“You are still angry,” he guessed, nodding, as if that explained her strange behavior. “I cannot blame you. But I will make it up to you. We will be married, and when—”
“I will not marry you,” she interrupted quietly—too quietly.
’Twas his turn to stare hard, then to explode. “You must marry me!”
“Why? So you can atone for your guilt?” She shook her head slowly. “Were you not listening the day I told you that whatever I felt for you is no longer there? Why would I want to marry you, Warrick?” And then her composure slipped. “Give meone good reason!”
“So our child will not be a bastard!”
She closed her eyes to hide her regret. What had she expected?Because I love you?
Rowena sighed. When she looked at him again, she was without expression—just barely.
“Well, there is that,” she allowed tonelessly. “But that is not reason enough—”
“Damn it, Rowena, you—!”
“I willnotmarry you!” she shouted back at him, her endurance gone and every bit of her resentment released. “Do you try to force me to do it, I will poison you! I will castrate you whilst you sleep! I will—”
“You need not go further.”
He wore the same expression he had duped her with once before, that of a man racked with pain. She did not fall for it this time.
“If you want to atone for your guilt, Warrick, set me free. Relinquish claim to my child and let me go home.”
After endless moments Warrick’s shoulders drooped—but he nodded.
Chapter 47
He did not come. She was to give birth to his daughter any day, nay, any moment now, but he did not come. And itwouldbe a daughter, her child. That was a fine little revenge on her part, not to give Warrick the son he so wanted. She had decreed it so, willed it so, so it would be a girl-child. Luck did finally have to come her waysometime.
But Warrick did not come. Why had she thought he would, just because he had ridden to Tures once a month, every month, since she had left Fulkhurst?
He still wanted to marry her. She still would not. She was rude to him. Twice she had refused to see him at all. But he kept coming back. He kept trying to convince her that she belonged with him.
So he was contrite. What did she care? ’Twas too late.
But he was ruthless about it. He got her mother on his side, and Anne was very good at badgering. She had been saving it up for three years.
“His wanting to marry you has naught to do with his guilt,” Anne had assured her on one of her many visits. “He was going to marry you before he knew he had aught to be guilty about. He made the decision when he brought you to Ambray Castle. Sheldon told me so.”
Sheldon was another sore subject. As far as Rowena was concerned, he had stolen her mother from her. He had taken advantage of Anne’s vulnerability, seduced her affections, then married her before she could catch her breath. Now he had her convinced that she adored him, when she could not possibly—not a friend ofWarrick’s.
And then last month, when Rowena’s spirits had been particularly low, Anne showed up with another revelation. “He loves you. He told me so himself when I asked if he did.”
“Mother!” Rowena had complained, horrified. “How could you ask him that?”
“Because I wanted to know.Youcertainly never bothered to ask.”
“Of course I would not,” Rowena replied huffily. “If a man cannot say it on his own, without having it pried out of him—”
“That’s just it, my dear. When I then asked if he had told you, he said he did not know how.”
Her mother would not lie about that—but Warrick would. Tell a mother exactly what she wants to hear. How underhandedly clever of him.
But it meant naught to her. She was not going to break down and marry the man, even if hewasproving to her that she was not as dead inside as she had thought, that her heart could still race when he was near her—that she could still crave his body,even in her condition!But her awakened desires made no difference. She was not going to play the fool again and open her heart to another rending.
Today she sat in the window embrasure of her room. She might be Lady of Tures now, but she had wanted the familiarity of her old chamber when she arrived here, rather than the much larger solar.
