He was silent for a space. Rosina thought she read a modicum of consciousness in his features. But there was no hint of it in his voice when he spoke. “What would you, Rosina? I am a peer of the realm, and that has its obligations.”
“Obligations, Raith, which you were ready enough to ignore when it suited you.”
Her chest was so constricted she could barely breathe, but the tide of burgeoning resentment that had so long been held in was overwhelming. She saw him open his mouth to speak, and forestalled him, her voice trembling with the force of her emotions.
“You t-took a wife from ad-advertisement. You c-cared only for the advantage of your f-fortune. Now, because you choose to — to set store by some incautious w-words that I let fall, I am made the — the scapegoat of your jealous fury!”
Raith followed her a step or two, his face ravaged by some emotion she could not recognise. Yet his tone was defensive. “Do you think I want to believe it? Rosina, can you not see how I am tortured by these doubts?”
“Doubts!” she echoed, husky now, the words coming thick and fast as the dam of anguish burst the barriers of her characteristic diffidence. “Do you not see how your doubting tortures me? If there were any truth in that tenderness with which from time to time you move me, with which you touch my heart, there would be no room in you for doubting. But it is false — and I hate you for it, Anton!”
His face paled, its pallor visible even in the candlelight as he moved towards her. “Rosina—”
“Do not come near me!” She dashed the welling tears from her eyes, backing away. “I do not w-want to hear your cozening words, your soft approaches. They can mean nothing, or you would have faith.”
Raith stopped short. “Blind faith? Is that what you expect?”
“I expect nothing. I have been given nothing.”
“How can you say so? Is my regard nothing?”
“What regard? You have no regard for me, but only for yourself. And for your arrogant pride.”
“Is it arrogance that a man should wish to assure himself that his wife is chaste?”
“It is arrogance to assume otherwise.”
“I do not assume it!”
“But you suspect it, and that is enough!”
She saw his fingers reach up to writhe in his hair, as if exasperation tormented him. “Devil take you, woman! That you persist in this refusal to enlighten me can only increase my doubts. Why cannot you see that, Rosina?”
She gave a mewl of equal frustration, throwing her hands to her face. “Heavens, but you are blind! Raith, if you doubt me, you will do so whatever I tell you, unless you have certain proof. Can you deny it?”
Her wrist was taken and he tugged her close, a blaze in his eyes. “I deny it utterly, though I well might have fallen to so base a level. I have been too many times betrayed by the perfidy of women. You play the innocent all too convincingly, but so may the lowest strumpet!”
The breath was stopped in Rosina’s throat. A white heat of rage drove the blood coursing through her veins. There was no thought in her action. One hand was imprisoned, but she pulled back a little. Driving with the whole force of her other arm, she dealt her husband a ringing slap, full on his scarred right cheek.
Raith reeled with the blow, releasing her, his hand flying to his cheek. He turned astounded eyes upon his wife. “Why, you vicious little vixen!”
Rosina threw up both hands as he advanced. “Strike me at your peril! You have deserved that of me.”
Turning, she whisked herself through the door into her dressing-room. With shaking fingers, she turned the key in the lock, and then leaned against the door, panting and spent.
Rosina watched the departing coach from the window of the saloon. The local pastor was the third caller she had received in the last few days. She was relieved to have rubbed through the ordeal of explaining her non-appearance at church, and could not help reflecting that the absence of her spouse had provided an adequate excuse. Besides, had he been here, she would have been so wrought up she could not have thought of anything intelligent to say.
She dreaded his return, each day expecting the evil hour could not be any longer delayed. How was she to find the courage to face him? It seemed incredible that here she was in November, almost two weeks a wife, with no idea where her husband was, or how much longer he meant to be away. She knew only that the last she had seen of him had been his face of thunderous astonishment after she had struck at it.
How had she dared? Her heart misgave her whenever she thought of it. Her moment of triumph had been short-lived. Within a very few minutes of that fatal impulse, every ounce of courage had dissipated with the realisation of what she had done. She remembered the sag of her knees, the sudden horrific thought of the pregnable outer doors. Terror had gripped her at the fierce inevitability of Raith’s revenge. She had flown to the door that gave on to the corridor from her dressing-room, and locked it with frantic fingers. It had not been enough. Her bedchamber.
Her feet had grown wings as she sped through, fleet as the wind, in her mind a startled question. Was there even a key? Her relief, on discovering it in the lock, was stupendous. She had fallen upon it, and had such extreme difficulty in making it turn, that she cried aloud in her frustration and haste.
Once secured within her own apartments, Rosina backed from the door to sink down upon the bed, her pulse fluttering wildly in her throat, listening intently for the sound of her husband’s approach.
But no footsteps disturbed the eerie quiet of the night. There was no rattling at any of the door handles. She sat for a long while, mumchance, while the teeth chattered in her head, and her whole frame quivered and shook as she cursed and lamented that hideous loss of temper, and wondered at her own foolhardy audacity.
Actually to hit Anton! Had she run mad? What brazen defiance had driven her to so insane a proceeding? Oh, but he would make her suffer for it!
