Bound to Be a Bride (5 page)

The reappearance of the other two men changed the tenor of whatever had transpired or had been about to transpire in their absence. Isabella asked, as tactfully as such a thing could be asked, if she might have a moment or two of privacy to do her ablutions. All three men reined in their horses with comic speed and turned out of the small clearing. They had her mare on a lead trotting happily after the other horses.

Javier called over his shoulder, “We will be a five-minute walk straight west.”

Isabella smiled at their awkward male aversion to anything to do with the rudimentary functions of the female anatomy. The nuns had told her in fierce tones that men were
never
to be included in any discussion of that nature, especially anything to do with her monthly blood or the pains that accompanied it. All of those experiences were excellent opportunities to practice restraint and do penance, for which she had been thoroughly trained. Her discomfort was an opportunity to remain amiable and reliable, regardless of her body’s limitations. And that is how the nuns had trained her to regard the human body. Limiting. Something that had to be tolerated until an eternity of heavenly rest came at last.

A husband wanted a beautiful, charming, delightful wife, the nuns had explained to Isabella on the day she departed the convent. All Isabella could think during the entire two-hour recitation of their womanly wisdom was,
How
would
you
know?!
None of them had ever been a wife. Not physically, at least. All of them were married to Jesus just as legitimately as Isabella would have been married to that complacent de la Mina heir, but Isabella—despite her successful efforts to limit her physical… pleasure… to middle-of-the-night, solitary, sinless dreams—suspected a real husband of the flesh might have some additional… demands.

When she was feeling particularly optimistic, Isabella even imagined a husband who might want to share that intimate knowledge of her body, just as she would be curious about the workings of his. She shook her head to erase that foolish idea—it was probably a sin just to imagine such a travesty—then shook her bottom to make sure she had shaken off as much as she could before rising from the crouching position behind the tree and readjusting her drawers, chemise, infernal corset, and overdress.

Isabella ran the short distance to meet up with her fellow travelers, spurred on by her girlish enthusiasm for the first full day of her new life.

***

Javier fought the image of a crouching Sol (damn her for not giving him a real name to fondle in his brain) with her bare bottom peeking out from beneath the layers and layers of fabric. God help him; contemplating the turn of that ass had already taken up far too much of his time, and he had only been awake for two hours.

She was a spectacular horsewoman, at least. He did not have to worry about her hampering their aggressive pace. No one spoke while they were on the move, but the few times they stopped to water the horses and eat their small rations, the four of them agreed that they need not overcomplicate their plans. She looked the most like Javier, dark and aristocratic, so they decided she would pretend to be his younger sister who was being taken to live with a cousin in Aveiro, should anyone on the road inquire.

“A man in a coat like that would never let his sister wear a dress like this.” Isabella gestured to Javier then back to herself. She was still holding the last hunk of stale bread that had served as her lunch clenched in her fingers.

Sebastián smiled. After a few hours together, he was already beginning to enjoy the company of this impertinent young woman who knew just what to say to unhinge the authority of his best friend.

“What do you mean by ‘a coat like that’?” Javier asked with a bit of petulance. “This is a perfectly serviceable cropped riding coat.”

Isabella and Sebastián shared a conspiratorial smile.

“What? It’s a simple blue coat.”

With that, Marco joined in making fun of his friend. “A simple coat, Javi, really? Is that why it took your tailor in Madrid four weeks to get it right?”

Javier scowled at all of them. “Enough. One well-made coat is worth many of lesser quality. That is a known truth.”

Isabella finished chewing the last bits of her bread, licking her fingers for every stray crumb. She looked up to see that Javier’s frown had deepened. She straightened her features back into seriousness and looked squarely at this challenging man. “I agree completely. The same known truth applies to one well-made dress… that an older brother like you would surely provide for his dependent.”

Marco and Sebastián started laughing.

Javier looked at them like the traitors they’d become over the past few hours of traveling with this unsettling girl. Their laughter died down and he turned back to face her.

