“Whose fault is that, my lord?”
He fought the urge to flash back and tried for a lighter note. “I have a name, you know. Will you use it?”
“Anton…”
He melted at the sound. “I like that.” She did not repeat it, her gaze still wary. “Don’t look at me so, Rosy. Can you not trust me?”
“I do not understand what you want of me with thistalkof yours.”
“Well, you may relax. I don’t mean to pry into your secrets, not yet awhile. I thought I might rather give you some of mine.”
She eyed him with a touch of scorn in her dark gaze. “So that you may induce me to open my closet of skeletons in return?”
“At least you admit the existence of skeletons!”
“I admit nothing!”
His resolve to adhere to gentle means faltered, but he tamped down the threatening fire.
He knew not how to proceed. She had found him out. He had arranged this with just that intent. Over dinner, with the persistent allure of his wife’s presence at his side, and the goad of that cursedly suggestive promise she had extracted from him, he had begun to chafe at the restrictions of his marriage. How could he endure to wait until Ottery delivered his findings? It might take weeks to unearth Rosina’s history. Even then, how could he know it was the truth? Only Rosina knew that. Impatient, he had instructed Kirkham to have this room prepared, and ordered his wife’s attendance. It began to seem as if he was wasting his time and effort.
The thrust of disappointment spurred him. He leaned forward again. “Rosina, we cannot continue in this way. Besides, there is no need for it. If you will only tell me the truth, we can—”
“What truth? That which you have built up in your mind? Oh, I know well enough what you think of me!”
He reached out and caught at her unwilling hand. “If you truly knew it, you would open your mind to me.”
Rosina winced, giving an involuntary hiss of pain. Raith held firm as she tried to pull away. “Be still, can’t you?” He saw a mark, and loosened his clasp, but drew her unwilling hand towards him. “Let me see.”
“It is nothing.” She spoke in a breathless fashion and Raith knew it was untrue.
Again she tried to withdraw, but he would not let her, looking up. What he saw in her face there made him respond with a trifle of irritation. “Look at me with resentment in your eyes, if you will, but it is of no use to struggle, Rosy. I will not let you go until I have seen it.”
Her breath shortened. He had so much power to control her. Was she to have no will of her own? She let her hand lie in his, but a burning seed of rebellion grew in her breast.
Turning the hand in his fingers, Raith pushed back the wristband of her nightgown. A thin bruise was exposed there, in the soft flesh of the inside of her wrist. The memory flashed in Rosina’s mind. In the chaise, when she had moved to touch his cheek.
Remorse was in both face and voice. “I had no notion I hurt you so badly.”
Had he not? And he so apt to hurt! If not her body, then her heart and mind. What of the sensations he had aroused in her by the intensity of his passion? Then rejected her only because she could not answer him on his terms. Did he ever stop to consider the distress he was inflicting? No, his temper was too ungovernable.
As if he read her thought, Raith sighed. “I am a brutish husband, am I not?”
Yes, he was. But she did not say it. Almost Rosina suffered a reversal of feeling, as he lifted the wrist to his lips and pressed them gently to the wound. Oh, but he could be tender. Then why had he ever to carp at her? She dared swear that in another moment, if she did not do or say as he demanded, he would be railing again.
Raith covered the wrist, keeping her hand imprisoned within his own, and Rosina met his eyes as he looked into her face.
“Why should you trust me?” A rueful note in his voice. “I said I might give you my secrets, did I not? Will you believe then that I know what it is to be in the power of someone who can force you to do what you would not?”
“You know it?” Rosina snatched her hand out of his and tucked it into the folds of her wrapper. “Yet you persist in treating me as if I have no power of my own.”
He shifted back, away from her. “That is untrue. Did I force you that night I came to your bedchamber?”
Rosina stood up abruptly, incensed by his obtuseness, by the single track of his thoughts. “Is that all that is in your mind? What of your insistence upon my staying in this room to be subjected to your questions? What of the manner in which you seized upon me in the saloon when I came down—”
“You need say no more!” His interruption was defensive, as he rose too. “You may reproach me for that if you will, but as for my questions — I am your husband, Rosina. 1 have a right to know my wife’s history.”
“Then why did you not obtain it before you married me?” She shifted away from the chairs towards the window. “You cared little enough what I might be. Or who, if it comes to that. You did not even wish to see me. Why should you have troubled yourself about my past life?”
