She had a bed of her own, in a spacious lovely bedroom with drapes of gauze that fluttered like the softest wisps of clouds. She was alone in it, but by choice this time. No unkind chastity belt bit into her skin. Yet she had been wearied to the very bone and wanted only sleep.
Her weeks of deprivation had culminated in the day's adventure. What had begun as a public shaming and horrendous breaking of the most primal taboo – being bound and displayed to the eyes of all of Falcon Bay, and then subjected to a coerced fucking by her own father – had ended in utter satisfaction. She was avenged on her brother, whose incestuous lusts had set her upon this path.
She was avenged, too, on her father … not that William deGranville had committed any crimes against her until today. But call it, rather, revenge for her mother's sake. Anna deGranville had passed the final years of her life in melancholy, knowing that she had been made to give up her second-born. And why? Because her husband would never have accepted that child as his own. He had never fully trusted his wife thereafter, either.
Constance knew this to be true. Her parents had kept separate rooms, and a chill distance between them. She now suspected that her conception had been more dutiful than joyful, and might even have been the last time her father could bring himself to bed his wife.
For Anna had been tainted in his eyes. Even unknowing of the child – of Jacqueline – Anna had been tainted to him. William could not look on her without seeing her in the arms of a pirate, could not touch her without wondering what Philippe Merlion and his men might have done to that fair body.
What
had
been done? Constance did not know. Had her mother confessed such acts to her father? Surely not. They would never have spoken of it. William would have wished to believe that it had never happened, and yet he had not conducted himself in that manner. Instead, he had shunned her, ignored her.
The more Constance thought on it, the more she remembered Rob and his jealous possession of her. No other man but him should ever have at her cunny … as if it were
his
and not her own. Thus must it have been with her parents. Anna, wife to William and therefore chattel, had given that which was rightfully his to others. Whether it had been done by force or not. As if she were no person at all, only a belonging.
She hoped for her mother's sake that Philippe Merlion had been a splendid lover. It was hard to believe when she thought also of Jacqueline's reported abuse at the hands of the pirate lord, but perhaps it had been different with Anna. Perhaps she had enjoyed a passionate affair before being returned to the loveless arms of her husband.
William had never trusted her again. And he had extended that distrust to Constance, even as an infant or blameless girlchild. He had kept her as a prisoner on Veradoga, always claiming it was to protect her. Now Constance wondered if it had been meant to punish Anna, through her daughter. Or to protect the family name instead.
There had been talk, sly whispers and knowledgeable looks, their sphere of acquaintances so merry and malicious. It may have been that as much as anything else that drove Anna to her suicide. Wherever she went, she had to know that others were spreading tales about her. Anna deGranville, taken by pirates … no doubt ravished again and again, and likely moaning with a wanton's pleasure all the while.
Her father had gotten through that somehow, but was never going to chance the like happening again. And perhaps he believed it, as well. Perhaps he believed that his fair Anna had indeed moaned and writhed and exhorted her rapacious captors to greater efforts. Perhaps he believed that Constance for all her seeming innocence, would turn out to be the same. As all women were.
Well, that had been proved to him beyond any doubt. It had been Rob's doing, but would her father see that?
Then again, he might not be so willing to favor Rob now. Not when he had regained consciousness to find Rob sucking frantically on his cock, not when he had been made to put it up Rob's arse.
Constance wondered how they had passed the night in their cell. She thought of paying them a visit, speaking to them through the bars. But better to let them stew in each other's company for a time.
She rose instead with inspiration blossoming in her mind like a rose, and swiftly sought out Jacqueline.
Her sister was in a robe, newly from the bath, hair damp and curling around her ears. The animosity that had always before been in her blue eyes was absent, for they had settled the accounts between them.
"Did you sleep well?" Jacqueline asked, offering with a wave the sideboard's tray of pastries and fruit.
"Far better, I imagine, than our father and brother did."
"How very true."
"But it struck me this morning, Jacques. With the pair of them missing, presumed lost at sea or slain by pirates, that would mean that the estate on Veradoga, and Father's fortunes – less the ransom he has already paid to you – would fall to me."
Jacqueline licked crumbs from the corner of her mouth. "Is it not a governorship? Appointed by the crown?"
"It was," she said, momentarily distracted by the sight of Jacqueline's tongue sliding luxuriously over her lips. "But Father was of great service to the Crown. When asked what reward he would have, he requested and was granted that his holdings be made ancestral, to pass down to his legal children."
"Ah," said Jacqueline. "Which I, never acknowledged, am not. Else it would be mine for I am your elder."
"You have already your pirate empire," Constance said. "All of Falcon Bay, and Merlion's many ships, are yours. What I propose is a venture of cooperation."
"Speak on, sister."
"Veradoga, located as it is, would make a fine pirate's port. Your ships, my island estate … together, we could reap quite a profit."
"Hmm … an interesting offer."
"I'd only request one thing," Constance said, already sure that Jacqueline was going to agree. "If you could, perchance, stage an attack on Santa Juanita, and abduct the son of Don Martinez, the governor? I should like to portion out some of my revenge unto Enrique, as well."
The very thought of it … dusky-skinned Enrique, such an eager participant in her downfall … she owed him. She owed him for striking the flint that set Rob afire. Had Enrique not been attempting to steal a kiss that evening, Rob might not have caught him at it, and called her a poor hostess for allowing her guest's physical needs to go unfulfilled. She might never have ended up thrown on her back across the dining-room table, Enrique feeding his thick cock into her mouth whilst Rob licked at her cunny in order to make her comply.
He'd told her he would stop when she had brought Enrique to spending, but he had only been as good as the letter of his word, not his spirit. For once she had swallowed down the salty, creamy effusion, Rob had declared his intention to rub his cock against her, claiming that it was not incest unless one of them came. But he'd known too well how to see to it that she did, and then saw no reason why he should not immediately fuck her. That had been the beginning, thanks to Enrique.
She had even fled because of him. The prospect of marrying him had been bad enough, but it was his sneaking into her room and bed, so determined to have a poke at her cunny that he forewent his friendship to Rob, that led to their discovery and her ruthless beating. Rob had switched her, then brutally raped her bottom, and that was when she had known she had to flee.
Rob had been repaid for that. His own tender cheeks would still be stinging from the welts she'd applied, and after the hard fucking he'd taken from Salvador, he must be feeling as if his innards had been gouged with a broomstick.
But Enrique needed to repay, as well. Constance imagined him at her mercy, and felt a warm tingle run from her breasts to her loins. The things she could do to him, make him do, have done to him! It would be wonderful to hear him weep and beg as Rob had done. She might even arrange for the capture of Don Martinez as well, Enrique's father, he of the eyes that crept so lewdly over a woman that it was as if he could see through her very garments and feel, by some stroking of vision, that which was beneath.
"Why stop there?" Jacqueline asked. "Why not Lord Cuthburt, too?"
"And his niece, Margaret!" Constance clapped her hands. "I never liked her, the times we met. Such a prig, she was. Always with her nose in the air, and never improper in the slightest. We'll see if there's truth to his nighttime games!"
"You have a cruel stripe, Constance."
