Arranged Marriage To The Rogue (Victorian Romance) Read online

  “Why, I was thinking of your honor, milady. That man insulted you, and someone has to make it right. And who better to do that than your future husband?” he said, still smiling, albeit this time it was significantly less sincere.

  “He is going to kill you, you know? Captain Hawkins is a trained soldier with combat experience. I wish you no insult, but you do not stand a chance. Please, Martin, give up this foolish notion and call off the duel,” Lillian said, still standing near the door.

  “And is that supposed to intimidate me? There are worse things than dying in a duel, Lillian,” he said darkly.

  “What could possibly be worse than having your life taken from you?”

  He lowered his head, staring at the floor for a couple of long moments. When he raised it again, the smile was gone, and his eyes were full of sorrow. “It happened around three years ago. My best friend and I vied for the hand of a girl. I loved her more than anything else in the world, and it was not until I met you that I felt such attraction again.”

  Lillian blushed just a little bit, and took an involuntary step forward.

  “Eventually, my friend challenged me to a duel, and I foolishly accepted. On the morning the event was supposed to take place, I showed up. He did not. Instead, he had used the opportunity to seduce her in the most dishonorable fashion.” His mouth tightened, as did the muscles in his face. “They’ve betrayed me, the lot of them! And she did not even care about his complete lack of honor, Lillian! On that day I swore that I was to be nothing more than a scoundrel, and life became significantly easier. Then I met you, and things stopped being so simple.” He lowered his head again, staring into the floor.

  The next thing he saw were the clothed ankles of his betrothed, standing in front of him.

  “I do not care about honor in general, Martin, and I worry even less about mine. At the moment, all I care about is you, and that is the way it shall remain, forevermore,” she said as she touched the sides of his face with her palms, raising his head while she lowered herself on one knee. Then, in a slow and sensual manner, she kissed him on the mouth.

  As if he was waiting just for that, Martin rose to his feet like a jack-in--box, and she felt that something else had risen as well when he pressed himself against her. They both continued kissing as they shared one long, sensual embrace. Then, Martin grabbed her by the waist, turned around, and threw her on the bed. With desire in his eyes, he ripped the silk from her corset, exposing the bare skin below.

  “That… I liked that!” she moaned out in a barely audible manner.

  “I will buy you a better one!” he exclaimed as he lowered his trousers, exposing his throbbing manhood for her to see. In a single motion he tore a hole in the middle of her pantaloons, and proceeded to enter her viciously.

  The gasp that she let out was equal parts shock and pleasure. Pleased by her reaction, he grabbed her by her spilling breasts and pulled out ever so slightly, before he impaled her again. She squealed again, but the way she rolled her eyes backward told him not to stop. Having positioned himself more comfortably, he continued to repeat the motion. Lillian was slowly starting to enjoy the act, evident as she shamelessly lifted her legs and spread them apart—an act unbefitting a girl of her stature. However, that didn’t make it any less wondrous of a sight, any less than the way she bit the side of her index finger.

  Feeling his blood boil, Martin went over to ravage her with new fervency as the fire between both of them expanded through their bodies.

  “I…I —oh, my Looord!” she screamed in ecstasy while her body contracted, and her legs slowly started descending. Martin did not say anything. His mind was long gone.

  The old barracks

  Noon

  The crowd was getting restless. Men of power, men of influence, all there to witness the heir of House Stanbury getting murdered in cold blood, and putting up a good show.

  Even the Lord Stanbury was there, Martin observed, his expression not betraying a hint of regret or remorse. They were all waiting for Martin to arrive, that much he could see even from the coach’s window. He had insisted on travelling apart from his father, so as to avoid the unpleasant conversation that would have inevitably ensued. It is better this way.

  With a rumble, the carriage arrived at its destination, and a veritable horde of men swiftly surrounded it to escort the young man to the exact spot of the duel. In anticipation, he looked toward it even before he disembarked. Captain Hawkins was there, ready, willing and able, for the show to begin.

