Deceived

by Nicola Cornick

  “And neither do I!” Isabella’s blue eyes, so like those of his late wife, flashed defiance. Marcus felt suddenly bitter. He had never doubted India’s accusation because he had understood all too clearly how Lady Jane Southern might have felt. Isabella had fire and courage and spirit where India had meekness and timidity. For some mothers she would have been the ideal daughter, but not for Jane, who had had a restless spirit herself. She and India had been as dissimilar as chalk and cheese and they had never been able to live comfortably with their differences. Yet somehow it felt like a double betrayal of India for him to be able to enter into her mother’s feelings and see how perfect a daughter Isabella would have been for her.

  “Despite your denials, it is part of a pattern, is it not?” he said roughly, as though Isabella had not spoken. “You married Ernest Di Cassilis for his money and I am sure that the others, the men you had along the way, had to give you something you needed or be discarded.” His possessive anger was fanned white hot at the thought as he continued. “You made sure that Jane Southern disinherited her daughter in favor of you. You married me to save yourself from ruin. And now you bargain to buy your freedom. There is little you will not do, little you will not stoop to, to ensure your own fortune.”

  Isabella had turned very white at his words. “That,” she said, “is blatantly untrue.”

  “The facts speak for themselves.”

  “The facts are as I related them to you,” Isabella said. “I married Ernest because at the time it was what I thought was best to save my family. As for the others…” She swallowed hard.

  Marcus held himself tight with rage. “Yes?”

  “There were not so many of them as you imply,” Isabella said, “and all I wanted from them was affection.” There was stark despair in her voice. “I know that you and others have branded me a whore on the strength of it but you know nothing. Nothing at all.”

  “So tell me.”

  Isabella looked at him and there was a faint smile in her eyes. “Oh no, Stockhaven. You did not ask that. I am not going to expose any more of my soul to you. All you wanted was the truth of what happened when I jilted you. That I have given you, whether you choose to believe it or not.”

  Marcus felt his frustration tighten further. “And the rest? The inheritance?”

  “I have told you. I knew nothing of Lady Jane’s plan to disinherit India and I deny that I encouraged her to do so. And I married you—” She paused.

  “Yes?” Marcus said again.

  Her eyelashes flickered, once again hiding her expression from him, but her tone was bleak. “Very well. I confess it. I married you to save myself from the debtors’ prison. It was a bad mistake but I was—”

  She broke off and closed her lips tightly.

  I was desperate. He remembered her saying it when she had threatened to marry whichever of his fellow prisoners would have her.

  He shrugged. The anger drove him on and it left no room for sympathy. “So. I have paid off your debts and you are safe. You have told me why you jilted me and now—” He paused. In the firelight she looked fragile and apprehensive. He wondered how on earth she could look like that when she was the most brass-faced creature on earth.

  “And now,” he said, deliberately, “I do believe it is our wedding night.”

  Isabella had her hand against his chest, warding him off. “I cannot give myself to a man who does not care for me, does not trust me and I dare say does not even like me very much.”

  Marcus laughed. There was a wildness inside him and it demanded recompense. He wanted to slake his anger and his bitterness in her body. He wondered how she thought that any man could look on her and not feel the same desire.

  “You underestimate my feelings for you, my love,” he said. “I admire you and I want you.”

  Isabella’s clear blue eyes challenged him to examine those truths he wanted to ignore. “Yet you despise me,” she said.

  Marcus’s gaze did not falter. “A part of me does, perhaps. We need not regard it.” He touched a finger to her lips. If he did not have her soon, he thought he would burn up with the wanting.

  “I need you very much,” he continued, the rough undertone edging his voice. “You are not indifferent to me, either. Look me in the eye and tell me that you do not want me.”

  Isabella was biting her lip. She did not look up. “I want to be indifferent to you,” she said.

  “Ah.” Marcus leaned forward and touched his lips lightly to the curve of her neck. “That is a vastly different matter, as even you will allow.”

