Page 46 of Tempting the Scoundrel
George seized her wrist and yanked her forward. Alexandra’s face was so close to his that she could smell the brandy on his breath. “I’ve never struck a woman, but you try my patience. If I hear about you seeing Lord Locke again, I’ll marry you off to someone without the same restraint. Do you comprehend me or shall I repeat it in French?” When she didn’t answer, he squeezed her wrist so hard that she almost cried out. “Do you?”
Alexandra glared at him. “Yes.”
His eyes narrowed, but he released her. “Good.Stevens!” The butler appeared at the door and bowed. “Escort Lady Alexandra to her bedchamber. Make sure she stays there.”
Stevens seemed apologetic as he escorted her. Alexandra was aware that her father’s voice carried; the butler had likely heard their entire conversation. But Alexandra was in no mood for pity. She did not want condolences. Such emotions would not save her if her father wished to marry her off to a cruel husband who abused her.
Alexandra paced her bedchamber. Nick would be at the lake now. He’d be wondering where she was.
Would he be disappointed if she didn’t show up today? If she never showed up again? Compromised or not, Alexandra would force nothing on Nick; her tattered reputation was not his concern. He’d made no promises to her. Their lessons were not vows.
But he deserved some goodbye. An explanation for her future absence.
“Damnthis,” she muttered. No, she couldn’t let him wonder.
She’d end it today.
Alexandra pulled open her bedchamber window. She had climbed this tree so many times in her youth, the scrapes and bruises angering her brother James. He’d called her reckless. She wished he were here so she could tell him climbing up and down trees was the easy part.
What came next would be hardest.
* * *
Thorne pacedalong the banks of the lake, where he had been waiting for over an hour.
He was impatient to see Alex. Meeting with her had become the best part of his day—hell, the best part of his life. Happiness had been so fleeting before. It existed in mere moments: a warm meal; a soft bed; a bit of extra coin for a pie. Joy was a luxury, after all. It required some sense of safety, however brief.
Bliss was an intoxicant. Difficult to gain, easy to lose.
Thorne was a fool prolonging the inevitable. Every second with her was stolen time he didn’t deserve, laughs he hadn’t earned, yearning looks that he’d lied to receive. He had to hand it to Lord Kent for conceiving of the most inventive form of hell: a confidence artist falling for his mark. Happiness, then, was another form of torture. The devil whispering in your ear that it came with an expiration date.
And so did her affections.
He laughed bitterly. “What fucking luck,” he murmured.
A movement in the trees made him look up, and his breath caught. Had this woman been fashioned at birth just for him, she couldn’t have awed him more. It was the way she moved about in this world—with a gaze as sharp and pointed as a dagger’s edge. But she was not nearly so delicate, for blades could blunt without proper care. They could be broken or rusted. No, he could only describe her in the terms of a summer storm: powerful and disorienting.
And storms always made Thorne feel alive.
“You’re late,” he said, smiling as she approached.
She wore her usual wardrobe to their lessons: a loose dress that covered her bathing costume, her hair plaited. She looked as wild as a sea siren. “Yes.” Her answer was clipped. “I have som—” Their eyes met and she hesitated, frowning.
His smile faded. She wore a strange look on her face, as if she were making some important, unspoken decision. “What’s the matter?”
The space between their breaths felt like an eternity. Alex abruptly looked away. “Nothing.” During that small expanse of time, she had made a choice. She started unbuttoning the dress over her bathing costume. “It’s nothing at all.”
“Alex.”
She shucked the dress and tossed it into the grass. Even the thick, nun-like material of her bathing costume didn’t hide the agitated rise and fall of her chest. Soon her boots joined the dress in the grass.
“Swim with me,” she said, starting to wade into the water. “I don’t want to talk.”
“No. Not until—” His answer was cut off as she dove in. “Damn it!Alex.”
But she was already swimming away from him, her strokes strong and fast. Nick muttered a swear, tore off the clothes covering his own bathing costume, and went in after her. Alex was a fast swimmer. He’d watched her once, on the bank of the lake, as she sliced through the water. The graceful line of her body made him think once more of sirens—her natural element was water.
His chest heaved with the effort of catching up to her. Sheer desperation drove him—what choice had she made? What had happened? Why was she late?—and perhaps some emotion slowed her.
