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“Because I thought you had wit enough to know I was not that sort of woman.” Bitter laughter like wine gone bad bubbled in her throat. “But I suppose a faithless heart must see only its own reflection in others.”
“Speaking from experience, are you?” His eyebrow rose mockingly. “Tell me, does your paramour know I asked you for a true marriage? Or are we both to be your fools, dancing to your whim?”
Acid churned in her throat. “Does your last tryst know you think of all women as no better than harlots? Or have you yet revealed to your mother that your lack of a match is because you have no sincerity nor ability to see it in others?”
She was unprepared for his lunge, lightning fast as he snatched her shoulders in an iron grip, bringing his face close enough to hers that she could feel the heat of his breath and smell the brandy fumes on it.
For a long moment, they stared at each other. Then Arthur growled low in his throat. “No sincerity, is it? But I am quite sincere in this, Nora, I will not have a marriage in name only. No longer. I will not let another man have a claim on you.”
She had no chance to reply before his lips fastened over hers with bruising force. There was nothing of gentleness in the kiss, only a demand so harsh and punishing she feared it might draw blood.
It was an act of dominance, with nothing of love, kindness, or courtesy.
Her reaction was immediate and almost instinctual. With a wrench that she knew would leave bruises later, she tore herself free from his grip, breaking the kiss as well. Then, before he could respond, she drew one hand back and slapped him, hard as she could manage, across one cheek.
* * *
Arthur staggered, his cheek throbbing from the force of the blow Nora had delivered.
It hurt, but it also served to bring him back to himself. He breathed out, watching Nora, who was watching him warily, like a deer who had spotted a hunting dog. He straightened, and she backed up a step, eyes fierce and watchful. He took a hesitant step forward and extended a hand.
Nora moved away instantly, eyes snapping. Her lips were bruised, and the way she stood suggested her shoulders might be too, but it did nothing to diminish the fire in her expression. “You must be mad if you think I shall let you lay a hand on me again or anything else.”
He forced himself to stop and step back, watching her as she watched him. The anger and hurt were still sullen embers in his mind, but the shock of her blow had cleared some of the haze from his vision. Enough that he found himself truly looking at her for the first time since she’d entered the room.
There were dark circles under her eyes, almost like someone had blacked them both but with a shape that suggested sleeplessness rather than violence. Her clothing was rumpled, with no evidence that she had made any attempt to neaten it. Her face was pale, eyes faintly bloodshot.
Her hair was barely in a state that might be considered passable, let alone presentable, and there were lines on her forehead and about her eyes that had not been present the night before.
Behind the fire of her temper, she looked worn and exhausted or ill.
What has she been doing to get in such condition in the space of a night?
He swallowed hard, then leaned back against the far wall, keeping his posture as non-threatening as he could manage when anger still hummed under the surface of his skin. “You say you were not with a lover. What then?”
Emotion spasmed across her expressive face. Surprise. Mistrust. Panic. And finally, resignation. Then she sighed and lowered her hand to a pocket in her skirt to produce a familiar, though much crumpled, missive. “My daughter.”
The world seemed to freeze and tilt under his feet, shock seizing his chest in painful iron bands that made breathing difficult. “Your…?”
“My daughter. She took ill last night, with a high fever that brought chills and fever dreams. Scarlett said in her letter that she spoke to images only she could see and was calling for me.” A bitter expression crossed her face. “What could I do but return home to tend her? She needed me. I could not leave. It was all we could do to try and soothe her with cold baths, and that was only possible because one of Scarlett’s patrons gave us some ice for her.”
She held out the letter. He took it with numb fingers, his mind moving as if all his thoughts had turned to half-frozen snowmelt. “A physician….”
Nora’s bitter laugh stopped his words as surely as her blow of only a few minutes prior. “As if any physician would leave the comfort of his bed to tend to the bastard child of an unwed maid.”
‘...the bastard child of an unwed maid... the bastard child of an unwed maid…’The words seemed to rattle and crash through his mind like wheels broken from their axles and left to careen wildly where they would.
His gaze dropped to the letter in his hand, flickering over the words without truly taking them in.
A child. A daughter. But to have a child... there was only one way to have a child.
A bastard child.
All the mysteries, all the little clues he had thought over came back and rearranged themselves into a new pattern.
A family he could not meet. But, of course, she would not wish to tell him until they were wed, when he could not set her aside so easily.
She had said she was no innocent maid. He had little suspected how true those words were. But why should he have guessed, when she was so careful to speak of her family in such vague terms when she spoke of a ‘sister?’ When she deflected all his queries with such guarded words?
