“They are blue.”

“Really?” She was beguiled. “How wonderful. May I see?”

With that, she approached him and peered up. He was very tall, taller than she’d remembered, somehow, and she had to place her hands on his arms and stand on her tiptoes to see deeply into his eyes.

“Many people have blue eyes,” he said.

“But yours are extraordinary.” Truly they were. “They are the color of the Hope Diamond.”

“Have you ever seen the Hope Diamond?”

“No, but now I know what it must look like.” She sighed. “And you smell good.”

“I smell like whiskey.”

“Yes, that too. But”—she breathed in deeply—“better.”

She could not define or describe it. It was a warm scent, like that of sheets freshly returned from the laundry. Or that of sunbaked stones.

“You’ve had too much to drink, haven’t you?”

She stared at his mouth, firm yet enticing. “‘Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon.’”

“You’ve had too much to drink.”

She smiled. He was so very amusing too. Her hands spread against his arms. So firm, they were, yet so smooth. She remembered the night of Squeak Piggy Squeak. She’d liked touching him even then. No wonder. He was marvelous to touch and he smelled like Lebanon.

She looked up into his eyes. He did not smile back at her. But he was very handsome this way, severe and judgmental.

“‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,’” she murmured. “‘For thy love is better than wine.’”

“No,” he said.

She wrapped her arms about his neck and touched her mouth to his. But only for an instant. He firmly removed her person. “You are completely inebriated, Lady Vere.”

“No, not inebriated. Intoxicated,” she declared proudly.

“In either case, you should go to your room and lie down.”

“I want to lie down with you,” she breathed. “‘He shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.’”

“Jesus,” he said.

“No, Elissande. My name is Elissande.”

“This is enough, Lady Vere. You may leave now.”

“But I don’t wish to.”

“Then I will leave.”

“But you cannot.”

“Oh, can’t I?”

Her tongue, which had been effortlessly lithe for quoting from the Song of Songs, again refused to cooperate here. “Please don’t. We must, for my aunt. Please.”

Surely he’d seen how shrunken and faded her aunt had become in her uncle’s house. Surely he understood the importance of keeping her free from further oppression. Surely he was as compassionate and perceptive as he was handsome.

Gorgeous, really. She could not get enough of looking at him. God in Heaven, what a sensational jaw. Those magnificent cheekbones. And those Hope Diamond eyes. She could stare at him all day.

And all night.

“No,” he said.

She threw herself at him. He was so solidly built. How she wished she’d had someone like him to hold on to in all the darkest days of her life—hugging Aunt Rachel had always made her sadder, but Lord Vere made her feel safe. He was a fortress.

She kissed his shoulder—she loved the taste and texture of his skin. She kissed his neck, his ear, his jaw, which was not quite as smooth, but had a slight roughness that scraped her chin most deliciously.

She kissed him on the mouth, capturing those very seductive lips with her own, savoring the taste of whiskey that lingered just inside his mouth, running the tip of her tongue over his teeth.

Oh, dear. His—his—

They stood hip to hip and she felt it. Him. Hard and growing harder.

And then she felt it no more as she sailed through the air. Landing on the mattress rather knocked the breath out of her and made the room spin like a kaleidoscope. But, goodness gracious how strong he was. She weighed a solid nine and a half stone. But he’d picked her up and tossed her as if she were a bridal bouquet.

She smiled at him.

“Stop smiling,” he said. It sounded as if he ground his teeth as he spoke.

Never smiling again was exactly what she aimed to do. For understanding her, she smiled at him with even greater abandon. Perhaps she ought to rethink the wholesale banning of smiles. They were quite enjoyable at times like this, when she was under no duress whatsoever, when she was relaxed and happy and at peace with the world.

She beckoned him with her index finger. “Come here.”

For once, he obliged. He loomed above her for a moment, then leaned down and took her jaw between his fingers.

“Listen and listen well, if you can get anything into your barmy, addled head: no. You can force me into a corner and make me marry you. But you can’t make me fuck you. Say one more word and I will have this marriage annulled tonight and send you back to the bedlam where you came from. Now shut up and get out.”

She smiled at him some more. His lips moved in the most mesmerizing fashion when he spoke. She would have him read to her, so she could ogle him for long minutes at a stretch.

Then his words began to make an impression on her ear. On her mind. She shook her head. No, he could not have meant it. He was her fortress. He would not toss her over the rampart to her uncle.

“I mean it,” he repeated. “Out.”

She could not. She could only lie there and shake her head helplessly. “Don’t make me go. Please don’t make me go.”

Don’t make me go back to a place where I cannot take a single free breath, where never a moment passes without its share of fear and loathing.

He yanked her off the bed and to her feet, his fingers clamped about her arm to keep her upright. Without any mercy, he marched her to the still open door, then gave her a shove that sent her stumbling to the middle of the sitting room.

Behind her the door slammed shut.

An hour later Vere came out of his room for the cake. He hadn’t eaten much the entire day, and all the whiskey in the world couldn’t mask the gnawing of his hunger anymore.

He was on his second slice when he realized that she was sobbing in her room. The sound was very faint—almost inaudible. He finished the cake on his plate and returned to his bed.

Five minutes later he was again in the sitting room. But why? Why did he care? What he’d said was expressly designed to make any woman cry. And feminine tears had absolutely no effect on him: Women who were criminally inclined or mentally disturbed—not to mention merely manipulative—tended to be terrific weepers.

He went back to bed and tilted the whiskey bottle for the last drop. But bugger it to hell if he wasn’t back in the sitting room again three minutes later.

He opened her door but did not see her. He had to round the bed to the farther side to find her sitting on the floor, her knees drawn up to her chest, crying into her wedding veil, of all things.

The veil was a soggy wad. Her face was red and splotchy, her eyes puffy. She hiccupped convulsively. The front of her wedding gown, too, was damp from tears.

“I can’t sleep when you are crying like this,” he said crossly.

She looked up, a very dull expression on her face, no doubt waiting for his person to coalesce in her blurred vision. It did. She shivered.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’ll stop right now. Please don’t send me away.”

He couldn’t decide which one he hated more: the devious and dementedly smiling Lady Vere, or the devious and abjectly sniveling one.

“Go to sleep. I won’t send you away tonight.”

Her lips quivered. With gratitude, for God’s sake. In annoyance—and resentment and anger, which an ocean of spirits couldn’t drown—he made the mistake of saying, “I’ll wait till tomorrow morning.”

She bit her lower lip. Her eyes filled with renewed tears. They rolled down her already wet face to disappear into the bodice of the wedding gown. But she made no sound at all, her weeping as silent as death.