The Sherbrooke Bride - Catherine Coulter [32]
“Please, no more, my lord.”
Douglas stopped cold and stared at the same slight female who’d been upstairs in the midst of the fray. She was now standing in the open doorway, that same female who’d tried to protect him. The same one who was supposedly his cursed wife. He shuddered with the strangeness of it; it was absurd; it wasn’t real; he couldn’t, wouldn’t, accept it.
“Tell me your name, at least,” he said, his voice harsh, his fury boiling near the surface.
“My name is Alexandra Gabrielle Chambers. I am the Duke of Beresford’s youngest child, but I am not a child, I am eighteen years old and a woman.” She paused and he saw the strain on her face, really a quite pretty face, with rather luminous gray eyes that weren’t stupid. She’d pulled her hair back and tied it with a ribbon at the nape of her neck. She had nice bones, a nice mouth, pleasantly arched brows and quite pretty small ears. It didn’t move him one bit, none of it. She fretted with the sash on her pale blue dressing gown, then looked up to face him again. “Don’t you remember me at all, my lord?”
“No.”
“I suppose I have changed a bit. I was plump then and even shorter. I even wore spectacles sometimes to read, my hair was always in tight childish braids, so it was likely that you disregarded me entirely, but now—”
“I really don’t care if you were bald and obese. Go away. Go back to bed. You can be certain that I won’t come to ravish you tonight. I am not in the habit of bedding women who are strangers to me.”
She paused a moment, drawing up, straightening just a bit more. She looked briefly at Tony, then nodded. “As you wish, my lord. I will sleep in the adjoining bedchamber if that is all right with you.”
“Sleep in the corridor! Sleep with Tony for all I care. After all, he appears to have married you too.”
“Really, Douglas—”
Alexandra turned without another word and left. She picked up a candle from a huge Spanish table in the entrance hall. She walked slowly up the wide staircase. What had she expected? That he would look at her and fall into raptures at the gift Tony had bestowed upon him? That he would compare her to Melissande and decide straightaway in her favor? That he would fall instantly and madly in love with her? That he would sing hallelujahs and donate his wealth to charities for what Tony had brought about? Or rather what her father had convinced her to do? Ah, her father . . . She remembered exactly what he’d said, how he’d begged her, pleaded with her, used her own feelings against her, how . . . Alexandra shook her head. No, it was on her head, no one else’s, all of it. If she had wanted to toe the line, had really wanted to refuse, her father wouldn’t have forced her to wed Douglas by proxy. But the money, he’d needed it so desperately, and he actually believed that the addition of both Douglas Sherbrooke and Anthony Parrish to the family would force his fatuous heir, Reginald, once he returned to England, to curb his wild, spendthrift ways.
Ha! She was doing it again, trying to find reasons to convince herself that what she’d done was right and just and really marvelous. When, in fact, there were no good reasons at all. Douglas had been betrayed by his cousin and by Melissande and by her father. And by her. She’d been hoping, desperately hoping that his reaction when he learned about her would be different, but now Douglas had come home and reality had presented a furious face. It will be all right. You mustn’t give up. It will be all right. Her silly litany, Alexandra thought, climbing the stairs. Stupid and immature and . . .
Melissande was waiting at the top of the stairs, clutching her hands spasmodically to her bosom.
“Well?” she said without preamble. “Have they started fighting again? Have they drawn