He visibly stiffened.
“Please, leave.” She inhaled her next breath with difficulty. “Now that news of our betrothal will spread, there is no needfor us to be seen together. And there is certainly no need for us to spend time together in order for you to pretend you remotelycare.”
He took a step closer. “I am not done speaking with you, Elizabeth.”
“WellIam done speaking with you!”
For a split second the Baron looked stunned. But then he grabbed her face and forced a kiss that brutally invaded her senses. Elizabeth could barely breathe, his palms crushing her jaw as he angled her head for access. He devoured her in full, lips breaking free only to travel down her cheek and suckle her neck till she was sure that he had marked her.
When he finally pulled away, he held her chin so she was compelled to look at him. “I will see you each day until we marry, Elizabeth, and youwillobey me in this. I am not done with you by a long shot, for you have rightly surmised I have plans. I have plans for us both. And you will neither thwart nor disrupt my plans in any way, else you discover more than my hand across your arse.”
He turned on his heel and left, Elizabeth’s soul so bruised by both his insult and assault she ached.
That night, she pulled out her stack of pages and picked up where her story had left off. She wrote like her life depended on it, for perhaps it now did. Perhaps the brooding baron mirrored her own bastard of a betrothed too close for what she wrote to be mere fiction.
Elizabeth had thought the two stories diverged, but plots blurred, the reality of her existence interjecting. Somehow shemust expunge Baron of Milton from her breast, with the only tool she had: words.
The lady’s limbs ached, bound as she still was to the brooding baron’s bedpost. He’d abused her most cruelly when he’d savagely taken her lips. She shuddered at the memory, though her loins shuddered wickedly too. Fear and shame warred within her trembling, tattered heart. Would he ravage her completely? Steal her innocence for good? Did she wish for him to ruin her, or did she wish for her escape?
She was but a pawn, a prisoner in his rented, soulless room. Wholly at his mercy, she raged at his abuse. To use his lips as weapon, a kiss to brand her flesh… She felt sure she’d die for excess of emotion, careening between the highs of heaven and lows of hell.
Soon, the lady had no tears left to weep. She closed her eyes, desperate for oblivion, and was slowly swallowed by a dark and dreamless sleep. Her chin fell to her chest, her arms falling slack, still lashed to the baron’s bed.
CHAPTER SIX
My dear Elizabeth, prepare yourself for my arrival at one o’clock today. I should like to spend an additional hour reacquainting myself more deeply with your person on this, the fifth day of our betrothal. I have also scheduled you another appointment with Miss Li at two o’clock, to complete your final fitting and deliver you a needed refresher in manners. —Milton
She’d murder him, she would. She would murder him before she married him.
Elizabeth hoisted his outrageous bouquet of purple iris outside and crushed his clear ‘I send a message’ beneath her heel, rubbing his blooms—his person—out. Let him find her manners thus smeared across the front step when he arrived at bloody one o’clock.
She marched back to her bedroom, eschewing all breakfast, until a soft knock fell to her door.Annabelle.
“Lizzie, was he really all that awful?” Bella slipped in only to curl herself at the foot of Elizabeth’s bed. “I tried my best to keep him at bay, but he?—”
Elizabeth stifled a sigh. “Of course you did, dear, but the man is not easily thwarted.” She made a face. “I do not blame you, Bella. His every word and action is unconscionable.”
“Well he cannot be all bad if he hates Sir Wigglebottom as much as you.”
Elizabeth was in no mood for humor. “I briefly thought him amiable but was rudely enlightened.” Her sigh escaped as a huff. “I must suffer this marriage until either he or I should die, and I simply prayhedies first. Then I might at least enjoy his fortune as his widow, living off the fat of his?—”
“Lizzie, that is most unlike you. Why, I have only ever heard you speak of Lady Stanton in such coarse terms.”
“Forgive me, Bella.” Though inside, Elizabeth felt no remorse. “He brings out the worst in me, even as he presents his worsttome, served daily in his horrid notes and even more horrid bouquets.”
Annabelle’s eyes narrowed as she brushed a lock of hair from Elizabeth’s neck. “Lizzie, did Stanton’s nasty creature attack you yesterday?”
“The lady’s pug does not bite, Bella, it merely slobbers.”
But already Annabelle had pulled Elizabeth’s braid aside, inspecting her neck to declare these were indeed bites, or welts of some sort, as if her skin had been?—
Elizabeth flushed with shame, quickly pulling away. She was mortified by what she’d endured at the Baron’s hands, or rather, his lips, yesterday. The devil himself had marked her.
“Lizzie, he gave me his word he would not hurt you when I allowed him entry to your chamber!”
Elizabeth barked a laugh. “Hisis no gentleman’s word, Bella, which is why you must give me your word that you will steer clear of him until I wed.”
“But surely he’d not?—”
