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"All the more reason to stop and think what you're doing!"
"Collin . . . He . . . I cannot even tell you what he accused me of. Even being a virgin was not proof enough, not for such an honorable, decent man. I will not live with a man who despises the very lust he avails himself of every night. He shames me, Danielle. He shames me at every turn. Am I such a shameful person, then?"
Her friend's eyes filled with the tears that Alex's body had ceased to produce. "You must not think such things. He is a fool. Have I not told you they are all fools? Write to the duke. He will come for you himself."
"No, I am sorry to leave you here, but I cannot stay another moment in his house. Take the bag. Perhaps you should wrap it in a sheet? I'll retrieve it outside the gate, where that grass grows so wild. Go."
And then she was alone. She slipped her sheathed knife into her boot and cast a cold eye around the stone walls of the room, skipping willfully over the items that spoke of her bed-partner. Not her room and it never would be. Leather slid over her fingers as she pulled on her gloves and turned her back on Collin Blackburn's bed.
The mare swung her head around in a sharp arc and caught Collin's chin with a thunk.
"Damn it." He dropped her foot, no doubt rewarding bad behavior with exactly the thing she wanted, but he couldn't seem to bring himself to care. It likely wasn't the worst hit he'd get today. At least his tongue hadn't been between his teeth.
Unfolding his stiff body, he rose with a grunt of true exhaustion. Uncertainty had kept him up all night. Uncertainty and guilt and the dusty cold of an unused bed. Not so unused now. He wondered when the maid would discover the rumpled bed. A week or two? Then again he might be moving in permanently; Alex's eyes had been that cold.
Stepping out of the shadowed barn, Collin's hands clenched to fists at the memory of her curls teasing the man's cheek. They'd looked so. . . involved. Tense in a way that bespoke an intimate past. He'd thought he might throttle him . . . And apparently he should have.
"Stupid prick," he muttered, meaning Dixon, but feeling the sting of the curse himself. Who was more stupid than he?
He'd felt the censure of Alexandra's gaze on him all night, as he'd twisted and turned in the rough embrace of pilfered blankets. Her eyes gone blank and depthless, a shield against his hatefulness.
"Damn your black soul," he growled, definitely meaning himself this time and not the startled boy who leapt out of his path. Pausing at the door to swipe his boots against the bale of hay he kept there to catch stable muck, Collin dug his fingers into the stiff muscles of his neck.
He had wounded her. Again. Perhaps unforgivably. He'd struck out in childish anger when she had needed his protection. God only knew what that blackguard had been saying to her—that rapist disguised as a pale English milksop. And the startled dismay he'd surprised from her face . . . that hadn't been fear of discovery, it had been helplessness as she'd stood in a crowded ballroom and tolerated the presence of her attacker.
His throat thickened with regret, with disgust at what he'd accused her of. Worse than that, really, for what if he'd been right? What if she had serviced a dozen men before he came along? Hadn't he been with a dozen women in his life? Hadn't he suckled and licked and screwed them and never thought twice about it? Oh, he was cruel, and wretched with it now.
He loved her. He loved her and he had abused her as surely as if he'd beaten her to the floor.
The walls moved past him and he was walking through the great hall, between tables still littered with the mess of dinner. Bridey's small girl worked her way 'round, stacking metal plates and cups. The meal was done then. Had she eaten?
His boots slapped the stairs as he bounded up, abruptly urgent with the need to see her. He smelled of sweat and horseflesh and no doubt she'd spit and slap at him, but he wanted to see her, wanted to dare an apology.
Her door fell open, unbarred.
"Alex?" A sound stirred from the turret room. A woman slipped into view, her blond hair a disappoint-ment. "Danielle. Is your mistress about?"
Collin glanced stupidly around, as if she crouched behind the bed. The maid did not answer and when he looked back to her, she only returned his stare, though her lips twitched into a momentary snarl. Well.
"Ah, has she gone for a ride?"
"You could say that."
He felt a flicker of irritation and set
it aside. "What does that mean?"
"You may figure that out on your own."
"Please don't growl at me. Just tell me where she is."
"Fool."
"What?"
"Salaud, she has left you." "Left me? But—"
Danielle swung about, skirt and hair flying out in a wave as she stepped back into the turret room and slammed the small door behind her.
