Page 83 of Juliet's Touch

Chapter twenty-six

Evenmoreunpleasantthanthe ropes digging into Juliet’s wrists was the soiled linen taste of the gag Charles had shoved into her mouth. And those weren’t even the worst of her woes, because she had ten icicles for toes and soaking, muddy stockings on her feet. The cut on her neck still stung, but at least it had stopped bleeding.

The look of ecstasy in Charles’s eyes as the knife had pierced her skin would forever be seared into her memories. She had feared he would slice her open right there in Eric’s kitchen. By the grace of God, a noise had startled him, and he’d halted. Unfortunately, he’d then dragged her out of The Pink Petal and down the dark, practically empty streets to these hideous rooms. The few individuals they passed, either couldn’t see that he held a knife to her throat or were simply too jaded to care, making someone with Eric’s ethical conscience even more remarkable.

Juliet had seen the person who’d made the noise in the kitchen. The young woman had ducked back into the shadows before Charles noticed her. Hopefully, whoever she was, shesought out Eric and told him what she’d witnessed. The second he knew Juliet had been abducted, he would come looking for her.

Please let him find me soon, Juliet prayed, because Charles had grown increasingly erratic, binding her to a chair, then pacing and mumbling under his breath. At least if he was frantically moving, he wasn’t touching her, thank goodness.

Once again, Juliet berated herself for being a naïve ninny. Her original impression of Charles was wrong on every account. She’d gone from thinking he was a handsome gentleman to believing him to be a cowardly, arrogant arse. But the truth was even worse than that. He was sick and depraved. Perhaps it was fortunate that she hadn’t eaten much in the past twenty-four hours, for if she had, she might be casting up her accounts due to the innumerable deviant paintings decorating the walls and a display of grotesque statues. It wasn’t that she found the shackles attached to the headboard of his unmade bed in themselves bothersome, it was more Charles’s cruelty that unnerved her.

Charles’s pictures were nothing like the naughty ones inThe Secret Life of Gentlemen,where men and women engaged in sensual acts of all sorts. The illustrations in the book stoked Juliet’s curiosity and made her ache with need. Expressions of mutual enjoyment and bucolic scenery added to her fantasies.

But Charles’s massive collection was filled with violent images of women with terrified looks on their faces, screaming into dark abysses as men twisted them into odd shapes. There were blood, sharp weapons, demons, and fire, all of it nightmarish and diabolical.

As far as Juliet was concerned, men and women could engage in whatever they wished as long as the acts were consensual. Butconsensualdid not describe what covered the walls surrounding her.

Since the artwork, if one could call it that, was everywhere she looked, she fixed her gaze on the floor, while willing Charles to have an apoplexy.

He halted in front of her.

She made the mistake of looking at him.

He bared his teeth in a grin that was so disturbing, she felt as if an arachnid was crawling up her back. Her instincts told her to run, which was an impossibility—ropes anchoring her to the chair, and all.

Charles approached, lifted her chin, and stared into her eyes. His pupils didn’t dilate, and he appeared deranged.

Because he is exceedingly, unequivocally, a boiled-brained gull.

“How could you?” he asked, his spittle spattering her cheeks.

Since there was a gag in her mouth, Juliet couldn’t respond, not that she knew what to say to appease the monster.

“With the son of a whore,” he growled. “A bloody pugilist when I’m heir to an earldom. I will be one of the most powerful men in England. And you were withhimafter you humiliated me by kissing that villain who roams the city at night, making fools of the aristocracy.”

They make fools of themselves without any assistance from Knight Roamer, thank you very much.

At least he didn’t seem to know that Knight Roamer and Eric were one and the same.

His eyes widened until he resembled an owl. Thereupon, he wrinkled his nose and snorted.

Well, pooh.Juliet winced, suspecting he’d just made the connection between Eric and the avenger. She’d just made one of her own. Charles must have been the man she’d seen duck behind the settee when she’d entered the brothel, which could only mean one thing—he visited The Pink Petal. Not that she was surprised because deep in her heart she had known he hada predilection for such things. Many men did. Not that there was anything wrong with it as long as the women in their lives didn’t care and they treated the prostitutes well. But Charles’s predilections went way beyond the joys of tupping.

Besides, she, for one, cared, and she wanted to be the center of the world to the man she loved—Eric Stone, to be precise.

“That bloody pugilist who sulks around the whores and threatens me is the same one who dons a disguise at night,” Charles said. “How did I not figure this out sooner?”

He would find them and then make Charles rue tormenting her.

“How dare you send a letter breaking our engagement?”

Since this was what it was like talking face to face with Charles, she’d done the correct thing.

“I’ll tell you what is going to happen next.” Charles leaned close, his sickly-sweet breath blowing across her cheek. “You are going to say that the reporter fromThe Daily Dispatch of Londonis wrong, and that Knight Roamer was working with the bandits.”

She’d known Charles would do something vengeful since his fragile hubris wouldn’t be able to handle the humiliating aftermath from the article. She simply hadn’t realized he was a lunatic who would abduct her at knifepoint and carry her off to a reprehensible torture chamber.

“You will say that you kissed me to thank me for saving you.” His chest puffed—the delusion fool. “Yes, that shall do. Then you will say that you were with your sister in the country, hiding from the villainous Knight Roamer this entire time, so you were never compromised. And then we shall marry.”