“Thank you, Elena. That will be all.”
The housekeeper scurried from the room. Carin glared at Rafe.
“I don’t like prawns. I hate white wine. I never eat melon. And any guests of yours will automatically be enemies of mine.”
He folded his arms. “Are you done?”
“For the moment.”
“In that case, I’d suggest you pay attention. I don’t like repeating myself.” He smiled tightly. “You will bathe and put on perfume. You will dress in something long and feminine. And you will join me, at a few minutes of eight, so that we are ready to greet our guests together. It is time I introduced you to my friends.”
“I’m not the least bit interested in meeting them.”
“Throughout the evening,” Rafe said, as if she hadn’t interrupted him, “you will smile at me and say the sort of things a woman says to her husband. My guests are not to be treated to your sharp North American tongue.”
Carin lifted her chin. The simple action made his breath catch. She was still filled with defiance, and it only added to her beauty.
“Didn’t you hear me? I don’t want to meet your friends.”
“You will do as you are told.”
“I will not! You may have had the power to force me into this marriage, to bring me here, to this—this godawful corner of the earth where you play at being emperor, but you can’t force me to pretend I like it.” She swung her legs to the carpet and stood up. “I am not your property. I am not…What’s so damned funny?”
He came towards her, smiling. When he reached her, he took her shoulders in his hands, drew her unyielding body forward.
“That was a fine performance, querida. Truly, it was excellent. But you are wrong. I can do whatever I wish with you. You are my wife. My property.”
“That’s nonsense.”
She spoke sharply but her voice shook. Good. It was time she feared him. All these weeks, watching her waltz through his home as if it were a hotel, as if she were visiting royalty and he was a servant…
“You’re trying to scare me, Rafe, but I’m not a fool. This is a civilized country. It has laws.”
“Indeed, but the laws are very different than they are in your country.” His eyes dropped to her mouth, then rose to meet hers. “I thought I would let things go on as they have been,” he said, “that we would live in this house together, as strangers.”
“We are strangers. We have nothing in com—”
He kissed her before she could finish the sentence, his mouth gentle against hers despite the anger of the past few minutes. When she would have turned her head away, he clasped it between his hands and went on kissing her, until she sighed against his mouth.
“I could take you by force, querida, but I won’t.”
She let out a breath. “Then—then why—”
“Husbands and wives should not sleep apart.”
“I have no intention of sleeping with you, Rafe.”
“You will sleep in my arms tonight, even if that is all you do. But I promise you, querida, there will be more, and it will be because you come to me of your own choice.”
She gave an unsteady laugh.
“You find that amusing?”
“I find it amazing, that you should even think—”
He lowered his head, kissed her mouth again, with slow deliberation, until he felt the first, faint tremor slide through her body, heard the whisper of her first, soft moan. Then he tilted her face up, slipped the tip of his tongue between her lips, coaxing them open. He waited until she sighed and gave him access to the honeyed warmth of her mouth, until her hands rose to clasp his wrists.
Then, as much as it killed him to do it, he let go of her and stepped back.
“You said we have nothing in common, querida, but we do. It isn’t what either of us would wish, perhaps, but it’s more than many people have.” He looked at her, then ran his hand down her cheek, to her throat, to her breast, and she took a shuddering breath as he cupped her flesh. “You will beg me to take you, Carin. I promise you that.”
“I won’t,” she said in a shaky whisper. “I swear it, Rafe. You’ll wait forever before that happens.”
He smiled, lowered his head and kissed the pulse that raced in the soft hollow of her throat.
“Until tonight, minha mulher,” he said softly.
It took every bit of his control to leave her there, and walk out the door.
CHAPTER SEVEN
CARIN stood in the center of her bedroom and watched as Elena and Joao emptied it of the last of her possessions.
At first, she’d tried to stop them. “Don’t do this,” she’d said. “You don’t have to obey the orders of a barbarian.”
She’d spoken in English, which she was sure João understood, even if he pretended he didn’t, but she knew it didn’t matter, that neither he nor the housekeeper needed to understand her words to get the message.
Elena’s face was flushed. She cast a couple of seemingly apologetic glances in Carin’s direction, as if to say she regretted her role in this but what could she do, except obey?
“The master has spoken,” Carin said bitterly. She flung herself into a chair and folded her arms. She had never felt so helpless, or so angry, not even when she’d realized she’d been nothing but a one-night stand for the man who was now her husband.
The housekeeper and the houseman shuttled back and forth until, finally, João stopped in the doorway with Elena just behind him. João made a stiff little bow.
“Senhora.”
If ever Carin had heard a one-word speech, this was it. He was telling her that he and Elena had completed the job. As if she couldn’t see that for herself, Carin thought grimly. The closet stood wide open, stripped of everything that had hung there. The bureau drawers were empty. The bathroom vanity no longer held her toiletries and cosmetics.
There wasn’t a sign she’d ever occupied this room that had been her sanctuary.
She looked up at João, who still stood in the doorway, his face expressionless, his arms at his sides, as if he were waiting for his next command. Did he expect her to thank him for a job well done? Was he waiting to be dismissed?
That was a laugh. Rafe had just made it clear that she had no rights in this house, that she was nothing but property, like his horses and his land. Now, his servant was waiting for her to send him on his way.
She rose to her feet, thumbed her hair behind her ears, stood as straight and tall as she could when, inside, she was trembling with rage.
“Go,” she said. “Just—just get out of here.”
The houseman gave her another stiff bow and did as she’d asked. Elena lingered a second longer, her hands knotted together at her waist. She looked as if she wanted to say something but what was there to say, after The Great God Alvares had spoken?
“It’s all right,” Carin said wearily. “Really, it is.”
“He is good man,” Elena said softly. “He has kind…” She searched for the word, then thumped her chest. “He is kind in here, sim?”
; The housekeeper gave her a wan smile and hurried from the room.
Rafe, a good man with a kind heart? There was no explaining some things. For all Carin knew, someone might have said as much about the Roman emperor Caligula. She felt like laughing but she sensed that if she let any sort of emotion show right now, she’d never be able to keep it under control.
Anyway, there was no point in wasting time laughing or crying or feeling sorry for herself. Giving in to emotion wouldn’t change a thing. She’d figured that out weeks ago, during that endless flight from New York, when she’d sat staring out the window as the world she knew slipped away from her. Her thoughts had chased after each other like rats in a maze until, finally, she’d let fear and exhaustion drag her into a dream-tormented sleep…
Sleep that had become soothing and peaceful when she’d suddenly felt herself cocooned in the warmth of Rafe’s arms.
Carin walked to the window, stared out at the flat prairie and the distant mountains.
Why had he held her all those hours? And why had she let him do it? It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known she was curled in his arms. She’d come awake long enough for that, to feel the strength of his embrace, the heat of his body, the steadying beat of his heart.
Tell him to let go of you, she’d thought, but it had been so good, to be in his embrace. The lights in the plane had been dimmed, there’d been no sensation of motion, only the moon and the stars lighting the heavens as Rafe took her from her old life to a new one. She’d waited for the terror to rise up again and choke her but it hadn’t. What she’d felt, instead, was a hot excitement at the knowledge that she was Rafe’s wife, that she belonged to him now, that he would not leave her again…
Carin swung away from the window and strode from the room.
Maybe she was married to a crazy man. How else to explain why he could be so tender one moment and so unfeeling the next? Maybe she was crazy, for even trying to make sense out of it, but she was a captive in this house, in this marriage, trapped until she could somehow force Rafe to see that the life he’d planned couldn’t possibly work, that he couldn’t expect to create a happy little family by chaining the members together.