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“Do you want me to leave?”
His arm tightened, almost cutting off her breath as he said under his breath and in Spanish, “Dios! And how should I know what I want or do not want at this moment? Stay if you will or go if you will. What difference can it make?” His eyes had closed as if he meant to sleep, but his arm still held her close and his fingers remained caught in her hair, so that Alexa found she could hardly move her head without feeling that her hair might be torn out at the roots.
With her face pressed against his chest she could feel his heartbeat pulse against her cheek and the roughness of the hair on his chest against her nipples, making them erect and sensitive against her will, almost aching with the need to have his fingers touch them; his mouth claim them as he had done before. What was happening to her? “Be careful, my dear,” Orlanda had warned her earlier. “Too often the body can betray the mind, and blind emotion override sensibility and will.” Alexa had come here planning to seduce him while he was still half-dazed by the drug he had willingly indulged in, meaning to keep her mind clear and calculating wh
ile she cleverly inflamed his desire to the boiling point before she retreated. But instead of responding to all the techniques of lovemaking she had been instructed in, he had told her frankly and without embarrassment that he was incapable of making love to her under the circumstances. She should make some suitably cutting remarks and leave at once before he insulted her even further by falling asleep. Hadn’t he told her to go or stay as she pleased? And at what point had she turned her body so close to his that she was almost lying on top of him, with one of her legs straddling his in a shameless fashion?
Moving her head cautiously again, Alexa noticed with mounting anger and resentment that his eyes were still closed and he was breathing quite evenly and peacefully. Had he actually forgotten her presence?
“I hate you, Nicholas Dameron!” she almost growled between gritted teeth, adding passionately, “and I will always hate you and despise you for the lying hypocrite that you are!”
Although she had hoped for some reaction from him, Alexa flinched instinctively at the strange, short laugh he gave. “Do you, querida?” he murmured half-mockingly in a drowsy voice, his eyes still closed. Alexa had opened her mouth to make some suitably acerbic retort when he said in the same half-slurred tone that seemed to deride himself as well as her: “You must not expect to surprise me with that kind of statement, you know. My pure virgin wife felt the very same way, or perhaps worse. I did take her virginity after all, and very clumsily too, I’m sure, to judge from the way she used to cower away from me if I came within a few inches of her mortified body.” Again his short, humorless laugh made Alexa flinch in spite of the feeling of shock that had made her body stiffen. Then he said thoughtfully, “I suppose I should have had the sense to stick to whores and the Indian and Mexican women I met who wanted the same thing I did. But, Christ, did you ever know a young man under twenty with any sense at all?”
Alexa did not know why he was suddenly telling her all the sordid details of his past, unless he had managed to forget her presence and was talking almost to himself. Part of her revolted against his forcing her to hear any more; and yet another part of her wanted to hear everything, so that she would have even more reason to hate and despise him. Whores and women of even less than easy virtue. He should indeed have stayed at his own level.
“Why did you marry then?” she heard herself ask with surprise. “Since you are not a female, no one could have forced you into a marriage you did not want, surely?”
She thought for a few moments that he had either fallen asleep after all or chose not to reply to her question until he said with sudden bitterness: “No? Ah well, I suppose I did not have a rifle pointed at my head or the threat of being shut up in a room to exist on bread and water to make me take a wife. But my father died before I was old enough to remember what he looked like, and I was brought up by the Spanish side of my family. They had already arranged a marriage for us when poor little Teresa was still playing happily in her cradle. She was not asked if she cared for the match or not, I’m sure, and I married because it was expected of me to produce heirs as quickly as possible in case either hostile Indians or a storm at sea finished me off—which would have been a stroke of good fortune for her, I’m sure. But...” Alexa felt his shrug against her and wondered why her mouth had suddenly become so dry as he said in a detached voice: “I suppose we were both unlucky in the end. I can feel sorry for her now, and I see too clearly what a clumsy brute I must have seemed to the poor girl. She hadn’t been told anything at all about what she might expect to take place in a marriage bed, and I had had no experience with...I suppose it must be called innocence, for want of a better word, although ignorance was more like it. Hell...!”
