He smiled, a mocking smile that bared dazzling white teeth, but didn’t answer her question directly. Instead, he said, “If you are indeed Mrs. Traverne, then you must be the widow of my youngest half-brother. I should have guessed it during our first meeting, I suppose, but my thoughts were otherwise occupied at the time. Pray accept my condolences on your loss. Julian Chase, at your service.”
He made a sketchy bow, his hand pressed soulfully to his heart. Anna got the feeling that she was being toyed with, rather as a cat might a mouse before pouncing, but she was too unnerved by his appearance to feel even the first spark of anger.
“What do you want?” she asked again. Her voice sounded hollow to her own ears.
His purposefully charming smile did nothing to soften the hard glint in his eyes. “I think we both know the answer to that. I’ve come for my emeralds.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His mouth twisted. “Come now, Green Eyes, that card won’t play. Surely you don’t suppose I’d have traveled all the way from England on the off chance that you might have the gems? No. I know bloody well you have them, and I want them. You might say I insist on having them.”
He moved toward her then, with the quick, fluid grace Anna remembered so well. She barely had time to register his intent before he was upon her, his hands curling around her upper arms. Anna squeaked with fright as he pulled her onto her toes and loomed over her threateningly.
“Don’t play games with me,” he warned her, his face so close she could see the tiny lines fanning around his eyes. “I don’t like being thrown into Newgate and nearly hanged for a crime I did not, in fact, commit. I don’t like traveling to a hellhole halfway around the world to retrieve what properly belongs to me. And I hate women who lie. Any one of those things is enough to make me angry. All of them together—well, let’s just say I’m not in the best of tempers at this moment. I want those emeralds, and if you have the sense that I perhaps mistakenly credit you with, you’ll give them to me, now. Otherwise …”
He let the threat trail off, but the tightening of his hands on her arms and the baring of his teeth in that travesty of a grin were quite enough. Anna, practically dangling from his hands, looked into those penetrating eyes and knew that lying was useless. The truth was going to make him furious enough.
“Please let me go.”
Her voice was low. An appearance of calm was what she strove for, but she doubted she was achieving her aim. His hands burned her flesh even through the wrist-length taffeta sleeves of her mourning dress. In deference to the heat, her dress was thin, and she wore only a single petticoat beneath it. Through it she could feel the powerful muscles of his thighs brushing hers, and the sensation made her shiver. He was holding her close, too close, so close she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. It didn’t help that the hard mouth presently scowling at her was the same mouth that had kissed her so many times in her dreams, or that her imagination had relived almost nightly the way his hand had cupped her breast that never-to-be-forgotten night at Gordon Hall. The memory of the fantasies she had had of him made her cheeks pinken and caused her to hastily drop her eyes.
“When you agree to return my emeralds.”
“I don’t have the emeralds.”
He gave her a little shake. “Don’t lie to me.”
“It’s true. I don’t. I—sold them.” She dared another look up at him. He met her eyes with a hard, ugly expression in his own.
“You sold the bracelet, true. But not the rest. That bird won’t fly.”
“I did. I did! I had to have the money. For Srinagar.”
His eyes narrowed. “You little liar. If you’d sold the rest I’d have heard. I made inquiries all over London.”
His fingers were digging into the soft flesh of her upper arms. On tiptoe as she was, the top of her head barely reached his chin. Although he was clean shaven, she could see the shadow of stubble there. With her head thrown back, her neck was starting to ache, but that was the least of her problems. Anna suddenly realized that, if he chose to harm her, she would be powerless to stop him. Julian Chase was easily twice her size, his shoulders wide enough to block her view of the rest of the room behind him. His jaw was rigid with barely controlled temper, his mouth thin with it. Those blue-black eyes glittered as they impaled hers. He looked capable of any degree of violence. The romanticized image of the dream lover who’d so shamefully haunted her nights shattered there and then. This man was hard, and cold, and dangerous.
“I sold them in Colombo.” It was a desperate admission, and it had the effect for which she had both hoped and feared. It looked as though he was starting to consider the possibility that she just might be telling the truth.
“What?” He stiffened, his eyes boring into hers.
