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“But it is Embry, Grandmama!” Philippa persisted excitedly. “And he is kissing her, too! Won’t Helen be just...”
Whatever else she had been about to say was interrupted by Ianthe who blurted, “Oh, do shut up, Pippa!” before bursting into tears.
It had been, Alexa reflected dreamily, almost like the excitement of first swimming underwater—holding her breath before she opened her eyes into green depths—and then, suddenly realizing what had just happened, she snatched her hands from around his neck and jerked erect, reaching futilely for the cord that would release the velvet carriage curtains. Already annoyed at her own display of weakness, his mocking laugh before he made the caustic comment that since at least half of London had seen them already he could only think of one other reason for her sudden desire for privacy only added more fuel to the fire already raging in Alexa’s breast.
“Half of London, including Selby and Rowell!” Alexa snapped back vengefully. “And not to mention the Duchess of Atherton, as well as your fiancée's two younger sisters! I would have warned you, had you not been so recklessly precipitate! I do not suppose there’ll be any ‘Exciting Announcement’ made at the ball under the circumstances, will there? Just think how disappointed all of society is going to be, although no doubt the relish they’ll take in gossiping about the reasons will partially console them!”
She had flung each word at him like a barb, but to her angry amazement Alexa discovered none of the expressions she had expected to see on his darkly saturnine face—only a lifted eyebrow as he inquired if he was expected to apologize for making her a target for the gossips. With a far too casual shrug Nicholas continued in a matter-of-fact voice: “If you’re really so much concerned for your reputation as you seem to be, my poor Alexa, we can formally announce our engagement tomorrow night and have it published in the Times the following day, to make it official. I had no intention, in any case, of offering for Helen; that was Belle-Mere’s idea in the first place. But now that I think of it, becoming engaged to you instead should put an end to all that nonsense for good, thank God!”
At fir
st, sure she could not possibly have heard correctly, Alexa could only stare at him as if she was stupefied. And then as he continued to look at her through those dark green eyes that darkened even further when he narrowed them, and in which she could discern no feeling or expression at all, the enormity of what he had just said struck her at last with all the force of an unexpected blow.
“I...I beg your pardon?” Alexa said in a husky voice that was a little above a whisper, and he repeated his suggestion (it had not even been couched as a question!) rather impatiently, adding that he certainly hoped she did not expect the hypocrisy of a more formal kind of proposal, with him going down on one knee and presenting her with a posy of violets or something equally ridiculous.
“And announcing an engagement, as you’re well aware, does not necessarily mean that a marriage will follow, in case the idea makes you nervous. It will, however, insure that I’m no longer a target for matchmaking mamas and that you...” the pause was infinitesimal, but Alexa noted it for all that, “why, you will find it easier yourself to escape fortune hunters and—the other kind of hunter as well!”
Feeling hunted herself, Alexa shook her head violently, as if she was denying that she had heard correctly. “No! I cannot believe that I...that you... You must be deranged to...to...”
“To propose to you?” he taunted her with that strange, twisted smile she had hated from the first time she had seen it turned on her. “Do you place such a low value on yourself as to think a man has to be mad to offer you marriage, or is it that you would prefer receiving a different type of proposition?”
“It is hardly the value I place on myself, but my memory of the unfailingly brutal and callous manner in which you have always treated me that makes me feel you are merely playing some kind of cruel game with me!” Alexa blazed back at him. “Or could it be that your pride demands that you come up with a conveniently understanding fiancée you can produce for the world to see before Helen breaks off the understanding you two obviously had? Why should I let myself be used by you again?”
“The Spaniard,” she remembered Charles Lawrence calling him laughingly in that long-ago time in Colombo. And at this moment there was none of the English Lord to be discerned in his harsh, high-planed dark features. Only the proud, vengeful Spaniard with twin white lines of barely checked fury on either side of his mouth and the slight, ominous flare of his nostrils that she remembered from before. Just as she recalled all too well the particularly throaty softness of his voice, reminding her unpleasantly of the low growl of a crouched black panther ready to spring.
“Have I used you indeed? Forgive me for pointing out that my recollection is quite different. In fact, almost the opposite! I think I had you—or used you, as you put it— for the first time and the only time at the bordello known as the Temple of Venus, and that you charged me quite an exorbitant price for your surprising virginity, which I paid! And I also recall quite clearly that I did not go there seeking you out in order to use you—quite the contrary, in fact. There I was, half-asleep in my hashish dream and perfectly content until I was disturbed by the intrusion of a priestess of Venus who—it soon became apparent— wished to make use of me! Should I go on?” “No!” Alexa said strongly, painfully aware of her warmly flushed face. “No, I don’t wish to be reminded of anything unpleasant, and I’ve no intention of entering into a pretended engagement to you only in order that you might save face, as they would say in the East!”
