Seacrets (30 page)

“I’ll be waitin’ on ya, missy.” And with his last word he slapped Mallory on her buttocks.

Mallory spun on her heels quickly and with a great force, slapped Kilern squarely on the side of his face, to the point of leaving a raised welt in it’s wake.“Don’t you ever lay a hand to me again, Kilern. I am not that quisling you’ve got stowed away in there. I’ll kill you. You understand my meaning?” With a final glare, Mallory descended the stairs and walked toward her carriage with an arrogant swagger.

ξ

Chapter Twenty-Six

Pressed up against the door, Maura could hear the clicking of Mallory’s heels as she made her way down off the wracked porch steps. Hearing Kilern’s heavy booted footsteps making his way back into the house, she quickly inched her way back to her corner beneath the toppled table.

After entering the
room, he walked over to her hiding place and crouched down to peer at her huddled into the farthest corner. Reaching in, he grabbed her by the front of her bodice and yanked her out from beneath the table. “Ya canna hide from ya fate, gel.” His face just inches from her own.

Maura
could smell his fowl breath. She turned her face from his. He leaned in and ran his encrusted mouth and tongue down the length of her neck to the swell of her breast, and sucked on the flesh just above the cloth of her ripped chemise. She knew there was no way out this time. The rape of her body was an inevitability she would not be able to avoid.

Kilern pushed her backwards to the floor and stepped away from her.

Maura watched as Kilern walked toward the chamber pot at the opposite side of the room. He did not even bother to turn his back to her. He brazenly unraveled the ties on his breeches and exposed himself to her. He mocked and taunted her. “This be what awaits ya gel,” As he boldly fondled himself.  

 
              When Kilern finished relieving his bladder, he walked back towards Maura, crouched down to her level and lifted back the tattered table cloth. “Sorry ta disappoint ya darlin’, but he’s not quite ready for ya yet”, he cackled as he clutched the urine stained area of his breeches.

“I’ve other things ta attend ta before I can let ya have ya way with me, hehe.” Kilern dropped the tablecloth and walked towards the door.

When Maura heard the door slam, she felt this was her chance to try to cut her ties and escape. She worked tirelessly to cut her bonds and finally her efforts paid off. Her wrists were free and she easily began to work on the ropes at her ankles.

The thought of Daniel lying in his bed possibly dying and full of worry over her, kept her from her own fears of what would happen should Kilern come back and find her unbound. He would defile her and kill her
this time for certain. She must hurry. Her heart was racing. Her brow, covered with beads of sweat. Her throat was as dry as the dessert.

With one last cut, with the dull cheese knife, her legs were free. Maura dropped the knife at her side and rubbed her ankles where the tight ropes had left their burn marks.

Maura jumped to her feet to look out the window to see where Kilern might be.

She struggled
to open the window. She tugged and pulled on the window sash, but it was no use. The weathered years had taken their toll. The panes of glass were filthy and mud streaked. She could not make out whether it was day or night outside.

Finally,
Maura thought to chance it and break the panes on the window to make her escape. She looked around the room to find something heavy enough to break through the wooden frames and glass. By the looks of the casings, it would not take much. Maura walked to the opposite side of the room, picked up the toppled chair and crashed it through the glass and wood as if it were a dolls house. She pushed the remaining chards of glass and splintered wood to the outside, then climbed up onto the chair to make her escape.

She
was halfway out the window when she felt herself being dragged back inside by her ankles.

“Leavin’ so soon? Why, I’ll not hear
of it, hehe.” He cackled and flashed his bean toothed grin.

Maura fought even harder
. She kicked and screamed. The front of her gown was completely torn from her, right down to her undergarments. Her skin was torn and bleeding from the broken glass and splintered wood.

“It matters not, ta me, whether ya be all prim and proper or if ya are a mess. I’ll take ya any way I can get ya, my beauty. Wild and fightin’ is what I prefer. So you go right ahead and scratch and claw all ya like.”
He had dragged her back down onto the floor and was lying atop of her, his bulk pinning her down.

Maura could feel his hard bulbous mass pressing into her thigh, as he rubbed himself up against her. His mouth was now just inches, from hers. She turned her face from his to keep from smelling his fowl breath.
He licked the length of her face from her jaw line to her temple. She thought she would vomit from the smell of his breath and the slimy feeling of his tongue on her skin. He reached down to grab her exposed breast. Maura winced in pain as the salt from his dry palm stung the open wounds upon her breast. The grim from his hands comingling with her blood made her sick to her stomach.

“The feel of ya softness beneath my palm makes me forget why I’ve gone through so much trouble ta keep my paws off of ya, until now.” He breathed in deep then bent his head to her exposed breast and licked the blood from the side of it. “Ya are havin’ no idea how good ya are tastin’ ta me, now, lass.” His voice was ragged.
“Now if ya are a good girl and do as ya are told, I won’t be harmin’ ya. But if ya give me a hard time of it, well ya be makin’ it that much harder on ya self, gel.” Kilern passed his hand over her stomach and rested it upon the junction of her thighs. He ran his palm along the length of her inner thigh and made a searing sound as if her thigh were burning his palm.

Maura felt helpless. She knew there would be no getting out of this and she would have to succumb to his violation of her body.
Nevertheless, she must survive if she wanted to see Daniel again. She would do what she must, to survive. That was her only consolation. She would have to remove herself from the horror that was swallowing up her human form, and just take herself to another place.

Kilern had returned his hand to the junction of her
thighs, penetrated his disgusting, grimy fingers inside her velvety folds, and let out a low groan. “I don’t know that I kin wait for ya ta have been taken by another. I’m wantin’ ta take ya myself. I want ta feel ya soft moist heat around my shaft.” He held her down with one strong, forceful arm and began to untie his breeches with the other. He forced them down, then kicked one leg free of a pant leg. He climbed atop her and forced her legs apart.

