He had positively slammed his razor down on a shelf by the door before wadding the towel up to throw it across the room, Alexa noted with almost smug satisfaction as she had turned around obediently to stand with her neck bowed and her hands clasped before her in an attitude of mock-submission meant to annoy rather than deceive him. All she had to do, she told herself now, was to remember not to fly into a rage again no matter how he tried to prod her into it. Why, that would probably frustrate him more than anything else!
Chapter 39
The ubiquitous Mr. Dawes had not only swept the debris left scattered everywhere as mute evidence of an explosion of rage; he had also stoked the fires in both rooms and swiftly set a table with linen and silver and crystal before the fire in the sitting room, explaining as he did that Madame Olivier certainly never stinted on anything for her most valued customers. “And I hopes, milord, that the cold repast is to your liking? Everything you usually wants when you pull the cord three times, though o’course I’d gladly bring anything else...?”
When Dawes’s words had suddenly trailed off, Nicholas had been standing directly before the fire and staring almost angrily into it. Then, as he looked up and followed the direction of the man’s gaze, he found himself just as frozen with disbelief for an instant.
“Oh,” Alexa said hesitantly as she paused effectively in the doorway of the bedroom. “I did not realize... You are not angry with me, are you? I...I only borrowed what looked like your oldest garments— not those made by Stultz, of course—because I wanted to surprise you.”
“Did you?” A certain note in Nicholas’s voice made Alexa rush quickly into speech before he could say more.
“Well, you see, darling, I really wanted to look attractive for you, but your last mistress must have been rather bigger, as well as shorter than I am and when I put on that peignoir and realized how frightful I looked...I had the idea from something my friend Leonie said to me once about men finding it exciting to see a woman dressed this way. Wasn’t it true after all? Do I look too mannish?”
She had worn a pair of his trousers folded up at the bottom until they were several inches above her ankles, with a ribbon from one of her garments to hold them up around her slender waist, and a thin white linen shirt, rolled up at the sleeves and held together by a knot at the waist, instead of studs. And she did not look in the least mannish, as she doubtlessly knew quite well! The vixen! And why was it that she could make him want her and be enraged at her at the same moment? It was as if each encounter was like a fencing match of thrust, parry and riposte that continued to the next and the next. His long pause as he studied her appearance was meant to unnerve her, but she seemed to be able to keep her questioning pose without altering it—like a Tableau Vivant, Nicholas thought grimly.
“What is your opinion, Mr. Dawes?” Alexa said brightly as she turned her gaze quickly away from Nicholas’s fire-shadowed face and ominous silence. Although her heart had begun to thud rather apprehensively she persisted in the same light tone, “I know of course that you could only be the same Mr. Dawes whose efficiency in every respect I’ve just heard praised so highly!”
“What is your frank opinion, Dawes?” Nicholas asked in a drawling kind of voice that held undertones Alexa did not particularly care for. “I would like to hear it.”
“Well, milord, now that you’ve asked...!” Stony eyes flicked over Alexa again in a coldly considering way before Dawes said: “I’ve seen troublesome ones before—the kind you can’t trust. And there’s nothing like taking precautions, just in case, your Lordship! If I might be pardoned for making the suggestion. Sometimes just seeing the straps is enough to do the trick, milord. And if not...”
“I’m sure I may leave it up to you, Dawes, although you should keep in mind that I don’t want her marked up. Not unless she’s aggravating enough to make me tire of her.”
It was partly stubborn pride and partly sheer cowardice that made Alexa bite back the righteously indignant words that had almost escaped her at that. It was only when he addressed her tauntingly with, “I certainly hope you haven’t lost the power to move along with the power to speak, sweetheart!” that she was able to respond to his baiting of her at last in a voice that sounded almost even.
“I...forgive me, but I was only rather taken aback, I suppose. I had no idea that your inclinations were so like Newbury’s—especially since you became so angry with me once for suggesting as much.”
