Seven Nights in a Rogue's Bed (19 page)

He scowled at her. Had she imagined that smile when he first saw her? “What are you sorry for?” He sounded bitter although she had no idea why. “All blame in this mess is mine.”

“I acted like an idiot last night.”

“Leave it, Sidonie.” He sounded tired. Tired and disgusted with everything. “Go to bed.”

Still she didn’t move. She wasn’t sure why. Actually she knew why. It was because of a smile. And because she had a sudden piercing memory of his expression in the mirror after he believed he’d put her in danger.

He did a fine job now of pretending indifference. Last night he hadn’t been indifferent. She refused to believe he was shallow enough to change in a few hours. She drew herself up and stared directly at him. “Why did you give me Roberta’s vowels?”

An intensely masculine growl of frustration. She wondered why she wasn’t even a little afraid of his temper. “For God’s sake, Sidonie!”

“Jonas…”

She faltered into silence as he grabbed her hand and hauled her out of the hall and into the library. Thank goodness this room had a fire. The hall provided a frigid setting and she’d imagined a thousand ghosts eavesdropping on their argument. He released her the instant they were inside. Like a naughty schoolgirl, she stood trembling on the Turkey carpet before the desk.

She raised her chin. He might want her gone. He might find her person distasteful. If either of those were true, she’d make…
damned
sure he told her so. “Why did you give me Roberta’s vowels?” she asked again in an uncompromising tone.

“So you’d leave.” He sounded equally uncompromising. His fists opened and closed at his sides, indicating his resentment.

She stiffened her backbone. She already knew this wouldn’t be easy. “Why do you want me to leave?”

“Why do you want to stay? You were desperate to get away last night.”

She flushed. “You know why I ran away.”

He sighed and turned, but not before she caught a flash of desolation in his face. No, he wasn’t nearly the furious monolith he wanted her to believe. A fragile
tendril of hope unfurled toward the light and stopped her retreating.

“I know I pushed so far that you were desperate to escape.”

Guilt weighted her belly. Why, oh, why, had she been such a henwit? “I wasn’t running from you.”

He cast her a disbelieving glance. “Looked that way.”

“What happened… frightened me. I was running from myself.”

She waited for some hint of understanding. Instead he strode across to the window and rattled the curtains wide to reveal the starlit cliffs. “It makes no difference.”

“Yes, it does.”

“Sidonie, listen to me.” He was back to sounding tired and sad and dauntingly immovable. “Go to bed. In the morning, take my carriage and go wherever you will. Hades, for all I care. I don’t know what you hope to achieve by this confrontation, but whatever we shared is over.”

Right now she was glad he didn’t look at her. She suspected her face betrayed her despair. The question she forced through her tight throat emerged husky and uneven. “How can it be over when it hasn’t started?”

Jonas stared out at the cold world and wondered just what hell he’d wandered into. How strange that tonight all was calm beauty outside when his inner landscape was a blasted wilderness. He should have kept riding and never come back.

“What do you want,
bella
?” he asked with an idleness he didn’t feel. “Blood?”

He heard her step nearer. Her hand curled around his arm. She rarely touched him—unless he tricked her into
it. Now when it could lead nowhere, confound her, she lost her shyness.

“I want… honesty.”

He fought the urge to shake her off. Even through his coat sleeve, her touch burned. He yearned to sink into the numbness that had possessed him before her advent into his existence. What he wanted didn’t matter. Long ago he’d learned that lesson. He resisted the impulse to touch his scars.

“Why?” he asked despairingly, his hand clenching in the gold velvet curtains.

“Jonas, talk to me. Yesterday you wanted me. Is that no longer true?”

She did want blood, it seemed. Reluctantly he turned to her. “I’m sending you away for your own good.”

“Does that mean you still want me?”

What to say? He could lie but he had a nasty feeling she’d never believe him. “I don’t want to want you.”

