Page 22 of Outrageous

“Somebody has taken my clothing.”

His eyes flickered to the garments the maid had laid across her bed. “What are those?”

“That is an excellent question,” she shot back.

His mouth tightened. “That is a dress and undergarments I had brought over for you at great inconvenience.”

“I want my clothing—what I was wearing yesterday.”

He took a step into the room and closed the door before leaning back against it and crossing his arms. “I believe it is time we came to some agreement.”

Eva crossed her own arms and returned his cool, haughty look. At least as well as she could when she was dressed in a borrowed dressing gown while he was clean and pressed and kitted out in clothing that fit his big body as snugly as a glove. His hat and overcoat looked new but his other toggery was so well-tailored that she assumed this must have been what he was wearing beneath his ridiculous corsair robes.

“I do not wish to engage in arguments every day. Or even every other day. What can I do to accustom you to the idea that we will shortly be man and wife?”

Eva thumbed her chin and gazed upward in a gesture of exaggerated contemplation. “Let’s see . . . that would be, um . . . Let. Me. Go.” She dropped her clenched fists to her sides and strode toward him, brimming with fury. “Why can’t you leave me here? I can send a message to my father to come fetch me. I daresay James is already halfway back to London. My parents are not leaving for another few days—it will not take them long to come up here and—”

“No.”

She couldn’t help the frustrated noise that slipped from her. “Why are you doing this? I don’t care if my reputation is ruined. I don’t. You must have guessed I never intended to marry, so this makes no odds to me. You can go your happy way and never have to see me again.”

Impossibly, his expression hardened even more and his arms dropped to his sides. He took a step toward her. When she would have stepped backward, his hands shot out and closed on her upper arms like vises.

“I am going to say this again and it will be the last time I repeat myself. You will become my wife. I do not care if you have no regard for your own reputation or name; I have plenty for my own and for the few family members that remain to me. I do not care to live out my life known as a man low enough to destroy a woman’s reputation and make no amends. If you are harboring the bizarre belief that anyone in Britain would believe you abducted me, you are—” He hesitated, his eyes narrowing slightly as he realized what he was about to say. “Nobody would give any credence to such a story. Even if they did, that still does not change the fact you have been alone with me for two nights. And really, that is the crux of it all: you have been compromised. You have just seen your brother’s response to compromising Miss Drusilla Clare—do you expect anything less from me?” She opened her mouth and he lifted one hand, his index finger raised in a cautionary gesture. “Do not say anything you will regret, my lady.”

Eva ground her teeth, keeping her jaws clenched.

“If you cannot voluntarily bring yourself to get dressed and get into the carriage, then I will carry you into it, dressed as you are. If you cannot bring yourself to speak your vows in front of a member of the clergy, I will find one who is not so fussy about the, er, finer points of the ceremony.”

She gasped. “You would marry me against my will?”

“I thought I’d made that patently clear. Yes. Yes, I would. Because I know you will end up marrying me in any event. If I were to let you go home, as you have requested, the Marquess of Exley would hunt me down like the vermin I would be if I released a young, unmarried gentlewoman to the vagaries of the road. And when he caught me—after he administered sufficient chastisement—he would make us wed. If I refused him, he would put a period to my existence, and there isn’t a magistrate in the land who wouldn’t applaud such an action. So, yes,” he said in a low, menacing voice. “I will force you to do the sensible thing now and save us both a great deal of bother later.”

Eva could feel the mood come over her; it had been toeing the edges of her consciousness like a willful goat testing its tether. Her temper was what her father and everyone else thought of as a sign of madness. Well, everyone but one person: her stepmother.

“You have a dreadful temper, Eva. That is all that ails you.” Her beautiful, loving stepmother had taken her aside years ago—after one of the confrontations with her father that had left everyone in the house miserable and tiptoeing on eggshells.

“How do you know?” Eva demanded. “How do you know it is not m-madness?”

It had been difficult to say the word, but not to accept the truth. Her father had told them about their mother when Eva was not yet fifteen. She did not know why he’d waited so long, but she suspected it was because he’d not wanted to face the truth himself. No, only his new wife, Mia, had been brave enough.

“I have a terrible, terrible temper,” Mia confessed that day. “My head becomes hot and my hands shake. My mind is like a trapped animal running around and around inside my head, looking for an exit.”

Eva had been stunned. “Yes! Yes, that is exactly how it is with me. But—”

“You are not mad, my beautiful daughter. You are only angry—and you are not good at managing your anger.” She had shrugged her delicate shoulders, as if such a thing—a thing that had plagued Eva all her life—was a mere inconvenience, a bagatelle. “You will need to learn to manage it. And I am proof it can be done.” Her mouth had curved into an ironic smile. “Not always, perhaps, but often enough. When you feel these things happening to you, it is time to breathe deeply and clear your mind. It is not time to argue or discuss—you will not be able to do so rationally.” Her pretty face had become hard. “Raising your voice, becoming hysterical? These are things that make men feel they can ignore us—that we are merely emotional females. I am not saying you must not be emotional, I am saying you should save your emotions for a time when you can examine them in private. Never let anger rule your behavior—or your anger will rule you.”

Eva clutched at the memory of those words now, her eyes held by Visel’s. A vein in his temple pulsed and she realized he, too, was struggling to manage his anger. Why? Because everything he said was true. She would have to marry him—whether he insisted on it or not. It was not just about her; it was about her family. What would happen if the truth about what she’d done got out? Rumors of such behavior would not only hurt her, they would hurt the rest of her family—especially Melissa. Sweet, gentle, and quiet, her seventeen-year-old sister would have even less chance of marrying than she did now. No, Eva had to marry him.

And then there is the fact that you want him. The thought rang in her mind with the sharp decisiveness of a judge’s gavel, and she wondered if she’d said the words out loud. But he was still looking at her with haughty inscrutability.

A wave of exhaustion hit her, leaving her feeling shaky and worn down. “I will get dressed, my lord.”

His eyebrows lowered and she realized her capitulation had put him off balance; Eva tucked that tactic away for future use. “You are not planning an escape?”

“No, I’m not,” she said, realizing only as she spoke the words, they were the truth. She gave him a look as haughty as his own. “You can take my word of honor.”

His jaw worked from side to side as he raked her with a pitiless blue stare. Finally, he nodded. “I shall send a maid up and will wait for you in the parlor.”