“I could ask you the same thing. What are you doing?” His thumbs brushed the bottoms of her breasts. “ ’Tis one thing to be a virgin and another entirely to have never been kissed before last night. Yet, you played the seductress with skill, love.”
“Me?” She pushed him away and he sat back in the grass. “Why did you kiss me just now?”
His chest suddenly moved as if with silent laughter. He leaned on his forearms and looked up at her. “I kissed you because I could,” he said.
He was not braced for the fist that struck him on the chin. A whisper of movement that had alerted him just ashe glimpsed a facer coming his way. With lightning-quick reflexes, he caught her other hand, which held a rock. His senses had been so ill tuned that it took him that long to realize how far he’d let down his guard. It took him another breath to realize what had just happened before he had the foresight to wrestle her to the ground.
Rose couldn’t believe it as her cloak entangled around his limbs. “Get off me! Bastard!”
“My God, Rose.” For all his fury at that moment, his was a gentler hold than she deserved. “Tell me you did not just attempt to bash me in the head with that stone.”
“I have every right to kill you for what you have done to me! You would do the same. Tell me you would not!”
Glaring into his eyes, she could only wonder whose heroism was being tested more as he held himself against her. “Do not tempt me to take more of what you already lament losing, Rose. Be thankful I am such a saint.”
“You are the devil! Do not think that last night will ever happen again.”
“Ah, so you got what ye wanted from me, did you, love?”
She stilled beneath him. “I have no idea what you are speaking—”
“Look into your soul and ask yourself why you let me go so far. I am a man, Rose,” he said softly, a warning now, for he recognized the danger to her, even if she did not. “An ungodly one at that. You gave me your virtue and I want to know why.”
She turned her head. “Would you have preferred that I let you rape me?”
His eyes narrowed as he wrestled his hands around her fists. “Do you think last night was remotely close to rape, love?”
“YouknewI was an innocent.”
“Aye, I did. But did you? And I am not talking in the physical sense. Is it some sort of vengeance against your father you seek? His virtuous, convent-raised daughter sullied by a Kerr.” His eyes cut into her like shards of glass. “No doubt ’twill prove a grave dishonor to the noble Lancaster name when people learn the warden’s daughter was ravished by a barbaric Scotsman. Your father’s humiliation would be complete. All prospects for marriage of his aristocratic daughter will be gone and he will send you away. An interesting scenario, if Hereford cares a whit what state you are in when delivered.”
“Get off me!”
“Do you really believe you are worth so little? Look at me, Rose.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. “Nay!”
He forced her chin around. “The more I have been considering the problem you present me, the more I have come to realize that if Hereford thought for one moment you were alive, he would never have stopped looking for you.”
“If you are implying that he and Friar Tucker are in some kind of unholy alliance ... you are wrong. Do not dare defame a good man. Do notdare!”
“You are worth a great deal to your father. Kirkland Park belonged to your mother’s side of the family. You are your great-grandfather’s heir, Rose.”
“Then perhaps Kirkland Park is important enough to my father that I can trade it all to buy my freedom. And perhaps ... you are both brigands equally at fault for the events that have transpired. You will probably kill each other and I will be free.”
Roxburghe sat back, and she pushed away from him, desperate to scramble from his reach. She could feel the stitches tear, but she didn’t care as she backed away.
“You knew about your inheritance,” he said. “I thought you did not. I thought you should know the truth, Rose.”
“Did you think your revelation would turn me against the only man I truly love and who has protected me?” she said. “Or is kidnapping and ...” she could not say the wordrapefor the very meaning made a lie of what had happened between them last night. “Is abducting me not enough for you?”
He unfurled to his height and braced his feet as if he faced a broadside. For a tense second he stood there, then the expression left his face, as if it were so easy to toss away his emotions like much unwanted fodder. “Even if you are a ‘Fallen Woman,’ your fortune is still intact. Papa will welcome you with open arms.”
Then he walked past her and out of the glade.
And she hated herself for not hating him.
Chapter 7