“It’s the truth, I swear. At the market. I—needed the money.”
“You sold the emeralds?” His voice was awful.
“Y-yes.”
“You little bitch,” he said, and practically threw her away from him. Anna stumbled backwards, and regained her balance by catching hold of a chair back. Casting a surreptitious look toward the partially open door beyond him, she rubbed her arms where his fingers had gripped her. Surely someone would appear at any moment to come to her aid. Or she could run.…
He seemed to be thinking furiously. Suddenly he glared at her. “You sold them, you say. How much did you get for them?”
“Uh …”
“How much?”
Anna named a sum that made his eyebrows twitch together.
“Who bought them?”
“It was at a stall in the market. A man—he dealt in jewels. I could probably find him again—if he’s still there.”
“You’d better pray he is.” With that growling pronouncement he clearly accepted the possibility that she was telling the truth. He took a step toward her, stopped, and thrust his hands into the pockets of his coat.
“Pack a bag. We’re going to Colombo.”
“What?” Anna’s eyes widened.
“You heard me. Get moving.”
“But—I can’t leave. There’s Chelsea.…”
“Who the devil is Chelsea?”
“My daughter. She’s five. And—”
“If you can’t leave her, bring her.”
“No!”
His eyes sharpened on her. “Don’t tell me no again. It may have escaped your notice, but you are not exactly in a position to dictate terms. You are a thief, my dear, and in England they hang thieves. When last I set eyes on my very vindictive brother Graham, he was foaming at the mouth over the loss of those emeralds. You can be very sure that he would love to find out what really happened to them.”
That silenced Anna. Looking satisfied with the effect of his threat, he jerked his head toward the door.
“So go get your things together, your daughter, whatever. I want to be on the road within an hour. Oh, and bring the money. If we can find the vendor who bought the emeralds from you—and you’d better pray we do—I don’t suppose he’ll give them back just on the strength of your sweet smile.”
There was a moment’s silence. Anna stood as if frozen to the spot, her hands clutching the chair back, his eyes narrowed at her.
“I said get moving.”
“I don’t have it.”
“What did you say?”
“I don’t have the money. I spent it.” Her confession had a desperate edge. As she had expected, the effect as it sank in was dramatic. His jaw clenched, his mouth tightened, his eyes blazed. His pockets bulged as he clenched his fists. Then his hands were out of his pockets, and he was coming toward her, reaching for her. Anna squeaked as he dragged her from behind the chair.
“Say that one more time.” His voice was ominous. His hands were gripping her upper arms again, and again Anna found herself on tiptoe. Her eyes were huge with fright as they stared into his furious face.
“I spent the money.”
“You sold the emeralds and spent the money. Spent a small fortune in a matter of some two months. Do you take me for a flat?” He was practically hissing the words into her face. “There’s no bloody way in hell you could have spent that much money in so short a time. Lady, you’re insulting my intelligence.”
“I bought Srinagar—this place. And—I had to spend most of what was left to get it back on its feet. It had been deserted for nearly a year. Vines had all but strangled the plants we had—I had to buy new seedlings and clear whole fields. Then there was the irrigation system.…”
His mouth curved into a snarl. He yanked her up against him, holding her imprisoned by his hands on her arms, lifting her so that her body was pressed intimately against the hard length of his.
“You stole my bloody emeralds, sold them, and spent the money on this damned white elephant of a place. Lady, if that’s true, then the place is mine. And-”
“They weren’t your emeralds.”
Where Anna got the courage to protest she never knew. He looked like a man bent on murder, her murder. His hands were tight on her arms, his body overpoweringly strong as he loomed over her. His eyes blazed into hers. His breath was hot on her face.
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “And you’re mine. You owe me, and I’m going to take what you owe me out of your soft white hide.”
“You …”
Before Anna could protest further, he had yanked her even tighter against him and his head had descended to trap her mouth. At the feel of those hard, hot lips against hers, Anna made a mewling sound of outrage and tried to jerk free. He released her arms to wrap his hands around her back, clamping her to him. She could feel every hard millimeter of his body as it burned into her skin. When she wouldn’t open her mouth for him, one hand moved up her back to grasp the neat coil at the back of her head. He imbedded his fingers in her hair, pulling the tender roots so that she cried out. Triumphant, he thrust his tongue inside her mouth, pillaging the soft interior, his fingers holding her skull so that she couldn’t break away.