  I am not going to disappoint him. Martin walked down the coach steps and the crowd spread to let him pass. He breathed in, snapped his fingers, and pressed forward. And the lot of you, I will give you all something to remember!

  As he made his way toward what everyone expected to be the place of his death, Martin took a slow, deliberate look around. Everyone stared at him as if he was a fool. Perhaps I am. Yet, they were slaves, the lot of them. They were born as slaves, and they would die as slaves, beholden to a system of values they merely aped as opposed to understood. Unlike them, I have lived freely all this time.

  He was six feet away from his opponent now. A second approached him, offering him a choice between several blades. He allowed his gaze to fall on each of them, inspecting them with a bemused expression. Then, as if he were starting over, he ran his hand over all of them once more. He gave Captain Hawkins a quick scan with the side of his eye. Unlike him, the officer had few qualms about which weapon he was about to use, and the saber was already in his hand.

  “Are you going to pick a weapon, or are you going to continue prolonging your life in this shameful manner?” the captain asked him, having apparently noticed the way Martin looked at him.

  Now is the time, Martin concluded. For a moment, it appeared as if he had picked his weapon: a long blade with only a slight curve. He held it in his right hand, clenched his fingers, and gave his opponent a stern gaze. Then, out of the blue, he gave it back to the second.

  “Just what are you doing, silly boy? Have you no mind at all? You have to choose your weapon!” The captain spoke through his teeth, his anger apparent.

  “But, I have already chosen my weapon,” Martin said as he stepped away from his second and toward the captain. Very slowly, and careful so as not to provoke is opponent with any sudden movements, he kept getting closer one step at a time.

  “Just what are you talking about, Stanbury? You’ve left your blade by your second. Go back, retrieve it, and let us do this like men!” The crowd was getting unpleasant as well, and Martin could feel everyone’s stares on his skin. He was well used to playing the part of a scoundrel, but this was something else entirely, and he did not feel all that comfortable doing it. But it has to be done. For her.

  “But I don’t need a blade to best you, captain. In fact, all I need is this cloth right here!” he exclaimed as he pulled a silky, skin-colored piece of fabric from his sleeve, all in a non-threatening manner. Something appeared off about it, and it did not seem all that clean, but the captain could not tell from that distance.

  “What is that?”

  “I could tell you, my dear Captain, but I think you might want to see for yourself,” Martin said as he slowly threw the item toward his opponent. As expected, he caught it effortlessly.

  “And how exactly is this going to—“ Captain Hawkins stared at what he held in his left hand, his eyes wide in disbelief. A mere moment later, he started foaming at the mouth, let out a horrendous, beastly sound, and attempted to stab Martin with his sword. Luckily, the seconds were quick enough to grab him by the shoulders and subdue him before he managed to draw any blood. “You pathetic, grotesque, twisted son of a no-good whore! How dare you do something like this? I will have your head, Stanbury! Do you hear me? Your head!” he screamed as the seconds dragged him away.

  Smiling, Martin approached the piece of cloth, grabbed it with his right hand, and took a quick look at it, despite knowing full well what it was. Whoever thought a bloody piece of
Lillian’s ripped pantaloons would save my life? he asked himself as he pocketed the fabric before anyone else could see it for what it was.

  “You worthless, disgusting piece of human filth! You can’t even fight me as a man! Goddamn you, your children, and your children’s children! To the depths of hell with the whole of Stanbury line!” The captain refused to stop spouting insults and kept struggling so much that two guards had to come from the side and help with the restraining.

  “If he does not calm down soon, I am afraid the duel will have to be cancelled. We are gentlemen, not beasts,” said the referee from the side.

