Lord Deverill's Heir by Catherine Coulter (best books to read all time .TXT) 📗

in the calmest voice she had ever heard from herself. It was flat, no emotion scrambling about to humiliate her further. “The comte is not my lover. I have no idea what this sodomy means. Either you will tell me or you will get out of my way. I will repeat it once more: the comte is not my lover. I have no lover or any sort. Tell me or move.”

She actually shoved at him. He grabbed her arms and forced them against her sides. “Sodomy,” he said slowly, looking down at her. “Very well. I will tell you what it is. You will recognize it quickly enough and I will see the knowledge of it in your eyes. When he took you, you were on your hands and knees, that, or on your belly. Damn you, stop looking so blank.

He took you from behind. Is that plain enough for you? He took you as he would take a boy were he a pederast.”

This hadn’t occurred to her. She felt utterly stripped of anything that she knew. “But surely that is impossible. Horses don’t do that, and I have watched horses mate. My God, it would be horrible. It isn’t what is proper, for man nor beast. What is a pederast? What do you mean?”

“Shut up, damn you. Very well, so he didn’t use you in that way then.

Then it was your mouth.” He jerked her forward, leaned down and kissed her hard. “Open your mouth,” he said against her lips. “Open your lips so I can taste you. Did that miserable little bastard spill his seed in your mouth?”

She didn’t open her mouth, despite the force he used. Finally, he let her go. He raised his head. Lightly, he touched his fingertips to her lips.

“Yes,” he said slowly, “he let you take him in your mouth. You have a beautiful mouth—soft and giving, even though you refuse to give it to me, I can imagine what it was like for him to caress his sex with those lips of yours.”

She saw him in her mind’s eye, his sex, swelled and long, thrust into her mouth. No, it wasn’t possible. She ran her tongue over her lips. He laughed. She wanted to kill him. He believed the comte had put his sex into her mouth? That he had found his release in her mouth? She shuddered with disgust. She didn’t try to escape him again. She wouldn’t allow him to destroy her.

She smiled up at him, her voice as calm as her mother’s. “You are lying.

No one would do what you have described. It is absurd, unbelievable. I will tell you one last time that the comte is not my lover.

“Ah, but look at you, you believe it so completely. Thus you must trust the person who told you. Who was it, Justin? Who told you this lie?” It was he who stepped away from her. He had sworn that he would not again allow his bitter anger and disillusionment to get the better of him. Ah, but she enraged him with that calm of hers, trying to turn the tables on him, to put him in the wrong. He managed to smile at her, but it was difficult. He wanted to strangle her, to throw her on the Axminster carpet, jerk up her riding skirt, and plunge deep inside her. He drew a deep breath. “No one told lies of you, Arabella. You have only yourself to blame for my knowing the truth. I saw you. I saw him.”

“You saw me? You saw the comte? Who cares? What bloody truth? That makes not one whit of sense. What in the devil are you talking about? Damn you, don’t just stand there like a preacher searching out witches, tell me!”

“Perhaps when you meet again at the barn or wherever, you can show him your newfound knowledge. You can tell him that you want him to sodomize you. Yes, but caution him to go slowly, Arabella. Tell him that he must be gentle, that he—”

She thought she would vomit. Instead, she struck him with her fist in his jaw. His head snapped back she had hit him so hard.

She picked up her skirts and ran to the door.

He called after her, even as he rubbed his jaw, “You will pay for that, Arabella.”

“I have already paid,” she whispered as she pulled open the door and slipped through it.

“Another macaroon, I think, my dear.” Dr. Branyon smiled at Lady Ann as he slipped another cookie onto his plate.

“Elsbeth, more tea?”

“No, thank you, Lady Ann,” Elsbeth said, turning her wandering attention to her stepmother.

“I suppose it is not so very odd that the earl and Arabella do not join us.” The comte spread his hands expressively, a knowing gleam in his dark eyes.

Lady Ann gave him a look that she had until today used only with Sir Arthur Bennington, a local baron who had tried to kiss her once behind the stairs. The gleam disappeared quickly. Good. Even a Frenchman understood that gleam. She nodded, raising her chin, then turned to Dr.

Branyon. “Paul, I trust you will join us for dinner this evening. It is Thursday, you know, and Cook will prepare Arabella’s roast pork.”

“Pork, hmm? Perhaps I can force myself,” Dr. Branyon said. He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece and quickly rose. “If I am to have a chance at snabbling any dinner, I must leave now and see to my patients. Six o’clock?”

Lady Ann nodded and walked from the drawing room to the great double doors with him. He turned, saying quietly, “Ann, something is troubling you. Ah, it’s the marriage, is it? You know that you must become used to the fact that Arabella is a married lady.” Lady Ann didn’t know what to do. She looked up into his face, a face she had known since she was seventeen years old, a face so beloved that all she wanted to do was touch him and kiss