He paused for so long that Alexa was on the point of bursting out at him to finish what he had begun, so that she need not be goaded into thinking about him merely because he had managed- to arouse a certain amount of curiosity in her. Tilting her head back so that she could see the expression on his face, Alexa felt her heart give a sudden, nervous jolt when she encountered those dark, jungle-green eyes she remembered only too well, especially when they narrowed at her like the slitted eyes of a crouching black panther. Moistening her lips, she succeeded in forcing what she hoped would pass for a coy smile, while she ran one hand teasingly down from his shoulder until it rested on his thigh. Instead of displaying any evidence of desire, he frowned down at her before growling: “How the devil did you get here? Damn!” Running tense fingers through his tousled dark hair, he seemed to wince; completely ignoring Alexa’s growing anger in his preoccupation with himself, until at last he released her from the almost crushing embrace in which he’d held her locked against himself, saying in an insultingly casual tone of voice: “Since the signora has been kind enough to provide me with a handmaiden to share my dream, would you be a good girl and bring me a glass of that cold wine from the bucket in the corner there? And while you’re about it, you might as well light that pipe up for me again. It seems to have gone out.”
With a kind of spring that would have done any feline justice, Alexa leapt off the bed and stood glaring down at him while she wondered viciously exactly what he might do if she raked at him over and over again with her nails, especially since there was no body of water handy for him to try and drown her in. More annoyingly still, she noticed that he had levered himself up against a pile of cushions and closed his eyes again; although being part animal himself, she thought unpleasantly, he must have sensed the pent-up fury in her that was on the verge of eruption. Why else would he have thought to say without even looking at her: “Listen here, my girl, if you’re of a mind to throw a temper tantrum I should warn you that childish displays of that nature tend to bore instead of titillate me—if that was your object—and I presume that is why you’re here?” Ignoring Alexa’s choked gasp, he continued in a bored and slightly weary tone of voice: “Although I am not generally in the mood to give advice, I will do you the favor of warning you that if you hope to get ahead in your—ah— chosen profession, you should really learn to do as you’re bid by your clients, with a smile and a pretense of enjoyment at least!”
“What?” As Alexa’s voice rose dangerously in pitch he seemed to give an exaggerated shudder before he suggested rather impatiently that since she was obviously neither docile nor obliging, both qualities that he always insisted upon in women, she might just as well take herself off and have the signora send in one of her better-trained young ladies. “Like... Oh, yes, the ravishing blonde. Maddalena, I believe her name was. Very much a real woman in every way. And please—before you begin to shriek again—let me assure you that I intend to pay the signora for the time you’ve spent with me, as well as for your earlier efforts to make yourself pleasing.”
Had he perhaps gone a little too far in teasing that dangerously volatile temper of hers he remembered almost too well? Regarding her through barely slitted eyes he screened with his lashes, Nicholas found himself hoping that she would manage to control herself this time at least, for the contents of that pipe had been very potent, and he still felt waves of that dreamlike feeling washing over him from time to time. Looking at her as she stood there like an angry young Amazon in that diaphanous apology for a chemise, with angry spots of color blazing in her cheeks and her lips parted as she literally gasped for breath, Nicholas wanted her almost as much as he did not want her. He had desired her from the very first time he’d set eyes on her; and now he damned her and the infernal chemistry that was like an invisible cord drawing him to her. For he had actually begun to want her now with his loins, although his mind despised and almost detested what she had so easily become, and the suspicious cynic in him mistrusted most of all the maneuvering she must have done to “find” him here tonight. And that was why, when he had somehow known with his senses that he was going to see her again, he had deliberately ensured that he could not make love to her even if he had wanted to. It was for the same reason that now, with an angrily muttered obscenity that would never be used within earshot o
f a lady, Nicholas pushed himself off the bed and strode over to one of the braziers to light his pipe. He noticed, quite interestedly, that she had at long last recovered at least some of her powers of speech.
“You...!” Alexa sputtered ragingly. “Oh, you...you unspeakable... Oh! If I only could...could...”
With legs crossed he had settled back against the cushions again, and now he gave her a curious look before he suggested disinterestedly that if she wanted to swear in any language she chose there was really no reason why she could not, was there? Especially now that she must be quite used to hearing all kinds of oaths and obscenities.
There was a dangerous moment, after she whirled around and almost ran to the other side of the room, when Nicholas thought she actually meant to pick up one of the red-hot braziers and throw it at him; but then she plucked open a door he had not noticed before and rushed through it with all the force and fury of a whirlwind, the door slamming heavily in her wake. Would she come back? Would she not? Obviously it would be the best thing for both of them if they never set eyes on each other again!
Nicholas stared morosely at the door while the smoke gradually and insidiously worked its sweet magic in his mind again, and he noticed that the door had on it the same pattern as the ceiling and that it even seemed to twist and change shapes in the same way. When he set the pipe aside and lay back again, he stopped wondering about her and began thinking about the decision he would have to make very soon that concerned another young woman and another dynastic marriage. His lips twisted ironically at that conceit. “Dynastic” certainly fit the attitude of the Dowager Marchioness of Newbury, who had already told him imperiously that she thought he’d do, after all, and that considering the elevated rank that would be his some day, he could do no better than to marry a girl young enough and healthy enough to bear lots of children and who was also used to the running of a large household and the correct etiquette and manner of doing things on any occasion that might arise.
