Nothing. No movement at all.
She took a deep breath and tried again. The chest didn’t budge. Again and again, she pushed. Eventually, she realized nothing would shift it.
Perhaps the dresser would serve. She straightened and moved across to set her shoulder to the bulky piece of furniture.
It didn’t move an inch.
She pushed until the breath sawed in her lungs and her muscles cramped with effort.
Her heart h
eavy with a dread she didn’t want to face, she checked the rest of the room. The furniture was nailed to the floor so firmly that without heavy tools, she couldn’t hope to pry it loose.
Fighting tears, she sank onto the bed’s high mattress. All she had to show for her efforts were broken fingernails and aches and bruises where she’d slipped and fallen in her desperation.
She couldn’t bar the door against the marquess. She was as defenseless up here as she’d been when her kidnappers had drugged her.
No, not quite. She fumbled for the knife. Although the grim truth was that it provided only the flimsiest protection.
She hadn’t heard the marquess downstairs. Even as she strained to shift the room’s heavy oak fittings, she’d listened avidly for his return.
Now it was late and she was stupid with weariness and fear. Her eyes stung with exhaustion but she couldn’t allow herself to sleep. Clutching her knife in damp hands, she lay back against the pillows and stared into the candlelit room.
Grace stirred from her troubled sleep. It was dark. The candle must have burned out. She had the strange fancy she was a child again, safe in her room at Marlow Hall. The large bed, fine sheets, soft pillows under her head.
Then she realized safe was the last word she should use.
The faint breeze from the open door must have woken her. This puzzled her briefly as she knew she’d closed it when she came upstairs. She curled shaking fingers around her knife.
Her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she saw the tall silent man on the threshold. His stare burned unerringly through the darkness to where she lay.
Chapter 4
Matthew stood in the bedroom doorway, breathing heavily. Lust thundered through his veins and his heart hammered as though he’d just fought off a powerful assailant.
The room was dark and still, but he knew instinctively the woman was awake. And watching him.
He could see a pale glimmer where her face turned toward him. She didn’t speak. He couldn’t even hear her breathing. Every nerve in his body sensed that she waited for him to cross to the bed.
He could go to her now. He could have her. It was what she was here for.
She’d open her arms and offer up her body’s secrets. He grew hard thinking about it. He’d lose himself in her honeyed depths and she’d give him the ease so long denied.
He braced his arms against the doorway on either side as if only physical effort stopped him surging across to take her. She wouldn’t refuse him. She’d been paid to do this. Whatever her distaste for him, she’d honor her contract or face his uncle’s wrath.
He’d paced the dank woods for hours, battling his baser self. And God help him, his baser self had won.
What man could resist when defeat was so sweet?
He shook his head as a drop of water traced a chilly path down his face. It had started to rain while he was outside. He hadn’t cared, had hardly even registered the wet. It did nothing to douse the raging fire inside him.
Dismissing his uncle’s plan had been easy when the doxy remained an imaginary creature. Faced with this defiant beauty, his resolution wavered, disintegrated.
Yet here he hesitated like a beggar at the kitchen door.
Why didn’t she say something? Scream? Protest?
Invite him to touch her?