Rapture Becomes Her by Shirlee Busbee

Author:Shirlee Busbee
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Man-woman relationships, Historical, Smugglers, General, Romance, Historical fiction, Crime, Fiction, Love Stories
ISBN: 9781420118421
Publisher: Zebra
Published: 2011-06-28T07:00:00+00:00

Emily woke disoriented with her jaw aching. Groggy, she reached for her jaw but was unable to move her hand. It took her a moment to understand why she could not: she was bound spread eagle, her hands fastened to either side of the bedposts, her ankles strapped to opposite posts at the bottom. Snapping fully awake, she made the alarming discovery that her gown and chemise had been slit down the middle and lay in tatters on either side of her body, leaving her bosom and thighs naked.

Panic shot through her and she bucked and twisted against her bonds, the memory of Ainsworth’s abduction rushing back. What a fool, she had been, she raged, not to pay more attention to Cornelia’s warnings. But why me? she wondered. It was Anne Ainsworth had wanted and if he had been gone to Newhaven all day, there was no way he could have learned that Anne had escaped his grasp. . . .

Fighting back the horrified hysteria that rose in her throat, Emily struggled to make sense of her situation. Concentrating on something else helped calm her and allowed her to ignore her own desperate straits . . . and what might be her fate . . .

It was apparent, she admitted bitterly, that Ainsworth and that weasel Jeffery had learned somehow of Anne’s departure from The Birches. How? When? But none of that mattered right now, Emily told herself, battering back another wave of panic. What mattered was her escape.

In the light from the lone candle sitting on a short, battered chest of drawers against the wall, she studied her surroundings. Beyond the bed, the chest of drawers, a chair next to the chest heaped with a pile of men’s clothing and a pair of gleaming boots on the floor beside the chair, there were no other furnishings—nothing that gave her any sense of where she was being held.

The room was small and under the overpowering scent of cinnamon and cloves that permeated the air, she caught the faint, musty odor associated with deserted, unused houses. From her position on the bed she could see that the ceiling and walls were roughly hewn—utilitarian and economical with no sign of style or elegance. Turning her head, she studied the bedposts to which she was tied. Made of good, solid English oak, they were square and without adornment. Like the chest and chair, practical and simple, they served a purpose, but no craftsman had ever touched them.

This was no gentleman’s house and, turning over possibilities, she decided that most likely she was in an abandoned farmhouse. But where? And how would anybody find her before it was too late . . . before Ainsworth came and . . . The panic she had held at bay ripped free and even knowing it was helpless, like a vixen with her foot in a steel trap, Emily fought the bonds that held her so securely. It was a silent, desperate fight but futile, and after

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