Page 85 of Once an Angel
under the burden of their scorn. She deserved far better.
His oath to David bound his heart like chains of iron. He had robbed her of her father and it was his penance and duty to replace him. To atone for his own neglect, he could give her a home, an education,
a place in society. He could even find her a husband who would cherish her as David had. Fate had ensured he could never be that man. She would despise him if she knew the truth about the night that
had left her father's blood on his hands. All his noble intentions paled in comparison to what he could never give her—his love, his body, his children.
A white-hot anger blazed through him. Anger at her cunning, her blatant deceit, and the terrible
unfairness of it all. His desire for her flared as brightly as ever. He wanted this defiant woman no less
than he had wanted the angelic creature who had washed up on his beach garbed in nothing but sand
and moondust.
He caught her arms and drove her back against the bedpost. His fingers pressed into her soft flesh, assuring himself she was real and not an illusion of his maddened desire. Her lips trembled, and he felt
a bitter satisfaction to know she was not as immune to him as she was pretending to be.
He lowered his lips near enough to smell the tantalizing musk of fear and anticipation on her breath.
"Are we even now? Have you punished me enough, Miss Scarborough? Are you satisfied with your revenge? To make me want you? To make me dream of you when you knew that once I discovered I was your guardian, I could never lay a hand on you?" She turned her face away, but he forced it back, capturing her chin between two fingers. "It was a terrible and wicked thing to do. Your father would be ashamed of you."
With those words Justin turned and left her, slamming the door behind him. He sank against the door, knowing his survival depended on pretending those stolen moments of passion and tenderness in New Zealand had never happened. But his bluff had not fooled him. Emily's revenge had just begun, and the punishing flames of hell couldn't lick any higher than his burning need for her.
* * *
Emily drifted in and out of sleep, her jumbled dreams as tortured as her waking thoughts. She threw
back the suffocating weight of the comforter. An icy draft blasted her fevered skin, drying the sweat and rippling goose flesh over her body. Shivering, she burrowed back under the comforter and tried to pinch her down pillow into some semblance of comfort. It was too wet from her tears to be salvageable. She heaved it off the bed and threw herself back, rapping her head sharply against the carved headboard. Groaning, she rolled facefirst into the mattress.
She had taken to her bed after Justin had stormed out, and was contemplating spending the remainder
of her life there.
She had lain unmoving, her sullen face turned to the wall when the maids had come to clear away the toys and sweep up the debris. She ignored the broth they brought, rising only to wiggle out of the binding wool and creep into the nightdress they left draped across the footboard of the bed. For hours people had tiptoed and whispered outside her door as if she were dying, but now, at last, even they had gone away.
She sat up, hugging her knees. One by one the tears slipped unbidden down her cheeks. Loneliness was no stranger to her. She had often tasted its bitter draft huddled in the attic with only Annabel for company. But that was a vague melancholy compared to this shuddering ache. All she wanted was someone to hold her. Annabel's porcelain limbs were a cold comfort at best.
How could she be so miserable in such luxury? Two nights ago, shivering on an icy park bench, she would have swooned to imagine being snuggled between a feather mattress and a fat down comforter. A brass warming pan had been tucked at the foot of the bed to toast her toes. A fire licked at the grate, but its serene glow only emphasized the unfamiliar shadows of the room. The half-tester loomed over her head like a black cloud.
The alien house creaked and sighed a mournful refrain. Emily shivered. This was worse than being alone—a thousand times worse. Justin was in this house somewhere, near enough to hear her cry out
but separated from her by a jagged chasm of broken promises and lies.
Emily wiped her cheek with her ruffled sleeve, becoming slowly aware of a new sound—music seeping through the floorboards. The faint notes swept her heart, bittersweet and hauntingly familiar. They called out to her, compelling her to rise and seek their source.
Her fists knotted in the comforter. How could she face Justin again? Her first glimpse of him beneath the Christmas tree had wreaked havoc on her fragile control.
With his dark hair trimmed against his nape and his face clean-shaven, he had looked ten years younger than she remembered—vulnerable but devastatingly handsome in a crisp suit tailored to the lean planes
of his chest and thighs. He had offered his heart in that lopsided grin, looking as tempting and delectable as a present waiting to be unwrapped. Emily had felt like a dowdy wren in Doreen's borrowed dress and bonnet. Only her humiliated pride had given her the strength to spurn him.
It had been so easy to condemn him, but having him look at her as if he despised her, knowing he loathed what she had done, made her feel truly ashamed for the first time in her life.
The music played on, dancing over her nerves like silken fingers. She threw back the comforter and climbed down from the bed. A pair of velvet slippers warmed on the rug in front of the hearth. She shoved her feet into them, unable to resist a wiggle of her toes in their plush contours.
As she slipped out of her room, the music grew louder, a dark and fantastical lullaby in the sleeping hush of the house.