“Surely, you are not suggesting that I purchase a dress for you when we arrive in Aveiro?”

“Oh!” Isabella smiled as if the idea had never occurred to her and delighted her, clasping her hands together. “How kind of you to offer!”

He opened his mouth to protest, but Isabella forced him to hold his silence by continuing her speech at a rapid clip.

“But of course I could never accept such an… intimate… gift from a gentleman not of my acquaintance, regardless of this charming ruse you have all agreed to enact on my behalf. No. I have my own… resources. I was just hoping that we might find a jeweler interested in acquiring them. And then I will purchase my own dress.”

Javier was looking at her with more interest now. “Jewelry, you say?”

“You sound a bit too avid for my taste, sir, but if you must know, yes it is. And before you suggest it, I did not steal it. It is well and truly mine.”

Her face clouded with the realization that her father was willing to sell her—there was no point in being euphemistic about it—for a few primitive stones set in a Maltese cross that looked like an ill-trained smithy had hammered it. She was not certain a jeweler would even want it. Even so, Isabella felt a twinge of guilt. She had not actually fulfilled her end of the bargain that had secured the cross, a gift from the de la Mina family to their son’s intended bride.

Isabella had argued with herself about it, then rationalized that the letter from Señor de la Mina had clearly stated it was an
engagement
present to Isabella herself. She had been engaged, after all.

“Are you quite finished?” Javier’s stern voice sliced through her thoughts.

“What do you mean?”

“You were doing that tedious murmuring again. You may want to practice concealing your thoughts before entering the real world.”

Isabella was offended by his high-handed tone, but suspected he was right.

By late afternoon, they had found another protected copse in which to spend the night. The horses were fettered near a stream and Isabella had proved that she was not boasting when she prepared the two rabbits that Sebastián had snared. She cleaned them and cooked them over the fire.

Isabella noticed again that whenever she ate or licked her fingers clean, Javier seemed to become particularly annoyed, finally huffing and getting up from the campfire. Then, after she had returned from taking care of herself before she fell asleep, Javier was waiting for her with the ropes.

Her stomach flipped, and she did not want to contemplate whether it was hope or fear that had caused the strange excitement to whip through her.

“I am not sure that is necessary,” she said softly. Sebastián and Marco had already fallen asleep on the far side of the campfire.

“We have saddlebags full of valuable supplies and—” He looked away, almost ashamed, then back into her eyes. “I just cannot take the chance of you stealing anything or slipping away and revealing our location.”

She stared at him and felt the wave of heat come up her body, from her stomach and over her breasts. Her breath became shallow. “Here.” She lifted her hands up, the wrists already together. Even though they were bare, she acted as if she were already bound.

When she saw the way Javier’s jaw tensed and his black eyes shone, Isabella had the strangest impression that her submission was actually a peculiar form of power that she wielded. Her body was eager to have his hands on her again, and if this ritualistic binding was going to bring that about, her rapidly beating heart seemed to suggest she should leap at the chance.

She stood like that for a few long moments, the position oddly prayerlike, staring into his eyes. “You should,” she whispered. “I’ve been told I sleepwalk and sometimes speak in the night. It’s probably for the best.” She raised her hands slightly higher, offering them to him.

His exhale seemed strained, but he did what he had set out to do. She realized now that the methodical wrapping of her wrists was a form of artistry. She smiled as he wound the ropes tenderly around her pale skin, her breasts tightening in her corset, that unfamiliar heat building between her legs.

When he finished with her wrists, he gestured toward the ground. She looked and saw that he had made a pallet out of two of the horse pads, and the army blanket from the night before was folded neatly at the end.

“Why thank you, Javier. A bed.” She spoke quietly and sat down slowly, then stretched her legs out.

He knelt down on one knee, his forearm resting casually across his other thigh.

“Here. Let me help you get settled.”

Isabella reclined onto her back, turned onto her side, and pulled her bound hands closer to her chin, as if she were snuggling into them.

“Do you want to tie my ankles as well?”

