone.
Where is Clive?
Her captors cursed and shot directions to each other.
“Get her hands!”
“I’m trying!”
“Her feet. The rope? Did you… Where is it?”
French. They speak in French!
She shuddered. Vaillancourt’s men? She groaned.
She could not go. Would not. They would take her to Paris. She wouldn’t live. Wouldn’t survive.
Nearly blind with fear, she lashed out, pummeling one fellow, hearing him curse her.
“Naked,” oozed one man with salacious glee in his ragged voice as he plucked a nipple.
She recoiled.
“Ce va, Maurice. Her tits won’t help you bind her.”
“Later, then,” Maurice crooned as he jammed his face into the hollow of her shoulder and licked her skin.
“Shut up and help me get her out of here. A blanket…or a robe? What?”
Maurice had her on her feet, her skin against his hot, wiry body, his breath rancid and turning her stomach so that beneath the mask, she choked again.
“Mon Dieu, Maurice! Don’t smother her!”
“I’ll fuck her, though,” Maurice said, smooth as ice, his hands squeezing her breasts and trailing down, down, down to…
She squirmed, trying to stomp his toes.
The first man snatched Maurice’s hand away from her belly and tussled with Maurice to gain control of her.
“Merde!” Maurice shouted as they warred for her. “She’s mine. A hellcat. Warm as silk, Franchot. I’ll have her on her back for sure before I kill her.”
Franchot caught her wrists and gave a mighty yank. She fell against him. He held her in a cold vise of iron. He was dark, smelly, stocky, and strong as a bull. Her gorge rose. She leaned over his beefy arm to spit out the loose rag they’d gagged her with. Then he let her sag, and she sank to the floor like a sack of sand. “Fuck her, Maurice? Ruin her? Kill her? Do that, you fool, and you’ll not get the money.”
Maurice, quick as the devil, dragged her up from the floor and gave her a violent shake. This time instead of mauling her, he held her from him while his friend Franchot yanked open drawers and threw clothes at her.
“Chemise. Petticoat. Dress.” He glared at her, hand out. “Put them on. Quick as can be. Or out you go with us naked. Now you would not want that, would you, Madame Laurant?”
The sound of her name rang through her head like a death knell. They were certainly Vaillancourt’s men. Whether the deputy wanted her simply to finish his heinous job of murdering all her family or if he now added to that her false diagrams of English coast towns didn’t matter. They had her. She knew not how in hell they expected to get her out of the hotel, into the streets and off to…where? The coast? A ship to cross the Channel cluttered with the hundreds of British and French vessels meant to annihilate each other?
They were either fools or well connected to a network that would take her, pass her from one man or another to another hideaway, another port, another perilous crossing of the turbulent sea to the Seine and Paris, Vaillancourt, and her end in a stone-cold cell.
She caught another breath, hard from the pain in her chest, and let out a sob.
“Do it!” Franchot pointed at the pile of clothes on the bed. “Dress!”