At that moment, with her hair loose and hanging over her breasts and down her back like a wild mane and the color blazing along her cheekbones, her curiously slaty eyes pinpointed by the reflected crimson of the fire, Nicholas was reminded of some female pirate who lacked only a pistol or a cutlass to make the image complete. Through the fine, thin linen of his favorite shirt her nipples were easily discernible and all the more tantalizing for being barely veiled. And the time she must have spent before the mirror in his dressing room had surely reassured her of the seductively intriguing image she presented. Damn her! Masculine attire, the way she wore it, only served to emphasize her femininity and to flaunt it. From hellcat to temptress—how surprising and unexpectedly swift the transition had been!
She had just made some ridiculous statement that was meant to be provocative, hadn’t she? Allowing the cynical side of his nature to prevail on this occasion, at least, Nicholas shrugged negligently before reminding her that she had been the one to announce herself famished and thirsty, had she not? Unless she had since changed her mind...? In the end he regretted the consideration he had displayed for her, especially when he realized that she actually ate with an almost peasant appetite and gusto instead of picking at her food in a ladylike, mannerly fashion. She consumed, with equal enthusiasm, cold roast beef and veal as well as capon stuffed with oysters and several different kinds of cheeses as well, washing everything down with the wine that he had been thoughtful enough to order. Tempted to make some caustic comment, Nicholas decided instead to sit back and watch her with fascination while he wondered annoyedly what made her as changeable and as unpredictable as the direction of the wind or the moods of the ocean.
“Oh thank you. You cannot imagine how very hungry I was!” Alexa said at length as she bit into an apple. “Mmm! And what a good apple too! This is the best way to enjoy any fruit, you know. Would you care for a bite? There’s almost half left, and I don’t think I can eat another bite of anything!”
“I was beginning to wonder when you might come to that conclusion,” Nicholas said almost disbelievingly before adding, “but are you sure you have had quite enough, my dear?”
“Well...if we can have some cognac perhaps? I’ve found it does wonders for the digestion, as well as making me much more...well...passionate. That is, of course, unless you would prefer that I feign reluctance?” Alexa gave him a limpidly questioning look before resuming sweetly, “I had noticed of course that whenever I have been with you, it is that element of near-rape I remember the best. But that is not too unusual, of course. I mean that particular...”
When he rose from the chair opposite where he’d been lounging negligently it was in one swiftly fluid motion that gave Alexa barely time in which to widen her eyes before he had leaned across the table and grabbed her onto her feet with such force that for a moment she thought he meant to haul her across the table. The fingerbowl she had been using went flying and her wineglass tipped over. A plate, left too near the edge, crashed to the floor.
“Alexa,” Nicholas said in a softly polished voice, “you shall have your cognac and show me
the extent of your passion in bed, I think, unless you want me to take you here and now, bent over the table or on the floor or in any other fashion you prefer. So?” When she managed to shake her head as she tried to swallow, he released her at last, sending her floundering back into her chair. “While I find two glasses for the cognac, why don’t you wait for me in the bedroom? Unless, of course, I’ve mistaken your preference?” He hardly waited for her to start out of the chair as if she’d been pulled by strings before turning towards the sideboard. But over his shoulder, catching her almost in the doorway with his casually flung command, he said, “Take only the shirt off for the moment, tesoro, and don’t get in bed yet, will you? Seeing those sweet little curves of yours so provocatively outlined has given me all kinds of intriguing notions, I must admit.”
The sound of her swiftly indrawn breath seemed loud in the suddenly still air between them as Alexa whirled to face him on bare feet, her eyes blazing against the sudden whiteness of her taut face. “For God’s sake! Haven’t you wasted enough time already on your cruel little games? You have convinced me by now of the futility of resistance—why hesitate to be blunt again? Instruct me as to the nature and form of the performance you want from me, my lord, so that I might do whatever you say I must and have it done and over with as soon as I may. You wished your shirt returned and my breasts bared?” Alexa’s fingers had been tearing angrily at the knot while she was speaking, and now as it came loose she almost ripped the shirt from her own body and flung it contemptuously in his direction, standing there like a fiercely proud young Amazon in the firelight that tipped the gold of her breasts with crimson. “And now, Lord Embry? What else do you require of me?” Her voice had become quite breathless and shook slightly from the force of her emotions; but Alexa stood her ground without flinching, even when his long strides brought him up to her in a dangerously purposeful manner that could have meant he intended to strangle her.