“Yes,” he said, but his voice sounded thick and unfamiliar. Almost greedy.

He spread the blanket over her, then lifted it away from where it covered her feet. Isabella gasped when his fingers touched the bare skin above her ankle boot, then quickly closed her mouth and eyes, hoping that her sinful pleasure at his touch might not be so obvious.

Javier tied her ankles with the same attentive precision he had used at her wrists. He tried to convince himself that he was not employing his usual speed and skill because he was trying to be mindful of her safety, but the truth was that he wanted his fingers on her supple skin for as many long seconds as he could steal. He had figured the girl would try to defy him when he suggested he was going to have to bind her each night on their way to Aveiro. She had proved quite amenable, showing admirable equestrian and culinary skills and generally not making a nuisance of herself. Perhaps he had hoped to infuriate her so he would have an excuse to deposit her at the next village and never think about her again. Perhaps, he’d thought, it was a good plan to provoke her to petulance or disobedience so he would no longer… think about her in that way.

To say that plan had gone awry would be putting it mildly.

When she raised her joined wrists to him, gave them to him, he nearly took a step away from her, from the flood of desire that coursed through him. He felt the shock of it when his fingers touched the skin of her wrist, and he saw the softening gleam in her eyes as she allowed him to take her. God, if he could feel this way merely tying her up, he could only begin to fathom what he could feel if he
really
took her this way. Pliant. Wanting. Staring at him in that eager way.

He shook his head, realizing he was done with her ankles. He patted the ropes and then traced his index finger at the top where it touched her bare skin to make sure it was not too tight. His instructor had taught him with particular care, paying special attention to the precise location of the rope, how it affected bone and muscle, veins and tendons. How to speed up or slow down circulation. Of course he knew it was not too tight. He had learned everything there was to know about different ropes and their applications, an art form that had been passed down for generations.

Nearly two hundred years prior, six Japanese men had remained in Spain after joining the renowned Japanese emissary Faxecura Rocuyemon on his tour of Europe and the Americas. Those six men, who had converted to Catholicism and learned Spanish from missionaries while they still lived in Japan, subsequently married Spanish women and thrived in the town of Coria del Río, near Sevilla. Their Japanese Samurai arts had been passed down in the greatest secrecy from generation to generation, with the eldest son of each family carrying both the private cultural history and the public surname Japón.

One of Javier’s closest friends at the seminary in Pamplona had been Tomás Japón. As they had gotten to know and trust each other, Tomás had finally confided what he considered to be his terrible secret. His ancestors had made every attempt to publicly dismiss their Japanese heritage, lest they fall victim to the xenophobia that had defined Spain in the seventeenth century. In private, however, they had passed on the traditional arts of the samurai, including
Hojojutsu
, the formal art of binding and wrapping.

Javier had found his calling. Tomás had laughed at his friend’s enthusiasm, especially when he realized Javier had little or no use for the martial art as it related to the traditional taking of prisoners and parading them shamefully through the streets before beheading them. Javier had almost immediately seen the erotic possibilities. Initially, he practiced on a few lusty and cheerful wenches in Pamplona, then he perfected his technique with a “widow” of a certain age in Olite. He suspected she had never been married, but she was particularly limber and game and it was of little consequence to Javier what she called herself. For nearly two years, he had visited her on a weekly basis, creating more and more complicated variations on the
Hojojutsu
theme. He had never left her wanting.

Then, when he began organizing the rebel forces and turning his attention more wholeheartedly to his political goals, he assumed the art of bondage was something that he would have to chalk up to youthful curiosity. The idea that he might find a woman, a virgin, by the looks of it, of marriageable age, who seemed to be quite… amenable… to his bondage fantasies, was something he had never dared hope for. Of course, he could suppress the urge, but if someone just happened to present herself, and she just happened to get a strange gleam of anticipation in her eye, and she just happened to offer herself up to him as if she had no greater desire than to be bound by him? Then he might change his philosophical position on the hand of divine providence after all.