Bound in Moonlight (15 page)

“Will you bid forty thousand, sir?” Riddell asked.

Caroline silently implored him with her eyes. The count looked away with a resigned shake of the head.

Dunhurst gave Caroline a dead-eyed smile.

Five

C
AROLINE FELT HER flushed cheeks go cold as the blood drained from them. Her lips grew numb.

The slaves exchanged grave looks. A gentleman standing close to the dais turned to his neighbor and said softly, “Look at her. She's gone white as bone.”

“Wouldn't
you,
if you were about to be sold to the Flogster?”

“I have thirty-nine thousand five hundred guineas,” Mr. Riddell announced to the group as a whole. “Do I hear forty?”

The men consulted one another in whispers, shaking their heads, and no wonder; forty thousand guineas was an astronomical sum.

“Forty thousand to master a near-virgin of incomparable beauty,” Riddell said. He paused to sweep his gaze across the audience, then lifted his gavel.

Think, think,
Caroline commanded herself. Should she try to last out the week, or leave now and sacrifice the money?

Her share of the purchase price would be thirty-five thousand five hundred fifty guineas. Dear God. How could she give it up? But how could she stay and let Dunhurst brutalize her as he'd brutalized Dahlia . . . ? Caroline had promised herself, after escaping her father's clutches, that she would never again sit still for such viciousness.

“Speak now, gentlemen, for this rare opportunity is about to slip through your fingers,” warned Mr. Riddell.

“Right then.”He raised the gavel high overhead.

“Forty thousand.”

Amid a flurry of exclamations, all heads turned toward Lord Rexton, leaning against the console table with his ankles crossed, his brandy snifter lifted as if in a toast.

Caroline gaped at Rexton, who didn't so much as glance in her direction.

Mr. Riddell lowered his gavel slowly, his brow furrowed. “My lord, do you mean to say that you wish to bid on—”

“He can't!” Dunhurst interjected. “He's here in an official capacity. It would be highly irregular for him to buy a slave.”

“Irregular, perhaps,” Rexton replied, “but not prohibited. Nowhere in the written regulations governing Slave Week is the legal overseer enjoined from purchasing a slave. Is that not the case, Riddell?”

The auctioneer mulled that over with a frown. Grudgingly, he said, “I believe you are correct, my lord.”

The gentlemen applauded that ruling; the slaves exchanged smiles.

“I have forty thousand guineas from Lord Rexton,” Mr. Riddell intoned. “Do I hear—?”

“This is outrageous,” Dunhurst exclaimed. “A fucking travesty.”

“Do I hear—?”

“Fifty thousand.” Dunhurst glared at Rexton, jaw out-thrust, as if daring him to go that high.

“Sixty.” Rexton took a nonchalant sip of brandy.

Baring his teeth, Dunhurst spat out, “Seventy.”

With a weary glance at the ceiling, as if this were all an enormous bore, Rexton said, “One hundred thousand guineas.”

Dunhurst's mouth fell open. The room erupted in excited conversation, with a few whoops and exclamations of “Bravo, Rexton!” and “That's the spirit!”

Lord Dunhurst, his face purpling, jabbed his walking stick into the air and said, “One hundred ten thousand guineas.”

The viscount smiled as if at a blustering child. “Yes, well, unfortunately, old man, you're not at liberty to bid that high.”

“The devil you say!”

Rexton said, “Based upon the evaluation of your financial wherewithal conducted by my partner, Sir Charles Upcott, the maximum sum you are permitted to bid is one hundred thousand guineas.”

“I . . . I'm afraid that is the case, my lord,” said Mr. Riddell.

Stabbing a finger at Rexton, Dunhurst said, “Sir Charles didn't snoop into
his
finances. Who's to say
he
should be permitted to bid a hundred thousand?”

Riddell said, “I daresay every man here is aware of the value of the Rexton estates and holdings.”

This statement was greeted with a chorus of affirmation.

