Just when she was about to press forward, he used his grip on her hair to pull her head back and expose her throat to his mouth. Kissing that skin with hunger, he muttered, “You went to London and remained for two weeks.” His teeth bit down sharp enough to make her hiss. “Returned to me in a state I find entirely unacceptable.” A slippery tongue soothed the bite. “You did not write. I hear of your exploits, not in letters to me, but to that idiot family.” He trailed her jaw, the soft flesh of her earlobe pulled between his lips so he might nip hard enough to make her yelp.
It was almost impossible to think straight with his mouth on her flesh. “I knew you’d go to Stonewall Grove and hear the letters.”
Lips pulled back from his teeth, he growled straight in her ear. “Because he is of more importance than I?”
Eyes closed, Arabella leaned her cheek to his so she might confess a sad truth. “I am trying to survive. I need allies.”
Taking her chin between his fingers, he met her eye. His voice dropped low and menacing. “You will tell me everything.”
Her confession was difficult to speak aloud. “The new Baron of Iliffe, William Dalton, is a distant cousin of my late husband. When Benjamin was alive, I had never met him. I am not even sure if he’d known he was in line for the wretched title. But he had heard of me... and found my inclusion in his elevation unacceptable. To purify the indignity of my bloodline, and my grave infamy, Dalton cast me out of London and swore he would kill me if I ever crawled back.”
Arabella could still remember their first meeting, the way he’d stormed into the room where she convalesced, the stranger threatening her, until words were not enough. Payne ha
d not been there, and the other servants had done nothing at the sounds of her screams but send for Griggs and her doctor. By the time the pair had arrived, Arabella was wounded, her clothing mussed, rocking back and forth on the floor beside a fallen candlestick smeared with blood. “I stayed clear of the city, I ran, moved houses every few months. For a time it seemed he’d forgotten me, but he has amassed massive debts. He wishes for my third of the estate to be released... At first he sent out letters requesting I allow him the honor of arranging a fresh marriage on my behalf. I refused. Three weeks later, someone entered my home in the night. The blighter never got near me, not with Payne’s vigilance, but Magdala heard the man in Mary’s room.”
Gregory was not moved. “There is more.”
Eyes overflowing, chest so tight, Arabella had a hard time speaking. “When I was in London...”
Gregory gave her a shake. “Breathe.”
On command her lungs expanded. “When I was in London the man I hired from the caravans came to warn me. Dalton was coming to burn down my house in the night, after I had been taken from it and another had been left in my bed. The city would assume I was dead, my widow’s dower would return to the Iliffe estate, and I would be made sport of at their leisure.”
Harrow wiped her tears. “Their?”
“I would rather die.” She wanted to hide her eyes, to pretend even a man such as Gregory Harrow would not be disgusted with her after such a confession. But he would not allow it. “That night on the moors, I wanted to die...”
A firm hand palmed the curve of her thigh, warmed her to the knee. “Open your eyes, Arabella.”
It was such a simple request, but the effort required to look at him, to see anyone look at her after such words, was insurmountable.
Gregory had no patience for such weakness. “The unscrupulous have far more power than you do and can play the game much better. You are wasting your time trying to follow laws and rules, cavorting with vagabonds and nobles as if to find a secret escape, all the while waiting for shadows to drop the axe.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Arabella snarled. “You have no idea what I survived. Even a man like you cannot imagine it.”
Almost tender, the monster traced a finger over the line of her jaw. “What you fear will come for you. Be it for your life or to make you a whore. They have seen how very beautiful you are, and how fetchingly frightened.” Gregory grew lazy as he explained the simple answer. “You will fail, be dragged back to your hell, where they will relish toying with you and raping you until you die.”
“God damn you!”
Laughing, Gregory mocked her. “Look at you flinch from the truth. You are pathetic with your trembling and weeping.”
Bristling, she sat tall, green eyes flashing fury. With all her strength, she put her hands to his shoulders and shoved the man kneeling at her feet.
Filling the air with scornful laughter, he caught her wrists and held them with a crushing grasp. “You will have to fight a lot harder than that!”
Launching herself at him, Arabella began to attack in earnest, kicking and biting with every fiber of her being.
He caught her, pinning such rage, and made his point, to the panting wild woman. “That is the fury you will need if you want to win. THAT! Not fear. Not the lingering remains of old terror.” He pointed his finger in her face, his expression mirroring demonic violence. “If you cannot fight them with everything you have, you may as well whore yourself out now.”
He went from cruel to needy, Arabella caught up in his arms, crushed to his chest in his fervor to hold her tight. Under the embrace she stilled, and where she had pushed at him, she commenced to pull. Her urge to rip him to pieces with her teeth was warring with the need to prove she was formidable, but under all of that was the desire to be held, even crumpled as they were from battle.
Pressing her forehead into the curve between his neck and shoulder, she nodded and let out a grateful cry when he altered the purpose of his roughly grasping arms and hushed her, pulling her so close he could feel the heart pounding in her chest.
As he stroked her hair and held her, he rebuked. “There will be no more running. That is what they will expect. Do not give your enemy the pleasure of witnessing your weakness.”
He said nothing more while she cried.
Not half-recovered from her fever, it was not long before Arabella fell into slumber against him. Taking his chair, he held her on his lap, smiling savagely, gathering the edges of a quilt around them both.