Christopher ignored his friends and marched back to his room. The door wasn't locked against him. He found Anastasia stuffing a few things that had been left out of her satchel back into it.
He closed the door behind him and leaned back against it. He wasn't angry, but he was certainly annoyed, and not just a little confused. A mistress had no conceivable reason to get upset at being called a mistress.
"Just what do you think you're doing?" he demanded. "And why the devil did you hit me?"
She paused long enough to glare at him. "I did not take you for a fool, Christopher Malory. Do not pretend to be one now."
"I beg your pardon?" he replied stiffly.
"As well you should," she snapped. "But you are not forgiven!"
"I wasn't asking to be. If I said anything wrong, I'm bloody well damned if I know what it was. So why don't you tell me what you objected to, then perhaps—perhaps, mind you—I will apologize."
Her face flushed furiously. "I take it back, Gap, you are a fool." She marched toward him. "Get out of my way. I am going home."
He didn't move away from the door. He did grab her shoulders to keep her in front of him, though he refrained, just barely, from shaking her.
"You aren't going anywhere until you at least explain yourself. You owe me that much."
Her lovely cobalt eyes flared. "I owe you nothing after what you just did!"
"What did I do?"
"You not only let those men insult me, but you stood there and did exactly the same thing. How could you speak of me like that? How could you?!"
He sighed at that point. "Those are my closest friends, Anastasia. Do you think I wouldn't be proud to show you off to them?"
"Show me off? I am not a toy. You didn't purchase me. And I am not your mistress!"
"The devil you aren't," he snapped, but then ho paused and frowned. "Don't tell me I forgot to ask you last night. That's why I went back to your camp. Why else would you be here, unless I asked you and you accepted?"
"Oh, you asked me," she said in a soft, furious whisper. "And this was my answer."
For the second time, she slapped him. His face turned quite red this time, and not just from the slap. Now he was angry.
"Do not hit me again, Anna. It was a natural assumption for me to make, that you had agreed to be my mistress, particularly since I woke up to find you lying naked in my bed. Blister it, you even said you agreed. I distinctly remember you saying so this morning. What the devil did you agree to, if not that?"
"You have only to recall what I told you was the only way you could have me, and you'd have your answer. I'm not your mistress, I'm your wife!"
"The devil you are!"
It was probably because he looked so horrified that she shoved her way past him and out the door. That he was utterly horrified was why he stood there in complete bemusement, rather than try to stop her. He just couldn't believe that, drunk or not, he would so totally ignore the strictures of his class. A marquis did not marry a common Gypsy, well, not so common, but still a Gypsy, well, half Gypsy, but still ... it just wasn't done.
She was obviously lying, a ruse to trick him into thinking that he'd married her, and she'd been able to do it because he got so sotted with drink last night that he couldn't remember what he'd done. Of all the bloody nerve, and especially when he only had to demand some proof and she'd have to fess up that she'd lied, since there wouldn't be any proof. He would have thought she was more intelligent than that, to think she could get away with it. Some of his fast-rising rage stemmed from disappointment in her.
He went after her. She'd already left the house. He just barely spotted that bright skirt disappearing into the woods quite some distance away. It was too far for him to catch up to her on foot, though, so he ran to his stable.
She was no more than halfway to her camp when his stallion came galloping up behind her and was yanked to a rearing stop a bit in front of her. She ignored him and the beast and continued her march, merely veering around him. It was an easy matter to move the horse in front of her again, and again, until she got the idea and stopped.
He extended a hand to her, to lift her up. When she just stared at it, he explained, "I took you away from your camp last night, I'll return you to it today. It's the gentlemanly thing to do."
She snorted. "How convenient, to play the gentleman only when it suits you."
That was a serious insult that had him retaliating in kind. "I wouldn't expect a Gypsy to grasp the intricacies of the nobility."
She raised a brow at him. "Is that a roundabout way of saying that the intricacies of common courtesy are beyond the grasp of the nobility?"
He blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
