A tiny muscle twitched at the side of his jaw. It was
the only indication he gave that he was feeling any emotion whatsoever.
“I asked you if you were all right some time ago. You said you were. Presumably that was a lie? You already knew that you were pregnant?”
The bold word for her condition made her flush; she nodded using the tiniest affirmative movement of her head.
“When were you planning to tell me?” His voice was almost conversational. Megan’s eyes dropped guiltily.
“You weren’t, were you? So why did you tell me now?”
Megan’s eyes rose swiftly back to his. Here was her chance to explain.
“I wanted you to understand why I have to marry Donald… ”
At the sudden terrible flash of rage in his face she broke off, staring at him, her mouth agape. He looked homicidal.
“My God, you don’t seriously suppose I’m going to permit you to go through with that, do you?” he rasped.
“Justin, please, can’t you see it’s the only way? Our baby… ” She got no further. Justin came away from the door in a lunge, his hands catching her by the shoulders, his fingers pressing hurtfully into her skin as he let her feel his power. “I could kill you,” he said. “I could do it so easily. If you weren’t carrying my child, I think I would. My God, were you actually
intending to marry another man and pass my baby off as his, with nary a word to me? You vicious, immoral little slut!”
Megan cried out at that, backing away from him as if he’d struck her. He continued to hold her inexorably, his hands tightening until his fingers were digging deep into her flesh beneath the thin silk of her gown. Megan, staring like one mesmerized into gleaming golden eyes that could have belonged to the devil himself, felt a tiny frisson of fear. He looked capable of any violence.
“You’re hurting me!” she cried, her hands coming up to close over his wrists. For an instant his hands exerted their cruel pressure, and then he almost flung her away from him, in disgust.
“Get your cloak. We’re leaving,” he said curtly, moving toward the door.
“Justin, you don’t understand!”
The look he gave her was icy with contempt.
“Oh, believe me, I understand very well,” he said through his teeth. His free hand came up to close around her wrists, and hold them tightly. Megan whimpered as he deliberately crushed her delicate bones between his fingers.
“Count yourself fortunate that I don’t accord the same treatment to your lovely neck,” he grated, and then he flung her hands away from him and turned back toward the door. “Get your cloak and come down,” he instructed briefly over his shoulder. “And I warn you, if I should have to come back after you, you
won’t care for the consequences. I give you my word.”
And with that, he left the room. Megan stared after him for some time, too stunned even to cry. Then, moving blindly, she gathered up her cloak and followed Justin down the stairs.
This time he put her into the carriage alone, while he rode alongside on a horse procured for him by the innkeeper. At this evidence that he couldn’t even bear to be alone with her, Megan felt a dull ache invade her heart. She had made him despise her, and he was making no secret of his distaste. He had not vouchsafed one word to her since he had left her whimpering in his bedchamber at the inn, and to Megan’s one last desperate attempt to force him to see the situation from her perspective, he replied with a glance so fierce that she fell instinctively silent. He was not far from violence, she guessed. It would take very little provocation on her part to drive him over the edge. But I meant it for the best, she wanted to cry as she watched his dark, brooding figure astride the big bay horse through the dusty window. Why would he not see that?
She was so miserable that she had not even questioned their destination. She did not believe that he still meant to carry her off to his house in Wales, but as it happened, she was wrong. They broke their journey twice; Justin took advantage of the first stop to change into clothes more suitable for riding. Megan was relieved to discover that he had brought luggage for them. Although she was offered no opportunity to change, at least it was good to know that she would
not have to wear her evening dress until she could return to London.
As the day lengthened, the country through which they rode became increasingly hilly. The roads were rough, and she had to endure considerable jolting as the carriage pressed forward with all speed. The occasional roadsigns they passed bore foreign-sounding legends: Thedegar, Tydfil, Aberdare, Neath, and Llanelly. Despite the limited amount of traveling she had done, Megan had no difficulty in recognizing them as the names of Welsh towns. Justin was indeed still taking her to Windsmere.
