With his usual arrogance he ignored the instruction. Instead he tossed something at her. She had to drop the body to catch it. It was the black wrap that matched the one he was wearing. It felt like the final humiliation to have him stand there viewing her through cold opal eyes as she fumbled on the robe over her near nakedness and dragged the two pieces of black silk across her body, tightly knotted the belt.
‘Tell me about Jamie,’ he demanded remorselessly.
He just was not going to give up!
‘Which version would you really like to hear, Rafiq?’ she flashed at him. ‘The one where I admit to going from your arms to his arms with no conscience? Or the one where I tell you just how fickle you were—how easy you were to dupe and how badly you let me down when you dared to believe I could play such calculating games?’
His dark face tightened, big shoulders flexing at her bitterly deriding tone. ‘The truth,’ he gritted. ‘Just tell me the truth!’
The truth? She almost laughed, though she’d never felt less like laughing. She wasn’t that sure that he could take the truth! Did she actually care any more whether his pride was up to weathering the blow she could deliver it?
No, she didn’t, she realised. He had called her poison. Well, maybe it was time he discovered just how poisonous she could be. So she lifted her face and looked at him squarely.
‘The truth is that you were set up,’ she said. ‘Uncle Thomas and Jamie always knew I would inherit from William. William actually paid my uncle money for my keep. Uncle Thomas was greedy; he wanted to get his hands on all of William’s money. But the only way he could do that was if he kept it in the family. He encouraged a romance between Jamie and me. I refused to play. They didn’t like it. Tensions in the house became pretty grim. I decided I needed to get away and started hiring myself out to the local gentry to earn some extra money so I could leave the farm. Which was how I came to meet you.’ She released a short laugh which stung with mockery, for never in a hundred years would a woman like her normally have come into contact with a man like Rafiq. ‘You swept me off my feet and into bed, even asked me to marry you.’
‘And you saw your quick escape from drudgery?’
Her eyes widened on this darkly handsome, beautifully put together man who could harbour such a huge inferiority complex. ‘If I’d known about William’s money it would not have changed anything. Haven’t you noticed yet that I don’t have much use for the stuff?’
‘Unless you want to give it away to your step-cousin.’
He was mixing the past up with the present. ‘Do you want to hear the rest of this or not?’ she demanded.
A muscle in his jaw clenched tightly. He gave a grim nod of his head. ‘I said yes to your proposal,’ she continued tightly. ‘And was then left with the unhappy task of breaking the news to Uncle Thomas and Jamie. They saw their chance of getting their hands on William’s money slipping away, so they decided to do something about it.’
‘I saw you with him in your bedroom.’ His dark eyes were glinting as if he could still see them there. ‘You were standing in your bedroom window, locked in each other arms.’
‘I was locked in his arms!’ Melanie flashed out the distinction.
He didn’t believe her. ‘Brazen,’ he gritted. ‘You were kissing as if you couldn’t get enough of each other!’
He was right; the kiss had been fevered. Jamie had been feverishly trying to seduce her while she had been trying to get away! ‘I was young and a complete fool,’ she admitted cynically. ‘I actually believed that Jamie truly loved me. I was attempting to let him down gently because I believed I was hurting him!’
‘In your bathrobe. It was gaping.’ His eyes were black with accusation.
‘It was not!’ she denied, paused to think about that, then had to offer a small shrug. ‘Maybe a little,’ she conceded. ‘Things were getting a little out of hand, and I—’
‘A little?’ he cut in. ‘Do you believe a little should mean something here?’
The jeering tone of his voice straightened her backbone. She looked into his hard, condemning face and wanted to hit him! ‘Well, you tell me what you think it means, Rafiq,’ she challenged. ‘Or don’t I need to ask?’ It was written on his face! ‘Because you saw me locked in that embrace with Jamie you just had to believe that I must be enjoying it! Didn’t it occur to you for one small second that I might not have had much choice in the matter?’
‘So you were the victim?’ His tone derided her.
‘As much as you were,’ she replied.
‘I know your passions,’ he countered gruffly.
Melanie released a hard laugh. ‘I suppose I should have expected a man from your culture to think like that,’ she murmured bitterly.
‘Meaning?’
‘Primitive!’ she flashed at him. ‘I let you make love to me so, in your primitive view, it therefore goes without saying that I would let any man do that same!’
‘I never said that.’
‘You don’t need to say it when I see it written on your face every time you look at me,’ she denounced. ‘The day I let you into my bed I lost your respect.’
Her shrug said she no longer cared that she had. As she began to walk towards him, Rafiq stiffened in the doorway. He had never seen her look upon him with such open dislike. ‘I was twenty years old,’ she said as she reached him. ‘I let you take something very special from me. It should have meant something to you, but it didn’t or you could not have walked away.’