  Martin looked at the captain again: he was in an absolute frenzy. He will not be calming down within the foreseeable future, he thought as a wicked grin snuck onto his face. Just a little bit more, and I can come back to Lillian. Content, he turned back toward the referee, put on the most honest face he could, and spoke. “I will be waiting for a bit more, sir, but I am afraid that I do not have all day.”

  As if every word was a strike against his exposed hide, the captain shouted again. “I spit on your manhood, boy! The Stanbury house truly has no honor!” He struggled once more, but the men’s hold on him was simply too firm.

  Stylishly, knowing that everyone’s eyes were fixed on him, Martin took on a dramatic pose and donned his smile again. “What did you expect? After all, I am a rogue!”

  The captain howled like an enraged animal again, unable to contain his fury.

  THE END

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  Desired by the Alien King

  Blinking her bleary, groggy eyes, Gwendolyn tried to focus her mind on the last thing she could remember. The shooting pain in her head—where did that come from?—did not make it any easier.

  She and her archaeological team had been going through the Sarmian excavation. The desert around them was gorgeous. It reminded them of the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert of North America back on Earth, except the browns and tans and the ruddy and rusty colors were streaked with green and grey. Being surrounded by all that beauty had made them wish they were tourists instead of scientists. But they had gotten to work well enough, for each of them was well accustomed to interplanetary travel. More exciting than Sarma itself was the idea of who lived there and what first contact with them meant. Gwendolyn and her people were living the dream of not only every archaeologist on Earth, but every biologist, every biochemist, every political scientist and historian, every philosopher—practically the whole of humanity. They were on the cutting edge of the most exciting thing to happen in human history since the confirmation of extraterrestrial life itself.

  The Sarmians were not merely extraterrestrial—they were humanoid. They had human forms, human anatomy. Except for the trail of hair descending from the hairline of the scalp to the bridge of the nose, they could easily pass for human, at least physically. It was something that science had always deemed biologically impossible, but it turned out to be one of the times when the universe yanked the rug out from under science. The Sarmians had become Earth's great obsession and people from every discipline were all but foaming at the mouth to have a crack at studying the planet and those who lived there.

  And Gwendolyn Rush had snagged for herself the singular honor of leading an archaeological team to the desert wilderness of Sarma, into the ruins of an ancient Sarmian society, to dig for clues to why the Sarmians were so much like humans.

  What they were seeking was not just insights into how ancient and prehistoric Sarmians might have lived, but also confirmation of the only theory that could explain them, a theory so radical that it could have been easily dismissed if the very existence of the Sarmians were not such a radical thing. What the scientists of Earth hoped the planet Sarma might yield was any clue to the identity and nature of the aliens who, the theory held, had come to Earth eons ago and abducted prehistoric humans, taking them across the stars to guide and shape their evolution for some unknowable purpose. The Sarmians were one riddle whose answer might expose a greater one.

  And that was what brought Gwendolyn light years from Earth into the heat and dust and undeniable beauty of another planet, supervising other archaeologists and students in the digging and scraping and sorting and categorizing for later study of structures buried in the sand and the objects and artifacts that they contained. As much as Gwendolyn loved and cared about the work, it made her wish that she were a leaner and lighter woman. Gwen was pretty—an almost luminous beauty in fact—with a soft round face, bright blue eyes, and an incandescent smile. When she did not have her hair bound up in a scarf or rolled up under a hat, it fell in loose black curls about her shoulders. But it was in the mid section that she felt a bit ponderous when she went to work on a dig. Her hips, buttocks, and thighs had somewhat more of a spread than she would have liked. At times she would watch the female students who accompanied her on digs, note their hips and thighs that lacked the same spread, and think, A decade and a half ago, that was me.

  But then, a decade and a half ago Gwendolyn was not one of the youngest leaders of the field of xenoarchaeology, whose perseverance had contributed to humanity's greater understanding of the non-human species of the galaxy. A decade and a half ago she could only dream of leading the effort to understand the other human-like species in the galaxy, something that biology had predicted man would never see. Even if she was not what the most desirable men wanted to take to bed, there were compensations.

