The Merchant's Daughter (Dubious Consent, Historical Erotic Romance) by Dalia Daudelin Read Free Book Online

It had been a long day, and only getting longer. The grass was soft and the trees sparse enough that you could at least see anyone coming for almost half a mile, and that was a fair blessing but the young lady in my charge didn’t seem to take a comfort from it. Her speaking voice was beautiful, but when she shouted in shrill tones her voice lost its beauty.
    “You wait: your heads will roll after my father hears about this!”
    We’d been hearing it for the better part of an hour. At first it had been threatening but as time passed, our horses failed to return, and the rear group was not to pass this way for more than a day. Suddenly, the threat of thieves, of wild animals, loomed much larger than a demotion, even if it meant I was back to late nights on guard duty.
    I looked up at the sky, and thought for a long time about my wife, at home with our fifth child. She had been pretty once—marvelously beautiful and he’d asked God how he’d been able to woo such a woman. But that was twenty years passed now, and making four children had not been kind to her. The young lady, daughter of an Irish merchant, was hard to look away from for long, and I was starting to feel a familiar feeling in my loins. It had been years since I felt it without a bellyful of ale.
    “When your father hears about it, if he hears about it…” a voice piped up, “That’ll be then. This is now. So keep your mouth shut.”
    It was the youngest, Richard, who was fresh off the boat from England. He’d do well to learn to keep his mouth shut, I thought. I spoke automatically, thoughtlessly.
    “Begging your pardon, Miss Dempsey—young Richard has a foul mouth, but he’s worth putting up with if trouble should arise.”
    The sentiment was fair enough, but it left out the fact that every man seated around the horseless carriage, every man out on patrol agreed with what he’d said. I began to wonder if maybe I’d been dealing with too many high-born folks who demanded I walk on eggshells. Perhaps it would be wiser to try to get myself into a position to train the new boys, so I could speak my mind without too much fear of repercussions. I almost smiled at the thought, imagining seeing my own sons growing up with their father around every day. A shrill noise yanked me from my dreams—a scream.
    I was on my feet before I knew what was happening, scooping a knife off the ground as I rose. My sword lay beside it in heavy wooden sheathing, but if it were a varmint or snake I hardly wanted something so heavy. Richard—a snake of another kind entirely—had been leering at the young lady with poison in his eyes, and when she wandered off like a fool, he made his move. He had his knee pressed into her chest and unlacing his breeches, and I knew what he intended even as he covered her mouth to prevent another scream.
    He didn’t see me coming, saw nothing but a wet hole he thought he could stick his cock into. I pulled him off and pinned him down. I pressed my knife into his throat and when his eyes focused on my face there was a mix of confusion and fear in them, the haze of lust gone.
    “Richard, I swear to you: If you don’t yield to the King’s law, you’ll be left dead on this spot, and the wolves will feast on you in the coming cold.” I pressed the knife harder, and the look in his eyes, of a caged animal, didn’t leave him, but I could see him weigh his options. And then his head laid back and his eyes lost their focus altogether.
    We bound him in leather thongs and set him aside for trial—road or no, civilization or no, there are some things a man can’t do to a woman and still get away with it. I was overcome by a powerless anger, and I feared I might kill him. Not only had he failed to uphold our most basic mission, not only had he attempted to violate a Christian woman, but on some level I felt personally offended by the way that he had tarnished my reputation and the reputations of my men who had only wanted to do their jobs. At