Unforgivable(49)
“I presume,” he said tightly, “that when you say Will, you are referring to Mr. Anderson?”
She flushed several degrees more scarlet. “Of—of course I am,” she stammered awkwardly.
“But you call him Will,” Gil pointed out in a deadly voice. He paused for several moments, staring at her fixedly before he added, even more quietly, “and what does he call you?”
Rose looked appalled. “I can assure you that he addresses me quite properly! I suppose I think of him as Will because—” She floundered to a halt, and the silence between them swelled uncomfortably.
“Because?”
She looked at him beseechingly. “Because he’s been a good friend to me, Gil. Can’t you understand that?”
He stood up and walked around the desk, closing the distance between them. He did not touch her. He was too angry to touch her.
“From this moment, you will put Mr. Anderson out of your mind.”
Her brows drew together at his dictatorial tone, and her lips thinned. “For goodness’ sake, Gil! Whatever has brought this on?”
“What has brought this on?” he repeated, his voice rising with disbelief. “Your behaviour over the last two days has brought this on! The soulful glances directed at Mr. Anderson. The way you tiptoe around his quite irrelevant feelings.”
“What? You cannot be serious?”
He laughed humourlessly. “I am quite serious. This languishing you’ve been doing after your chivalrous knight of the turnip field—it has to stop. Now.” He ignored her sharp gasp of outrage. “If you want to be my wife in more than name, I expect you to behave like a wife.”
“Languishing!” she exclaimed. “I have not been languishing over Will Anderson!”
“No? I sat with you both yesterday for two hours. You were making eyes at one another over your damned seed catalogue like Pyramus and Thisbe!”
“We were not! What errant nonsense!” she retorted hotly, but he thought he saw a flash of guilt in her eyes. “Where did you get such ridiculous ideas? I can’t—”
He interrupted her, in no mood for her protests. “You are too friendly with him,” he continued implacably. “You spend far more time on estate business than is warranted, and you must know it. Mr. Anderson is a first-rate steward, well able to deal with it all himself. You call him Will as though he is an intimate of yours. It is inappropriate! I have no doubt the whole village gossips about it.”
Rose stared at him, her cheeks hectic with colour, her grey eyes sparking with anger. “I cannot believe,” she cried, “that you are throwing an innocent friendship in my teeth when you have been throwing up the skirts of practically every woman of your acquaintance for the last five years!”
“Is that what this is, then? This friendship of yours? Revenge for what I’ve been doing?”
“Revenge?” Every trace of the quiet, biddable female was gone now. Her face was flushed, and her eyes glittered. “Do you think I cared that you were tupping all those stupid women?” she asked bitingly. “Do you think it hurt me to think of you with them?” He looked up to encounter eyes that were bright and sharp with malice. “Of course it didn’t,” she hissed. “It was just embarrassing.” She filled the last word with scorn, and he took her meaning: he was embarrassing. An absurd, philandering peacock. He felt his face heat.
“As for Will,” she went on, more calmly, “he has been a true friend. And I will not allow you to cheapen that with your nasty insinuations.”
He laughed out loud at that, a coarse, masculine laugh that mocked those fine feelings of hers. “Do you think that’s how he sees you, Rose?” he asked. “As his dear friend? I can tell you now that he does not.”
He stepped right up to her, taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger and turning her face up to his. He felt her body stiffen in shock and rejection, but she did not pull her chin away. She stared at him, her grey eyes hard with hate.
It was astonishing how he felt so drawn to her even as he wanted to thrust her away from him. He stroked her jawline with his finger as he stared down into her pretty, mutinous face.
“Will Anderson wants to take your clothes off,” he said, slowly and deliberately, “and stick his cock in you.”
Something flickered in her eyes. Revulsion; denial. But she determinedly pressed her lips together and said nothing, her face stiff with loathing.
“Just as I do,” he added, unable to stop himself. Her eyes widened at that, and he thought perhaps his own did too. They stared at one another, both surprised. They were breathing heavily, their gazes locked, his hand lightly touching her face. It seemed to him that her face was a question. Impulsively, he lowered his head and captured her lips with his own.