“Have no doubts, Mrs. Frazier. If Angelique wants your husband back, she will get him. There’s nothing you can do to stop her.” Charles’s words haunted Hope as she dashed the moistness from her eyes, then swept into the crowded ballroom.
“Mrs. Frazier, retiring so soon?”
Hope was turning the knob of what she presumed to be Drake’s bedroom door when Charles’s hatefully familiar voice stopped her cold. Dropping the hand to her side, she turned to see him leaning lazily against the wall near the stairwell.
“It’s been a long day,” she murmured noncommittally. When he continued to stare at her, she pursed her lips and glared at him in annoyance. “Is there something I can do for you?”
His head shook in slow, thoughtful sways. “Not directly. However, I think there is something I can do for you.”
“Dear Lord, why me?” she sighed, wearily resting her shoulder against the door. Louder, she added, “If you have something to say, say it. It’s been a long day and I’m tired. I’d rather enjoy a nice soft bed than spend the rest of the night playing stupid little guessing games with you.”
His lips tightened angrily. “I’ve devised a way for you to keep a ring around your finger, woman,” he snapped, shoving his hands deep inside his trouser pockets. “The least you can do is be grateful.”
“Me?” she scoffed in disgust. “I don’t think so, sir. You’re too selfish to be wasting time wracking your brain to think of ways for me to keep my husband.”
“Perhaps,” he countered shrewdly. “But I would wrack my brain thinking of ways to keep my wife. I see no reason we can’t both profit from my ingenuity.”
“I do. I’ve had enough of you tonight to last a lifetime.” She reached for the doorknob with trembling fingers and turned. “Whatever plan you’ve concocted, I want no part of it.”
“Even if it means losing my brother?”
Hope’s gaze returned to him slowly. Her dark eyes sparkled with conviction. To think that once she had actually defended this weasel to Drake! What had she been thinking of? Comparing this swine to Luke and what she’d shared with him was like comparing night to day.
“Even then,” she said, finally. “You see, Mr. Frazier, if Angelique is successful in stealing Drake away from me, then that would mean I never really had him to begin with. All the fighting in the world wouldn’t keep him at my side if it’s Angelique he wants to be with. I believe you said words to that effect in the garden tonight.”
“So you’d just give up?” he asked incredulously. Pushing away from the wall, he approached her. Hope, remembering all too well her previous encounter with him, flinched. “Without a fight? I don’t believe it!”
“Believe whatever you want. Right now I’m too tired to care. Now if you will excuse me—”
“I most certainly will not!” Before she could stop him, he reached out and slammed the door shut. “You may be willing to let them make a fool out of you, but I’m not so generous.”
“What do you mean?” she demanded. The smell of brandy on his breath was strong, and she instinctively retreated a step. There was small comfort in knowing the houseful of guests below would hinder any further physical attempts he might make.
Charles hesitated, his crystal blue eyes shimmering with disgust as he leaned against the closed door. “Do you know where you husband is right now, madame? Or my wife?”
“The last time I saw Drake, he was in the garden—alone.”
That she had seen Drake since her encounter with himself seeme
d to surprise Charles, but he recovered quickly. He fixed her with a glance just shy of recrimination. “Perhaps for the moment he was alone,” he conceded coldly, “but how long do you think Angelique will allow him to stay that way?”
“I don’t know,” she replied tersely, “and I don’t care.”
It was a lie. She cared—so much so that the thought of Drake slipping off into the night with Angelique brought a stab of pain to her heart the likes of which she hadn’t felt since learning her family had perished in the fire in Thirsty Gulch. But she’d rather rot in hell before letting this man see, and play on, her pain.
Of course, Charles saw through the veneer of haughty disdain only too well. His lazy smile attested to that. “Don’t you?” he reached out and brushed his cloth-covered knuckles against her suddenly warm cheek. Hope swatted his hand away, but the damage had been done. “Then why do you flush every time I mention your husband and my wife together?” he argued. “And why do your eyes shimmer with betrayal?”
“I haven’t been betrayed.”
“Yet,” he conceded with a brisk nod. “But how long will that last? How long before they submit to the treacherous passions of their bodies? A passion that has been too long denied?” He watched as the tip of her shill-pink tongue darted out to lick suddenly parched lips. When the moment was ripe, he pounced. “And what do you do, madame, while your husband is out romancing another?” Charles scoffed derisively. “When we first met, I would have sworn you’d shown a touch of spirit. I must have been wrong. Only a complete fool would give full blessings to her husband’s blatant indiscretions by welcoming him back into her bed.” His eyes drifted to the closed door, and the long, thin fingers that tightly gripped the latch. “Yet it would seem that is exactly what you are about to do.”
Hope faltered. Her hand came off the knob as though it had just metamorphosed into a snake. “This is the only room I know, and I—I have to sleep somewhere,” she replied, hating the way her voice cracked, and her heart throbbed deafeningly in her ears.
His mirthless laugh echoed down the hall as he shoved himself away from the door. His large hand swept the paneled hall, indicating the other closed doors. “This is not Bethlehem, madame,” he said with a sardonic leer. “We do have room at the inn. Pick a room and I will see it is readied for you. If you wish, I’ll see to it that Drake is not told where you’ve gone.”
“Why?” she demanded softly, clenching her fists in the tattered remains of her skirt. “Why would you do that?”
“Entirely selfish reasons, I assure you,” he said with a mock bow. “I happen to think that a night spent alone, away from his lovely wife’s company, will show Drake what he stands to miss should he decide to pursue my wife. No matter what you say, you are not the only one who would like to see your marriage work, Mrs. Frazier.”