They kept going until long past midnight. Luckily there was a full moon floating high above the winding dark road, or Megan very much feared that Pryor would not have been able to find the way. As it was, Justin had to ride before them with a lantern strapped to his saddle so that the coachman could see the road.
The last part of the journey was slow, and extremely bumpy. Megan had to press herself back against the seat to keep from being thrown to the floor. At last Megan heard a distant roaring and pounding which after a short while she identified as the sound of the sea.
When the carriage finally rocked to a halt, it was Justin and not Pryor who assisted her to alight. His touch was impersonal as he helped her from the carriage. Megan had at first thought that his assistance was a sign of a lessening in the terrible icy anger he had seemed to feel toward her all day. Now, looking
up into his bleak face, as dark and forbidding as the windy night around them, Megan realized that she had been mistaken in thinking that his anger had eased. As Pryor had been fully occupied with preventing the horses from moving too close to the cliff edge, which was perhaps some twenty yards away, Justin had simply done what was necessary. Megan stared up at him helplessly for a moment, then turned her attention to the house.
Her first thought was that Windsmere was huge; her second, that it was dark; and her third, that it looked as much like a haunted house as any place she had ever seen. The stones of which the entire four-storied facade was composed were so deep a gray as to be almost black, and the numerous turrets looked like gnarled fingers grabbing at the moon. There was not a light in any of the windows; the driveway leading up to the ornately carved front door was overgrown with weeds. Megan began to have the awful suspicion that she, Justin and Pryor were the only human beings within miles. Had he actually brought her to a deserted house? Then, remembering his avowed purpose in abducting her, she thought that it was quite likely.
In this, she wronged Justin. He was staring up at the house with a disgusted expression on his face that had nothing to do with her or her condition.
“Go in out of the wind,” he said brusquely. “I had no time to inform Mrs. Cork of our coming. Clearly, she is not prepared to receive visitors.”
He turned back to Pryor with a brief word advising
him of what to do with the carriage and horses, then climbed up on top of the vehicle himself to remove a pair of valises while Pryor continued to stand at the horses’ heads. Megan made no move to enter the house without him, and Justin threw her an irritated glance when he rejoined her, a piece of luggage in each hand.
“Come on,” he said, leading the way across the last bit of weed-choked driveway to the unswept stone steps which led to the door. Then, as Megan trailed meekly behind, one hand pressed to her skirts to keep them from blowing about indecently and the other holding the hood of her cloak over her hair to shield it from the rain that had just begun to fall, he added, “Be careful where you step. You could fall.” It was the first note of concern Megan had heard from him all day.
Justin pounded on the door. Even with the reverberations of his fist on the wooden panel sounding louder than the thunder that was beginning to rumble, it was some appreciable time before the door opened. Justin alternately cursed and pounded, while Megan huddled as best she could under the overhang, which provided little protection from the heavy drops of rain.
When the door opened at last, Justin did no more than glare at the frail little woman who stood clutching her black wrapper at the neck with one hand and hanging onto the barely cracked door with the other before shouldering his way inside. Megan followed him, and stood shivering in the great drafty hall which was lit only by the single candle that the small
woman had apparently carried to the door with her before setting it on a nearby table so that she could work the bolt. Justin looked huge and menacing in the nearby dark hall, and Megan was not surprised to see the woman cower from him as if he were some monstrous apparition.
“For God’s sake, Mrs. Cork,” he snapped. “What ails you? And where are the rest of the servants? This place is as cold and dark as a damned great tomb.”
“Is it you indeed, maister?” she quavered in a broad Welsh accent looking only marginally less startled than before.
“Yes, Mrs. Cork, it is,” Justin said, making an obvious effort to control his impatience. “Shut the door and rouse the rest of the staff. This lady needs a warm bath, and her supper, and so do I.”
“There bain’t no other staff, maister,” Mrs. Cork said. “They up and went back to Cardiff some three months back. I would’ve wrote and told you so—if I could write.”
