Green Eyes (34 page)

The answer was embodied in a single word: Anna. Had there been any truth in the accusation she’d hurled at him tonight? Did the fierce attraction she held for him have anything to do with the fact that she had once been his golden half-brother’s wife?

Julian probed the thought as carefully as if it were a sore tooth. Did it matter that she had once been Paul’s?

Damn the green-eyed little witch. Here he sat drinking himself senseless when what he really wanted to do was storm her bedroom and take her, over and over again, until she was reduced to a quivering mass or need in his arms.

And even that wouldn’t serve to douse the hunger that raged inside him. He wanted her surrender to be total: not just her body, which he knew he could have pretty much at will, but her heart and her mind as well.

He wanted all of her for himself alone.

The idea that she’d once belonged to Paul made him want to break things. But not because he’d always wanted what Paul had; he would have felt that way no matter who her husband had been. In Anuradhapura, when he had recovered the emeralds only to discover that they were no longer central to his happiness, he’d faced the dismal truth: he loved the chit. Loved her to the point of madness or folly. Loved her above and beyond any depth of feeling of which he had ever thought himself capable. Loved her with a hard-edged hunger that possession of her body failed to appease. What he wanted was to possess her soul.

He wanted her to love him, not Paul.

Jim called him crazy, and Julian supposed Jim might not be far wrong. To hesitate even for a second to claim the prize he had longed for all his life when he had the means of doing so within his grasp was folly, and worse than folly.

But instead he waited. Waited for Anna. Hadn’t some poet once opined that the world was well lost for love? That was exactly how he felt. Nothing—not the emeralds, not his dazzling new birthright, not all his once-grand plans for revenge—meant anything to him in comparison with his craving for Anna’s love.

At first he had felt a fierce glow of elation as he’d contemplated returning in triumph to Gordon Hall, ousting his despised half-brother from the ancestral acres, and reigning there himself as lord.

Then the thought of Anna had brought him thudding back to earth. The expression “cream-pot love” took up residence in his mind. If he returned to her, announced that he was Lord Ridley, and asked her to be his bride, she would very likely agree. Certainly she would be a fool if she didn’t. She would be gaining a rich husband, a title, a stepfather for Chelsea of whom the child was already more than fond, and a bed partner who was obviously to her taste, all in one fell swoop.

But he would spend the rest of his life wondering: did she truly love him? Or, underneath her kisses and sighs, was she secretly mourning the thrice-damned Paul?

Julian knew he wouldn’t be able to stand the torture of imagining that. One night he’d end up wrapping his hands around her throat and choking the breath from her body, just to assure himself that his golden half-brother was truly driven from her thoughts for good.

So he had said nothing of his discovery to anyone but Jim. He’d resolved to make Anna love him and then tell her the truth. If, then, she wanted the two of them to return to England and claim their rightful place as lord and lady of Gordon Hall, he would be only too happy to oblige her. But if she chose to stay in Ceylon, that decision would please him well, too.

He didn’t care where he was, as long as Anna, loving him, was by his side.

The fire in which she’d nearly been trapped had brought the depth of his feeling for her home to him. If she had died … it didn’t bear thinking of. He would spend the rest of his life like a wild beast, howling at the moon.

He wanted her; he meant to have her. Countless females from all walks of life had fallen like dominoes before him since the days of his gangling youth. Why should this one whom he desired beyond all reason be any different? She might not be easy to win—her dogged clinging to the bonds that still tied her to his brother precluded that—but she was worth the fight. He would teach her to love him, however long it took.

The first step, of course, was to get her over Paul. Julian’s teeth clenched, as they did whenever his younger half-brother’s image intruded on his consciousness. All his life he had considered Lord Ridley’s two acknowledged sons as his bitter rivals, but never had he thought to feel the extent of the jealousy that consumed him at the idea of Anna loving Paul. The golden boy had won again, staking a preemptive claim to what Julian would have given his right arm to call his own. Where he had had to fight for everything of value he possessed, Paul had been handed it effortlessly. Even Anna. Had he appreciated her? Had he loved her?

Not as he, Julian, loved her. Not with this burning need to possess and protect and cherish her for all the days of his life.

