Seductive Wager (25 page)

Brett tried to walk Kate, but after the ordeal of supporting her to and from the church, his wound was throbbing painfully and he was so weak he felt dizzy.

Fortunately Valentine soon returned with her suspicious brew. “Do not ask what it is,” she said in answer to Brett’s raised eyebrows. “It is very
désagréable,
but it will bring her around. Go see about your arrangements for tomorrow. I can handle her. Just set her down in that chair and lay her head back. Return in about an hour and maybe she will talk to you.”

“It’s not talk that I’m interested in,” Brett said. It was impossible to ignore the hungry look in his eye.

“That is more than you have now,” Valentine said as she tried to settle Kate just to her liking. “I told one of the girls to pack Mrs. Westbrook’s clothes, but maybe you should see for yourself. I have no idea what one needs for a sea voyage. Just to think about it gives me the
mal de tête.”

“Kate, too,” Brett said absently as he headed toward his own room. Hearing Kate referred to as Mrs. Westbrook had taken him by surprise. His mother had died giving birth to his stillborn sister and the only woman he could picture with that name was his austere grandmother. It brought home to him with sledgehammer impact the fact that he had married a nineteen-year-old girl about whom he knew virtually nothing except that he was becoming unbearably impatient to take her to his bed. God, what a fool he had been.

He tried to imagine Kate as the mistress of his several houses with their enormous staffs, but all he could see was an innocent young girl with wide, clear blue eyes that were like an open invitation to love. They sparkled brilliantly when she was happy but glittered like blue diamonds when she became angry. He could almost, taste her sweet lips returning his kisses.

In a trance, he reached out to free her hair. As it tumbled through the mists of his memory, his body quivered with a shiver of delight. The long, silky tresses, as pale as new corn silk, fell in abundance over her shoulders and down her back. She threw back her head revealing the white column of her throat resting on creamy shoulders with skin like satin. He could feel it under his fingertips, feel its warmth, feel it tingle from his touch.

As he mentally traced a line with his fingers down her throat, across the shoulder, and down the graceful line of her arms, his gaze fell forward to the dark cleft between the rising mounds of her breasts. His hands moved to the small of her back, lifting her up slowly and bringing his lips ever nearer to objects of his desire.

To touch them with his lips, to kiss and fondle their delectable tenderness, to take the ruby nipples into his mouth became the one thought burning through his consciousness. He was hot with churning passion and so uncomfortable he pulled at his tie to loosen it.

“Should I check with the maid before she finishes the packing?” Charles’s matter-of-fact voice brutally interrupted Brett’s enthralling daydream. He didn’t answer, unwilling to let it go, but Charles’s voice intruded again. “Is there anything in particular you would like me to tell her?”

Wrenched painfully back to reality, Brett swore. “I’ll see to it myself,” he growled in a hot and breathless voice. But Brett’s steps did not go down the hall to Kate’s room, and a few seconds later Charles heard the front door slam.

Kate was harder to revive than Valentine anticipated. She forced Kate to swallow every drop of the pungent liquid, but that failed to sober her and she went off to brew a stronger batch. Kate was sound asleep when she returned, and that annoyed Valentine so much that she almost left her to sleep it off. However, she relented and ruthlessly poured the second cup down her throat. This time Kate’s eyelids began to flutter. Valentine pulled Kate to her feet and kept up a steady flow of heartening chatter, chiding the girl for being so silly as to get drunk on her wedding night and gently encouraging her to begin walking on her own.

Kate’s befuddled wits recognized Brett’s name, but she found it impossible to understand the rest of Valentine’s conversation. The word “brandy” kept getting mixed up with a priest, but the part that made the least sense to her was the marriage Valentine kept talking about. Who had gotten married, and why should Kate be interested in them? She most certainly couldn’t have anything to do with their wedding night, a subject that seemed to be of great concern to Valentine.

