Under a Stern Reign (19 page)

Then with a sudden crack she felt a scorching strip bite across her exposed buttocks. She wanted to yell her outrage, but held it in as terror blended with a treacherous heat simmering between her legs, warming her insides, making her heart pound and her breath catch in her lungs.

With one hand still twisting her arm the man slashed the crop down onto her bottom again. She bit her lip against the pain, her sex rubbing against the edge of the desk. She whimpered lamely. He struck again, turning the stripes of scorching heat into a generalised spread of warmth all over her rounded bottom cheeks. Her pussy pulsed heatedly, growing increasingly wet. Her mind spun, and she saw herself back on the dinning table, her buttocks proffered to her stepfather, and she wanted it again. She wanted something to fill her now, to throb deep inside her and make her rock back and forth as her pleasure rose to new heights. And she wanted Genevieve there to witness her ecstasy. She wanted to live that ecstatic night again.

‘Fuck me...' she urged hoarsely. ‘Please, fuck me as hard as you can...'

But the man needed no invitation. His erection was already in his hand. It thrust into her, filling her with one long penetration and drilling deep into her molten centre. She moaned, mumbling deliriously to herself, her eyes tightly closed as she absorbed the joy of being roughly fucked by the loathsome brute.

He pumped angrily, watching the girl's perfect fleshy spheres quiver and listening to the slap of his hairy groin against them as he inexorably quickened his rhythm. She fucked like a whore, he mused, rutting even more aggressively against her.

Elise felt her nipples harden and rub painfully through her shift against the desk. Her legs were shaking, leaving her barely able to hold herself up, especially when he let go of her wrist and clasped her buttocks with both hands, kneading them like dough. He grunted like a wild boar, still rutting furiously, his rod ploughing deep inside her.

And then he pressed deeper than ever and slumped, exhausted, onto her back, his cock pulsing rhythmically as it discharged his load, some seeping back and trickling down the insides of her thighs. She lay beneath his weight, panting, savouring her own diminishing waves of pleasure, her mind still reliving the recent night when her stepfather had fucked her in similar fashion, right in front of Genevieve.

The man refastened his breeches. The riding-crop was on the floor, so he stooped and picked it up, glancing at Elise the whole time. Then he opened the heavy wooden door and left her alone in the silence and gloom, tears suddenly blurring her vision and meandering down her cheeks.

 

 

 

There was too much confusion going on in Genevieve's mind. She had wanted Rodolfo from the first moment she ever set eyes on him, and she still did, didn't she?

She knew there was no one else like him. But during the period they had spent together he seemed removed from the man she imagined him to be. She was surprised and uncertain of his ruthlessness.

So much had happened to her in so short a time. Things of all kinds flashed through her mind all through the day, and more so while she slept in her bedchamber in the craggy, hillside home of the Conde de Agora, near the ancient town of Sintra, some twenty miles from Lisbon.

Their flight from France had exhausted every nerve in her body. After fleeing from de Tranville's chateau she found herself crying uncontrollably as she struggled into the dead man's clothes and as Rodolfo shouted and lashed furiously at the horses.

Through the night they bumped along a deeply rutted forest path, and once clear of it he took them across fields and manoeuvred from one track to the next for the whole of the following day. He seemed to want to stop only briefly, and only then for the sake of the horses.

Somehow she managed to sleep intermittently on the wagon floor, although each time they stopped she felt every inch of her body aching.

At times he was taciturn. He said they would need to stay away from towns, so hungry and dirty they would sit by a wood fire at night, and she would nestle into his brawny arms for warmth and fear of the dark and the outdoors. But, as close as she was to him, she would stay awake wondering what would happen to her if he slept too deeply to hear the night's dangers. It seemed as if she had never slept at all.

There were times when he would simply ignore her and wander off with the musket he had quickly snatched after the fight, leaving her alone and terrified, returning hours later with a string of dead birds. He would pluck and roast them and avidly they would feed their aching stomachs like savages. He would smile as they chewed on the rough birds together, almost as if he were enjoying himself.

Guessing routes, they arrived at the port of La Rochelle in what must have been about three or four days, but the time seemed to have merged into one long painful blur to Genevieve.

In his way he had been considerate and oversaw her survival in the wild, but there were times when she thought surrender would be preferable to the painfully buffeting ride, the vigils for pursuers, the sleepless nights, the diet of little more than roast wildfowl, berries and water, and then the voyage to come.

They were filthy as he pulled her along the harbour jetty, chatting, bartering with or simply talking down to scruffy captains as if he still were the fine gentleman and dandy and not a desperate man on the run.

He would switch from one language or dialect to another, at times remonstrating with his arms and shouting like a street vendor, at times making her wince with the crudeness of his colloquy and vulgarity. The mariners seemed to come from all over the place - Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians and Greeks. He treated them all with the same mix of bluster and camaraderie.

Rodolfo's jaw was covered in dark stubble, and sweat and soil clung to his clothes and forehead. He had almost no money in his purse, and after watching him spend nearly all of it on food and wine for them both in a seedy, whore-filled inn, she watched him sell the horses and wagon for a fraction of their value to a total stranger there.

As the man trundled off, singing happily, her heart sank to new depths and tears filled her eyes. The sight of their departing transport reminded her that there was no return for her to the place she had called home. Where would she end up now?

With the money from the sale he negotiated a pricey passage to Portugal from a small, highly dangerous looking man who would not take his eyes from her as they bartered over the fare. Finally, rubbing his chin and winking from her to one of his bearded and toothless crewmen, he agreed.

