The Marriage Test by Betina Krahn

Author:Betina Krahn [Krahn, Betina]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Romance, General, Historical
ISBN: 9780786267682
Google: jsgUmQytIDwC
Amazon: 0425196453
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2004-01-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

Julia felt herself being hoisted and then draped over something—someone—and realized she was being carried into a house or a building of some sort. Her thick braid dangled and jiggled freely from the back of her head, attracting the attention of several parti-colored hounds, who made a game of nipping at it while dodging the feet and fists of the men who carried her.

Before her tortured gaze, a badly worn tunic and a pair of oft-patched woolen tights strained to contain a monumental pair of buttocks. Given her proximity to that part of her abductor’s anatomy and the fact that she had to drag each inhalation through her nose, she was almost overcome by the fumes he emitted every time he strained and rose a step. By the time they reached the top of a set of spiraling stone stairs, she was woozy and nauseated and had wicked ringing in her ears.

“So”—came a strident-sounding male voice—“this is Grandaise’s tart.”

She was dumped unceremoniously onto a bench and had to twist to the side and hook her legs beneath the seat to keep from tumbling off. A man leaned close and grabbed her chin to look at her. Apparently he couldn’t see her much better than she could see him, for he ordered her captors to remove her gag to better appraise her.

“You’re sure this is the one?” he demanded, clearly expecting something other than a tousled young female with unfocused green eyes and a burnished gold braid tainted with dog slobber. She worked harder to make her eyes both focus on the same thing, and soon found herself face-to-face with a tall, slender man in a wine-colored velvet tunic with matching hose and sleeves. He scowled at her and she would have answered in kind, but she was too busy trying to get her aching jaws to close and her parched mouth and throat to moisten.

“She’s little more than a green twig.” Her captor made a face. “Grandaise has appallingly common taste in females.”

He drew back out of range before she could make her jaws work well enough to bite his nose. Then he strolled back and forth, fondling a small, elegant eating knife. With a wave of his hand he ordered her feet released, and her abductors went one better and pulled her upright on the bench.

“Do you know who I am?”

With her vocal apparatus not sufficiently primed, she was forced to answer with a shake of her head. But, the motion must have shaken her wits back into place, for in the next instant she realized he could only be—

“Bardot, the Comte de Verdun. Your lover’s bitter enemy. Although”—he rolled his eyes—“bitter may be understating it a bit. I’d like to cut off his head, scoop out his brains, and use his skull for a drinking cup.” His sardonic tone undercut none of the seriousness of that desire. “But until I have that pleasure … until he gets off his dead arse and comes out to fight me like a man … I shall have to make do with capturing and holding his scrawny little mistress.

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