Read Online Love's Savage Bonds by Jeb - Free Book Online Page A

interest, and the girl realized that she'd been correct: he
was broken. He’d probably started on the bottle before Charles had even
galloped off.  Had the two of them been alone, she'd have had nothing to
fear from this husk of what had been her husband.
     
    But, of course, they were not alone.
From behind, Catherine felt wiry fingers clamp painfully onto her shoulder, and
she was thrown across the bench of the coach, face down over her husband's lap.
     
    "Hold her." Lefanu's voice
was icy and calm. She felt Philip take a fistful of her hair with one hand,
while his other pressed down on her back.  Hampered by her gown and the
small space, Catherine was unable to escape his grasp as she felt Lefanu take
her wrists, and twist them painfully.
     
    "Aaaahhh!" she gasped in
pain. "Help! Help! AAagghghhh!" The pain seemed to treble as
Lefanu yanked her arms up behind her.
     
    "Keep your mouth shut, woman, or
I'll stuff it full of your hair until you choke." Catherine sobbed, and
she felt Lefanu force her arms to lie across each other, at a right angle; he
then wrenched them further, so that her arms were bent double, her hands nearly
meeting between her shoulderblades as Lefanu fastened them together with some
sort of thin twine that bit savagely into her flesh. More of the twine anchored
them in that unnatural position, sending waves of pain all the way down her
arms, through her torso.
     
    “Oh, god, please!” Catherine pleaded
for mercy, the pain moving beyond excruciating.
     
    Lefanu whipped a silk handkerchief from
his breast pocket and handed it to Philip.
     
    "Shut her up."
     
    Catherine felt a twisting pain in her
hair as Philip raised her head from his lap. She looked up at him, with
pleading eyes, offering every prayer she knew for this man to once more take
pity on her.
     
    "Philip, please... uggghh!"
     
    With less concern than he'd have shown
for one of his hunting dogs, Philip forced her head cruelly back, and began to
stuff the silk ‘kerchief into her mouth. Catherine tried to fight him, but she
was simply too exhausted, her body too racked with pain. She made a feeble
attempt to bite him, but the strain in her scalp and neck prevented her from
even properly closing her mouth.
     
    With the handkerchief wedged into his
wife's mouth, Philip slipped the green silk cravat from about his throat,
tightened it into a band, and forced that between Catherine's teeth, driving
the packing deeper into her mouth, so she felt sure she must choke. He yanked
the band tight, and Catherine felt it slice brutally into the corners of her
mouth as Philip used it to bind her gag in place.  Careless of Catherine's
mass of disordered tresses, Philip wound the cravat tightly about her head, and
made it secure with a knot that cruelly pulled at her hair, and pinched the
soft flesh at the nape of her neck.
     
    Satisfied that his wife was well
secured and silenced, Philip settled back in the seat, watching as Lefanu
inspected the knots.
     
    "There." The Frenchman
regarded Catherine as a hungry man might a banquet. "That should keep you
in place until we are ready to... deal with you."
     
    "Yes," Philip slurred.
"We have questions for you, haven't we, Colonel? And we'll have answers,
by god!"
     
    "Yes..." Lefanu's response
seemed to trail off strangely. "Yes, we shall have answers, by all
means."  
     
    Catherine sobbed into her gag: she
sobbed Charles’ name.  It came out as nothing more than a muffled grunt.
Struggling wasn’t an option—it was barely a fantasy, bound as she was, in the
clutches of the two men. Her exhausted mind had almost forgotten what it was
like to be able to move, or that there had ever been a moment without pain.
Captivity was her fate. Bound and gagged captivity. And as impossible as it
seemed, there was certainly worse to come.
     
    **********
     
    Elizabeth Cathcart took another glance
through the curtains-- there went the strange black brougham. Well, not friends
of her brother's, then. A