Roselyn strode to her bake house, carrying her tray of meat pies, trying to wipe Spencer Thornton and his cruel words from her mind—but it was no use.
How had he dared to imply that she needed a man to take care of her? She had spent the last two years learning to rely on herself, not her family’s riches. She’d gone through abuse and heartache and despair, and she would not turn back into the girl she used to be.
She would not allow Thornton to make her forget that considering John Heywood’s suit was actually a courageous decision on her part. She was willing to try to love again, even if it meant a safe sort of love—the only kind that seemed real anymore.
After she put the meat pies in to bake, she arranged the courtyard for a simple supper. Off to the side of the cottage, a small window was open. She hoped Thornton would hear the entire conversation, so he would know she didn’t need a man with a title and wealth. She could be content with good friends—and a man who cared about her. Life needed no more than that.
Except the courage to unmask a spy, and in her anger, she was forgetting her purpose with Thornton. Was he deliberately trying to distract her?
As dusk was falling, the Heywood brothers returned from the fields, stopping at her well to wash away the dirt. Roselyn studied John as he wiped down his face and neck. She thought she should feel something more for him than affection, but then, she hadn’t had much practice being a wife after Philip had so coldly rebuffed her. She should be moved by John—but in her mind flashed the memory of Thornton naked beneath her hands, his large body at her mercy.
The sun had long since set when Roselyn said good-night to the two brothers, cleaned her supper dishes, and went into the cottage. She brought the last meat pie to warm by the fire for Thornton.
As usual he was sitting on his pallet in the shadows as she came in. She tried not to look at him, but she sensed his tension, his anger, and she wondered how she had ever thought him easygoing.
Kneeling before the fire, she said, “Your supper will be ready in a moment.”
He didn’t answer.
As she lit candles around the room and cleaned away her supper preparations, she couldn’t help wondering how he felt lying motionless all day. Did he dream of Spain or England?
When the meat pie had heated through, she started to bring it to him, but he said, “No,” quite forcefully. She watched him brace himself and rise onto his good leg. He didn’t ask for her help, nor would she have readily offered it. As he hopped toward the table on one bare foot, he used the stone chimney to brace himself, then a cupboard, and lastly the table. She pulled out a bench for him and he sat.
Even dressed in Philip’s old garments, Thornton looked every inch the nobleman holding court. His bruises were gone, showing the classic strength of his face and his proud, strong nose. His beard and hair needed trimming, but other than that he looked aloof, above his meager surroundings.
Roselyn was once again thankful she had not married him.
When Thornton finished eating, he stood up again, and this time swayed. She took a step forward without thinking, then stopped. He caught hold of the table and slowly straightened.
“I have to regain my strength and learn to walk again,” he said, eyeing her. “If you want me gone, you’ll help me.”
“I was helping you without your threats. I’m not about to stop now—especially with the added temptation of your imminent departure.”
He gave a cold laugh. “Then come here.”
She approached him slowly, uncertain why she hesitated. Their gazes remained locked together, even when she was forced to arch her neck to see his face. He seemed surprisingly intent, distracted from his anger.
Sliding her arm so intimately about him was dangerous to herself and everything she believed in. His rib cage was broad and strong, and already he seemed healthier. The muscle at his waist made her feel strange and fluttery and uneasy.
His arm came about her shoulders until she was pressed to the warm length of him. She looked away, breathless and uncertain.
And so they started to walk, back and forth across the room until even Roselyn grew tired.
“Since we both want me gone as soon as possible,” Thornton finally said in a tight voice, “how should I get off this cursed island?”
“You can take a ferry at Cowes, on the north side of the island,” she answered, trying to sound calm instead of burdened by his weight. “Take the one to Southampton, where the road to London is better. There’s a decent inn right by the dock, should you need to eat or rest.”
“Trying to make my leave-taking as enticing as possible?”
Not bothering to answer, she bit her lip and struggled to hold up his weight. Showing weakness would only please him.
But he wouldn’t stop walking until he staggered and almost sent her tumbling to the floor with him.
She helped him down to the pallet, put her hands on her hips, and studied him. “You need to wash now.”
Slowly he opened his eyes. “Enjoyed my bath, did you?”
“Enjoyed—!” She clamped her mouth shut and whirled away from him. From the kettle over the fire, she poured hot water into a basin, tossed towels and clean garments onto his pallet, blew out the candles, and climbed up to her bed.
In the darkness she lay awake, listening to the splash of water.
After Roselyn had left for her morning chores, Spencer came up on his elbow and stared at the closed door. He wondered how many times a day, as she milked cows or baked bread, did she wish she had not left him at the church on their wedding day? Did she long for servants to attend her, or would she have been content had her stable groom lived? He thought of the two of them alone together in this room, and his gut churned with nausea. Was he even lying on the pallet they had shared?
He couldn’t remain on his back for another moment. He angrily slashed another mark in the floor for the ninth day—only twelve left—got unsteadily to his feet, and, clutching the furniture, hopped across the room. He repeated the process until he tripped over Roselyn’s chair before the fire, and on his way to the floor hit his forehead on the stone chimney—another new bruise, he thought in anger and disgust.
Of course Roselyn arrived at just that moment, so she could see him on his hands and knees, his aching head dropped between his shoulders. Clenching his jaw, he looked up at her.
She had come to a stop just inside the door, carrying her basket full of round loaves. She said nothing at first, her face so proper and prim she probably bored her family into abandoning her.
