"And so you should bloody well cry, you little whore. You've given yourself in marriage to a man with no sap. One who wouldn't know what to do with a woman in a million years."
At Adam's words Arabella laughed hysterically. Oh, he knew all right. He was a master at seduction. If only she had realised it before….
"Tears on your wedding night? Well, I'm here to step into the gap, show you what a woman is made for."
His crushing grip on her forearms left her in no doubt as to what he intended to do. Adam pulled her up to him for a bruising kiss, drawing blood as he ground his mouth against hers.
Then he rammed her down onto her knees, jerking her head painfully with one hand as he began to pull himself out of his breeches with the other. She tried to shove herself away from his body, throw herself on the ground, but he held her inexorably against his groin.
"I've got something else for you to kiss. It's what sluts like you are made for. And in case you are thinking you're going to complain to anyone about this, just remember everyone thought we were to be married. I'll simply tell everyone you led me on. You wed that bastard for his fortune, but it's me you've wanted all along. Then see what your precious husband and friends think of you."
She gagged weakly at the stench of his appalling body odor, made even worse by the cologne he had tried to use to conceal it, and another smell--medicine, herbs?
It was one thing kissing an adored husband, quite another this act of violence. Desperate now as his flaccid penis hove into view, she bunched her fist and rammed it upwards with all her might.
Adam howled in pain and threw her from him, sending her head crashing against the trunk of the tree. An explosion of light burst in her head, and her last nearly conscious sensation was of hands shredding her gown, her underclothes, as he clawed and pummelled her.
She screamed for Blake, even though she knew he had most foully betrayed her…
"Get away from me, Leonore," Blake barked, yanking her questing hands away from him as he tried to get her out of the room.
"Don't you dare ever presume to try to kiss me again. I'm a decent and respectable married man who loves his wife. There's nothing that you have to offer me. There never was. You relieved me of my virginity when it became too much of a burden to bear, but our arrangement suited you as much as me. You got money, company and the variety I'm told you crave.
"I know what you are. A kept woman. A rich man's mistress, idle and bored. Men talk, just as women do. I've never done anything of which I am ashamed except be so weak as to continue my loose liaison with you when I knew I didn't care for you. Could never care for you.
"I made you no promises, and never thought of marriage. We had not seen each other for months even before I met my wife, so you can't possibly hold my defection against Arabella. It was already over. Well, it never really started.
"And there were others. Not many, as you saw at Lady Cavendish's, didn't you, but enough for me to know there were women with far more excitement than you on offer. You're far too cold and calculating to ever truly please. Too much in love with yourself for any man to ever convince them that you loved them.
"You have amply proven your character now by coming to me with this Banbury Tale of being with child. I know how old you are, that your bleeding has stopped for some time. You think to fool a doctor? Not to mention the fact that I haven't seen you for months.
"Even if there were a child, it is none of mine. If you give this out abroad, I shall have no qualms whatsoever about suing you for slander. Alistair Grant will willingly take my case and wipe the gutters with you. Do your worst, but don't ever come into my sight or my wife's again. You disgust me."
He dragged her out into the corridor, and stormed off to look for his wife, searching from room to room for her. Hard as he looked, though, he could not find Arabella anywhere. Then a smile lit his face. The bedroom, of course.
But when he went up, that chamber too was empty.
A sudden prickle of fear made him turn and run for the door. Once downstairs, he told the butler to get all of the guests into the drawing room, entice them with more refreshments. "I need to have some time alone with my wife. Keep the guests happy, please."
The butler nodded and went about his business, while Blake strode out the French windows onto the terrace. He saw the ground-out cheroot on the terrazzo, and felt another prickle of unease. A pile of laundry under a tree in the distance caught his eye.
Laundry?
There was a movement in the shadows.
Blake shouted. "Arabella! Arabella!"
The shadow loped off.
Blake shivered. As he ran nearer he could see the prone form of his wife stretched out upon the grass. Her face and thighs were streaked with dark patches which glistened wetly in the light of the partial moon just starting to rise over the hills.