CHAPTER FOUR #4
Joan curtsied again, and left the room. Rosina got up and went into the dressing room.
The trunk was tucked in a corner. It was empty.
Rather wildly, Rosina opened drawers and doors, looking where her things had been stowed.
She felt as if nothing belonged to her any more.
Her life was at the beck of others. Even her clothes were no longer hers to use as she chose.
And as for that — that despicable little room next door, she wished she might lock it and shut herself off from invasion.
Pausing, Rosina straightened as a daring thought struck. Was there a key? She darted to the bedchamber door and found none. Neither within nor without. Fairly running back across the dressing room, she looked in the lock of the door to the antechamber. Nothing.
Fiercely, she grasped the handle and dragged open the door. An intense feeling of relief swamped her. There was a key on the other side. Not pausing to consider her action, she moved into the little room and triumphantly extracted the key from the lock.
A latch clicked behind her. Gasping, Rosina turned. Entering the antechamber from his own dressing-room door was Lord Raith.
He looked at the key in her hand. Then his glance travelled to her face.
Rosina was seized with an absurd sensation of guilt, as if she had been caught out in wrongdoing. Without thinking, she put her hands behind her back, as if she would hide the key. To her consternation, her spouse’s eyes followed the movement, and the bitter look of cynicism became pronounced.
“Don’t trouble yourself to make a secret of your feelings. You are welcome to lock the door and pocket the key, if it will make you sleep safer at night. I am unlikely to break down the door, no matter how strong my desire to molest you.”
Rosina heard the words with resentment, despite an increasing sense of guilt.
Need he be sarcastic? Was it surprising she should be apprehensive?
Last night he had acknowledged that she had reason.
She eyed him. He stood stiff and tight-lipped in the doorway, grey eyes glinting.
There was no trace of melting as there had been last night.
She straightened, bringing the key from behind her. Fitting it into the lock again from the side where she had taken it, she looked back at him. “I married you for better or for worse, my lord. I will abide by the terms of the contract.”
He leaned against the door-jamb and folded his arms. “Am I expected to thank you? You set inordinate store by that part of the marriage vow, I take it. Let us hope my gentlemanly instincts may prevent me from forcing the worse upon you before we have had time to become better acquainted.”
Irritation flared. “Oh, Raith, must you be so — so naggy?” She moved into the antechamber and crossed to the fireplace, tweaking at her fingers.
Raith watched her, the fire dying out of his eyes.
She was right to reproach him. What in thunder ailed him, to be picking on her in this brutal way?
Yet her face at sight of his upon his entrance had thrown a shaft into his chest. Revulsion!
He had known she must feel it. She had tried to gainsay it yesterday.
Tried to make him think she did not regard it.
But there was proof, if he had needed it. One had only to look at her.
In spite of all, his conscience nagged at driving her into disquiet again.
It was the last thing he had intended. But what he had said, he reflected soberly, was not so far from the truth.
He had been married to her for little more than four and twenty hours, and already he was chafing at the necessity for patience.
If he did not take care, he would lose her altogether.
There was little point in excusing himself yet again. She would grow weary of his apologies, even if she believed, as he did not, that it excused his offences. He moved into the room. She must have heard him, for she turned.
“If you wish to speak to me at any time, you have only to send your maid to consult with my valet.”
Rosina was wary of the change of tone. He was so apt to alter at a second’s notice.
He looked no less dangerous, despite the relaxation in his voice.
The light was at his back, and his face was shadowed.
But the white gleam of his scar could be clearly discerned, like a little streak of lightning in the dark.
What had he said? Her maid? “I have no maid,” she said on the thought.
“I was forgetting that.”
His words rose to her consciousness, and she suddenly took in what he had meant. Send her maid to consult with his valet? A flash of anger sparked. She was not yet so great a lady.
“If I should wish to speak with you, my lord, I shall use no go-between. Such a course could do nothing but increase the distance between us.”
She passed him quickly and, with an ostentatious gesture, removed the key from the lock and replaced it on the inside of her own door.
He had turned, and she looked at him with some degree of defiance, but he did not speak.
Rosina waited a moment. Then she went into her dressing room and shut the door behind her.