The Lily Brand Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Description

  Dedication

  Author's Note

  PART I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  PART II

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  PART III

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  PART IV

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  PART V

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  SANDRA SCHWAB

  The Lily Brand

  Published by Sandra Schwab

  Copyright © 2005, 2015 by Sandra Schwab

  Cover design © Sandra Schwab

  www.sandraschwab.com

  [email protected]

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. The e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used, copied, or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the author except for the purpose of reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual people or events are coincidental.

  Forever Marked

  Troy Sacheverell, fifth Earl of Ravenhurst, was captured in France. He had gone to fight Napoleon, but what he found was much more sinister: Dragged from prison to an old French mansion on the outskirts of civilization, he was purchased by a rich and twisted widow. But more dangerous still was the young woman who claimed him as hers.

  Lillian had not chosen to live with Camille, her stepmother, but nobody escaped the Black Widow’s web. And on her nineteenth birthday, Lillian became Camille’s heir. Her gift was a plaything: a man to end her naiveté, a man perfect in all ways but his stolen freedom. Yet even as Lillian did as she was told and marked that beautiful flesh and branded it with the flower of her name, all she yearned for was escape. In another place, in another world she had desired love. Now, looking into burning blue eyes, she knew there was no place to run. No matter if she should flee, no matter where she might go, she and this man were prisoners of passion, inextricably joined by the Lily Brand.

  And while her heart remained locked in ice, his burnt with hate. Would they ever find true happiness?

  For Amazie,

  as promised

  Author’s Note

  The Lily Brand was my debut novel and was first published in July 2005. I’m thrilled to be able to release a new edition for the book’s tenth anniversary. I cleared up a few typos, but apart from that, the text remains unchanged.

  I would like to take the chance to thank everybody who contacted me over the past ten years to tell me how much they enjoyed Troy and Lillian’s story: Thank you so much! This book holds a special place in my heart, and I hope with this new edition, Troy and Lillian will find even more readers and make even more friends.

  Happy reading!

  Sandra Schwab

  July 2015

  Sign up for Sandra’s newsletter and receive a free copy of the novella A Tangled Web!

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  PART I

  The varying year with blade and sheaf

  Clothes and reclothes the happy plains,

  Here rests the sap within the leaf,

  Here stays the blood along the veins.

  Faint shadows, vapours lightly curl’d,

  Faint murmurs from the meadows come,

  Like hints and echoes of the world

  To spirits folded in the womb.

  —Tennyson, The Day Dream

  Chapter 1

  France, Autumn 1815

  The rattling of the doors was what alerted him first. In this stinking, dim-lit hell where he was imprisoned, the sound meant food at best and the step of the hangman at worst. But then, most of the men had been here for so long that they welcomed even that.

  The shuffling of bodies around him meant his fellow inmates were getting up—both food and hangman were better met standing, if only to rob the prison guards of the glee of hauling one to one’s feet. Warily, Troy stood, ignoring his left leg. The pain there had been a constant comrade ever since his last battle, when shot had peppered his thigh, taking him down, rendering him helpless when he had been taken prisoner. Bringing him here.

  Absentmindedly, he scratched his matted beard, which was dark with dirt. A flea shell cracked under the pressure of two of his grimy fingers, their nails broken, and was flicked away, discarded without conscious thought.

  Too long. It had been too long since he had been brought here.

  He had lost track of the days and weeks and months; they had blurred together and eventually formed eternity. Eternal damnation.

  There had been a rumor that the war was over, that Bonaparte had been overcome. Wasn’t it the custom to release the prisoners of war in case of a defeat? If he had been an officer, they probably would have ransomed him even before that. He had been an officer, he seemed to remember, but he hadn’t been wearing his normal uniform in that last battle. And so he had been treated like a common soldier, had been dragged into an available prison nearby, thrown into the company of thieves and cutthroats, and had been forgotten along with them.

  A small prison at the end of the world, at the edge of the sea—or was it? He could not trust his memories on that score, could not be sure whether the roaring in his ears during the drive on the back of that coarse wagon had been the sound of the waves or just his own blood.

  As the rattling grew louder, his neighbor dug his elbow into Troy’s ribs, causing the chains which tied them to the wall to rattle in counterpoint. “Ey, rouquin,” the man mumbled in coarse French, “what do you think it’ll be today?”

  Troy shrugged.

  The other prisoner licked his gray lips. “A flogging? Has been some time since we had one of those. Gratien will be impatient by now. Lusting after our blood.” A strange light entered his eyes. Troy had seen the likes of it too often to be shocked. If it was to be a flogging they would all be crowded into the small courtyard to watch the spectacle.

  The prisoners liked floggings. It meant an interruption of the gray time in their cells.