  He felt a shudder run through her but then she moved from beneath his touch and deliberately put a distance between them. “You cannot have me,” she said. She turned her shoulder. “Go! Go and find a harlot to satisfy your lust!”

  There was a moment’s stillness. Marcus did not move. He put one hand on her arm and felt the conflict in her. She was wound as tight as a spindle.

  “You do not mean that,” he said softly.

  Isabella’s shoulders slumped.

  “I do not mean it,” she admitted. “But you must go, Stockhaven. I told you the truth and you have chosen not to believe me. I cannot give myself, married or not, to a man who has no respect for me.”

  Marcus’s expression was implacable.

  “You can and you will. It is the bargain you made, my love.”

  “No,” Isabella said. “I will not give myself to you when you think so little of me.” She threw out a hand in desperate appeal. “You knew me before, Marcus! Was your own judgment of me so faulty then that you can believe this of me now?”

  Marcus gritted his teeth. The ghosts of his love for her twisted and tormented him. “I was young,” he said harshly. “Perhaps I was misled in my feelings for you.”

  “You loved me,” Isabella said, ashen now. “Are you saying it was all based upon a lie?”

  Her eyes were blazing. Before he could reply she added, “Why must you make yourself believe the very worst of me?”

  It was not a question that Marcus wanted to answer. Not now, possibly not ever. At the moment he could not think beyond the shocking need to have her in his bed. He did not want to confront his demons or to acknowledge that there was a chink in his defenses. Perhaps India had lied to him. Perhaps she had been jealous of his love for Isabella. And he, out of his guilt and remorse, had tried to blame Isabella for everything rather than admit the pain.

  Isabella’s eyes were a deep, dark blue, smudged with desire. Her cheeks were pink with arousal and when he touched her, her skin felt heated beneath his fingertips.

  “You cannot deny me.” He was aching to take her, afraid that he would lose all control if she refused him. “I was your first lover. You know that you want me, too.”

  “You will regret this.” She said it not as a threat but a simple statement of fact. “This feels wrong. It is wrong when there is so much unresolved between us.”

  Marcus understood what she meant but he tried to close his mind against the knowledge. Why make matters complicated when they could be simple? They could forget the past, the accusations and the recriminations, in the heat of the present. Afterward…but he did not want to think about afterward. Not until he had taken her and ravished her and reclaimed her, and laid all their ghosts to rest.

  “I do not know what to think,” he whispered.

  He caught her to him and kissed her with all the pent-up passion and torment that plagued him. She did not resist but she did not respond either. A tremor shook him; he gentled the kiss, courting a response rather than demanding it. Somehow he had to make this right. She had to want him as much as he wanted her. He felt her lips tremble beneath his before they parted to his searching tongue and then her whole body went soft in his arms and the sweetness of her yielding broke something within him.

  He swung her up in his arms and made for the door.

  It was only when he reached the top of the stairs that Marcus realized that he had no idea where to find Isabella’s bedr
oom. Under other circumstances he might have found it rather amusing to be striding off to take his wife to bed, only to realize that he did not know where her bed was. Now it merely frustrated him past endurance.

  “Tell me where to go,” he said, “or I swear I shall take you here on the stairs. I cannot help myself.”

  He saw the shock mirrored in her face. A part of him was as appalled as she that he was behaving with so little finesse as to treat her like a whore, but he was too far gone in lust now to care. He had gained a response from her but he had lost it again now with his anger and desperation. Her voice was dry when she replied.

  “Your wooing lacks subtlety, Stockhaven,” she said.

  “You will not find me lacking when the time comes,” Marcus said. “The room?”

  There was an agonizing second while she appeared to consider the situation. To Marcus it felt like an hour.

  “The third door on the left,” she said.

