A Taste of Desire(51)
With her hand firmly back at her side, Amelia took a step back from beneath the branches of the towering tree, only to be brought up short when the viscount smoothly slid a small knife from inside his knee-high leather boot.
“Go ahead, carve your initials.” He extended the knife, the metal handle facing her.
“Why ever would I want to do that?” She gave the blade a pointed stare.
Teeth flashed white in his sun-darkened face, and her stomach plummeted in much the same manner as it did when he’d kissed her.
“Don’t you ever do anything just for the sheer enjoyment of it? Wouldn’t you like to know that there is something that will bear your mark for the rest of its life?” His eyes darkened to a forest green as his gaze focused on her mouth, sending an army of heat waves coursing through her.
“Not particularly,” she said, sounding and feeling slightly breathless.
“Then I shall do it for you.” He pulled back the proffered knife and then with great care, etched the initials ARB below his. After he finished, he slid the blade back in his boot.
“How did you—”
“Your father. He’s spoken about you at length.”
Suddenly an unaccountable pain washed over her, as bitter as it was debilitating. In that same moment, Amelia recalled, with a clarity that had too often escaped her since her arrival at Stoneridge Hall, not only the reasons, but the intensity of her dislike for Thomas Armstrong, smashing the truce they had reached that morning into pieces no bigger than particles of dust.
Rose was her middle name—her mother’s name. Her father hadn’t a right to share such personal information with the viscount. Especially him of all people.
She found strength in her rage. “Yes, while he cannot recall my birthday, knows nothing of anything that is of the vaguest importance to me, and has now carted me off to be served up on a bride platter to a man I’d sooner bludgeon than marry, I’m exceedingly grateful he’s somehow managed to remember my full name.”
The viscount’s eyes widened as though he’d been ambushed. Slowly, all vestiges of amiability disappeared, and his expression shuttered to a mask of stone. “Marry you?”
Any other woman might have been insulted at the amount of distaste infused in those two words.
“I don’t know which half-witted jackass has imparted you with the notion that I would ever have you on a plate much less a platter, but I shall gladly disabuse you of it now.”
“Anyone with half a brain can see through my father’s machinations. You’re the son he never had, and if he can’t claim you by blood, then come hell or high water he’ll attempt to do so by marriage. And if you can’t see that, I can tell you right now who that half-witted jackass is.”
A vein throbbed in stark relief against his temple. He held his hands clenched tight at his side.
“Only you could make me regret my gesture of kindness today.”
“Ha! You weren’t being kind, you were conceding to your mother’s wishes.”
His eyes sparked like green bolts of lightning. “Yes, taking my parent’s wishes into consideration, something of which you have no concept. Well, you should consider yourself lucky you ungrateful little chit. At least your father would see you married to a gentleman who won’t fritter away every shilling of your dowry at the hazard tables. If I were him—which I thank God every day that I’m not—I’d gladly give you the rope to hang yourself by allowing you to marry that no-account Clayborough. But I’ll tell you this, the Bank of England doesn’t possess enough coin to entice me to marry you, so you can rest easy on that score.”
Amelia swallowed hard, remembering the last time she’d cried. It had been the summer of her thirteenth year. She’d been in bed with the fever awaiting her father’s return. He hadn’t come. Five days she’d cried for him. She’d cried for the loss of her mother the year before. She’d never shed another tear since.
What she wouldn’t give now to be that thirteen-year-old child who’d been able to cry without fear of revealing the depth of her pain and hurt. But she knew she couldn’t. Not here, not with him, perhaps never again.
Amelia mustered up some of her dwindling composure. “You’re correct. Tonight I’m certain to sleep much easier.” She then turned and made the walk back to the house alone.
Chapter 14
At the library door, Thomas bid the woman adieu, sent the footman escorting her out a curt nod, then made his way right to his desk and dropped into the high-backed leather chair. He ran a weary hand through his hair and pondered his options with the same concentration a surgeon would wield his scalpel.