Kate started to frame a question, but then Valentine mentioned Brett’s name and her heart lurched painfully. Brett couldn’t have married someone else! She tried to grasp the thread of the conversation, but her head was aching so much she couldn’t think. Now Valentine was mixing
her
name up with this unknown couple; her frustration made her angry enough to fight off the paralyzing effects of the brandy long enough to ask,
“Who
got married?”

“You did,
mon petit chou,”
Valentine crooned in a comforting voice, but her sharp old eyes were alert for signs of danger.

“Don’t be silly,” Kate giggled. “I don’t even know the groom.”
Oh my God,
Valentine thought,
she doesn’t remember anything at all.

“Do you remember going out a little while ago?” she asked. Kate shook her head. “Do you remember drinking Brett’s brandy?” Kate didn’t answer. “Can you remember dinner?”

Kate tried to concentrate. “I think so,” she said, struggling to fight off her mental haze. “Brett was trying to make me do something that made me extremely angry, but I can’t remember what it was.” She had an uneasy feeling it was important. “What was it?” she asked, gazing empty-eyed at Valentine.

“He asked you to marry him. Do you remember?” Valentine asked, hoping Kate wouldn’t recall the manner of his proposal.

Kate frowned with the effort to remember. “I think I do, but there was something else that got me so mad. Why did he do it, Valentine? I would give anything to marry him. I love him so much.” Valentine almost cursed as Kate’s eyes began to fill with tears.
You’ve got to think of something fast,
she told herself.
Brett will be back any minute expecting to see a smiling bride eager for her wedding night, and all I have to show him is a crying drunk with hair in her face.

“Bon Dieu,
were you angry when he said you must marry with him to save your reputation.”

Kate’s hiccups stopped. “I remember now.” All desire to cry gone, she tossed her head in wrathful pride. “I wouldn’t stoop to trap him into such a marriage.”

Valentine steeled herself for the plunge. “You did marry him,
mon ange.
You have been Madame Westbrook for more than an hour now.”

Kate’s body became as rigid as if it had been turned to stone. Her brain fought for words, weapons to drive out the understanding of what she’d just heard. It couldn’t be true. She didn’t remember leaving the inn. Anyone could see she was still in the parlor. Maybe Valentine was teasing. That
must
be it, but Kate didn’t think it was funny.

“You got drunk on brandy,” Valentine told her, pointing to the empty bottle, “and we had to carry you to the church. Even now the maid packs for you. This is your wedding night,
ma chérie,
the most important night of your life. You must be ready when he comes.”

Her last words were obliterated by a cry of anguish that rose from the depths of Kate’s soul, soared until it became a bone-rattling scream, stayed suspended in space for several moments, then subsided into a heart-rending sob. Kate collapsed into the middle of the floor, her dress and hair forming an arc around her crumpled form, her body rocking to and fro, and her arms clasped close to her bosom.

“My God, please let me die!” she wailed in anguish.

The door was nearly torn from its hinges as Brett, closely followed by Charles, burst into the room. “What’s wrong?” Brett demanded, stunned at the sight of his wife sprawled on the floor. “She sounds like she’s being torn apart.” He turned to Valentine in frustrated impatience. “You didn’t say anything stupid, did you?”

“No, but I did!” Kate moaned, her raised face distorted by grief. She was shaken to the very roots of her being by a sense of utter desolation at being robbed of the right to make the most important decision of her life. For the rest of her days, women would smile knowingly and whisper that she had taken shameless advantage of circumstances to catch the greatest matrimonial prize in England, that Kate Vareyan, a girl of no fortune beyond an old castle about to be sold for debts and a birth that was genteel only because it had no cause to be otherwise, was scorned by her peers.

She glowered at Brett. Being forced to marry him like this had robbed her of her only chance to prove she loved him. He would always remember he had been forced to marry her to save her reputation. Refusing to become his wife had been her only chance for true happiness.

“Don’t sit there like a dog howling at the moon,” Brett commanded. “You look disgraceful with your hair in your face and your dress dragging in the dust. Where’s your pride?”