  The room was in darkness, the curtains drawn but with a rogue beam of moonlight slicing through to speckle the floor. Marcus had a brief impression of a bed with a high, carved back. He would not have cared had it been a broom cupboard. He put her gently on the bed and crossed to the door, turning the key with deliberation in the lock. The sound seemed to echo through the quiet house, signifying exactly what he was doing. He returned to her side, ripping off his neck cloth as he came toward her and discarding his shirt. He half expected her to scramble to her feet, to make some attempt to escape or to remonstrate with him. Instead she lay still, watching him, her skirts tumbled up above her thighs, her body still and open to him, wanton, abandoned. It was the most disturbing and inciting thing that he had ever seen.

  He tore the gown from her shoulders in his haste, acting with an awkwardness that spoke of nerves as well as desire. He cursed his clumsiness even as she protested.

  “My dress!” she exclaimed. “I cannot afford—”

  Damn the dress. It was in the way.

  “I will buy you another one.” Marcus bent to kiss her, rough in his anxiety, his mouth claiming hers hungrily. He wanted a response from her again. He needed one. She had admitted that she wanted him. He was not taking an unwilling wife to his bed.

  He forced himself to a patience that he was so far from feeling it felt like a mockery. He had it all to do again. He had to coax that stiffness from her body, draw the passion from her. He had to go slowly. His body cried out against the thought but this time he ignored it.

  When her lips parted beneath his, he felt a surge of triumph equal only to the surge of desire within him. Her tongue tangled with his. His mouth moved on hers, possessive, demanding. He cupped her face in his hands, driving his fingers into that silky dark gold hair that he had wanted to caress from the very first. She gave a little moan and moved her body accommodatingly beneath his. Marcus’s lust swelled and his erection also swelled commensurately.

  He could not wait much longer.

  He pulled back to draw off his boots and saw her draw the tattered remains of her bodice close in an oddly innocent gesture. It only served to draw his gaze to the skin that it exposed. He sat down facing her on the edge of the bed, placed his hands about her waist and bent his head to the hollow of her throat. He could feel the heat that spread beneath her skin. His tongue flicked the curve of her neck, tasting her. Immediately her nipples hardened beneath the shreds of her chemise, and with a sound deep in his throat, he brushed the material aside, closing his lips over one of the cool, damp peaks. Isabella’s body arched in an instinctive plea but he held her tight, his hands hard on her waist now as his mouth plundered the sweetness of her exposed breasts. Her soft moans and the writhing of her body pushed him perilously close to the edge but he was determined to prolong her pleasure. He was not sure how his selfish desire for satisfaction had transmuted into a determination to please her, but now their mutual need was all embracing.

  He swept the material of her gown down, his hands moving over the bare planes of her stomach and hips in subtle caresses until Isabella reached blindly for him. She was shivering, though not with cold. He could sense the ripples of feeling edging along her skin and it roused a deep hunger in him. He kissed her again. Her mouth was warm and eager against his own and as his hands slid down to clasp her hips and pull her against his body, he parted her lips with his tongue and stroked deeper, exploring, curling his tongue with sensuous abandon against hers. He knew that her need was as acute as his own. It was implicit in the urgency of her hands on his body and the soft, broken-off gasps of her pleasure.

  He parted her thighs with infinite gentleness. He sensed her instinctive hesitation, then his fingers were stroking gently as he felt the wet warmth of her. He touched his lips to the smooth skin of her stomach, edging lower, tracing the curve of her thigh with the tip of his tongue. Very slowly, with infinite gentleness, his lips brushed the curly triangle of hair between her legs. He heard her gasp, and then he was kissing her there, holding her hips down as he touched his tongue again and again with aching tenderness to her quivering core.

  Isabella cried out. Her body tensed, her back arched and Marcus raised himself above her, easing himself between her legs, his rigid shaft poised at her entrance. He could not hold back any longer. He slid within her, feeling the heat and the incredible tightness close about him.