She stepped so close that her haunting fragrance teased his senses. Her face was pale and intense. “I don’t want to want you either.”

This time Jonas managed to shake off her hand and step away, telling himself he controlled this encounter. When he knew he was at her mercy.

How ruthless a sweet woman could be.

She still wore his greatcoat. It lent her appearance an incongruously stately air. Her hair was rumpled and tendrils curled around her beautiful face. The sight was powerfully sexual, as though she started to undress for a lover.

He stifled a groan. Exactly what he needed to think about when he tried so desperately to be noble. All his
animal instincts shrieked that Sidonie was here; for once she didn’t appear unwilling, and the carpet was soft enough for what he had in mind. “I’ll destroy you,” he said bleakly.

“You might prove my salvation.”

His lips twisted in an unamused smile. “I’m nobody’s salvation, least of all yours.” He knew it was unwise to prolong this encounter, but he couldn’t let it go. “Last night you were convinced I was the devil incarnate. What’s provoked this self-sacrifice?”

“It’s not self-sacrifice.” The look she shot him contrasted with the innocence of her pink cheeks. “If you touch me, I promise not to run.”

Dear God…

The impulse to accept her invitation at face value and roll her under him was overwhelming. But he’d learned self-control in a hard school. “I intend your ruin.”

An uncharacteristically cynical expression crossed her face. “Today I thought you’d lost interest in ruining me.”

“Oh, hell, Sidonie…” He swung away and slumped onto the window seat, staring down at his hands linked between his knees. If he kept looking at her, he’d touch her. If he touched her, all good intentions were dust.

After a pause, she sat beside him. Reckless chit. Didn’t she perceive the risk? He clutched his hands so tightly together that the knuckles shone white.

“You’ll think I’m disgustingly forward,” she said in a subdued voice.

Jonas didn’t dare look at her. “Go away, Sidonie.”

She didn’t heed his gravelly plea. “I’ve decided I’d rather like… to be ruined.”

Her voice trailed away so he needed a moment to
realize what she’d said. His head jerked up so fast, he hurt his neck. He stared at her in disbelief. “What the hell?”

She raised her chin and met his eyes. He read uncertainty and hard-won courage in her face. “I said—”

He leaped to his feet as though he were the offended virgin and she the pursuing rake. “You’re out of your mind.”

Sidonie remained seated, watching him as though she gradually made sense of his behavior. He wished he could say the same.

“You had a week to seduce me, Jonas.” She had the temerity to smile at him. “Congratulations. You’ve succeeded.”

I
f she’d felt less on edge, Sidonie would have smiled at his shocked reaction. Her surrender flummoxed this notorious man of the world. Her surrender left her flummoxed, too, but the last few minutes had answered some urgent questions, however uncommunicative Jonas proved.

He went against his strongest inclinations when he sent her away. He still wanted her. That clarified the most important issues. The rest she’d work out.

When she sat beside him, she hadn’t mistaken how he’d trembled, a slow combing wave that ran through his body. Over the last days, she’d learned so much about this man and his reactions. Thrilling to imagine what remained to learn. She was apprehensive and excited. If she relinquished this chance to explore the passion flaring between them, she’d regret it all her life.

He scowled at her. “You don’t mean it.”

She stood as he backed away. “Of course I do.”

His jaw set hard as stone. “I won’t do it.”

“Heaven help us, Merrick. You’re suffering a temporary surfeit of honor. You’ll get over it.”

He glowered at her. “The promptings of my conscience aren’t a minor illness. I’m trying to do the right thing,
tesoro.
”

“I know.” She hesitated, seeking words to explain her capitulation. “When you returned Roberta’s vowels, I realized I didn’t want to leave you.”

If she expected her bald confession to crack his resistance, she was disappointed. His expression remained austere, his slashing eyebrows lowering over his eyes. “I’ve set you free.”

“Free to give myself to you.”

Still he didn’t relent. “Why?”