Paul had not been capable of a love like that. Julian knew it in his bones.

Why could Anna not see?

Julian propped his feet up on the huge teakwood desk, leaned back in the leather chair, and took another swallow of whiskey.

Folly or no, he meant to get good and drunk. Drunk enough so that he would pass out. Drunk enough so that, for one night at least, he could get Anna out of his head.

Blessed oblivion sounded pretty good at the moment.

XLIII

I
t was very late, or, rather, very early, since the clock had chimed midnight some two hours before. Anna, pacing her chamber, had given up any attempt at sleeping. The beautiful green dress was hung neatly in her wardrobe. Her shoes and underclothes had been stored away too. There was not one visible reminder of the evening just past, but still she couldn’t get it out of her mind.

Julian had been like a bear with a sore paw as he had driven her home. To do him justice, the few necessary remarks she had addressed to him had been icy. Perhaps she had deserved to have her head snapped off in return. But the last half hour of the drive had passed without so much as a single word being exchanged between them. Then, when they had reached the house, he had said something under his breath that had made her eyes widen, and had dragged her into his arms.

The kiss had been long and shatteringly intimate. He’d held her twisted across his lap, his arms tight around her, his hands bold as they moved over her. Anna had begun by resisting and ended by twining her arms around his neck.

Then he had practically pushed her from the carriage and driven toward the stable in the rear.

Since then she’d been listening for his step on the stairs. But he hadn’t come to bed. She wasn’t even entirely certain he was in the house.

And until she was certain, she couldn’t sleep.

She had tried a hot bath, soaking in scented water until her skin was rosy pink. She’d washed her hair, drying it with long brush strokes, an activity that had never failed to soothe her—until tonight. In despair, she had even managed to drink a glass of warm milk, although she hated the stuff.

But here she was, at quarter past two, still wide awake.

Because of Julian, Everything wrong in her life could be laid squarely at his door.

Where was he, the devil?

Anna paced from door to window, and then, for variety, from dressing table to wardrobe. The plank floor felt cool beneath her bare feet. The long windows were open to the night, the mosquito netting that swathed them billowing in the breeze. The ends of her nightdress fluttered, too, as a welcome draft swept the floor. The garment was prim but sleeveless, in deference to the tropical heat. It ended at the throat in a tiny, upstanding ruffle, and more ruffles adorned the hem and edged the armholes. The thin muslin was elaborately pin-tucked in front, affording her some modesty where she needed it most. The single layer that made up the back was translucent.

It was a garment strictly designed for sleeping alone—or with a lover. At the thought of Julian seeing her in it, Anna shivered. She forced the erotic image away.

Julian was a problem that, for the sake of her own peace of mind, had to be dealt with. Did she love him?

Her heart shied away from that question.

Did he love her? Or did he merely want her flat on her back in his bed?

She shied away from that question, too. But that was the issue that had to be addressed. If he loved her … Her heart pounded at the thought. If he loved her, then perhaps she might loosen the iron grip she had tried to keep on her emotions and allow herself to love him, too.

Maybe, just maybe, the girl who had loved Paul had gone away with him. Maybe it was the woman who’d taken her place who longed for Julian.

There was a faint crash from somewhere downstairs. Anna’s head came up, and she stared intently at the door. Then she made up her mind. Snatching up her wrapper, she shrugged into it and tied the sash even as she made her way out the door.

If Julian was up and about, then she would have it out with him. The time had come to ask him point-blank what his intentions toward her were.

And if she didn’t like the answer, why, then, at least she would know.

So late at night, the house was deserted except for Moti, who darted along the upstairs passage at Anna’s heels. The stairs, barely lit by the fairy light at the top, were dark and shadowy and drafty. Below, all was silent. Reaching the downstairs hall, Anna strained to listen. She had heard nothing more, but a light shone faintly around the bend in the hallway. Heading toward it, she turned the corner that led to the rear veranda and found that the light was spilling from beneath the office door.

It took her only a moment to turn the knob and walk in.