  All thoughts of revenge and bitterness and anger had been burned up by his white-hot desire for her. Even so, he was unprepared for that first shattering crash of feeling as he thrust inside her and the shock and memory of it wiped out all thought. They were young again and the wooden floor of the summerhouse was hard beneath them and the summer moon poured down its blessing on them. Her skin was smooth and silver pale beneath his caressing hands as they fused, mind, body and spirit, close, closer still…Her fingernails scored his shoulders, mixing pain and pleasure. He drove into her, the hard hot thrust of his body searing brighter with every driving stroke. His body was racked with blissful pleasure, so sudden and so irresistible that he cried out in both surprise and ecstasy.

  I love you…

  Was that then, or was it now? He no longer knew. Nor did he care. He had wanted to think her avaricious and amoral but now he realized that he had been fighting himself at every step in an effort to make her fit that image.

  It had never worked.

  He knew she was finer than that and that she always had been.

  His hatred was vanquished and relief flowed in its place.

  His bitterness burned out.

  He drew Isabella close to his spent body in love and profound gratitude, and fell asleep.

  IT WAS THE SWISH of the curtains that woke him. Marcus stirred. He could not remember ever sleeping so long or so well. It felt as though all his demons had finally been laid to rest. The light hovered behind his closed eyelids. He did not want to open his eyes or confront the day. He wanted to tell Isabella that he regretted the things that he had said and the suspicions he had harbored of her. He wanted to tell her that he understood how painful it must have been for her to have to make that impossible choice between her family and his love.

  He reached out instinctively.

  The space beside him was empty.

  “Hot water, my lord.”

  Marcus opened his eyes. Belton was standing at the foot of his bed, an ewer in his hand and a towel over his arm. His expression was politely blank.

  Marcus shot up in bed. “Isabella…where is she?”

  Belton’s eyebrows twitched infinitesimally. “Her ladyship has gone, my lord.”

  “Gone?”

  Marcus looked around desperately, as though he were expecting—hoping, he realized—to see Isabella hiding behind the bed hangings.

  “Gone away, my lord,” Belton said lugubriously. “Her ladyship was insistent that we should not wake you.”

  Hell and damnation. Lost in his own bliss, Marcus thought that he had taken Isabella with him. He had wanted her to feel the same deep pleasure that had possessed him but perhaps�
��perhaps in his selfish enjoyment he had totally failed to notice her lack of response…or perhaps he had taken her body but her spirit had once again eluded him. He felt sick and cold and suddenly afraid.

  Belton had turned away and was pouring the water into the bowl on the sideboard. Through the buzz in his ears, Marcus heard the splash of the water and saw Belton mop up a spilled drop with absolute precision. He leaped from the bed and grabbed the butler’s arm.

  “Where has Princess Isabella gone?”

  Belton turned slowly. His expression was still impassive.

  “Her ladyship has left Town, my lord.”

  Marcus shook his arm. “When? When did she go?”

  “At daybreak, my lord.” The butler anticipated Marcus’s next question before it was half-formed in his mind. “It is now ten o’clock, my lord.”

  Ten o’clock. The numbers swam through Marcus’s head like fish. Daybreak was half-past four in the summer, five at the latest. Five hours’ start. Isabella could be anywhere by now, running away from him, putting as much distance between them as she could.

  Belton was standing upright like a soldier on duty. Marcus looked down, realized that he was stark naked, and released the butler’s arm.

  “Thank you, Belton,” he said.

  “A pleasure, my lord,” the butler said. He paused. “There is a note, my lord.”

  A note. Ridiculous hope surged through Marcus’s heart.

  “Where?”

  Belton pointed to the little table beside the bed.

  Marcus picked it up and unfolded it. He noticed dispassionately that his hands were shaking.

  Stockhaven,

  I have gone to Salterton. You have had your wedding night. Now I trust you to give me my freedom.

  I.S.

  That was all. Marcus turned the paper over to make sure. The distance between them, physical and emotional, squeezed his heart. He had fallen asleep feeling closer to her than he had ever done in his life. She had merely been waiting for the dawn so that she could leave him.

  He thought now of the relentless barrage of accusations that he had thrown at her and the way he had tried to conquer her spirit. The downright cruelty of it made him shudder. He put his head in his hands.