He was so suspicious. Life hadn’t dealt him an easy hand and he’d learned to be wary of happiness or love or kindness. Her heart ached for him. She wanted him with her body, but more than that, she longed to offer him rest from his demons. Because for all his strength and determination, demons tormented him. She’d known that from the first time she saw that bizarre mirror-filled room upstairs.

She licked lips dry with nervousness and twisted her hands in her skirts. “Because I want to.”

“Not good enough.”

She stepped closer, her heart racing. He’d come direct from the stables. Odors of horse, leather and the outdoors melded into a surprisingly pleasant fragrance. “Seems good enough to me.”

He retreated, keeping the distance between them. “You’re suddenly very certain of yourself.”

She dared another step. He tensed as though scenting
danger. Wise man. She meant to be dangerous. She meant to crush his fragile scruples and take him as her lover. Her skin tightened with wanton anticipation.

A huff of amusement escaped. “For heaven’s sake, Merrick! You’re jumpy as a cat in a thunderstorm.”

He didn’t smile. “This is no laughing matter.”

“Actually it is. Ever since I arrived, I couldn’t turn around without you breathing down my neck. Now you act like a vicar with a wayward parishioner.”

He turned away and she strained to hear him. “When you ran away last night—”

She grabbed his arm. She braced for rejection, but he remained still, his muscles taut under her touch. “I was a stupid little girl, frightened by what I didn’t understand. Jonas, you told me this week offered me a freedom I’d never know again. It’s taken me too long to see how right you are. Until now, my life has been barren. Don’t send me back into the cold, not without the memory of joy to keep me warm.”

Where on earth did she find the courage to say these things? She’d never spoken like this to anyone. She’d been so busy bolstering her defenses, she hadn’t let Jonas glimpse her soul. Right now, she’d serve up her soul on a platter if he asked. He wasn’t asking and she served up her soul anyway. Her voice thickened with tears. “Don’t make me beg, Jonas.”

He sighed heavily and when he turned toward her this time, she realized something had changed. But still she didn’t see the eagerness she wanted. His face appeared, if anything, sterner. “What if I get you pregnant?”

Her hand tightened on his arm and she resisted the impulse to stamp her foot. What in heaven’s name was
wrong with the man? “You weren’t worried about that last night.”

For the first time, she caught a glimmer of rueful humor in his expression. “Last night hunger for your exquisite body turned thought to mush. Right now, I’m still moderately sane. Tell me, beautiful Sidonie, what if you have a child?”

Devil take him. He was a tougher opponent than she’d expected. Tough and smart. If she hoped to prevail, she’d need to be tougher and smarter.

“Roberta and I discussed that,” she said through stiff lips. The Forsythes weren’t a prolific family. Sidonie’s mother produced two daughters from her long marriage. In eight years, Roberta bore only two sons. Odds were if Sidonie submitted to Jonas, she wouldn’t conceive.

Which she knew pinned her hopes to a mere prayer.

He looked unimpressed. “And concocted some harebrained scheme, worthy of your sister.”

“You’re cruel,” she said hoarsely, dropping her hand from his arm and stepping away.

He shook his head. “No, I’m trying to make you see reality, not some addled romantic notion. You were wiser yesterday,
amore mio
, when you ran away.”

An angry sound emerged from her throat. “If you’re so keen to keep me away, why call me such names?”

His mouth relaxed slightly. “You’re right. It’s not fair. My conversion to man of principle isn’t complete,
bella
. I’m doing my best.”

Her stare was unflinching. “I liked you better as an unrepentant rake.”

“No, you didn’t. Tell me what you and Roberta cooked up.”

“I’ll live on my legacy somewhere obscure and pose as a widow. It’s the obvious solution if I… if you get me with child.” Her eyes sharpened on his unconcealed disapproval, although she admitted the plan sounded flimsy. “Roberta says there are ways to prevent conception.”

“Does she indeed?”

Her cheeks heated. “Are there?”

“Nothing totally reliable.”