Forcing her feet to move, she crossed the room, and pulled open the heavy wooden door. A small, slightly bent Indian woman stood in the opening. She smiled, creasing her weathered face as she walked in.
“Buenas noches,Senora de la Guerra. My name is Blue Blanket. Don Ramon sent me to help you prepare for bed.”
Just the wordbedmade the heat roar into her cheeks. Her insides knotted and her palms went damp. She pressed them against her gray silk skirt to keep them from shaking so badly. Fighting a sudden urge to flee, she glanced toward the window. Running would be futile; she had no money and no place to go.She wouldn’t even know how to get there if she did. Besides, she had brought this on herself, set this whole crazy plan into motion. There was no hope for it now but to face what she had done.
“Thank you, Blue Blanket,” she said softly.
“You may call me Blue. That will be enough.”
Sick with dread, her body taut with nerves, Carly let the woman unfasten the row of buttons down the back of her pearl gray day dress. Blue helped her out of it and out of her layers of petticoats, then untied and removed her corset. At the woman’s gentle urging, she pulled off her chemise and stepped out of her pantalets, then stood stiffly as the stoop-shouldered old Indian slid the white silk gown over her head. Blue took down Carly’s hair and carefully ran a bristle brush through it, then the old woman’s mouth pulled into a smile that showed gums full of missing teeth.
“I will tell Don Ramon that you are ready.” Backing away, she silently slipped from the room, leaving Carly alone in the silence that rang louder than a death knell.
***
Ramon lifted his heavy crystal snifter, a family heirloom brought to the New World from Spain, tilted his head back, and drained the last of his brandy. Fury still pumped through him, as it had for the last three days.
He couldn’t believe he was married. That he had been trapped like a naive schoolboy. Mostly he couldn’t believe that the woman who had done it was Caralee McConnell, Fletcher Austin’s niece. Worse yet, she was agringa.
He felt like wringing her soft white neck.
His smile felt cold and bitter. At least she would finally warm his bed. He meant to take her as he had wanted to since the moment he had met her, hard and deep, pounding into heruntil his lust was sated. His loins swelled to think of it. His arousal pulsed stiffly against the front of his breeches, his blood pumping, growing thick and heavy, pooling low in his belly.
Carly had forced this marriage. She had meant to use him to save herself. Well now she was his wife, and he would be the one who used her.
He set the snifter down on the table, hardly aware of the driving rain that had begun to fall, and jerked open the door leading out to the patio. A cold wind knifed through his clothes, but he was too angry, his body too aroused to feel it. He didn’t knock when he reached his room, just lifted the wrought-iron latch and jerked open the heavy oak door.
She was standing beside the bed, wearing the white silk nightgown his aunt had fashioned as a wedding gift. Her hair was down, gleaming like burnished copper in the light of the lamp on the dresser. A faint tremor rolled through her as he stepped through the door, and her big green eyes swung up to his face.
She looked so beautiful his breath caught, seemed to freeze inside his chest. Something warm slid through him, softening the barrier around his heart. He had seen the white silk gown when his aunt had sewn it. He knew it was exquisite, but he couldn’t have imagined how beautiful Carly would look when she wore it. He couldn’t have guessed the way her hair would shimmer across her shoulders, how the white of the gown would illuminate the paleness of her skin and the emerald of her eyes.
He couldn’t have known the way her soft ruby lips would tremble with uncertainty, even though she kept her chin held high.
An odd pain rippled through him, a tightness that expanded and made his throat feel dry. He didn’t like the feeling, didn’t like the fact that just looking at Caralee could affect him in such a manner.
He forced his gaze downward, over her womanly curves. He paused at the dark aureoles at the tips of her breasts and the swelling in his groin began to throb. He assessed her tiny waist, the shadowy triangle of down between her legs, and the throbbing grew more intense, the blood pulsing thickly through his veins.
“I see that you have accepted what is to be. That is good.” She said nothing as he unbuttoned his shirt and stripped it off, nothing as he sat down on the chair and pulled off his boots. The rain thrummed hard on the red tile roof, but it seemed no louder than the pounding of his heart.
He came to his feet and started on the buttons down his fly.
“Ramon?”
His fingers stilled. Just the echo of his name on her lips sent desire blazing through him. It was stoked by the heat of his anger… and his unwanted emotions.
“The time for talking is past.” He popped the final button at the front of his breeches but didn’t take them off, just crossed to the place before her. “It is not words I now wish to hear, but the sound of your small woman’s cries as I drive myself inside you.”
A soft sob rose in her throat. It sounded so fearful, so totally out of character, his gaze swung up to her face. Her bottom lip quivered and her eyes were glazed with tears.
“I’m sorry, Ramon. I wish I could change what has happened.”
“I told you, I do not wish—”
“I know how angry you are… and that the fault is mine.” She blinked and the wetness began to roll down her cheeks. He remembered how much she hated to cry. “I have suffered your anger,” she said softly, the sadness in her eyes touching him as nothing else could. “I have also known your gentleness. I beg you, Ramon. Show me that gentleness now.”
His heart squeezed, clenched inside his chest. One moment the anger was there, fighting to break free, threatening to overwhelm him, the next it was gone. In its place were all the feelings he felt for her he had forced himself to ignore. His hand began to tremble as he wiped the tears from her cheeks. Her skin felt like silk beneath his fingers.
“Do not cry,querida.” He pressed his lips against her temple, felt the faint tremors running through her. “Even should I wish it, I could not hurt you again.”