Raising his voice to be heard over the cacophony, Mr. Riddell said, “One hundred thousand guineas is bid by Lord Rexton. Is there any advance upon that sum?” After a moment of silence, he muttered, so softly that only Caroline could hear, “No, I should bloody well think not.” His gavel struck the podium with a crack like a gunshot. “Sold for the extraordinary sum of one hundred thousand guineas to David Childe, Viscount Rexton.”

A roar of approval resonated through the hall. “Well done, old man!” “Good show!”

“Your slave, my lord,” said Mr. Riddell as he ushered Caroline by her leash to the steps at the edge of the dais.

Rexton drained his snifter, straightened up, and walked over. When he ignored the leash and reached instead for Caroline's hand to help her down the steps, Riddell lowered his voice and said, “By the leash, my lord. It is required.”

With a sigh, Rexton took her leash and led her to the console table. There, he executed several documents before witnesses, including a note of indebtedness to “Miss Caroline Keating of London, England” for the sum of ninety thousand guineas.

Ninety thousand guineas. It didn't seem real. None of this seemed real.

Mr. Riddell blotted his face with his handkerchief, then turned toward the door to the courtyard and called out, “May we have the enchanting Lili, please?”

Lord Rexton swung open a heavy oak door on the second floor of the castle's west range and gestured Caroline into a magnificent, candlelit bedchamber
moderne
decorated to look like something out of a Roman villa. The walls were marble with gold candle brackets and gilded bronze bas relief in the form of lyres, laurel wreaths, and winged horses. The furniture was gilt and ebonized wood, the draperies and bedclothes scarlet damask embroidered in gold. Against the back wall stood an opulently draped bed, each post of which was in the shape of a tall gold urn. A pair of glass-paned doors stood open, revealing a balcony furnished with a wicker chaise longue heaped with cushions.

On a blanket bench at the foot of the bed sat the worn old leather satchel Caroline had brought with her from London, looking grotesquely out of place amidst all this stylized splendor, alongside a rectangular, black leather case about the size and shape of a large gun box. A handsome wardrobe case with
Rose
inked on its tag stood next to an ornately carved clothes-press. Nearby sat a big leather-covered trunk secured with an iron padlock.

“They call this room
la Chambre Romain,
” Rexton said as he crouched next to the trunk, setting his writing box on the Aubusson-carpeted floor next to it. “A bit too archly imperial for my taste, but make yourself at home as best you can.”

“Thank you, my . . .” My lord? Should she still call him that?

“You would do well to address me as ‘master' outside of this room,” he said as he twisted a key in the padlock. “Oliver Riddell has never cared for me. He would leap at the excuse to snatch you away and auction you off to someone else—unless, of course, you would prefer that.”

He stowed the writing box in the trunk, retrieved from it a square green bottle labeled GORDON'S SPECIAL DRY LONDON GIN, and relocked it. “I can do with some fresh air,” he said as he rose to his feet. “You needn't wait up.”

“My lord,” said Caroline as he strode toward the door.

He turned and met her gaze for the first time that evening.

She held out her hands, still linked together. “Do . . . do you suppose . . . ?”

He unlatched her wrist cuffs and left.

Caroline stared at the door. He hadn't locked it, but she knew better than to go wandering about the castle by herself. She'd come too far to be sent home at this juncture, especially with ninety thousand guineas at stake.

A man's angry, muffled voice drew Caroline's attention to the open glass doors. There came a pause, and then he spoke again in a harsh tone, but still she could not make out the words.

She took off her slippers and padded silently onto the balcony. A balmy breeze fluttered the leaves on the surrounding trees, through the branches of which glowed a three-quarter moon.

“I said
strip,
you insolent cunt.”

The voice, which came from the large open window of the adjacent chamber, was that of the Marquess of Dunhurst, who had succeeded in purchasing Lili after losing Caroline to Lord Rexton. Caroline had been horrified on her friend's behalf, but Lili had smiled and winked at her as the Flogster led her away.