Justin cast his eyes at the ceiling. “My God, what next?” he muttered to no one in particular. To Mrs. Cork, he said, “See about heating some water for a bath for the lady, please. And bring up whatever you have in the kitchen to eat—it doesn’t matter what it is. And don’t bother to carry up the water—I’ll come back down for it.”
“Aye, maister.”
Justin plucked an unlit candle from a tarnished candelabra set into the wall, and lit it from the single
taper that appeared to be the only light in the entire house. Then, turning to Megan, he said curtly, “Come along, I’ll take you upstairs.”
Mrs. Cork was already moving slowly toward the back of the house, where Megan assumed the kitchen must be, when she obediently turned to follow Justin as he climbed the wide staircase.
It was impossible to see anything of the house by the light of the single candle, so Megan was left with the impression of vastness and neglect as she followed Justin for what seemed an enormous distance. At last he stopped, opened a door and motioned for her to precede him into a room. Megan did, but stopped short before she had come to the end of the pool of light cast by the candle. She did not much relish the idea of being left on her own in this mausoleum of a place.
But before she could summon the nerve to beg Justin not to leave her, he entered the room behind her, closed the door, and dropped the valises he had carried in one hand on the floor. Feeling relieved, she nevertheless trailed nervously in his wake as he moved across the darkened room with a sureness born of familiarity. He seemed to have no trouble locating the huge stone fireplace that took up almost one entire wall. A many-branched candelabra sat on the mantel, and Justin lit this, illuminating the room. Then he dropped to his knees before the fireplace and proceeded to lay the fire with wood from a basket on the hearth. Finally he lit the smallest chips of wood in the
center of the pile he had made, and blew on them until he had a fire going. Megan moved closer to the growing blaze as he got to his feet, brushing off his hands with a gesture of satisfaction.
Megan looked at him appealingly as his eyes moved over her, raking her mercilessly from her hair, which was curling wildly from the dampness, to the drenched hem of her cloak.
“Get undressed: You’re wet,” he ordered tersely, as he turned away from her, ignoring the unconscious plea in her eyes. “I’m going downstairs to get the water for your bath. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Megan watched him unhappily as he left the room. Clearly he was not intending to forgive her, or even try to understand why she had planned to marry Donald knowing that she was carrying his, Justin’s, child. At least, he wasn’t planning to forgive her yet. Maybe, after they had both had a good night’s sleep, he might be in a more reasonable frame of mind.
Justin was right. She was wet. Removing her clothes gave her something to do, something to distract her mind from Justin’s anger. Luckily, in her haste to go after him that morning, she had left most of the hooks at the back of her dress undone. If she hadn’t, she would never have been able to manage alone. And she didn’t like the idea of asking Justin to play lady’s maid in his present humor.
She had undressed down to her petticoat, which was dry and which, she supposed, would have to serve as a nightgown, when she heard Justin coming back.
Her ingrained modesty as much as the chill of the room prompted her to drag a musty-smelling blanket from the bed and wrap it around herself. She had just done so when he walked in without bothering to knock, steaming buckets of water in either hand.
He set the buckets by the door, threw her a cursory glance, and crossed the room to drag a hip-bath from behind a screen in the corner to rest on the rug before the fire. It was dusty with disuse and neglect, and he sloshed a little water into it and wiped it out with a rag before pouring in the rest of the water. Then, without a word, he went out again, to return with two more buckets of water which he proceeded to empty into the tub.
“Get in,” he said when this operation was completed.
Megan looked at him uncertainly. “Is this your room?” she asked, not sure exactly how best to phrase the question that was burning a hole in her brain, the question of where he was sleeping that night.
Justin eyed her sardonically. “Does it matter? Get in the bath.”
“I just wanted to know,” Megan replied defensively, her chin lifting at his manner of addressing her. She made no move to get into the tub.
“If it matters so much to you, yes, it is,” he said coolly. “As it was the room most recently in use, I assumed that it would be the most livable.”
“Oh.” Megan’s voice was small, but her mind was alive with speculation. If he was meaning to sleep with her, then there was the probability that she could
persuade him to listen to her in the age-old fashion in which women had always persuaded men.