The sight that met her eyes caused her to pause inside the threshold, her hand still on the knob, her eyes widening, Julian lounged at his ease in the chair in which she usually did the household accounts, his booted feet on the desk, his evening clothes wildly askew. The smell of whiskey was almost overpowering. A large, yellowish stain on one whitewashed wall trickled tiny golden rivers toward the floor, where lay the shattered remains of a bottle in a puddle of liquid.

“Well, well, if it isn’t milady Green Eyes herself.” There was the faintest slurring to the words. He smiled, a nasty mockery of amusement, and his booted feet hit the floor. He stood, slightly unsteady on his feet, and executed a travesty of a bow. “Do join me, milady.”

“You’re drunk.”

His eyes narrowed at her, and he sank abruptly back into the chair;

“Damned right I’m drunk. And why not, pray? You’re enough to drive any sane man to drink, you may take my word.”

It was not much more than a mutter, and seemed to be directed as much to himself as at her. Fearing that their voices might carry and awaken the household, Anna eased the door shut behind her and stepped farther into the room to eye him with some exasperation. Clearly there would be no getting any sense out of him on this night!

“You should go to bed,” she said in the scolding tone that mothers habitually use toward wayward children. Skirting where he sprawled in the chair with some caution, she crouched beside the mess on the floor and began to carefully pick up the shards of glass.

“Now there’s a suggestion.” Julian watched her progress broodingly. Then in a much sharper voice he snapped, “Leave it! The maids can get it in the morning.”

Anna glanced up at him. “I don’t want them—”

“I said leave it!” It was a snarl. “Go back to bed and leave me the hell alone, will you please?”

Carefully cradling pieces of broken bottle in one hand, Anna rocked back on her heels to study him.

“I should do just that, but I’ll not abandon you in this state. You’re liable to break your neck on the stairs.” Her brows twitched together thoughtfully.

“Shall I send Jim to you?”

“To bloody hell with Jim!”

Anna’s lips tightened with impatience. Standing up, she moved to drop the broken glass in the wastebasket by the desk, then stood leaning against the far corner, frowning at him. He met her eyes with an insolent stare, then slowly dropped his gaze over her. The suggestion in that bold look was unmistakable. He was doing it merely to antagonize her, Anna knew. She frowned at him.

“That’s something I must say for Paul: never, in all the years that I knew him, did I ever see him …”

Julian’s head rose with the awful menace of a cobra’s. His mouth twisted in a furious slant.

“… drunk,” Anna finished lamely, her eyes widening at the rush of blood that rose to darken Julian’s face.

“Don’t you ever, ever again compare me to bloody Paul!” he said through clenched teeth, his knuckles white as his hands gripped the arms of the chair. “May the bugger burn forever in hell!”

His body was tensed as if he would shoot from the chair at any moment. The muscles in his shoulders and arms, the outlines of which she could clearly see through the thin linen shirt, were bunched. He looked like a man on the brink of extreme violence.

“Why, you’re jealous!” she said in surprise.

“Ruby said you were, but—”

He shot up from the chair as if it had catapulted him forth and was around the side of the desk to stand looming over her before Anna could do more than shrink back.

“You’re damned right I’m jealous,” he said through his teeth. He was so close that she was forced to half sit on the edge of the desk, leaning away from him; so close that the whiskey on his breath hit her in a sickening wave. His hands came up to rest on either side of her face, tilting it up toward his. Then they slid upwards, his fingers threading beneath her hair to massage her scalp. His eyes bore down into hers. His lips parted to show the faintest gleam of white teeth in a predatory smile.

Anna felt the steely caress of those large hands on the delicate bones of her skull, and for a moment, just a moment, she was afraid.

“Let me go,” she said clearly.

He laughed, the sound brutal, and his hands slid down to curl around her neck.

“Do you know what you called me, that first night after I made love to you? You were smiling in your sleep—for me, I thought—and then you called me Paul. I wanted to strangle you. It was all I could do to keep my hands from wringing your pretty little neck.” His thumbs caressed the delicate tracery of bones that marched up the front of her throat, while the rest of his fingers spread out, sure and strong, along the back of her neck. “It would be so easy—I could snap your neck with a flick of my wrists. Then you wouldn’t be able to think of Paul anymore.…”