“What are you looking at?” he demanded in a low voice. “If I do not work on my strength, we’ll never be rid of one another.”
“If you insist on forcing yourself into things you’re not ready for, you’ll reinjure yourself. Then we’ll never be rid of one another.”
She set her basket on the table as Spencer failed to raise himself up onto one foot, while the room swam about him and his head throbbed. He felt frustrated, despairing, raging with anger at the things he couldn’t control, at the way his life might soon end.
The last thing he needed was Roselyn Harrington taking hold of his arm as if he were an infirm old man. He tried to shake her off and couldn’t even manage that.
“Release me,” he said, his voice a low growl.
“You need help, even though I don’t want to give it.”
She dropped to her knees and when he tried to push her away, she toppled over onto her back. She didn’t even look rattled to be lying there, and he despised her serenity.
“Are you used to lying on your back?” he said, the angry words tumbling unbidden from his mouth.
He wanted her to fight, to scream, to hit him, but instead she raised up on her elbows, her eyes glittering and her lush mouth mutinous, kissable.
Kissable?
Leaning over her body, he braced himself with one hand. He didn’t know why he felt this need to wound her. “While we’re on the subject of your back, tell me about your stable groom. I never did hear his name.”
Her chest rose and fell at a quick pace as she glared at him. “Philip Grant,” she said between her teeth.
“How long ago did he die?” Spencer watched her eyes narrow. He had a sudden memory of her hair long and wet, reaching to her hips.
“I owe you no answers.”
“You owe me much more than that.”
“So it’s back to our betrothal again, this contract you say you never wanted. If you are convinced you’re owed this land, why don’t you just go up to the manor for Margaret Heywood’s care? She helped me when I nursed—”
Roselyn knew she should not even mention the Heywoods to him, let alone Philip, but the threat of his body above her made her nervous. Thornton had trapped her in her cottage, trapped her in lies, just as he now trapped her with his body. He was large and strong, and every day he seemed more powerful to her.
But at the mention of Wakesfield and the Heywoods, he narrowed his eyes at her, then looked away—almost guiltily.
“Why do you hesitate?”
When his eyes returned to her face, she felt the fire of his regard. “I do not need to force strangers to care for me—you owe me.”
Her heart pounded within her ribs so loudly he must certainly hear it, as her every inhalation pressed her breasts to his chest. She was flustered, unable to stop the awareness of him as a man.
“But never forget,” he continued, leaning even lower until their breaths mingled, “that this estate is mine, that all this is mine.” His gaze swept down to her breasts as if he owned her, too.
“What are you implying?” she demanded as a curious, excited tension shivered through her stomach. When his gaze settled on her mouth, she couldn’t help licking her lips as if they were suddenly parched. Pressed so close to him, she felt his muscles tense, could see the smoldering heat of his coal black eyes, and suddenly she knew she needed to distract them both from these mad thoughts.
“Thornton, I don’t understand you. You claim indignation, abandonment, yet even the night before our wedding, you wouldn’t make an effort to speak to me.”
That certainly distracted him, and he straightened away from her, letting Roselyn come up on her knees.
The sunlight streamed in the open window, almost blinding her, but Thornton sat behind it, in the shadows of the cottage, dark, remote. He could have hurt her as she lay beneath him on the floor, but never once did she think he would use violence. Was she being foolish?
He finally met her gaze. “I handled our betrothal the way I thought best,” he said in a bitter voice.
But you hurt me, she wanted to cry. How could he do that to a young girl who would have accepted any kindness, when she had known so little?
“Well, your handling of our betrothal made sure you had no bride,” she said, “so I guess you succeeded.”
“You had your lover all ready, did you not? And I can only imagine what lure you used.”
She took an angry breath to reply, but he continued before she could.
“But none of it worked as you planned. So Grant had to be nursed before he died, did he? You bargained for a malleable husband and wealth, not this life,” he said, glancing around her cottage with obvious sarcasm. “Were all your choices still worth this? How will you feel when I go to court to break this betrothal by naming you an adulterer?”
“An adulterer! I was married.”
“And we know how legal that was. This might be our only chance to be free of one another. Don’t think I won’t do it out of some misguided notion of pity.”
Roselyn stood up, her fists clenched at her sides. “I am sick of your snide comments and your threats. I have saved your life, and instead of gratitude, I get bitter sarcasm. When are you going to let go of the past? Don’t you think I have paid enough for what I did to you? My family has cast me out; I work for every morsel I put in my mouth. I am done paying, Thornton. Go ahead and slur my name at court if that makes you feel better. It can’t be any worse than what I’ve already gone through.”
Without offering to help him up, she left a loaf of bread and piece of cheese wrapped in cloth on the table, poured him a mug of cider, then left to make her delivery to Wakesfield Manor. She muttered angrily to herself as she marched down the sunlit path, knowing that constant argument was not the way to discover the truth of his loyalties.
Roselyn knew that she eventually had to go back to the cottage. Daylight was almost gone, yet still she worked in her bake house by candlelight, preparing the pies ordered by the village tavern.
She couldn’t forget how Thornton had looked at her bosom, as if she should freely give herself to him to repay her debt. She should be disgusted, revolted—but instead she remembered the glimmer of hurt in his eyes.
Suddenly, she heard a noise behind her, and before she could even turn around, a filthy hand covered her mouth.