The Heir - Catherine Coulter [58]
She glanced up at the sun, guessed that it neared luncheon, then let herself quietly into a side entrance. She thought only to avoid seeing Justin before it was absolutely necessary. She trod through her home to the library, slipped through the door, and shut it quietly behind her. Arabella was not an enthusiastic scholar, certainly not much addicted to the use of the dictionary. Thus she spent several minutes perusing the book-lined shelves to locate it. She had always assumed that any words her father did not use were not worth knowing about. She was beginning to think that in this instance she was wrong. She pulled the leather-bound volume from the shelf, wet her fingertips on her tongue, and began to riffle through the stiff pages.
Her fingers sped down the columns until she found the word she sought. “Sodomy,” she read. “Middle English and Old French ‘sodomie’.” There were biblical references, but nothing to tell her what it meant. “Well, damnation. What could he have meant? What?”
14
Arabella suddenly felt movement behind her and whirled about, nearly dropping the dictionary, so thick and heavy that it would have broken her foot. She looked up at the earl, who stood with negligent ease, his hand resting flat on the top of the desk. Her mouth went dry. She felt guilty even though there was no reason to. She’d even been speaking out loud. Had he heard her? Of course he had.
“Well, my dear wife, what word could be of such interest to bring you to the dictionary?”
He sounded colder than he had the night before. Utterly apart from her. Contemptuous of her. Would he hurt her again? Rip off her clothes again? She shook her head even as she looked down at the word, so very damning by itself, and she tried to slam the dictionary closed. He moved quickly, wresting it from her arms.
“Surely we could have no secrets? Aren’t we married? Come, Arabella, if you wish to know the meaning of a word, you have but to ask me.”
For a brief instant, she wanted to demand that he call her ma’am, but she couldn’t. Everything had changed. It was now too grave, too perilous. She said nothing. There was no hope for it. He would find the word. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d be damned if she would act guilty. She said with a tone she prayed was as cold as his, “I was looking up a word you screamed at me last night. I had never heard it before. I wanted to know what it meant.”
“What was this word I screamed at you?”
“Sodomy.”
His black eyebrows went up a good inch. She had no shame, the damned slut. She was shoving it right into his face, rubbing it in his nose. So be it. He turned slowly to place the dictionary onto the desk. Then he looked at her. She was standing tall, her shoulders squared. He looked at her, stripping her naked as he had the night before, and it was all there in his eyes, all the condemnation, the contempt, the rage. “Poor Arabella, did not the comte give you a term to describe your activities? I understand it can be painful, this way a man can take a woman. I have never done it. But perhaps now, that he has breached you, I will do it. Was he gentle with you? But you are an intelligent woman. I cannot understand why he did not tell you what he was doing to you is called. How very remiss of him.”
“I have no lover,” she said 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