Devil's Embrace (Devil 1)

She lashed out at him, beyond reason. “Damn you, let me go. I will not belong to you, do you hear? You will not bend me to your will, you and your accursed child. Don’t you understand? There are no palm trees, no vineyards, no olive groves in England . . . there are no prison guards.”

He grit his teeth, drew back his hand, and slapped her. Her head snapped back with the force of his blow, and he slapped her again. She staggered against his arm and would have sprawled to the ground had he not held her.

“There are no olive groves in England,” she whispered, her voice broken.

For a moment he could feel the starkness of her fear like a living creature within her. She seemed as a child, violently torn from all that she knew, and she was carrying a child herself, his child. She was leaning against him, her forehead pressed against his chest, her arms hanging limply at her sides.

“No, Cassie,” he said, stroking her hair, “there are no olive groves in England.” He held her close, his cheek resting lightly against her hair, and softly rubbed her shoulders.

She was silent for many minutes. Finally, she straightened her head and gazed up at him, her eyes clear. “You have never before called me Cassie.”

His fingers lightly touched her cheek as if he wished simply by touching her to clear the red splotches created by his own hand. “No, you are right. Just as there are no olive groves in England, I had believed there was not a Cassie in Italy, only a Cassandra.”

He paused a moment, gazing out over the calm lake. When he finally spoke, Cassie could feel him struggling with himself, though his voice was calm, almost detached.

“Much has happened, and very quickly. If you would prefer to wait some months before we wed, it is your decision.”

She pulled slowly away from him and he let her go. “Why do you still have Joseph guarding me?”

“He is no longer guarding you, cara. He is merely your companion, someone who cares about you and wishes to keep you from any harm. If his presence upsets you, then he will go.”

She sighed and rubbed the palm of her hands against her still-burning cheeks. “No, I do not wish him to go.”

“I am glad. If naught else, perhaps he will keep you from falling into the lake when you handle your sailboat clumsily.”

His jest brought a slight smile to her lips and he allowed his muscles to relax. “And our wedding, Cassandra?”

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; She gazed up at him, a faint flush covering her cheeks. “I have behaved badly, I think.” She faltered a moment, and then said straightly, “I do not want to be fat, and you know yourself, my lord, that nothing would change, even if we did wait.”

He smiled, picturing her belly swollen with child. “No, nothing would change. That accursed child would continue to grow in happy ignorance inside you.”

“He is not accursed.” She hugged her arms protectively around her stomach. Bright color suddenly stained her cheeks, for he had used the word she had flung at him. “That, I did not mean.”

“But the rest you did.”

“Yes.”

He smiled down at her quizically and offered her his arm. “If the babe is going to make his mother fly into rampages, and scare the wits out of his father, then I fancy I shall have to become stern with him, this very evening.”

“I am certain, my lord, that the babe already believes his father to be a monstrous man, bent upon disrupting his peaceful existence.”

“I shall take that as a compliment, my dear. Now, Cassandra, if you wish to go back to the villa, I shall let Marcello tell you the response of the Dutch shipping representative.”

She forced interest into her eyes. “You know, my lord? Do not tease me. Come, what is the answer?”

He shook his dark head, delighting in the fact that she had regained her balance. “You must learn patience, madam, though I daresay that we shall, within a couple of years, recoup our losses.”

She smiled and nodded her head. She lengthened her step to match his stride.

The earl toweled off his body and quickly donned the undergarments and breeches Scargill handed to him.

“I begin to believe it’s back in Scotland I am,” Scargill said, eyeing the rain-bloated clouds overhead and shivering in the unseasonably cool weather. “And ye, my lord, ye must still insist on yer exercise, even though the weather would make a Scotsman cover his kilts.” He looked out over the lake, and fancied that the water was as cold as were his fingers. He shook his head. The earl, as was his custom, had dived from the narrow wooden dock and swum to the opposite shore and back again with long, powerful strokes, enjoying the invigorating water and, Scargill thought, the strength of his own well-muscled body.

“What are you muttering about, old man?” The earl had heard very little of what Scargill had said, his thoughts on his own sense of well-being after his arduous exercise, and on Cassandra. He was to be married in a week now, and although his friends had loudly and raucously bemoaned his demise as a bachelor, he had only laughed, enormously pleased with himself. After expending so much energy in the pursuit of the only woman he had long known would suit him, he could not imagine feeling any of the trepidation his friends seemed to expect.

Early that morning, he had ordered their breakfast brought to their bedchamber. Cassandra had dutifully consumed a slice of dried toast, blanched, and bounded out of bed, forgetting her dressing gown in her rush to reach the basin. When she returned to their bed, her body trembling with cold, she eyed the remains of the rare sirloin on his plate and said, “It is not fair that you stuff yourself and I am the one who becomes ill. And I would that you stop grinning at me like an officious bore.”