His kiss was meant as punishment, and punish her it did. Because despite the violence of it, despite her shameful despair that her body could betray her so, her breasts swelled against his chest, and that terrifying quickening that she remembered from before quaked to life deep inside her belly. Her woman’s body responded to the sheer male force of his. Her lips trembled beneath his, and her hand, which had been shoving futilely at his shoulders, went still.
“You want this, don’t you? So do I.”
Before Anna could quite register the sense of what he whispered against her mouth, he was pushing her back against the wall, kissing her again, while his hands reached down to gather her skirt in bunches and pull it up around her waist.
Not until she felt him pressing against her, his knees wedging between hers and the hard bulge of his manhood nudging hotly against the juncture of her thighs with only his breeches to separate her flesh from his, did she realize what he meant.
“No!” She shoved at his jaw, managing to free her mouth from the devastating heat of his kiss, and tried to struggle free. But he had her backed up against the wall, and the sheer weight of his body held her in place. To Anna’s horror she discovered that, with her skirt bunched up and her thighs spread, she was helpless to prevent him from thrusting himself against her naked flesh. The hard, hot friction against that most intimate part of her made her lips part and her knees go weak. The softness of her inner thighs was abraded by the scratchiness of his wool breeches, his buttons dug into her stomach, and the wall behind her hurt her spine. But what she felt was not discomfort, not fear or panic or even outrage, but a sharp, hot longing that filled her with shame.
“Stop! How dare you? Let me go!”
“Don’t worry, I’ll not think any the less of you when we’ve finished.”
That snide whisper against her ear as his mouth slid along her cheek and down her throat made Anna catch her breath. What he was doing to her was only what he had done to her countless nights in her dreams, and her body quaked in hungry remembrance. But this—this was reality, and this man was not her dream lover but a dangerous stranger. They were in the front parlor at Srinagar, it was broad daylight with the door to the hall half open, and Ruby, Raja Singha, or even Chelsea could happen upon them at any moment. And he was treating her like a whore!
“Let me go!” Her voice gained strength even as his mouth slid down the front of her bodice to find her breast. She gasped, quivering, as the moist heat of his mouth burned through the thin layers of cloth to her nipple, scorching her flesh. The tiny bud hardened painfully. Anna’s back arched in instinctive response—and then she felt his hands between her legs, touching her
there.
“You’re every bit as hot as I thought you’d be.” It was a husky murmur.
“Get your hands off me!”
He paid her no heed. His fingers stroked her dampening flesh, leaving fire in their wake as they gently explored clefts and crevices, while she stood frozen with a dreadful mixture of humiliation and desire. Then, to her horror, she felt him fumbling with the buttons to his breeches.…
One part of her, the shameful, animal part, quivered and quaked and ached for him, whispering for her to acquiesce, to permit him to finish this wickedness that he had begun. Her mouth went dry and her heart pounded deafeningly. The raging fire that he had kindled inside her with his first kisses had lain not quite dormant, smoldering for months, and had needed only his touch to stoke it to white heat. Now she needed him, wanted him, to put out the conflagration. Dear Lord, her body hungered for him!
But the other part of her, the decent part, the part that had been born and bred a lady, knew sheer horror at her own depravity. That part reached out blindly, groping for the nearest solid object. It was a vase set into a niche in the wall. Anna’s fingers closed around it. She raised it high, closed her eyes, and brought it crashing down on the side of his black head.
XII
I
t was a crude method of securing deliverance, but it worked. He staggered a pace or so backwards, his hand going to his head. Then he straightened slowly, awfully, to his full height. Those midnight-blue eyes blinked at her with pained disbelief. Anna saw to her horror that she had cut him. A trickle of blood ran from a gash in his temple. Pulling his hand away from his head, he saw the blood on his fingers and swore furiously. Then he looked at her again. His eyes blazed murder.