Page 124 of The Bastard's Iberian Bride
“The blackmail. The bleeding. I’ll have that item now, and you can return me my money.”
What item? What money?
“I have neither, though I commend the industry of the blackmailer, and pray that the money has gone to encourage Ferdinand to restore the people’s constitution.”
In three strides he was on her, with a knife at the older woman’s throat. “You will tell me the name of the one bleeding me. I know that you know it.”
“Pah. Would a respectable blackmailer pick a lordling as impoverished as you?”
He pressed the knife tighter. “We know there is nothing respectable about you, whore.”
His sort of man thinks every woman is a whore.
Paulette tugged at her bindings. “Do not call her that.”
He turned his eyes on her and her heart shriveled a bit. “But she is, little Paulette. She was your father’s whore.”
No. Her heart pushed into her throat and no sound would come out.
“Your father’s, and every French general’s from Rouen to Lisbon. Isn’t that true, Fil?”
Her vision went fuzzy. Her lungs would not fill. She barely remembered her father, but she knew he loved her mother. She just knew it.
Filomena’s voice came to her out of a cloud. “If you say I am such a whore, your Lordship, then there can be no question of a lie. You must of course be in the right about everything.”
He drew the knife back and his lips turned up in a smile that pressed a shivery ice block to the space between Paulette’s shoulders.
“I will have you again before I kill you. But this one,” the full force of that serpentine face turned on her, “this one I will keep longer and enjoy. Twice we have been interrupted, little Paulette. Now there is no one to trouble us. A pity you are no longer a virgin. Or are you still? Was that great bull of Shaldon’s unwilling to do his duty to you? Or perhaps unable?”
He reached for her cheek and she leaned away, fighting the urge to heave. Her eye ached, and she tasted the blood from a split lip.
He gripped her jaw hard and wrestled her upright studying her. “No,” he mused. “You’re not devious enough to bleed me, little Paulette. But you’ll restore me the fortune your father stole from me. What did you get from the solicitor, eh? Was there a letter from your dear papa? You’ll turn it over now.”
“She said she did not receive it from the solicitor,” her cousin said. “And this one has no skills at lying. Her heart erupts from her eyes.”
“We shall see.” He released her, sheathed his knife, and struck Filomena.
Paulette’s heart stopped. The woman had seen the blow coming and ducked, sparing herself the full force. He began to hit her again and again. Her hands were tied in back, her feet bound. She must be gripping the chair, somehow, because she held on, dodged, ducked, swung out her legs, and still she did not topple.
One final blow knocked her to the floor and Agruen kicked.
“Wait,” Paulette shouted. “Stop.”
He kept on. “Stop,” she screamed again, with all the force she could muster, praying they could hear her as far as Mayfair.
That swung his attention back to her, sending her nerves shrieking.
Thoughts tumbled, pictures. Her mother denying her answers, her mother and Mr. Tellingford, her mother dying. Finding the letter among her mother’s things—and the ring. She took small, shallow breaths and fought for control.
Jock’s voice whispered in her memory—one must reach deep inside to survive the pain.Her pain was as yet small. Her cousin’s, was not. Filomena wheezed and struggled for breath, sending her own heart pounding and squeezing so that her own breaths came just as hard.
Filomena had pointed a gun at her—she was not a friend. Yet she must keep her alive, somehow. Alive, Filomena might help solve the mystery, at least until she acquired what she herself wanted.
She mustered a breath. “Thereisa letter.”
