Bound to Be a Bride Read Free Page B

syllable as if it cost him dearly. “Get me my rope. The narrow one.” He barked the order with easy authority and the taller of the two lackeys quickly obeyed. The devilish Javier tied her up very quickly and very effectively as the shorter man held her in place. When they were finished, the devil shoved her over to their campsite.
    “Sit,” he commanded, then turned away to speak quietly to his friends. Isabella lowered herself awkwardly to the ground, until she was able to tuck her legs beneath her and sit rather demurely against a tree. She tried to hear what the three men were going to do with her as she made a few attempts to tug at the thin, soft rope that held her wrists. Unfortunately, the way she had been tied was far more complicated than she had first assumed. If she tugged in one direction, it tightened around her shoulders. If she pulled at her shoulders, it tightened around her neck. If she sat perfectly still, however, she felt entirely unencumbered, as if there were no rope at all.
    Javier had restrained her so quickly that she had initially assumed he must have been careless. Quite the opposite. Three rows of narrow rope twisted around her wrists and slipped into an invisible knot that continued in one infinite loop around her shoulders and neck, crossing in an X behind her back, then circling back where it met the other wrist.
    Isabella was disoriented, but eventually her head cleared enough to listen to the voices of these strange men. They were not speaking like lackeys… or poachers. They were speaking like… like… her father.
    “Who are you and why are you following us?” The devil had turned and was squatting in front of her. His shoulders were too broad, his wagging finger too close to her face. He spoke in that accusatory way, as if she were a prisoner of war, which, for all she knew, she was. Everyone knew the French and English had allied themselves with all manner of Spanish riffraff in their ongoing skirmishes around her father’s lands.
    She turned her head away, trying to ignore him. She might have tilted her chin up in the tiniest way, but it was only how she was raised. She had not intended to appear arrogant.
    “Are you trying to rekindle my anger? Answer me, you whore!”
    Now, that was quite enough. Her head snapped around. “I am not a whore. That much I can assure you.”
    She noticed that the other two men, standing a few feet behind him, had to turn away rather than let their arrogant leader see their incipient laughter. Perhaps she was the first person in history to speak plainly to the proud Javier.
    “Did you hear that, gentlemen?” Satan barked like a traveling carnival hawker. “She can assure me that she is not a whore… but how will we ever know?”
    The taller one turned around quickly. He no longer showed any sign of mirth. “Javi. Stop this at once. Look at her. She’s pathetic.”
    Now, that was not right either. “I most certainly am not!” Isabella railed. “I am perfectly capable of surviving in the forest, or at sea, or anywhere I happen to find myself in need of… surviving.”
    The three men stared at her—bound—and after a comical beat of openmouthed gaping, burst into peals of uproarious laughter. Satan found it particularly amusing. He stood up quickly (apparently any damage Isabella thought she had landed with her kick to his manhood was very short-lived), and he slapped the palms of his hands against his (rather muscular and right at her eye level) thighs. “Let us leave this snarling little beast to all of her independent accomplishments, shall we?”
    This time, the shorter lackey lost his sense of humor. “Of course, you are joking, Javi. We cannot leave her here. I’m sure you don’t need me to enumerate the reasons.”
    The devil turned to stare at the fire.
    Isabella stretched her legs slightly to put her feet closer to the warmth. Maybe being their prisoner for the night would not be all bad, seeing as how they had already built