Kate would have thrown something dangerous at him if she could have found anything, but all she had were her soft slippers, and they missed him. “My pride was stripped from me a short while back in the church when I was too drunk to do anything about it. Now I feel like howling at the moon. I feel disgraced and dirty. I feel like I’ve been violated, completely stripped of all decency and self-respect. I feel utterly and completely debased.”

“I never heard such ravings in my life,” Brett responded impatiently. “You act like I’ve committed a crime instead of doing what I could to protect you.” Brett grabbed Kate’s wrists and hauled her to her feet. “I’m out of patience with your tiresome predilection for seeing yourself as the mistreated innocent and me the ravishing savage. I don’t relish the role of villain, particularly after I’ve gone so far as to take a bullet because of you.”

“Bête!”
Valentine interposed furiously. “That was not worthy of you.”

Brett ignored her and turned to Kate. “When you left Ryehill, you placed your fate in my hands. Chance has done you better than I intended. It has given you a name, wealth, and position, and all you can do is sit on the floor wailing like a demented soul.”

“You have never, from the first minute I set eyes on you, been able to see me as anything more than a body to incite your passions,” Kate said with ice in her voice and fire in her eyes. “Not once have you stopped to think of what I might want, what might be best for me, or how your plans might hurt me, even if that hurt was only to my pride. You dismiss my ideas as female complaints and treat my anger as a childish tantrum. You see nothing but your self-consequence, your own important plans. No one is allowed to get in your way. They’re either forced to mold themselves to your wishes or are brushed aside and dismissed as too stupid to bother with. You’re arrogant, egotistical, and the most thoroughly selfish man I’ve ever met. Martin was not as bad as you.”

“Little one,” Valentine moaned in despair, “it is not fair to call Brett worse than a crazy.”

Brett grabbed Kate by the shoulders and shook her violently, unconcerned that his powerful grip might hurt her. “If you had half the breeding and intelligence you think you have, you wouldn’t disgrace yourself and my name by this shameless behavior.”

“I’m sick to death of hearing about your name!” Kate shot back. She tried to escape, but she realized she could only get away if he allowed her to. That fanned her anger to a white heat. “Let me go,” she hissed, and spat in his face.

Brett’s reaction was swift and instinctive; he drew back his hand and brought it rushing down toward her cheek. But somewhere in the midst of his swing, Brett realized what he was doing and tried desperately to stop himself. Too late. The blow was only a tithe of what it might have been, but he had struck her nonetheless.

Kate withstood the diminished blow without swaying. “Just like Martin,” she taunted him, her voice tight with rage. “Even the same cheek. Do they teach you that at school, or is it a natural instinct?” She threw back her head and swept the hair from her face, her eyes meeting his without flinching.

Brett had never struck a woman in anger, and he was momentarily stunned by what he had done, but under the cruel lash of Kate’s tongue, his chagrin died and his anger flamed anew.

“You are the most poison-tongued female I’ve ever met. Every time I’ve tried to help, you’ve turned on me, accusing me of every vile purpose you can think of. You have the face of an angel and the body of a goddess, but you’re certainly your brother’s sister. Would to God he had killed me and spared me the agony of learning what a fool I’ve been!”

“Nom de Dieu,
stop it!” Valentine screamed. “You are a
malediction
and I am sorry I ever helped you to marry her.” She folded Kate in her arms. “Oh,
mon pauvre petit chou,
he is a brute of the biggest, but he does not mean what he says. He has the
mauvais
temper.” She was horrified at what they were saying to each other, but she was most shocked at Brett’s striking Kate. In her mind, absolutely nothing could excuse striking a woman.

Kate pushed Valentine aside. She, too, was shocked at Brett’s words, but anger insulated her from hurt. “Of course I won’t pay him any attention,” she said, steadying herself against the table. The brandy was still singing in her ears. “I don’t want to ever set eyes on him again.” She started toward the door, then turned slowly to face Brett. Some of the anger had gone out of her voice. “I will see you are released from this odious marriage. Maybe it can be annulled. If not, you can always divorce me.”