Nicholas himself was not quite sure of his intentions until he had halted less than a foot away from where she stood with her hands clenched into fists at her sides and her long, slim legs set boldly apart; her eyes glaring hatred up at him like those of a trapped vixen. Trapped.... His girl-wife had had black Creole eyes that had looked at him almost in the same way. Dumb-animal eyes filled with fear and hate and frustration and revulsion, flickering away when they encountered his without realizing that he too. had been caught in the same trap as she. And if fate had not intervened... ? The fire flickered and the slate-dark eyes that raged into his held at least no fear, and no revulsion yet. Her breasts, high and pointed, had looked as if they have been brushed with silver by the moon, that first time he had seen her; but now as they moved with her quick, angry breathing they seemed to have borrowed some of the fire’s gold to complement the bronze mane of hair she shook back angrily under his long, speculative look.
He had not said a word yet, Alexa thought. Did he hope to unnerve her by the way he looked her over appraisingly as if she had been a slave on the auction block? And what did he really want with her after all? What more?
“Turn around,” Nicholas said startlingly, and her mouth dropped open as she stared up at him disbelievingly until he repeated it in a harsh, rather impatient tone. “My dear, your little breasts are quite charming, as you well know; but your—derriere, shall we say?—is your most enticing feature. Provocative too. Why don’t you walk into the bedroom ahead of me, and I will tell you what I require next after we get there. Well? A few moments ago you sounded anxious to have your performance over and done with as quickly as possible, if I recall correctly.”
With a visible effort Alexa managed to bite back the rebellious words she longed to fling at him and compressed her lips instead, giving him one last contemptuously hateful look before turning on her heel with her shoulders back and her head high, every inch the proud aristocrat on her way to execution.
“Stop there, exactly where you are standing now by the bed. You would have made a good soldier, my sweet. And do stay as you are too, so that I can admire the fetching picture you present. I really think that you should be painted this way—the pirate wench taken captive and disarmed, and following orders for a change. Tell me, does this ordeal seem to you as painful as walking a plank with an ocean filled with hungry sharks at its end?”
“Much worse, I assure you. And does my admission give your Lordship satisfaction?” Every word dripped acid, for all that Alexa felt her teeth sink into her lip soon afterwards when she felt that he had come up behind her. What did he really intend to do with her? Oh, God! How easy it had all sounded, and how detached from reality somehow—the lessons that had been intended to teach her how to play the whore. You did this and you did that, or you allowed a man to do thus and so—all carefully calculated, the object being to find his weaknesses and play on them, so that in the end he would become slave to his own weaknesses and the woman who found out what they were. Delilah... Salome... Cleopatra... countless others. The great courtesans of the world who ruled through the men they made mad for them and then manipulated. None of them would be standing here as stiff and brittle as a dry twig that could be snapped in two without effort. Any one of them would, by now, have turned aggressor and had him in bed, an easy victim. Or...or they would give in in such a manner that pretended defeat turned out to be actual victory. The victor vanquished... Think about it, Alexa! she commanded herself. Think only of what you should have learned by now and use that knowledge.
It was as if she had become paralyzed while he—her enemy and her adversary—had somehow been able to sense her thoughts and act as she should have done. In honor of that travesty of a supper she had been forced to sit through, he had donned a shirt but without troubling to fasten any more than two or three buttons at the most. And now Alexa felt his bare chest press against her naked back as his arms seemed to surround her and hem her in like the columns of a conquering army; so sure of victory that already his hands had begun to move possessively and far too intimately over her captive body.