"You can go to the bathroom, now," conceded Gerault.
"But I am not finish with them!" Yvette protested, rubbing her swollen nether lips with one hand, and her upper lip and nose with the other.
"Go see Le Boeuf, then. I want these people to rest. Tomorrow, Monsieur Fleming goes for the money, ne c'est pas?"
Darla had pulled herself together and started for the bathroom. Gerault followed her out of the room. Yvette pouted sullenly, watching Fleming as he sat up on the edge of the sofa bed. She walked over to him and thrust her hips out.
"Be nice to me. Give me some pleasure. You will not be sorry!" She reached out and picked up his hand, trying to place it in the wet nest of her excitement. He jerked it away from her grasp with a curse.
"You filthy, stinking whore! I wouldn't touch your diseased cunt for anything! You're lower than the dirtiest animal. You're even worse than Gerault. At least he tries to look clean!" His anger boiled up at the disgusting uncleanliness of her.
Gerault and Darla came back into the room, and the girl started to dress as Fleming got to his feet and headed for the bathroom. As he went into the hall, he heard Yvette yell after him.
"I will make you sorry, rich American! No one can talk like that to Yvette!" She lapsed into French, rattling it off at Gerault, who had followed Fleming into the hall. He cut her off with a few words, then accompanied Fleming to the bathroom.
When the victims had been led back to the cellar and shackled, and the family was again left to themselves, Fleming asked his daughter what the conversation was about. She was quiet for a minute, then answered him in a low voice, so that the other two could not hear.
"She was very angry with you for scorning her and calling her names. To get evens she asked Gerault to give her Tommy to play with."
"What did he say?" Fleming felt a chill travel up his back.
"He told her that he'd see – after you left to get the money!"
"Damn! He can't do that! It's not part of the bargain. We did everything they ordered and they have the pictures. Now I have to get the money, or even if they release us those pictures could turn up anywhere to haunt us. God! What a horrible mess!"
"Actually, Daddy Chuck, he can do anything he wants. Until all of us are free, he has all the winning cards! You'd better talk to him and try to reason with him about Tommy. It wouldn't do to make him mad. He thinks you've caused him enough trouble by refusing to pay the ransom in the first place."
Fleming studied his daughter's face, then took a quick look at Ann and Tommy. Both had their eyes closed. He turned back to Darla.
"You think so, too, don't you? You think I should have paid when you first turned up missing, don't you?" His voice was bitter. Darla couldn't be sure whether the bitterness was directed at himself or at her. He could have come to the decision that he'd been wrong in his lifelong opinions about ransoming. Or he could just suspect that she blamed him for all they'd been put through.
"You did what you thought was right, Daddy. No one could ask you to act against the things you believe in. Like I told you before, I'm proud that you had the courage of your convictions when it came to a real test. I know it wasn't easy for you."
"Don't patronize me, Darla!" Fleming roared. He was losing his grip on his temper as his frustrations increased. After years of giving orders, he had been forced to take the kind of orders that he wouldn't have believed anyone capable of giving. His guilt at letting his personal convictions cause the capture and torture of his whole family was now compounded by the guilt he felt about the wildly sexual joy he'd experienced with his own daughter. For her to sympathize with him now was another thorn of guilt in his prickling hide. He blew up.
"Could it be that you're trying to keep me busy thinking about how I got us all into this, just to tout me off the train of thought you don't want me to follow? You wouldn't want me to wonder, would you, about how accomplished a bed partner you are?"
Darla gasped, shocked at what he was insinuating.
"You're a regular bundle of passion, aren't you? A vixen who loves cock so much she don't care how she has it – or even if it's her own father, by God!" He was panting as he sputtered the last words.
Darla was sobbing, now. She knew again the shame she had felt before as she realized her unnatural passions for her father. But one of the excuses she'd had was that he was a desirable person in so many other ways. She couldn't get excited over just any male. But her father had always been so special. He was so understanding and gentlemanly and solicitous for others. This wasn't like him at all. She felt lost – truly lost – for the first time since the whole kidnapping thing had started. She was alone in the midst of her family. The father she'd loved more than anything in the world had turned against her. He hated her.
"Charles!" Ann's voice was like a sharp icicle piercing the thick atmosphere of the cellar. Even in the depth of his angry frustration, Fleming's ears burned at that address. When she called him Charles, Ann was not about to agree with anything he said or did. And the coldness of her tone now promised even more than the usual rhubarb.
"If I weren't chained to this damned wall, I'd come over there and beat you to death with your own damned pocket watch!" Her tone had not gained any warmth since she first spoke to him.
"This whole family is suffering because they trusted you to do the right thing. I could have raised hell back there at the hotel and insisted you pay the ransom. Rut I let you make the decisions. And I'm not about to cry on your shoulder now, just because your handling of the affair has landed us here."
"But I'll be damned if I'll have you condemn that girl for having the depth of sexuality she inherited – in part – from you! As did your son! And I admit to at least half of the genes that are responsible for their passionate natures."
"Just what the devil do you think Tommy and I were forced to do up there? Play pattycake? We gave in to their threats in pretty much the same way that I imagine you two did. And we did things that mother and son should never in God's world do. And we enjoyed it! Both of us! And we were sorry it happened. And we talked it over like two intelligent, educated, enlightened people should. And we decided not to let it ruin our lives."
"But that could all go by the board. You come along with your self-pity and anger at your own weaknesses and accuse your daughter of habitual promiscuity, and you can ruin all our lives!"
"Well, you're not going to do it! I won't let you! This mess is a time for all of us to stick together. And it seems to be a time for revelations, too. Well, let me do a little revealing of my own."
"You seem to be shocked to discover that your daughter is responsive to the stimulation of a healthy male body controlled by a mind that – when it's thinking properly – commands respect and admiration. Would YOU rather she was a frigid bundle of inhibitions that would go through life looking for a storybook romance that never came?"
"And don't tell me that you're unaware of that very normal phenomenon known as a father fixation? Damned few girls don't idolize their fathers, if the men are worth a damn at all. Take a gal like that and force her, naked, into her father's naked arms, and let her feel his naked cock against her very vulnerable body, and what do you have?"
Ann paused for breath, but not for long. She was fighting for the very foundations of her family, and the battle was going against her by its very nature. It was an unprecedented situation for any family to find itself in.
"We've been forced to learn a lot about ourselves, and about each other. At least that holds true between Tommy and me, and between Darla and you, Charles! And we may not be pleased with what we learn, but we can surely forgive in others the same weaknesses we find in ourselves; and in case there are any doubts, let me hear you right now, Charles Eldon Fleming, deny before God and your family that you did not find pleasure in the incestuous relationship you were forced into with your own daughter! Go on! Let's hear it for old Charlie!"