Maura
lie there motionless. She refused to give him what he wanted in the way of a fight.

“Oh gel ya are goin’ ta feel so good with ya velvet wrapped ‘round me.”

As he began to enter her, Maura instinctively tried to thwart his mission, by bringing her knee up between them. He began to laugh heartily in her ear.“That’s right, gel, you fight me. It will make it all worthwhile. The chase is half the fun of it.” He cackled his disgusting laugh again and continued to grope at her breasts.

Maura’s head began to pound and the room was spinning. She was remembering being on the ship and that Kilern had violated her body then.
One memory, after another, exploding in her mind. The memories were flooding her brain too swift to know what was real and what her mind was doing to help her get through this horror. She thought quick, and through gritted teeth whispered into Kilern’s ear, “I am not the virgin you think me ta be, Kilern.”

He stopped his effrontery of her body, momentarily, and looked into her eyes.

Maura grinned at his disappointment. She could see it in his eyes he was incensed.

“I was intimate with the Captain aboard the Arabella.” She could feel her spine straightening beneath her as his arrogance was beginning to wane.
“So ya little pot o’ gold is no more!” she shouted and spit into his face, knowing what was to follow. However, in her mind it was worth it not to die like a weakling.

“You bitch! You will surely pay for this, and hard, as well!”

Kilern forced her legs apart, but before he entered her, he wanted her to feel real pain. He bent to her breast and bit down on the side of it.

Maura screamed out in agony. She thought she would faint from the pain.

“I want ta make sure that ya take a souvenir that ya won’t soon forget, from our little tryst.” Then he drove his enormous shaft deep into her.

Maura thought she was being split in half from the force of him.
She screamed out and arched her back up toward him. When she did this, she could feel a flat sharp object beneath her.

In his haste to imbed himself into her body, he had let go of her hands.

Maura searched frantically for the knife she had dropped earlier.

Kilern was ramming himself into her over and over again
, cursing her with every thrust.

“You bitch! You’ll regret the day ya crossed me! When I’m done sellin’ ya off ta every man in the fleet, no one will want ya sorry used up arse”
He grabbed onto her hips, giving several painful thrusts into her and then collapsed onto her, exhausted from his rage.

Maura was numb from her head to her toes. She was in a trance. It was as if she were watching this happening to someone else.
Maura felt something in her hand. She wrapped her fingers around the wooden shaft, pulled it out to her side and then the next thing that she remembered was standing over Kilern’s lifeless body.

Maura,
still in a trance, sensed someone else in the room. She could hear a voice speaking to her, but could not understand what was being said to her. She turned slowly toward the voice, still clutching the knife in her hand, blood trickling down her forearm.

“My God, Maura!”  Aiden screamed from the door arch.
“What the bloody hell has happened here?”

Maura was awakened from her dream state and realized what she had done. She dropped the knife and stepped away from it and Kilern’s body.

Chapter
Twenty-Seven

Aiden grabbed the tattered tablecloth from the floor and wrapped it around Maura’s half naked and bloodied body. He sat her down on the floor across the room, away from the body.

“Tell me what happened, Maura.” Aiden plead
ed with Maura. His voice was calm and soothing.

             
As much as she could remember, she told her tale. “Kilern had planned to sell my virginity to the highest bidder and then peddle me off into the sex trade over seas.” Her voice was shaking. “I thought if I told him I was not a virgin, he would kill me and my ordeal would be over and I would not have to suffer the memory and shame of rape.” She buried her face into her hands and began to sob uncontrollably to the point of exhaustion.

Aiden
drew her into his arms, rocking her until she had no more tears left to cry.

“He raped me, anyway, Aiden and I suppose in my natural will to want to live and survive… I killed him. She began to cry again.
“I am no better than he, Aiden… no better.” She could barely breathe at the notion she had taken the life of another. In her mind, she had committed the ultimate sin.

“You did what anyone would have done to protect themselves, Maura. You did nothing wrong.”
He tried consoling her.

Maura wiped her nose on
a corner of the tattered tablecloth that served as her cover. “How did you find me, Aiden?” Maura asked.

“Well I started out lookin’ down around the dock area and then I thought whoever took you may have hidden you out in one of the ordinaries on the outskirts of town, waiting for the dust to settle. I
began asking around and Frederick, the mail carrier, said he thought he heard some odd ruckus out here at this abandoned shanty, while riding past here, early this morn.  So, ‘tis really Andrew ya should be thankful to. It may have taken weeks before we found ya.”

Maura’s eyes were cast downward. “I wish ya had not found me a’ tall, Aiden.”

“Look Maura once ya are back at Hargendon Manor and in the safe keepin’ of my brother and family, you’ll get past this. I know ya will.” He tried to assure her.

“C’mon, now Lass, we’ve got ta get the constable to clean up this mess and get ya home.” Aiden stood and extended his hand to Maura but she just sat there staring at the lifeless body of her rapist.

“I canna go back ta Hargendon Manor with ya, Aiden. I have committed the murder of another human. They’ll throw me ta the gallows.” She cried. What’s more, I will never want Daniel ta know this vile pig, this poor excuse for a human has taken what has been his. Aiden…Daniel and I were…intimate, in the carriage house, the night of the garden party.” She confessed. “After all the guests had left, Daniel and I walked to the carriage house, together, to retrieve Demon. Daniel was then goin’ ta take me back ta the guesthouse. Tensions had been buildin’ between ya brother and myself for some time and, well…I shamelessly gave myself ta him, like a common street whore.” Maura was sniffling back more tears of shame. “Aiden Daniel will never believe I did naught bring this onto myself.” Maura’s face was a twisted deformity when she spoke of her ordeal with Kilern.