The Sherbrooke Bride - Catherine Coulter [72]
“I don’t believe you.”
“Please sit down.”
“Give me the key and I will leave.”
Douglas closed his hands around her waist and lifted her. He carried her to a chair and sat her down in it. He stood directly in front of her, blocking any escape. “Now you will listen to me. I don’t know how we have come to such a pass. I had thought you more reasonable, more—”
“Submissive? Malleable? Stupid?”
“Damnation, be quiet! None of those things. You’re being absurd, you’re trying to rile me.” He began to pace back and forth in front of her chair. She watched him, not understanding and uncertain whether or not she wanted to.
He came to a halt, bent over, his hands clutching the arms of her chair, his face not three inches from hers. “All right, I will simply tell you what I have decided to do, decided in fact when we were still at Tom O’Malley’s cottage.”
She looked about as interested as an oak tree.
He straightened, looking down on her from his impressive height. “I have decided to keep you as my wife. I will not have this marriage annulled. Your father can keep the bloody settlement. You will suit me, I suppose, as well as any other female. You were right; you will make me a quite good wife. You carry a good bloodline; you have excellent breeding, as least you should. By keeping you, I won’t have to travel to London to find a likely candidate and court her until I am demented with boredom. Tony was right in that, curse his bounder’s hide. Of course, you are not all that I could wish for. You must learn to moderate your damnable tongue. I fancy I can assist you in improving your manners and your behavior toward me. So, Alexandra, there is no need for you to leave. There is no reason for you to act unreasonably. You are now my wife—I recognize you as such—you are now the Countess of Northcliffe.”
He beamed at her.
Alexandra rose very slowly. He stepped back, still beaming at her, obviously eager for her to throw herself on his manly chest and weep her relief, to bless him for his wondrous nobility, to kiss his hands and vow eternal devotion and servitude.
She turned, very slowly, picked up the spindle-legged marquetry table beside the chair, raised it over her head and brought it down. He stared at her in disbelief, jerked out of the way, and the table crashed down on his shoulder, not his head. The key dropped from his hand and fell to the floor.
She picked it up and raced to the door. Douglas was shaking his head, furious, bewildered, a bit disoriented. He was fast, but not fast enough. She was out of the door in a trice, had slammed it in his face in the very next instant, and even as his hand closed over the doorknob, he heard the key grate in the lock. She’d locked him in.
He stared at the door.
The damned woman had locked him in the Gold Salon. The door was old and beautiful and stout and thick. It would take five men, at least, to knock it open.
Douglas had been a soldier. He was strong, he was wily, he’d lost few fights. Damnation, he even spoke French and Spanish fluently. And yet this female kept catching him off guard. It was beyond too much.
He gave it up and yelled, “Open this damned door! Alexandra, open the door!”
There was pounding on the outside of the door, and a babble of voices, but no sound of a key in the lock.
“Open the door!”
He finally heard Hollis’s voice raised above the din, saying firmly, “Just a moment, my lord. Her, ah, Ladyship, has flung the key away, somewhere under the stairs we think, and we are currently searching it out.”
“Stop her, Hollis! Don’t let her get away!”
“There is no need for you to fret, my lord. Lady Sinjun has, ah, detained her as we speak.”
It was simply too much. Douglas stood there like a fool, saying nothing more, simply standing there, helpless, unable to do anything at all. The door opened. He walked