  Gratien came into view, shuffling down the aisle between the cells. It might have been a peculiar joke of the Fates that a man whose name meant “pleasing” had grown into a short, red-faced specimen with faded yellow hair, his breath wheezing in his lungs. Yet when Gratien descended into the bowels of his prison, nobody dared to laugh. All the men feared his violent temper.

  This time, however, he did not come alone.

  When the men spotted who was walking behind him, tall and graceful as Death itself, a murmur rippled through the crowd of prisoners as if a stone had been thrown into a dark, depthless lake.

  “La Veuve Noire.”

  “Silence!” The handle of Gratien’s whip banged against the bars before he turned to bow low. “Here are more, madame.” He had stopped in front of Troy’s cell.

  All around him, the men stepped back from the bars in a fruitless attempt to melt into the walls. The Black Widow, with her eyes like cold jewels, was a woman to be feared. Every on
ce in a while she came to the prison to collect… a prize. These men were taken away, never to be heard of again. But there were rumors, strange rumors, strange enough for the prisoners not to seek to become a prize.

  The black silk of the woman’s dress rustled as she turned to look into the cell. “I see.” She spoke with the polished accent of an aristocrat, yet her voice was cold enough to freeze the blood in the veins of a man. Against the black of her clothes, her face seemed ghostly white, the eyes painted in such a way that they appeared to be slanted like a cat’s. A slight smile curved her ruby-red lips, and she snapped her gloved fingers. “Light!”

  Two prison guards hurried forward, each holding a torch that threw a flickering light on the inhabitants of the cell. The Black Widow studied each man as if she were at market and they were the cattle she wished to purchase.

  Troy straightened his back and stared at her, refusing to lower his eyes as everybody else did. Once he had been a man to wield power. Even after all this time, there was enough pride left in him. He would not grovel in front of such a woman.

  “Ah,” she said in pleased tones. “Open the cell.”

  Gratien hurried to obey her command and waved the torchbearers to follow her inside.

  The men shrank away, yet Troy did not notice. Unblinkingly, he continued to stare at the woman until his eyes began to water.

  She halted in front of him, and the torchlight glittered on the golden net that held back the mass of her charcoal hair. “Oh, yes.” Her smile intensified. “Come here, chérie.”

  At first, Troy thought she meant him, but when the Black Widow looked back over her shoulder, he noticed another woman standing in the aisle outside, shoulders slightly hunched upward. Her dress of muted gray made her appear like the sad shadow of her companion. Reluctantly, she stepped into the cell, her eyes darting to the filthy men in chains, to the bare stone floor, to the few dirty rushes.

  “Don’t be so shy, chérie.” La Veuve Noire extended her hand, fingers beckoning.

  Troy blinked.

  The other woman, he now saw, was hardly more than a girl. A girl who tightly pressed her lips together. He watched as she laid her hand in the hand of the widow and was drawn forward.

  “What do you think of that?”

  Looking down, the girl shuffled her foot in the rushes, refusing to acknowledge the question, refusing to meet Troy’s gaze.

  “Great, great…” Gratien hurried to the widow’s side, closing his fingers around Troy’s forearm. “A good one, that. Young. Madame wished for young, non? Good shape, very good shape…”

  Madame deigned to smile some more. “Everywhere?” she asked with arched eyebrows.

  “Pardon? Oh… well…” Huffing and puffing, Gratien abruptly released Troy’s arm. “I’m sure… if madame would like to feel…”

  “Indeed.” The widow let go of the girl’s hand in order to strip the glove from her own. Long, white fingers came into view, crowned by long nails, their color matching her red lips.

  Troy wanted to jerk out of reach, yet his back was already against the wall, and now Gratien was pressing the end of his whip into the soft spot under his chin, forcing Troy’s head upwards and back so that he would not move. Troy swallowed convulsively, felt the hard wood pressing against his windpipe, before the woman’s fingers closed over the worn material of his breeches and around his manhood. He shuddered with revulsion as, chuckling, she roughly measured the width and length of him.

  “Not bad,” she murmured, “not bad. Chérie?" She reached back with her free hand and again brought the girl to her side. “Your glove.”

  From the corner of his eyes, Troy saw Gratien lick his lips. He was dimly aware of the soft clinking of his fellow inmates’ chains as they watched this spectacle in uncomfortable silence.

  Then the pressure of the widow’s long fingers eased, only to be replaced by another, softer grip. All Troy could see was the girl’s bent head, with the torchlight flickering over dark brown curls.

  “Well,” la Veuve Noire said. “What do you think, Lillian?”

  The girl raised her head and, for the first time, looked at Troy. Her eyes, he saw, were very wide, and it appeared as if the pupil had swallowed up the iris. She was, he realized, not just embarrassed by this situation, but very much afraid.

  “Stroke him some,” the woman commanded. After all, we want to know whether it is in good working order.

  Over the reek of the prison cell that he had long ago ceased to notice, Troy suddenly became aware of another smell, fresh and sweet, of flowers, perhaps, whose names he had forgotten. He felt the girl’s hand quiver and her teeth came down to bite her lower lip, hard. Yet she did as she was told.

