“If it will not save me from the hangman, then why would I even consider letting you touch me?”
She struggled against gasping for air as he tightened his grip on her throat. For a brief moment she thought he was going to kill her right then and there. Gisele suspected that she should welcome a quick death when none of the other choices offered to her were ones she could accept, but she realized that she wanted life more than she wanted anything else. She clutched at his hands, but he just silently continued to tighten his grip, seemingly oblivious to the pain of her fingernails digging into the flesh of his hand. Then, just as suddenly and calmly as he had grabbed her, he let her go. She rubbed at her bruised throat as she gulped air back into her body.
“You will do as I wish because you do not wish to die,” he said.
“But you just told me that what I do or do not do will make no difference. You still mean to hang me. It just becomes a matter of when.”
“It becomes a matter of how much pain you wish to endure before you give me what I want. And there is always that sweet, useless thing people try to cling to when all seems lost—hope. I think you are very good at clinging to hope. You will want to stay alive as long as you can because you will hope that you can escape me.” He smiled faintly. “Or kill me.”
She watched silently as he walked to the door. “I begin to think I will do more than hope I can kill you,” she rasped as he started to leave the room. “I believe I may pray for it, may come to crave it.”
“Good. Such passion puts the color in your cheeks, and you do not look quite so frail. Rest. I shall return to your sweet arms after my meal.”
The door shut behind him and she sank down on the edge of the bed. She did not know which she wanted to do more, vomit or cry. One moment the man nearly choked the life from her, the next he was telling her to rest so that she could properly pleasure him when he returned. Madness obviously ran rampant in the DeVeau family. She had been right to think that Vachel was far more dangerous and evil than his cousin.
She looked at the food, briefly considered the possibility of starving herself to death, and then took some bread and began to eat. Vachel was right. As long as she remained alive, she would continue to hope. She would suffer the humiliations and the pains and try to keep herself strong with hope. She would hope that she could escape and that her family would finally prove her innocence and help set her free, and she would also hope that Vachel DeVeau would die a gruesome, agonizing death.
As she ate, Gisele drank a lot of the wine. She idly wondered if she could get drunk enough to be numb to what Vachel did to her or, even better, be so drunk that he lost interest, if only for one night. Even as she contemplated the possibility she poured another goblet of wine, and the black leather jug was suddenly empty. She shook it over her half-filled goblet, then cursed and threw it across the room.
The man had even thought of that, she mused, and then felt an almost overwhelming urge to scream and weep. How could she fight a man who was not only cruel, but clever? If he thought of everything she might do before even she thought of it, there was no chance to outwit him.
To stop herself from sinking too deep into her own misery, she got up and began to meticulously search the room. It did little to improve her mood when she found nothing she could use as a weapon. That struck her as odd, for she was sure this was Vachel’s room, and a man like that had to have so many enemies that he would never dare to go to bed without some weapon within reach.
She carefully studied the room again, and cursed. It was not his room. Rather it was made to look like his room. Gisele was astonished at the man’s slyness, his secretive nature. She suspected that everyone who came to visit Vachel and probably everyone who lived and worked here thought this was the master’s bedchamber, but she sincerely doubted that Vachel ever slept here. Probably not even after he had stolen his pleasure from some poor woman. Vachel’s true sleeping quarters were secreted somewhere where no one could find him. The only other person who would know where the lord of the manor slept would be Ansel, and that man would go to his grave before he would betray Vachel.
His little hideaway could even be inside the walls, she mused as she idly inched her way around the room, running her hand over the wall. Gisele was not quite sure what she looked for, just some subtle thing that would be pulled or pushed to reveal a doorway. If his true bedchamber were not in the walls, then the hall leading to it was, for he could not be seen coming and going from this room.
“What are you doing?” asked a cold voice from right behind her.
Gisele gasped softly in surprise and turned to look at Vachel. She had not even heard the door open, yet a quick glance over his shoulder revealed Ansel taking one last look inside before shutting the door. Vachel DeVeau had obviously learned the same little trick that Nigel had. She supposed she should not be surprised. A man like him would find it very useful to be able to move around silently.
“I was looking for your escape door,” she answered truthfully.
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said.”
“Why should I wish to escape from my own room?”
She could tell by the way his voice grew colder and softer that he was becoming angry. It was not wise to tell him that she knew one of his greatest secrets. Then she decided that it did not matter. She might even get lucky and say or do something that finally broke his tight control over himself and make him kill her—quickly.
“Because you are hated so much that your enemies number in the thousands. The last thing you would wish them to know is where you sleep. The bedchamber can be the one place where a man is most vulnerable.”
“Cleverness is not always appreciated in a woman.”
“So your cousin was fond of telling me, either before or after he beat me.”
“My cousin obviously did not beat you often enough or hard enough.”
“He did his best,” she said, moving away from him and picking up the wine decanter she had hurled against the wall.
“Michael did not have a best.”
She had just set the decanter down on the table by the bed when she felt his body close to her back. He had neatly pinned her between himself, the table, and the bed. Gisele cursed her own stupidity. She should have watched him more closely.
“You did not send up enough wine,” she complained, but her voice wavered ever so slightly as she turned around to face him, their bodies only a deep breath apart.
“I sent up all you would need,” he said as he reached out to stroke her hair.
