“Tell Bradington”—Dimitri barely managed to keep a snarl from his voice—“she had an emergency with her wedding frock and had to visit the seamstress this morning, and she will return shortly. And send him on his way, if you please.”
“But my?—”
“Crewston.”
“Very well, my lord. But the younger Miss Woodmore is beside herself with fear that Miss Woodmore has been abducted again.”
“Advise Angelica I am confident her elder sister will return shortly. And I don’t wish to be bothered for any reason until she returns, or until after dinner. Whichever occurs first.”
“Yes, my lord.” Crewston withdrew, his disbelief and annoyance barely masked.
No sooner had the door clicked closed than Maia erupted from beneath the sheets, holding them to the front of her torso. She opened her mouth, likely to begin barraging him with questions or recriminations, and Dimitri decided to take the bull by the horns, so to speak, and launch his own attack first.
“Are you aware that you snore, Miss Woodmore?” he asked in a mild voice.
She drew back, a glint of fierceness in her eyes, and closed her mouth. The sheets were a bunch against her chest, revealing only the barest curve of one shoulder. “Why, I?—”
“It didn’t bother me, but if you decide to share a bedchamber with Bradington, it might become a concern.”
Her lips tightened and she replied in a low-pitched voice, “Don’t be a fool, Corvindale. Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing? Trying to divert me, trying to anger me? Or hurt me so I go running off to Alexander?”
He closed his mouth and blinked. Her intelligence and foresight never failed to surprise him.
“I know better than that, Corvindale. I know you better than you realize,” she said, lowering her voice still further, watching him steadily. “And you’ve lost the power to hurt me like you might wish to, because I know why you do it.”
He’d become very still. “Is that so?” was all he trusted himself to say.
“You’re just like the beast from that fairy tale, locked away, cold and angry and afraid to allow anyone close to you, or to divert you from your research. But you’ve missed everything that’s important. And this,” she said, spreading her hand to encompass the events of the last night, “is…was…a bit too close for you. I’m sorry for that.”
“Miss Woodmore,” he said, barely holding on to the fury he managed to dredge up, just able to keep the truth of her words from penetrating, “you have no idea of what you speak. The only thing I care about,” he said, his lips and jaw tight, “is freeing myself of this.”
He turned sharply so that she could see the back of his left shoulder.
Maia’s sudden intake of breath was audible and he felt her body still next to him. “My God.”
Dimitri knew what she saw: the horrible Marking of the devil spreading down like black roots over his shoulder. When he’d first awakened to find himself signed thus, the lines had been narrow, like fine cracks in shattered glass. But over the years of his abstinence, his disregard for Lucifer’s will, the lines had grown thicker and darker as they welled with pain. Now they rose from his skin like slender black-red veins, writhing and twisting with agony, pounding and pulsing with his every defiance of the Devil.
“This is the Mark of my covenant with Lucifer,” he said, keeping his voice steely. “I’m damned, Maia, damned and tied to him, and because of that, I cannot—I don’twant—anything or anyone in my life. I want to be left alone. I want to befree.”
She hadn’t taken her eyes from his shoulder, and when she reached to touch him, Dimitri moved away.
“Now,” he said, taking control of his voice, changing it from the desperate tones of a moment ago to one matter-of-fact and calm, “this is what will happen. You’re going to leave here, Maia, you’re going to go to your chamber and dress and pretend you were on a walk and forgot your appointment with Bradington. And you’re going to marry him as planned. And you’re going to forget about all of this.”
“I can’t do that, my lord,” she said, surprising him with the formal use of address.
“You must. There is nothing I can do for you, nor that I want to do. I’ve allowed you to invade my house, my den and now my bedchamber” —she tensed at that comment, and, gratified that it had hit the mark, he went on— “but I’m finished now. Lerina’s visit last night has me concerned she has some other plans. And I’ve done everything I can to ensure you wed Bradington without a hint of scandal. That is all I can do for you.”
Her mouth had tightened. “I cannot do that, Corvindale. Did you not hear me?”
“Yes, you?—”
“I cannot, Corvindale,” she interrupted in a stiff voice, “because, much as I desire to leave your vile presence, I cannot walk from one end of your house to my chamber in the other dressed likethis.”She flung the bed coverings away from her naked torso.
Lord.He caught his breath before he realized it, then looked away. But the image was burned into his brain, the delicate shape of her body, the shadow of her collarbones, the high handfuls of breasts tipped with tight pink nipples, the hollow of her waist and curve of hips, and the peek of a slender white thigh.Remember it.
“Very well,” he said in a strangled voice. “I’ll arrange it for you, Miss Woodmore.”
She was shaking her head, her full lips flat and mutinous. “I will return to my chamber, but I don’t see how I can marry Alexander when I’m in love with you.”