Lili's voice was so much softer than Dunhurst's that Caroline could barely hear it. “Nakedness can be so banal, don't you think?”

Caroline edged farther out onto the balcony until she had a partial view of the dimly lit room, which had floral-stenciled walls and a half-tester bed. A figure crossed in front of the window—Dunhurst, shirtless and with a perforated wooden paddle shoved into the waist of his breeches. He pulled something out of his pocket as he disappeared from view—a key, Caroline realized when she heard it turning and the door lock.

He reappeared, facing away from the window as he rooted around in a black leather box identical to that in Rexton's room, which sat open on the foot of the bed. His naked back was like a side of beef, dense with muscle.

“Just the thing.” He produced a rod of gleaming steel about the size and thickness of Caroline's forearm, rounded on one end and with a handle on the other. Looking toward Lili, he said, “Have you ever been fucked in the arse?”

“Why, yes, I have, my lord.” Her relaxed tone astounded Caroline.

“I am your master,”
he bellowed, the blood rising in his face,
“and you will address me as such!”

“Yes, master.” It almost sounded as if Lili were trying not to laugh.

“Yes, of course you have, you shameless trollop. I'll bet you loved it, too, getting bent over and having a big, hard stiff shoved up your bung.”

“Very much so.”

Caroline shook her head in confoundment. She couldn't imagine taking pleasure in such an act.

“Yes, well you won't like getting buggered with this. I'm going to ram it in till you scream and bleed.” He gave the big phallus a fierce thrust in illustration. “That'll teach you to be smart with me.”

“I daresay it would.”

“Strip and kneel down,” he commanded, pointing to the edge of the bed. “And get that nice round bum of yours good and high.”

What can I do?
Caroline thought, her heart thumping wildly.
How can I help her?
Even if she could get into that room, she had no weapon with which to fend off the brawny Dunhurst.

“Do it!”
he screamed, yanking the paddle out of his breeches, “or I'll make you sorrier than you can possibly imagine.”

“You won't need that, my lord,” said Lili as she sauntered up to him. “But
I
might find it useful.”

“What the devil is that supposed to—”

“Sittu.”
She touched his forehead.

His eyes closed; his arms went limp. The paddle and the phallus thumped onto the floor.

What just happened?
Caroline wondered. He looked as if he had suddenly fallen asleep standing up.

Lili stroked his forehead, murmuring something in a language Caroline had never heard before.

Dunhurst opened his eyes, blinking in evident bewilderment.

“Unbutton those.” Lili pointed to the fall flap of his breeches. “And untie your drawers.”

He did her bidding without hesitation. Caroline had read about mesmerists, who could induce a trancelike state with certain words and actions. Somehow, Lili must have learned how to do that.

“Push them down to your ankles,” she said, “then clasp your hands behind your neck.”

He did so. His masculine appendage was entirely flaccid, which Caroline wouldn't have expected. From what she'd been told about men like Dunhurst, it aroused them sexually to incite fear and pain and humiliation, which was what he'd been doing until just a few seconds before.

Lili regarded the limp little organ with interest. “Of course. I should have known. Can't raise the old sail, eh?”

Dunhurst, looking sheepish, lifted his meaty shoulders.

Lili cracked her palm across his face.

Caroline gasped.

“Answer your mistress when she asks you a question. Are you impotent?”

“Y-yes, mistress.”

“Other men suffer from that malady without turning into a brutish hound like you.” She picked up the phallus and paddle and walked around him, appraising him up and down as the slaves had been appraised during Inspection. When he looked at her over his shoulder, she smacked his backside with the paddle, making him yelp. “Eyes forward, dog.”

“Yes, mistress.” As he was turning his head, his gaze lit on Caroline, and he paused.

“Forward!” Lili whacked him again.

He obeyed her. Caroline fretted for a moment about his having seen her watching him, but given his mesmerized state, he probably wouldn't recall any of what was happening here.