AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Just look at you, so prim and proper and bossy. Perfect for me. How I treasure you. Yes, I shall kiss you.”
He was looking at her mouth, licking his lips, speaking to himself, really, but she had never deluded herself that his desires had anything to do with her.
She tried to will herself away, back to the abbey ruins, to the wind whipping her skirts and Guy’s safe, solid heat, to Guy calling her splendid, sliding that blackberry between her lips.
“Kiss my own virgin before I claim her.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I am not your virgin,” she snapped.
He went as cold and still as the stone at her back. Her limbs unlocked and she slipped past him, but she had taken barely two steps when he lunged. Fast as a snake, his arm lashed out. His hand gripped her forearm, his fingers digging into her flesh through her sleeves.
“You are not— What?” he snarled. “You are mine! Are you not?”
“I am not—”
His fingers squeezed harder, as if to crush the bone. She cried out, a horrid sound like a trapped animal.
“Unhand me, sir!” she managed to say. “You are hurting me.”
“Iam hurtingyou? What of the pain you cause me?”
She swung her other hand to strike him, but he caught that arm too. She tried to pull away, but he gripped both her forearms, leaning too close, forcing her to arch her back.
“Your innocence was for me, and me alone!” His once-handsome face was feral with rage. “What man took what ismine? You were my perfect, precious dream, a fine lady, untouched but prim and bossy as a governess. I treasured you, and you—betrayedme?”
In vain she struggled against the vise of his grip. She kicked at her skirts, tried to kick him, and abruptly he released her, shoving her away. He was shoving, and she was kicking, and then she was falling toward the grass, her legs confused, her body twisting instinctively, so she landed hard on her shoulder, jarring her stunned bones and emptying her tortured lungs of air.
She had barely sucked in a breath when his boot slammed into her side. Dreamlike, as if watching herself from the outside, she pictured her body slowly rise with the force of his kick, and just as slowly fall.
She braced herself for more. But nothing. He was tearing the trellis off the wall, sobbing and ranting about betrayal, and his dead brother Kenneth, and the unbearable pain when others took what was his.
Before her eyes, the stubby blades of grass were growing every which way. A brown beetle was tromping through them, the blades big to it like oak trees were to her. A brave little beetle, which cared nothing for her troubles. It did not care about Sculthorpe and his governess-stealing brother, or what happened to Arabella Larke. It cared only about making its way through these chaotic, disordered blades of grass.
A bitter taste flooded her mouth, but behind it lay the sweet taste of a blackberry, juicy and plump and ripe. If she concentrated, that would be all she tasted, all she knew, all she felt. The touch of Guy’s fingers on her lips, the autumn wind, the rustling leaves. And Guy. Hating her, wanting her, teasing her, touching her. If Guy were here now, would he smash Sculthorpe’s head against the wall? She didn’t know. She would never know. She would have to smash his head herself.
Tentatively, she rolled over and rose, testing her limbs. They did not fail her. She smoothed her skirts and wriggled her toes. Her arms throbbed. Her side throbbed. She ignored them; now was no time to feel pain.
Sculthorpe stopped destroying the trellis, his mouth distorted, his face red, and he swiped at his tears furiously like a little boy. Hecried? He had kicked her, yet she did not cry. How dare this vicious brute cry!
“We will not marry,” Arabella said, her voice as cold and hard as the stone wall that had witnessed her weakness and shame.
“Of course not,” he sneered. “I would not marry a soiled, disgusting, traitorous—”
“Silence. How dare you mistreat a woman thus.”
“You made me do it.” He clenched his fists. Gripping her skirts, she readied her feet to run, but he did not come near. “You let another man take what was mine. I shall tell your father of this!”
“I shall tell him that you kicked me.”
“And I shall tell all of England why you deserved it.”
After which, Papa would disinherit her. No excuses, he had said. She would have to keep fighting. How she wearied of fighting.
But she had fight in her yet.
This would not be her defeat.
Her mind and body felt icy and numb, but her pride would never let her down. Her pride knew what to say.
