situation. It is my wife who wishes to kill me. She may yet succeed. Oh, don’t look so stricken. I believe it happens in the best of families. Divorce is so hard to come by, and for a Catholic girl, the word doesn’t exist.” His voice turned hard. “So you see, Catalina and I are bound together until death us do part. An intolerable situation.”
Her mind was racing off in every direction. There were a million questions she wanted to ask, but she dared not voice a single one. Even now, he was suspicious of her. She could feel it in her bones.
She tried to look amused. “I’m sure, my lord, you are exaggerating.”
“Am I? I wonder.” His mood changed abruptly. “Enough about me. I am at a disadvantage here. I knownothing about you, and until I know more, I refuse to let you go.”
He spoke gaily, as though it were all a great game, but she wasn’t taken in by it. She’d seen that darker side of him and knew that the danger wasn’t over yet. She intended, if at all possible, to leave this place without his knowing who she was or where to find her.
She moistened her lips. “My lord, I appeal to you as a gentleman to let me go. You see, there is someone waiting for me. If he were to hear of my … misadventure, it could prove awkward for me.”
There was a strange undercurrent in the silence, as though her words disturbed him in some way. “I see,” he said. “And this gentleman, I take it, was someone you met tonight at Mrs. Spencer’s house. Did you make a secret assignation?”
Alarm coursed through her veins. “Mrs. Spencer? I know no one by that name.”
“Don’t you? I could have sworn that I saw you leave her house tonight. What happened? Did you quarrel? Did she throw you out in those rags? I know how jealous women can be. And you are very beautiful. Did you steal one of her lovers? Is that it? Who is waiting for you? Is it Worcester? Berkeley? Whatever they offered, I can do better.”
A moment before, she had been trembling in her shoes. Now, a wave of rage flooded through her. Each question was more insulting than the last, and he was doing it on purpose. This time, when she rose to her feet, there was no tremor in her knees. She was Catherine Courtnay and no man spoke to her in those terms. “My business with Mrs. Spencer,” she said, “is no concern of yours.”
“So, you were there!”
“And if I was?”
There was a moment when she knew she had made that blunder she had tried so hard to avoid. He rose to face her and his eyes glittered brilliantly. Then he reached for her, and hard, muscular arms wrapped around her, dragging her against thighs of iron and a rock-hard chest. She could feel the brass buttons of his coat digging intoher. Her arms were trapped at her sides. One hand cupped her neck, then his lips were against her mouth.
She moaned, not with pleasure, but in pain. Her jaw still smarted from the blow he had inflicted. She went rigid, waiting for the kiss to end, and the pain to pass.
He took advantage of her passivity and shifted her more intimately against his body. Catherine gasped, and his tongue swept in to take possession of her mouth. This was nothing like the insulting kiss he had forced on her after their marriage in Spain. He was tasting her, savoring her, with more gentleness than she’d dreamed was in him. A shock of pleasure took her unawares, and for a moment she sagged against him. Then she remembered who he was, what he was, and she kicked out at his shins in a fury of shame. He let her go at once.
Her hand went back, but before she could strike him, he grabbed for her wrist. He was laughing down at her.
“So, you’re not one of Amy’s friends,” he said. “I had to find out.”
She struck at him again, but he easily dodged her blow.
“Look, I apologize, all right? If you’d answered my questions in the first place, I would never have put you to the test.”
She hated his winsome grin, detested the sparkle in his eyes, and was thoroughly