Devil's Embrace (Devil 1)

She reared back. “Damn you, I don’t want your glib words, my lord. I shall never change.”

“You are but eighteen years old, Cassandra,” he said gently, and abruptly released her wrists. He sat back in his chair and regarded her silently. She saw tenderness in his dark eyes, and drew back instinctively. She hated herself, but could not prevent her pleading words. “Please, just take me home. I swear I shall tell no one about what you did. Just take me home, I beg you.”

He said with cold finality, “No. And never again abase yourself, Cassandra, it ill befits your character.”

“How dare you speak so arrogantly about my character? You can have no real notion whatsoever about me. If I choose to plead or abase myself, even to a knave like you, it is because it is in my character to do so.”

Her torrent of words, spoken with such perverse defiance, made him smile. “I suppose that next you will tell me that a woman’s tears come easily to you, that a woman’s guile are also part of your character.”

“Go to the devil.”

“Ah, the lady finally speaks words I understand. I wager that other young ladies of your age would have demonstrated sufficient sensibility by this time to have swooned at least twice. I thank God for your character, Cassandra, for fainting ladies are a damned nuisance.”

She turned stiffly away from him and felt cold despair once again pervade her mind like a familiar cloak. She could feel the swiftness of the yacht and knew that each minute took her farther away from her home and from Edward.

“Where is your yacht bound?” she asked, not looking at him. Perhaps he would dock somewhere in England and she could escape him.

He extinguished the small glimmer of hope with one word. “Italy. Genoa, to be exact. We have a long voyage ahead of us. You know, of course, that my father was an English peer, the third Earl of Clare. My mother was Italian. Over the past years I have spent roughly equal periods of time in both countries. Now, my mother’s homeland will be mine—ours.”

Cassie had wondered why she had been taught Italian, not French, like the other young ladies of her acquaintance. It was not possible, she thought with mounting confusion, that he could know that. She said, “The Union Jack is flying at the jackstaff.”

“Of course. The Cassandra has flown England’s colors for the past six months and she will continue to do so until we are in French waters.”

“What do you do then, my lord earl, strut like a Frenchman and become the Comte de Clare? Have you a French flag to cloak your cowardice?”

“Such a masquerade might prove amusing, but not at all necessary. The Genoese are the bankers of the French. Even the bucolic Louis has the good sense to protect the funnel to his royal coffers.”

“And if the French attack by error?”

As if he read her thoughts, he said, “Believe me, Cassandra, to be taken by French privateers or the French navy would not result in your return to England. In any case, it will not happen. Did you not notice the gun mounts? They are not toys, I assure you.”

Cassie slumped forward in her chair, her thoughts upon Edward and Eliott and the grief they would feel when they found her wrecked sailboat. Even at this moment, Eliott was probably growing concerned that she had not returned. “You are an evil, ruthless man, my lord,” she said, her voice as dead as her heart.

“Perhaps. Ruthless, at least, for I would have gone to any lengths to secure you as my wife.” He saw the glazed look in her eyes, and said no more. He glanced at the clock atop his desk and rose.

“It grows late, Cassandra. I must go on deck for a while to see to our course. If you wish to bathe, you will find fresh water on the commode. Gowns, underthings, stockings, hairbrushes are in the dresser and armoire. We will dine when I return.”

Cassie merely stared at him, mute. Vaguely, as if from a great distance, she heard a key turn in the lock.

“The wee lass, she is all right?”

“She will be,” the earl said as he released the helm to Angelo and turned to Scargill, a plucky, straight-spoken Scotsman, his valet for some ten years.

“It was like ye killed a part of her when ye sent her boat toward the rocks.”

“Yes, but she shall have another, once we are home again.”

Anthony Welles gazed starboard for a long moment over the choppy water, toward the English shoreline. “She is very young, Scargill.”

Scargill’s coarse red hair flapped up and down on his forehead in the sea wind, and out of habit, he raised his forefinger to smooth it down. He studied his master’s strong, proud profile, outlined in the orange glow of the setting sun, and shook his head. “It’s a ruthless thing ye’ve done, my lord.”

“Precisely Cassandra’s words, Scargill, but there is little point in repining now. She is mine, and that is the end to the matter.”

“As I’ve told ye afore, my lord, I’ve never known a man to raise his own wife. I thought ye’d forgotten her when that spitfire, Giovanna, got her hooks into ye.”

“The Contessa accomplished part of her desire, my friend.”

“She was hot for ye, I’ll grant ye that, my lord. But besides warming yer bed, she has an eye to yer title and fortune. She’ll not prove kind to yer English lass.”