CHAPTER SIX #3
Deeply concerned, he watched the tremors of her white face, his mind thronging with question.
What did this betoken? There was something here that could not be explained by all the careful arguments of his mind.
This reaction had no reference to his arrival.
If that were all, she would have greeted him with wary uncertainty.
Not this stark fright. The black eyes were dilated, a nightmare in their depths.
Even his disfigurement did not warrant this, considering her attempts to adjust to it.
Her fingers shook pitiably within his own, and her whole frame shivered. Raith saw the tears on her lashes, and without thought, he shifted forward and drew her gently into his arms, holding her close.
“Hush now, sweetheart, hush,” he murmured, only half aware of using the endearment, intent upon easing her. “All is well. There is nothing to harm you. Hush!”
Insensibly comforted, Rosina felt her jumping pulse begin to subside. She sagged against him, letting her head fall upon his shoulder. His hold was warm, and completely un-amorous, one hand stroking down her back in a rhythmic movement that readily increased her relaxation.
But her proximity started at length to disturb Raith, coupled with the feel of her nestling thus within his arms and the warmth and scent of her skin under the thin stuff of her nightgown.
His senses swam. The quality of his embrace began to alter.
The motions of one hand took on a sensuality that delineated her contours, while the other shifted upwards, allowing his fingers to run and writhe within her hair.
He laid his lips to the wispy curls and kissed across her forehead, travelling downwards as he brought her face up.
For a moment or two, Rosina felt the subtle adjustment of his ministrations as natural, and accepted them. Warmth pervaded her, but it was a pleasant sensation, unalarming.
Then his lips reached hers. The warmth intensified with a rapidity that mirrored the sudden increased pressure of his mouth. She heard his indrawn breath, and fire streaked down her belly. Panic took her. Her hands came up, struggling, and she thrust away from him, pulling back into her pillows.
“No! I cannot, I cannot.”
But the taste of her had overwhelmed Raith, and he forgot everything but his own need. His hands reached for her, drew her back into his embrace. He brought his mouth down on hers again, drawing at her lips, teasing them open.
Sensation flooded Rosina, melting her bones, burning her deeps with a febrile throbbing so intensely vivid she did not know if she could bear it.
Instinct bade her fight him off, but her fingers betrayed her, reaching up to his face to touch and stroke.
They came, all unknowing, into contact with the scar.
Its rough edging brushed Rosina’s fingertips, and a vision of it burst into her head. Shock made her whimper.
An instant later, she was released on to her pillows.
Raith threw himself to his feet, a weal of agony in his breast. He felt her revulsion as acutely as if she had spoken of it.
The fluttering touch against his mutilated side, followed by a muted squeal of protest, had been enough to jerk him into awareness.
He knew it to be his own doing, even as he extricated himself from the intensity of his passion.
He had lost control, and come by his deserts.
“I beg your pardon,” he jerked out. “I forgot myself. It will not occur again.”
He thought, as he turned from her, that she reached out to him. Her voice followed him as he got to the door.
“Raith, wait!”
He halted there, but he did not turn. “It is of no use, Rosina. I cannot do it.” Then he was through the door, heading for safety.
The day being a degree finer than any that had gone before, Rosina took herself outside for a breath of fresh air.
She told herself she must do so while she might, for November was almost upon them.
She did not truly expect that Raith would come riding in.
If he did, and she caught him thus unawares, it was unlikely she would be treated to anything other than the distant civility to which she had been subject for the last several days.
It struck her that she had been married for a week.
If those first days had been tempestuous, at least that had been better than this dull emptiness which made the time pass slowly.
She could not even enliven her existence with an attempt to render Raith Manor more homelike.
Her one effort had been crushingly rejected.
Upon the morning after her husband’s abortive entry at her bedchamber, for which she had railed in turn at her own irrational fears and at his absurd sensitivity, Rosina had come down to breakfast to find her place had been changed so that she must sit upon Raith’s left hand.
“His lordship’s orders, my lady.” The butler had been apologetic. “He instructed me on no account to allow it again to be altered.”
Pride had driven her back to the original terms of the contract. She was here on sufferance, merely to provide a means to an end. That Raith could countermand her request to the servants proved he did not consider her as the mistress of his home. Her interference was unwanted.
As for that other matter, she must assume his lordship’s requirement for an heir was to be put aside indefinitely.
That one attempt, which she had bungled disastrously, was to be the end of it.
If only he had warned her of his coming.
She would not have been shocked into remembering.
She would have prepared herself to receive his caresses.
So different from the foul-breathed fumblings of her guardian.
Oh, the fever of Raith’s kiss! How could she know that it would flame thus in her most secret depths?
The loss when he left her had been intense.
More so than the alarming sensations he had aroused, for the instant he let her go, a tempest of longing erupted within her.
If only he had kissed her once more, she would have responded quite differently.
But he had instead taken hurt, and his withdrawal was complete.
They met only at dinner, and once at breakfast. Rosina had tried to reach him, but his barrier was of ice.
He was polite, treating each overture with courteous attention, which did not extend to looking at her beyond an occasional glance of cool detachment.
Rosina wanted often to hit him. Anything to break through that aloof isolation.
She missed his irrational outbursts, even his cynically bitter remarks.
Rosina had abandoned her efforts to thaw him out.
She had hoped Sunday would keep him at home, thinking that a whole day together must break down his reserve.
But he had instead driven out, and Kirkham told her he had gone to spend the day with his maternal relations.
Disheartened, Rosina feigned sickness, refusing to appear at dinner last night, and requesting a tray to her bedchamber.
Joan attended her, and she had indeed felt so low that her poor appetite lent colour to the fabrication.
A half-formed hope her absence might rouse her husband to enquiry was found to be vain. He neither sent to her, nor ventured, as Rosina secretly dared to envisage, to enter her bedchamber to find out how she did.
This morning, driven by loneliness, Rosina had written to Gatty.
Her old nurse would be anxious, and she had promised to let her know as soon as she could that all was well.
She could hardly do that. But since Toly Aughton would be reading the letter, Rosina was obliged to write in coded phrasing, trusting Gatty would read between the lines.
She mentioned cagily that her lord had an unfortunate scar on his cheek about which he was a trifle sensitive, knowing her nurse would instantly realise this was the deficiency over which they’d had such earnest cogitation.
She said that a degree of understanding might have been set up but for this circumstance, and she wished it might not prove a barrier to an achievement one day of the sort of happiness that had attended the marriage of her dear mama and papa.
Gatty would know from this that her feelings had become involved, and that her path was strewn with difficulties.
Rosina was glad it was outside of her power to explain the extent to which she had allowed herself to warm towards her lord, for she did not know the answer to that herself.
She knew only that she had started out with the intention of living a separated existence in a cold marriage meant only for her protection.
Instead, she was beset by yearnings she barely understood, and remembered glimpses of a ravaged creature whose distresses played upon her heartstrings.
She could not conceal from herself that Raith had engaged her sympathies.