  As the perfume wafted around him and the girl's fingers worked on him, stroking, stroking, arousing, he closed his eyes and remembered how long it had been since he had last lain with a woman. Soon sweat beaded his forehead, while fire ran through his body, pooling in his loins. His hips jerked forward.

  It was obscene.

  Troy gritted his teeth.

  “Very nice,” the widow commented. “I think it will do.

  Abruptly, the fingers were removed and the pressure against his windpipe disappeared. Troy staggered, the blood roaring in his ears. With something akin to surprise he realized that he was quivering like a cornered animal.

  La Veuve Noire spoke one last time. “We will take that one then. Clean it and shave it—we would not want any vermin to come along. Then put it in the second carriage as usual. We will wait outside.”

  ~*~

  On the coarse road, washed out by recent rain, the carriage was rocking like a ship on high seas. Nevertheless, Lillian sat ramrod-straight, counterbalancing the motion of the vehicle with movements of her hips. Her stepmother lounged in the opposite comer, a thin smile on her blood-red lips. Like the cat who got the canary. But then, Camille had got a canary of some sort—even if it was not for herself.

  The key on Lillian’s golden necklace seemed to burn through cloth and skin, a visible promise of the things to come. She resisted the urge to tug her coat tighter around herself. Emotion, she had learned from an early age, was a weakness that one could not afford to show at Château du Marais. Instead she looked outside, to where the mist rose from the ground to blur all shapes and to render the landscape a gray, ghostly place of hopelessness. Like that prison.

  Involuntarily, her hands tightened into fists on her lap.

  The prison, the manor house, and the mines—they all were part of the land her stepmother owned, and they all formed a unity that fed on people’s despair, a well for Camille’s pleasure. On these outskirts of civilization Camille had spun a tight, powerful web, with herself holding all the threads. And those who got entangled in it were doomed, one way or another.

  From beneath her lashes, Lillian shot a look at her stepmother.

  Camille’s smile deepened. “You were quite shy today, chérie. Did Gratien’s little institution overwhelm you?”

  “It was my first time, maman.” Lillian chose her words with care. It would endanger her plans to anger Camille even in the smallest way. Better to pretend submission, compliance. “But let me thank you for my present. It is… lovely.”

  Her stepmother nodded amiably. “It is quite a nice specimen. And so much… spirit.” She licked her lips as if in anticipation. “It will be a pleasure to break it in. A challenge.” She raised a brow at Lillian. “Naturally, you will have to do that yourself.”

  “Oui, maman.”

  Outside, the world seemed even bleaker than before.

  ~*~

  When they arrived at Château du Marais, dinner had already been prepared for them, giving the servants time to prepare the man. Lillian did not taste any of the food she forced down her throat; she could have eaten sand and it would not have made any difference.

  The candlelight gleamed off Antoine’s bronzed chest, sparkled on the gold bands around his arms. He stood behind Camille’s chair, serving his mistress in sile
nce, his face expressionless, the mark on his forehead smooth. Lillian tried very hard not to stare at the golden breeches that hugged his hips, blending in quite nicely with the cherry-wood and golden furnishings of the dining room. Trust Camille to mind the details.

  Finally, the door opened to admit Maurice, his short black curls spanning his head like a cap. He, too, was wearing golden breeches, yet his torso was covered in a white silk shirt and his forehead was flawless. The mark, Lillian knew, could be found on his right biceps.

  He stopped at the table and bowed low. “Everything has been prepared, madame.”

  “Très bien.” Camille clapped her hands together, delight shining on her face, and she turned toward her stepdaughter. “Shall we go upstairs, then, chérie, and admire the results?”

  “Oui, maman.” Lillian put her napkin on the table, praying for strength to get through the next half hour. Never had it been more difficult to force a smile onto her lips than at that moment. Composure had been easier to gather even when her father’s coffin was lowered into the grave, leaving her alone with Camille.

  But Lillian stood, straight and graceful, her face as blank as those of the servants.

  Her stepmother led them through the wide hall and up the marble staircase, stone horses rearing up at the end of the rail. It was not far, then, to Lillian’s room, as she had moved rooms on her nineteenth birthday.

  The door opened to reveal another selection of cherry-wood furnishings in combination with white, diaphanous drapes on the windows and the four-poster bed. Even the bed linen shone like untouched snow.

  Blood showed so well on white.

  Across the room loomed one of Camille’s constructions. It had been unused and empty all these past weeks since Lillian’s birthday, but it now held the spread-eagled form of a man, chains stretching his legs and arms so that movement was impossible. Also made impossible was speech, as a gag filled his mouth, the leather strings wrapping around his shaven head, rendering him more helpless than at the prison.

  “Ahhh,” Camille breathed, “magnificent.”