No Choice but Seduction Read Online Free PDF

under the robe as she debated what to do. It was probably just a cat trapped in an empty room. This would be the second time she’d come across that situation in her travels, if that was what this was. It had been late summer when she’d arrived in England, it was now early fall, and innkeepers left windows open, even windows in their vacant rooms, to keep them fresh-smelling as long as they could before the weather turned too cold. Stray cats found their way in through those open windows looking for food, then forgot how to get out and made a racket about it.
    Trying the door would tell her immediately if the room was occupied. If it was locked, she’d have to consider going downstairs to complain to the innkeeper. If it opened, the noisy cat would likely scurry out into the corridor and run off, and her problem would be solved.
    The door opened when she turned the knob. She pushed it wide enough for the cat to run out, but no cat appeared. There was an orange glow in the room as if a fire was dying out, or a lamp was turned down low, which indicated the room was occupied by people rather than stray cats.
    She closed the door quietly, embarrassed now that she’d opened the door to someone’s room. She didn’t move, though. What had caused the mewling sound? A baby? That had been her other thought. The parents might be so used to the sound that it wouldn’t wake them. But there it was again, that mewling, and oddly, it sounded more desperate now.
    She was just going to have a little peek, she told herself as she opened the door again and stuck her head around its edge to see into the room. A lamp was turned so low it was probably going to extinguish itself at any moment. There was the bed, occupied by a couple of people under the sheets, one softly snoring.
    She looked quickly for a basket on the floor that might contain a baby, and if she found it, she was going to wake its parents to take care of it. But she found a pair of wide eyes staring at her instead, eyes that seemed to be pleading with her, belonging to a child who was gagged and sitting on the floor in the corner. Boy or girl she couldn’t tell, nor could she see if the child’s hands were tied, too. A blanket concealed that, but she guessed that they were, since no effort had been made to remove the gag.
    The sensible thing to do would be to close the door and run downstairs for help. But Katey didn’t care about being sensible. She had to get that child out of there. She’d worry later about whether she had any right to interfere. A visit to the local magistrate would clear that up, and if the child had to be returned to its parents, maybe the magistrate could instill enough fear in them to keep them from mistreating their child again.
    That mistreatment infuriated her and carried her straight across the room without a thought for the two people sleeping in the bed. But when she reached the child and removed the blanket, which revealed the long copper hair of a female child, Katey saw that the mistreatment was much worse than she’d thought. Not only was the girl tied hand and foot, but a long strip of cloth also secured her in place, one end tied around her ankle, the other tied around one of the legs of the bed. That’s why she hadn’t tried to wiggle or roll her way out of there.
    Katey quickly untied the long strip of cloth and picked up the girl. Now she was more mindful that the people in the bed could wake up at any moment. Whispering “Shh” to the child just in case she didn’t realize she was being rescued and started making noise again, Katey furtively tiptoed out of the room and managed to close the door behind them without having to set the girl down. She then rushed to her own room, placed the girl in the room’s single chair, quickly locked her own door, and lit a lamp so she could see what she was doing before she tackled the ropes.
    The ropes turned out to be thin strips of rough cloth, with knots that were much too tight to work