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But her way through the gardens was blocked: Sculthorpe was patrolling the paths. She could not face him. Of all the people in the world, he was the one she could not bear to see.
She veered off the path into a walled garden, and stood with her back to the wall, next to trellises covered in pink clematis blooms. She closed her eyes, listened to the birds, to the tinkling of the fountain, to her own deep breaths.
The birds fell silent. She did not open her eyes. But she knew she was no longer alone.
“There you are.” Sculthorpe’s voice was light and intimate. “Playing hide-and-seek with me.”
No. Please, no. Let a thunderstorm strike, a gale, an earthquake, a plague of blood and locusts and frogs. Let it be anything but Sculthorpe, catching her alone, that repulsive smile slithering through his voice.
The world never did obey her wishes. And now, still reeling from Guy’s touch, even her own body and thoughts were not hers to command.
Oh, why had she ever imagined she could control anything? Had she learned nothing? All her life she had tried to bring the world under control; every day it resisted.
Curse you, Guy Roth. Curse you, Sculthorpe. Curse you, Papa, and Oliver, and everyone who ever trod this misbegotten earth.
“I was looking for you. Miss Larke?”
His tone was sharper now. Vexed.
She opened her eyes. Sculthorpe stood inside the entrance to the walled garden, paused mid-step, hat in hand and expression pinched. His gaze was sharp enough to pin her to the wall.
“My lord. I was enjoying the birdsong.”
He relaxed visibly. With a jaunty flip of his wrist, he tossed his hat onto the bench. “A pretty place to find a pretty virgin.”
“We have no chaperone, my lord.”
Her voice sounded shaky. Good grief. Arabella Larke, turned into a trembling ninny! Who needed an earthquake or plague of frogs? Clearly the end of the world was already nigh!
“We are engaged. No one will mind.”
I mind, you repellent lecher!
Smiling, he strolled toward her. There was something new in his expression, not only the stomach-turning possessive leer, but something sharper, harder. A predatory gleam.
An unfamiliar sensation spread through her, which she belatedly identified as panic.
She had gone too far. It had all gone too far.
Not taking her eyes off him for a heartbeat, Arabella forced herself to breathe through the tightness in her chest, the peculiar lightness of her limbs. She let the anger come. How dare he prey upon her, and frighten her, and try to take more from her when he already had so much.
“I have decided to kiss you,” Sculthorpe announced.
Arabella pressed her back into the cold wall, silently reciting the reasons she had agreed to this: Vindale Court, the patchwork fields, playing with Oliver, her happy childhood before he died.
“You said you intended to wait,” she managed to say.
“Just one kiss,” Sculthorpe murmured, as if to a skittish horse. “A single kiss to whet our appetites. You do not quiver and tremble with desire for me as you used to do. I miss that.”
He was not touching her, yet she shuddered all the same. He laughed, low and horrid. She would scream or kick him or vomit on him, she didn’t much care what, so long as he moved away.
He came closer.
“There it is, your desire, that helpless frisson,” he said. “You wanted more, didn’t you? For a virgin, you are turning out to be very hungry.”
She couldn’t do this. Yet she had agreed to it; she hadagreed. This was the choice she had made, though she had no other choice, and was it a choice if she had no other choice? She had not won, after all. It wasn’t fair. She had defeated Guy, she had defeated Sculthorpe, but still they had defeated her.
Curse them both. They should be the ones against the wall, Guy and Sculthorpe. She would dispense with a firing squad and shoot them both herself.
