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Victoria didn’t wait another instant. She was through the adjoining door, slamming it behind her. There was a key in the lock and she quickly turned it. Slowly she stepped back. She was trembling. She didn’t know how long she had stood in the middle of her bedchamber, not moving, when she heard him striding toward the outer door of his bedchamber. Her eyes flew to the door that gave onto the corridor, and she ran quickly to it. She turned the key just as she heard his footsteps stop on the other side.
Rafael’s fist was raised to pound on the door. Slowly, as reason returned, he lowered his arm. He said very quietly, “Open the door, Victoria.”
“No,” she whispered. Then, louder, “No.” In that instant she pictured herself lying terrified in her bed, Damien calling to her from behind her bedchamber door. It was too much.
“I will kick the door in if you don’t open it this second.”
Very quietly Victoria fled across her bedchamber to the adjoining door. She unlocked it and slipped into his bedchamber, locking the door on his side. Her heart was pounding, but she was smiling grimly.
Her sense of triumph disappeared but moments later. Dumbly she watched the hall door open, watched him stride confidently into the room. He closed it softly behind him. “I thought you just might try something like that. No more escape for you, Victoria. Don’t even try it. Another thing, dear wife. You try to unman me again, and I will tie you down and show you not a whit of consideration. Do you understand me?”
She had lost. She felt an overwhelming sense of helplessness. Futile, she thought. Everything I try is futile. She looked at his angry set face from across his bedchamber. Slowly she sank to her knees. She crouched against the wall, her head buried against her thighs. She didn’t cry; the pain was too great, her sense of loss too overpowering.
Why didn’t she simply tell him about her leg? But she knew the answer. He had believed his brother’s filth. She didn’t owe him an explanation. He didn’t deserve it. He deserved nothing. She didn’t even hear him walk to her, she was so lost in her own misery.
Rafael stood over her, his hands on his hips, his legs spread. She deserved a beating, he thought, but the sight of her huddled on the floor against the door unnerved him. Slowly he dropped to his knees beside her.
“What was your confession?”
She felt his hand on her upper arm and flinched away. But he didn’t release her. “What was your confession?” he repeated. “You will tell me—something—or you will spend the night here on the damned floor. I mean it, Victoria.”
To his surprise and chagrin, she shook her head, not saying a word.
“So, you can’t even think of a convincing lie.”
Suddenly she raised her head from her folded arms and said, “Are you a virgin, Rafael?”
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“Are you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Victoria, I’m a man.”
“And a man always wins, does he not?”
“I didn’t,” he said, bitterness filling his voice. “Not this time, not with you.”
She looked him straight in the eye. “Are you going to rape me?”
He sighed. “No, I’m not like that.”
“I don’t want to spend the night on the floor. May I go now to my room?”
“Not until you tell me this confession of yours.”
She gave a brittle laugh. “Very well, I will tell you, all of it. I am really known as the trollop of St. Austell. Damien was only one lover in a very long line of men. There were so many, it’s difficult for me to remember . . . I began quite young, you know, perhaps as young as you, a man. I was, ah, not more than fourteen when this very virile stableboy took me into the loft. I shall never forget how he kissed me, how—”
“Stop it.”
Rafael jumped to his feet. “Get out,” he said finally, very softly. “Get out of my sight.”
I have won, at last, she thought as she forced herself to rise. Her leg, cramped from the position, knotted, and she had to grasp the door handle to keep from falling.
Rafael didn’t notice. He’d turned away from her.
She gave him a last bitter look and slipped into her room. She didn’t lock the door. There was now no need.
Very early the following morning, Victoria quietly opened her bedchamber door, looked up and down the corridor, and slowly pulled her valise out of her room. It wasn’t much heavier, she thought with a sad smile, than it had been when Rafael saved her from the smugglers. How very long ago that seemed. A lifetime, at least a lifetime of feeling. As quietly as she could, she crept down the corridor to the staircase. She paused a moment, staring down into the gloomy entranceway. Of course Mrs. Ripple wasn’t up and about yet. She prayed Tom slept in the house and not in the stable.
