He took exception to her accusation, but it didn’t stop him from sliding his hand around her nape. “I didn’t trick you. YouassumedI’d accepted your offer. In truth, I never agreed to anything except marrying you, and even that matter was settled with your father.”
She captured his wrist, staying his hand when he would have sunk his fingers into her lush tresses. Her anger was a pulsing, heated thing between them, as palpable as the desire. “You deliberately misled me.”
“In this instance, Lady Ravenscroft, I daresay you misled yourself.” He leaned closer, drank in the scent of oranges. Thoughts of everything else—his skeletal staff of servants, his interfering sisters—fled him.
“I’m going to Virginia whether you like it or not, my lord. You cannot keep me prisoner here,” she insisted, but her voice suggested she was not as unaffected by his proximity as she pretended.
She bloody well wasn’t going to Virginia. He grew tired of arguing the point. His lips took hers in a long, slow kiss. She opened for him, her body yielding as her mind would not. She tasted of sweetness and tea. He wondered if she would taste as sweet everywhere and somehow knew that yes, she would.
When he withdrew from her soft mouth, he stared down at her, lust thundering through him. Every part of him longed to claim her now. To carry her upstairs to his chamber, lay her on the bed, and sink home inside her. But he wanted her more than willing. He wanted her to come to him.
“You’re not my prisoner, Clara.” He kissed her again. “You’re my wife.”
She shook her head, denying it. “I don’t belong here, my lord. With my dowry—”
“Your dowry is mine,” he interrupted, lest she think to reclaim her fortune and leave him. “All two hundred thousand of it, to be judiciously spent upon the refurbishing and upkeep of our homes and estates, in addition to our living expenses. Your settlement is yours by law to dispense with as you wish. Ten thousand per annum and North Atlantic Electric stock, I believe.”
Clara glared at him. Her settlement was a handsome sum, but it wasn’t two hundred thousand pounds. “Let me go, you brute. I’m sure my father hasn’t settled the funds with so much haste. I’ll tell him everything. He’ll understand, help me to annul the marriage.”
“No.” He wasn’t about to let her go. Not ever. He’d seen to it that there was no worm hole through which she could slip. “The transaction has already occurred, legally and binding, so too our marriage contract. It’s all done. Don’t look so distressed, little dove. We are two of a kind, you and me, selling ourselves for perceived gain. I’ve been at this business far longer than you, however, and I know the cost better than anyone. No one truly wins.”
She pursed her lips and flattened her palms on his chest, attempting to dislodge him. “Forgive me for thinking it would rather appear that you’ve won, my lord. You secured yourself an heiress. Great sums of money are at your disposal, all your problems solved. It must have been so effortless. Good Lord, I came to you. And then you plied me with charm, worked your rakish ways on me, and I fell into your snare as surely as any hare.”
Of course he’d won. Miss Clara Elizabeth Whitney, American heiress and unworldly innocent, was his along with a tidy sum. He wouldn’t lose his homes. He wouldn’t have to worry over the futures of his sisters. He would no longer have to endure snickers in polite society, rumblings over his penury and his means of staving off ruin. He could hire a bloody housekeeper and maids who didn’t fornicate with footmen in the library. But she was staring at him now not with the low-lidded desire he’d come to expect from her but the full-fledged loathing of someone who had been duped.
He’d been duped before. He knew the feeling, like a blow straight to the gut. Lottie had seen to his education. Still, there was something about Clara that made a protective instinct roar to life in his breast. Something that made him want to gather her up in his arms, breathe deeply of her essence—musk and sunshine—and tell her that all would be well. That he was not a perfect man by any means, but he would never hurt her, treat her with disrespect, or ill use her.
He wanted to whisper reassurances to her now, to kiss her wayward brow, to promise he would be the best husband in his power. But instead he looked down at her upturned face, guileless and wounded, and lost all the pretty words he longed to say.
“You’ll not leave me,” he said instead.
But she was rebellious to the last, as proud as any queen as she stared right back at him. “Yes I will. I’ll not be your wife, Lord Ravenscroft. Nor will I share your bed.”
lara had not yet fallen asleep.She had not joined the earl’s sisters for dinner that night. Nor had she left her chamber since he had escorted her to it in the wake of their virulent row. For what must have been the thousandth time since stepping over the threshold and slamming the door in Ravenscroft’s too-handsome face, she paced the room. According to the mantel clock, it was well after two in the morning.
He had not come to her. Instead, he’d left before dinner. She’d watched him step out from her window, dark and debonair. Perhaps off in search of his club or some other form of amusement. Not a mistress, she hoped, though she had no right or reason to keep him from indulging his hedonism. His departure rather stung, much as she didn’t want to acknowledge it.
She detested the weakness within her that missed his presence. He was vital, a man who simultaneously sucked all the air from a room and yet breathed all the life into it. She wanted to rail against him, berate him, dress him down. She wanted to make him suffer and make him pay for deceiving her. But she also wanted him to kiss her. To knock at her door and appear, leonine and seductive, ready to strip away all her protest.
Somewhere during the course of her hours of reflection, she’d realized that part of her thrilled to the notion of being the earl’s countess. And not just in name only. He had awakened her body. He had charmed her. He’d listened to her, appeared to value her thoughts and opinions. She couldn’t believe his every action had been a ruse. Some men were too facile of tongue, creatures who never listened to a word a lady said. Others listened too much, pretending to care in an effort to use their feigned interest to their advantage. Ravenscroft was neither of those sorts of men. He was, she hated to admit, a law unto his own.
But what of his motivation? If it was only her dowry he’d been after, he should have been all too happy to see her off to Virginia, depositing her on the nearest docks. He didn’t require her—as he’d pointed out, the marriage settlement was already in his possession. Why then, did he want her as his wife? Did he merely want to bed her? She hardly thought so, for much as she hated to concede it, he likely could have bedded her at any point during their fortnight of courtship if he’d merely pressed her enough. Her resistance was that weak.
Still he hadn’t done so.
Even in the carriage that day, he’d put his hand up her skirts, touched her most improperly. But the moment she’d pushed him away, he’d respected her wishes. He could have arrived at her door, could have barged straight through it, at any point between the moment she’d slammed it in his face and now. He had not.
The Earl of Ravenscroft was a dichotomy. He had spent much of his life in sin. He was a wicked voluptuary. But he had also personally seen to the preparation of her chamber. During her many rounds of pacing, she’d begun to notice small details.
This chamber, unlike the rest of the house, was not threadbare or outmoded. Its wallpaper was crisp and new, its carpet well-padded and sculpted in a grand design. A corner bookcase possessed an assortment of volumes that were all of interest to her, from a treatise on the female vote to the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. A hand-colored lithograph of a whip-poor-will, a picture of Richmond, and some engravings of the verdant Virginia countryside ornamented the walls.
He had recalled their conversations, had tried hard to make a space for her that would appeal. It hardly made sense. But then, the man himself scarcely did. Was he gilding her cage? Attempting to win her over? Why had he not come to her? Why had he not made her his wife in deed as well as name?
Clara stilled as she heard a sudden commotion in the hall. Voices, loud and tight with worry, carried to her. Footsteps sounded, then the crashing open of the door to the earl’s chamber just next door. Something was amiss.
Heartbeat kicking into a rapid pace, she donned her dressing gown, knotting the belt at her waist. In two steps, she was at the door adjoining her chamber to his, throwing it open to reveal a grim scene. Her mouth went dry as she spotted Ravenscroft’s limp form being carried by the butler and two footmen. His head lolled, his midnight hair and beautiful face drenched in blood.
Dear God.