  Work on Sarma proceeded uneventfully until Gwen and the crew noticed a greying of what had been a perfect blue sky, and a low sound like a million heavy breaths exhaling coming in from the distance. They all looked up from their tools and their excavations and found something growing and looming into view on the horizon. It was a spreading vastness of ruddy brown emerging over the hills in the distance, and it could mean only one thing. Gwen cursed the luck. While modern Sarmian society was as advanced as Earth in many ways, they did not have a lot of the niceties of Earth, such as weather-tracking and severe weather dissipation systems. On Earth, massive sandstorms rising out of nowhere had ceased to be a problem long ago. Sarma, damn it all, still had them.

  As the airborne tsunami of sand came rushing in, Gwen ordered everyone to cover up their work, throw on scarves and goggles, and take cover themselves. She had just gotten her tools into an electric wheelbarrow along with some pottery whose markings and symbols she wanted to study and covered her eyes and her face when everything around her disappeared into flying sand. She pulled her electrolocator out of her pocket and turned it on, meaning to use it to find her way around by detecting masses and other moving bodies in the low visibility of the sandstorm. The screen on the device showed the shapes of structures and devices around her and the moving forms of the rest of her party. It also detected two other moving bodies coming up behind her, which she took to be simply two other members of her team looking for shelter.

  And it was then—ah-ha, then!—when that damn pain in her head started. She wondered now if she might have accidentally backed into something, but no, she remembered that the electrolocator showed nothing in the flying sand behind her but those two moving bodies. Her next assumption was that one of them had run into her. What sense did that make, one of them running into the back of her head? Which led to her next hypothesis: she had been struck on the back of the head, deliberately hit. And that was when the sandstorm and everything else disappeared into blackness in her memory.

  Now, opening her eyes and w
incing from that nagging throb in her skull, Gwen started to become aware of other things. There was something unfamiliar under her, soft and cushiony and satiny. And whatever she had on, it wasn't the durable fatigues that she had been wearing on the dig. It was soft too, luxurious and flowing. Getting her vision back into focus, Gwen saw that she was in a circular room with windows from floor to ceiling on every side. Outside and stretching out all around was a panorama of the Sarmian countryside in which she had been digging, with whirling and billowing clouds of sandstorm whipping through it, thinning here and thickening there. Inside the room, everything was red and gold and magenta. It was all silky, satiny fabrics, drapes and blankets and carpets, divans and cushions and Ottomans, and a very large bed on which she was resting. And Gwen was dressed not for an archaeological dig, but in a flowing gown that suggested activities of a totally different sort.

  After a moment of utter bewilderment taking this all in, Gwen sat up on the bed and blurted out her confusion: "What in the name of hell am I doing here?"

  Her voice bounced off the walls and windows of her surroundings, and only silence greeted her outburst. She half expected she had no answer forthcoming and would have to get up and start looking for one. That was when a portal at the far end of the chamber hissed and slid open, and he came striding in.

  He was a Sarmian, no question about that. But in Gwen's unscientific opinion he was the most jaw-dropping specimen of manhood ever to appear before her wondering eyes. He was tall, like a pillar on a monument to masculinity. He wore nothing but loose-fitting silken leggings and thin, solid-gold armbands on a body built to be naked. It seemed to her that nature had taken on the role of a sculptor and hewn the most perfect body humanly imaginable from solid marble, then rendered it into flesh. The face was as chiseled as the rest of him, with a handsomeness that appeared to command without words, Submit to desire. Short brown hair crowned his head. Eyes the color of the desert sands blazed hotly at her. In his expression was no violence, no threat, but the unspoken understanding that he was accustomed to being obeyed. But even in this tone, the words that he poured out in a low voice like a desert wind were surprisingly gentle: "Gwendolyn, you are awake. It is good. I have been most anxious to know you. I bid you welcome."