“You have described the kind of paragon of all virtues who cannot possibly exist, Belle-Mere,” he had challenged her quizzically, using the name she has asked him to use. And he had hardly expected her burst of gleeful laughter before she announced that she had in mind already exactly the kind of accomplished young woman she described— one who was reckoned a raving beauty as well.
“I see,” Nicholas had said drily, not really believing that the old woman who seemed to rule all of her family with her iron will could actually be serious in discussing a wife for him in much the same fashion as she might have described the points and ancestry of a blooded thoroughbred mare. It was almost to humor her that he had added in much the same tone, “And might I ask the name of this paragon, or must that remain a mystery until our wedding day?”
“Tch, tch!” She had eluded him, although there seemed to be a grudging twinkle in her sharp black eyes. “There’s no need to sharpen your sarcasm on me, my boy. We’re not primitive heathens, are we? And I’ll tell you the name of the girl who will make you the perfect wife, just to show I don’t take offence at small lapses.”
When he had inclined his head in caustic acknowledgment, the dowager pronounced triumphantly: “Why, it’s Helen, of course! Lady Helen Dameron, my granddaughter and your very distant cousin, fortunately. Wouldn’t do if the relationship was too close, you know. And she’s to come out this season; it’s all been arranged. So there cannot possibly be any obstacles to an engagement by next spring, let’s say, and the marriage...”
“Just a minute, if you please!” Even the dowager had looked a trifle startled at the sudden harshness of his voice, but by then Nicholas was past caring if he angered her or not. “I apologize for interrupting you, Belle-Mere....” He smoothed his voice out somewhat, although the rough edges were still there to hear. “But there is one thing that I feel we should settle quite clearly and definitely between us before we go on—and that is that I am used to ruling my own life and my own destiny, and I intend to go on doing so. In other words, my dearest Belle-Mere, I have no intentions of becoming yet another one of your puppets whose strings you seem to control with such ease; and when, or if I decide to marry again, I will do the choosing this time! I hope I have managed to insure that there will be no further misunderstandings between us?”
He had half expected her to fly into one of the formidable rages he had heard discussed in nervous whispers and had fully expected her to order him out of her house and her sight at the very least. Instead, to his amazement, she had thrown her head back and given vent to peal after peal of genuine laughter, after which, while she wiped her eyes, she announced that she was damn glad to find at least one Dameron with gumption and thought they were going to deal together very well indeed.
So he had taken a stand, and found no opposition once he had done so. What harm then, if he had been formally introduced to the blonde and lovely Lady Helen, who at the age of sixteen seemed to possess more poise and sophistication than many women over twice her age. And since they were distantly related, and he was constantly being asked to accompany the family here and there to meet all their friends and acquaintances, it had seemed quite natural to act as Helen’s escort on a few of these occasions. The only problem was that the next thing he knew, all the gossips were buzzing and the whole of society expected their engagement to be announced officially at any time. Goddammit! Even through the peaceful haze that seemed to hold him in the middle of a puffy cloud, Nicholas could feel the lightning-jab of anger. There was nothing wrong with Helen, and he could even like her in a distant kind of way. Moreover, he was quite sure she’d make someone an excellent wife. The fact was that he could not feel that he was prepared to marry again. Not after Teresa, and the scars that refused to fade, even after all the years that had passed since then.
Chapter 28
“Did you see?” Alexa cried angrily. “There is no need to try and make me feel better by saying I tried, I assure you; because even if I did—and I might as well tell you it was the most difficult thing in the whole world to pretend that I... Well, in any case I failed! First of all, he... he just was not interested in me in the very least. And then to make matters worse I had to lose my temper. And then... Could you hear the things he said to me? The even worse things he implied? Why, he all but said in so many words that he looked on me as a...a...”
“As a whore?” Orlanda inserted helpfully, making Alexa stop her pacing in mid-stride while her face reddened.
“Oh! I didn’t mean... You know I did not mean to be... But it was his attitude! That smug, superior, patronizing manner of his! Not that any of that excuses my lamentable lack of self-control, of course, but...” Alexa’s face tautened, her eyes slitting like those of a cat. “Do you know that he even dared suggest that he wanted Maddalena to...to replace me? ”That ravishing blonde,“ he called her. Hah! ‘A real woman,’ I think, were his next words. And...”
