“Leave you be!” He hunched down before her. His ruffled shirt was torn and powder smudged, his waistcoat and frock coat both showed signs of the day’s wear. “I am called back from service in New York because my wife is planning my very doom! Handing my very property to the enemy! My God, you might very well have set fire to the house with your very own hand!”
“No!”
“You might have sailed the ship!”
She couldn’t believe that there seemed to be no mercy, no reason in him at all. And still, she was desperate to make him understand. “I did not fire the house! Eric, I pleaded that they not burn the manor. I said that I would go if only—”
“Stop it!” he hissed, and his hand lashed out in a fury, stopping just short of her cheek. “You did what?”
“I said that I would go along willingly if they did not burn the house! And it didn’t burn, Eric! It—”
“Bitch!” He swore to her, low and trembling. “You went with him willingly! Into Tarryton’s arms! You forget how we met, my lady wife!” he charged her scathingly. “That you would need bargain with Robert Tarryton! The army lies languishing and I need run to capture my own wife, the Brit’s courtesan!”
“How dare you!” she cried, near tears of anguish and fury. She could not fight. Not even the truth stood in her defense. Rising, she lashed out at him. The fight had been simmering and brewing between the two of them, and he was glad of it. He seized her arm and dragged her up to him. In panic she struggled against him. She had never seen this dark rage take hold of him, and it terrified her. “Let me go! Eric, you’re hurting me, let go of me, Eric!”
He flung her hard on the elegant bed and fell atop of her, his thumbs and forefingers caressing her temples as he stared down at her.
“I’ve wondered. I’ve lain awake nights, and I’ve wondered if you were here, alone, in this bed. I agonized over leaving you so, yet I believed that you had vowed yourself into this marriage and that you would honor the promise sworn between us. I’ve faced bullets and steel time and again, and never have I sweat as I did nights, lady, torturing myself with visions of you as I have found you this night, sweet and fragrant from the bath, your flesh like alabaster, your heart beating that pulse to your veins. I’ve tried not to think that Tarryton might find his way to you, that his hands might close over your breasts, as mine do now.”
“I never betrayed you with any man!” she cried out, and she felt as if her teeth chattered harshly within her mouth. “I cannot bear Robert now! You know that—”
“I do not know that. I know that you walked out of this house with him this morning—willingly.”
“The servants—”
“The servants would not lie.”
“But I…”
“You what, milady?” he asked scornfully.
The words fled from her; she could not whisper them. I love you. They echoed within her skull, but she could not say them. They came too late, and they would not be believed.
“I did not do this!” she cried, and his lip curled in disbelief.
“I wanted to kill Tarryton—and you,” he told her. “From the time that I was summoned here, I felt an almost primal desire to draw torment and blood.”
“Eric—”
“Fear not, milady. I do not intend to go so far.”
“Eric, please—”
“Please what?”
“Let me up!”
He hated her at that moment, she was certain. Almost as much as she hated him for the disbelief and mockery in his eyes. And still he lay against her bare flesh, pinning her against the bed that they shared as man and wife. Love and hate…the emotions were close indeed. Though she thought she despised him desperately and burned to be free of him, she was filled by a greater need, to feel him close again, his hands and lips upon her, caressing, demanding.
“You’re forgetting that you’re my wife,” he reminded her. “And that I am a soldier, returned from the front.”
“I am forgetting nothing! We are bitter enemies, milord, and no matter how I try, you refuse to believe me.”
“You speak of war again. You chose to fight this particular battle. Well, I won, madame. You lost. And you are my wife.”
“Your despised wife! Eric, for the love of God—”
“For the love of God, lady, no. I will not free you this night. If it is war, madame, then know the truth of it. If we shall win this fight, then I am a hero. If the king is victorious, then I am a traitor indeed. But this night, lady, I am the conqueror, and the rewards of conquest are as old as time.”