Having made her defiant speech, she was immeasurably relieved when the carriage jerked to a stop and she heard the announcement that they were home at last. The same sense of relief enabled her to turn to Lord Embry and say politely that her carriage was at his disposal, should he wish to be set down elsewhere.
“Thank you, my sweet, but later, perhaps? I believe there is still much to be discussed and decided between us.”
Chapter 36
Afterwards it was easy to tell herself that she should have been warned by the way his words sounded as if they had been bitten off, or to wonder why she hadn’t kicked and struggled and screamed out aloud for help, even if he had had the insolence to whisper as he carried her out of the coach and up the steps of her house with the servants and poor Mr. Bowles staring, “If you’d prefer to ‘save face,’ as they say in the East, my darling Alexa, then you will let them all think that you are actually in a swoon, which is what I intend to say unless you’d rather have everyone think otherwise.”
And then there was the other, more fatalistic part of her mind that told her he would have done what he meant to do in any case, no matter what her reactions might have been! But at first, however, even when he carried her upstairs and she heard him demand from Bridget where her room was, even then she had no real inkling of the outrageous, monstrous act he meant to perpetrate. Not even when she heard him say grimly to Bridget, “And you can stay outside this door, do you hear? And if you and that butler have any sense you’ll keep the rest of the servants downstairs and out of sight!”
“But...oh, but my lord! If my Lady’s ill someone should be seeing to her.”
“I’ll be seeing to your lady. And if you have to tell them something you might as well say we’re discussing plans for our betrothal and wedding—in private, you understand?”
He had dropped her onto her bed to lie sprawling against the patterned brocade spread, just as he had once dropped her into the Indian Ocean, uncaring if she would sink or swim. And while Alexa continued to lie there in a daze of shock, her eyes wide and staring in disbelief, he locked and bolted her bedroom door quite calmly before turning back to survey her with an expression she neither liked nor trusted and did not wish to see. Squeezing her eyes tightly shut, she told herself that this was only a nightmare, nothing more. Not something that could actually happen to her—to the wealthy Lady Travers—in this civilized day and age. Why, when she opened her eyes again she would be able to laugh at herself for imagining...
“You can keep your eyes closed or open—it’s all the same to me. And you can take off that ugly purple dress you’re wearing, and all your damned petticoats and your corset as well—or if you prefer it, I’ll rip the clothes off your body myself! But either way, my mermaid, I’ll have you naked the way I first saw you; and I mean to use you, my virgin slut, as I should have done then and later. In every way and every fashion I see fit. Bruja, do you understand me? Is this the way you really want a man to take you?”
The purple taffeta ripped under his hands with a loud tearing noise that made Alexa flinch. The petticoats tore, and her shift; and she lay there with her teeth gritted together, willing herself not to cry out or beg him for mercy. She only flinched again when she felt the coldness of a knife blade against her skin as he cut away her corset, although she kept her eyes closed and stayed unmoving even then.
She could hear her own breathing and his, and she felt the bed give and felt the warmth of his body as he leaned over hers; but she would not open her eyes and give either him or what he meant to do to her any recognition. She lay with her legs and her arms outspread like a whore and was as cold inside herself as a whore while only her mind screamed for him to do it—whatever he wished to do with her body—do it and be done, freeing her, by his act, of himself and his image in her mind and her blood and her flesh. Free of the terrible, frightening chemistry that had bound her to him all this time and still did and still would unless he was the one to wield the sword that would cut her away from him forever. The sword of his own flesh... Why in God’s name didn’t he do something?
Alexa’s eyes flashed open to trap his unguarded for less than an instant before he shuttered them again and awarded her that one-sided, twisted smile she had come to know far too well. “You remind me of a pagan sacrifice, you know,” Nicholas said drily. “What I should have done in the first place was chain you to the nearest rocks and let some poor unsuspecting dragon have you!”
“Does that mean that you are not going to rape me after all? I mean, after going to so much trouble and exertion?”
She thought she discerned the slightest twitch to his lips before he retorted: “I was merely waiting until I had recovered my breath, as a matter of fact. You are no light weight, you know. Perhaps you should consider giving up puddings.”
“Oh!” Alexa exclaimed, sitting upright, “you’re despicable!”
“So you’ve said before, quite often. And you, of course, are a teasing little bitch!”