She remained silent throughout, close behind the dishevelled man who had once been the one of her dreams, terrified of the dangerous faces that seemed to bode her nothing but ill will.

The grubby man was a Portuguese sea captain, and almost as soon as they had set sail a heated argument erupted between him and Rodolfo outside their shoddy cabin, all over something she did not understand.

They harangued each other in Portuguese for a lengthy period, and towards the end the voices of three of the ship's equally menacing crew joined in, and she could perceive that threats and curses were being exchanged. At one point there was a thumping and stumbling sound, followed by curses and shouts.

But amazingly it seemed to all end with laugher, and the voices of Rodolfo, the captain and the crewmen faded up onto deck. Rodolfo returned some hours later, fairly drunk and with a purplish bruise around one slightly swollen eye.

He only explained it to her afterwards, though, casually and with a burst of laughter, once they had arrived in safety and spent a few days resting at his father's hillside home.

The captain and crew had taken Genevieve, with her clear eyes and slender shape, her grubbiness, her long hair hidden up under a hat and man's clothes, to be a harbour rent boy. The captain's own cherished cabin boy, a former rent boy from Marseilles, had run away while the ship was in port and the captain wanted Genevieve to take his place. He insisted that he had given them such a low passage fare on the assumption of Rodolfo's consent to this arrangement.

The argument only ended when Rodolfo finally explained that Genevieve was, in fact, a young Frenchwoman and his bride to be. Into the bargain, he told the man that they were desperate lovers and were eloping, so to escape her overbearing parents she had needed the disguise.

But, with the revelation that Rodolfo's companion was a girl and not a boy, the captain had immediately lost interest in the reasons for why they appeared as they did, the argument ended immediately and after much backslapping he and the mariners became drinking comrades.

Apparently, Rodolfo told Genevieve, the captain had once been unhappily married to an unfaithful slut who filled her bed each night with a different man while he was at sea, and he had been at sea for so many years and known some many wicked trollops in so many ports, that he had long lost interest in women altogether. So, over many bottles of wine he had sorely bemoaned the loss of his cabin boy - who was occasionally shared with his equally lonely crew.

Getting regularly drunk on wine, the seafaring fellow amazed Rodolfo by somehow managing to get them safely to Lisbon, although that may have been more a matter of luck than good seamanship, Rodolfo admitted to Genevieve, for once already at sea he'd noticed a deep crack ran all the way up the main mast that could have caused it to snap clean away at any point during the rough voyage. And rats had left most of the ship's ropes and sails threadbare, but despite all this he and the captain got along well together.

The captain tried to make Rodolfo promise that if he were ever returning to France, he would sail with him. Rodolfo agreed, and he, for his part, promised that if he ever happened to cross paths with any handsome rent boys on the Lisbon streets that longed to go to sea, he would make sure they got in touch with the good captain.

The captain took his offer seriously and kissed him on both cheeks and clasped his hands. He told Rodolfo that he would be staying in port for several weeks. He intended to get his ship repaired, to chase up money owed to him for old deliveries and to find love and companionship for his lonely seafaring days.

They bade farewell to each other, and the captain showed a sudden politeness to Genevieve. With her hat removed and the soil and sweat wiped from her face, he could now see what an extremely fine and unmistakeably female girl she was. In a strange dialect of French, he apologised profusely for his misunderstanding and kissed her hands.

It was on the boat that Rodolfo had declared his intentions to marry her. He had watched over her as she slept, pitying her dire state and complete exhaustion. He had let her take the bunk all the time, and dabbed her hot face with a damp cloth. And each time she looked at him and his bright eyes shining from his dirty face, she felt more and more love for him despite her uncertainties. But so much had happened in so short a period that she needed time. She could not marry him until all her thoughts and emotions had somehow found rest, and it was because of all these distractions that the wonderful view from her window at Conde de Agora's home made little impression on her. The fresh air and the sight of lush forested valleys and hills beneath blue skies only seemed to increase her melancholy.

Recurrently she would wake up panting and sweating. In her dreams she would keep seeing Count de Tranville towering above her, blood spreading from his chest, his bulging eyes fixed on hers in a mixture of disbelief, horror, accusing, and awareness of his own end.

She had grown to dislike him and his insistence on marrying her, despite her objections. She had grown to be afraid of him and his intentions. But how much were Madame Coubette and Elise responsible for the man's state of mind and behaviour?

Did Rodolfo really have to kill him? What sort of a man could take another's life without hesitating? And then only minutes later he had killed another man and possibly two more in cold blood.

In the darkness of sleepless nights she would see Rodolfo squatting at a fire as he had during their flight, brooding in the dark woods, a dead bird's blood staining his killer hands, his fingers plucking the feathers without him even having to look down.

He had lied, too, or as good as lied, to his own father. Having reached the safety of their destination she washed and then slept for almost a night and a day. Then over dinner she met the Conde de Agora, an imposing man, as tall and dark as his son, but with a stately belly and a sincere, wrinkled face. He had looked at them both with great fondness and, with concern, immediately asked after the welfare of his friend, Count de Tranville, and his daughter Elise.

Without hesitation or compulsion Rodolfo informed him that the count had been killed while bravely trying to escape capture, a victim of France's terrible revolution, and that Elise was captured before he could do anything to help and was probably in prison. And then he changed the subject.

It was as if what he had done simply no longer mattered. As though he had dismissed it from his mind. His attention turned instead to the welfare of his three brothers, all serving as officers in the army.

He was the youngest of the four, and humorously remarked that it was as well that they were away from home, for in all likelihood they would otherwise start bullying him as usual, and probably end up proposing and then duelling for the hand of fair Genevieve.