“The countess will see to my punishment.” My voice scratched like sand in my throat. “You needn’t trouble yourself with—”

“Silence!” His roar shook the sagging skin on his cheeks. Then he straightened, drew in a regal breath, and composed his smile and his voice into polite refinement. “As it was my horse you stole, it will be my welts upon your fair flesh.”

As Lady Abigail’s disobedient daughter, I was accustomed to discipline. For propriety’s sake, my punishments were always dispensed in the presence of a lady’s chaperon. And usually delivered with a strap. Never a cane.

If I were found alone with the marquess, it would ruin my reputation. I didn’t care about that, but as his gaze made a sluggish, skin-crawling voyage over my person, this felt alarmingly, decisively wrong.

“Roll over.” Bending down, he whacked the cane against the soles of my bare feet.

Biting pain bowed my back and hurled me into a fog of righteous fury.

“God damn your blood!” I wheezed, thrashing against the restraints on my arms. “Untie me! It’s getting dark, and the countess will be worried.”

“The countess answers to me.” He lowered to his knees and shoved my skirts up my legs, baring skin that had never been seen by sun or man.

“What are you doing?” I kicked and screamed, helpless to stop him.

He exposed my body all the way to my waist, and I could only stare in horror, the humiliation more than I could bear. The way he leered at my womanhood struck fear so deep in my heart I no longer felt it beating.

“Your beauty confounds me.” He caught my upper thighs in a bruising grip and forced my legs apart. “Untamed and untried, snarling and writhing like an unlicked cub.”

“A pox on your eyes.” My pulse exploded, shooting feverish chills across my flesh. “God’s wounds, cover me!”

“It’s not consistent with reason that a lady invokes God by vain and careless swearing.”

“By God’s feet, his tongue, and all his unmentionables, may he refuse you and condemn your soul to hell.”

His forearm landed across my hips and pinned me to the ground.

“You will roll over.” He pressed the tip of the cane against the private place between my legs. “Or you’ll bleed in ways you’re only beginning to fathom.”

The shivering started in my belly and spread to my limbs. By the time I wriggled onto my stomach, I was trembling so violently I had no control of my tongue. It flopped between my chattering teeth and filled my mouth with blood.

With my backside exposed to the air, I clenched every muscle, bracing for the strike. But when it came, I wasn’t prepared. Without the buffer of clothing, the blow crashed into me like fire, penetrating deep into muscle and bone and robbing my ability to scream.