Why hadn't he kissed her? Was she so abandoned that she could climax with him simply inside her? He hadn't even fondled her with his fingers, at least he couldn't remember doing so. He shook his head again, shaking away a slight dizziness. He still felt mildly drunk and he hated it, and the damnable vagueness.
He rose from the bath and the old slave handed him a towel. She didn't show any interest in his body at all. No, he thought, the anger building stronger than the drunkenness, she was so used to seeing naked men here—Sophia Stanton-Greville's men— that she didn't even pay attention anymore.
He dressed in freshly pressed clothes—good God, did the cursed woman think of everything?—and ate fresh fruit and warm bread. He shook his head at the offered rum punch. Jesus, he thought, watching the old slave drink it when she thought he wasn't looking. The drinking here was beyond good sense and control. He should know, he'd done enough of it the previous night.
When he left a few minutes later, he turned in the doorway of the cottage and looked back toward the bed, now freshly made up by the old slave. The interior still smelled of sex.
He hated himself for what he'd allowed her to do to him. She'd obviously kept control the entire time. He again remembered her shriek of pleasure and wondered if it had been feigned. Odd, for he wasn'
t certain and surely that couldn't be right. Ryder knew women. No woman could feign pleasure with him. But she could have and he simply didn't know. He remembered then the glasses of rum punch he'd drunk when he'd arrived the previous evening at the cottage. How delicious it had been, how cool and refreshing, and then all he remembered was the warmth he felt, the hard arousal, the urgency, the incredible sex that had gone on and on until he'd finally fallen like a good soldier in battle.
He walked to his horse. Sitting beneath a mango tree was Emile, chewing on a piece of turtle grass, his hat pushed to the back of his head.
"So," Emile said only, rising, and dusting off his breeches. "Are you ready to go home?"
"Yes," Ryder said. "I'm more than ready."
Emile asked him no questions. As for Ryder, he was cold sober now, his head so clear it ached. The more he tried to remember each detail of the previous night, he found he simply couldn't call it forth. Except that he'd spewed his seed in her mouth, his back arcing off the bed the release had been so powerful, that and her sitting astride him, riding him hard, her hands busy on his body, pushing him until he couldn't bear it, and again, he'd screamed his release.
Something wasn't right. In fact, something was very wrong. He was still frowning when he and Emile rode down the long Kimberly Hall drive. Ryder listened with half an ear to the rhythmic humming and singing of the slaves as they worked in the fields.
"Emile," he said finally, "have you ever seen a crocodile in the middle of the road in the mangrove swamps?"
"Yes, I have. It's terrifying, really."
"Something is very wrong," Ryder said.
"What do you mean?"
Emile was dancing around the issue. He didn't want to call Sophia Stanton-Greville a whore if Ryder was now enthusiastic about her. He was uncertain; he was trying to be diplomatic.
From one instant to the next, Ryder realized the truth, clear and shattering. It was her breasts! He'd fondled Sophia's breasts two times. He knew the texture of her flesh, the size of her, her weight, his hands could even now mold themselves in the shape to hold her breasts.
The woman who'd taken him twice the night before wasn't Sophia Stanton-Greville. The breasts were all wrong. It was that simple. If it hadn't been Sophia, then it had been another woman, and that meant something that made him want to howl in fury. He turned to Emile and said, "There was something in the rum punch she gave me last night." There, he'd said it aloud. And it was true, of that he was certain. But he couldn't tell Emile he was basing everything on the size and feel of breasts.
Emile was clearly incredulous. "You mean to say she drugged you? Good God, why?"
"I woke up alone, just as you told me would happen. What was strange was that I was still feeling drunk. Something else even stranger is that I can remember certain things, but all the details of the night are gone from my memory." He shook his head for there was something of a flaw in his theory. "If there was something wrong, if she has indeed been drugging men's rum punch, why wouldn't her other lovers have come to realize it and said something or confronted her with it?"
"I would say that you are the man with the most experience of all the men she's taken to that cottage. Perhaps the others simply remembered the pleasure and didn't question a thing."
"Perhaps," Ryder said. "Perhaps." He was thinking that more than likely, none of the other men had ever seen and caressed Sophia Stanton-Greville's breasts as he had. Just that other woman's, and thus the fools didn't realize the truth. Perhaps he wouldn't have either, at least at first.
He laughed aloud then. She'd be brought down all because of her breasts.
At five o'clock that evening, Ryder realized there'd also been a man there. He could actually hear his voice, but he couldn't remember the words he'd said. Did that make any sense? It had to. Who the hell had stripped him naked? He certainly couldn't remember taking off his own clothes, much less Sophia Stanton-Greville's.
She'd drugged him, seduced him, then brought in another woman to make love to him. It was clear enough. Ah, yes, and there was Uncle Theo who'd come in to see to his clothing. It must have been Burgess, there was no one else.
Ryder rose from the chair, a very grim smile on his mouth. He bathed and dressed carefully. He was coldly and calmly furious. He was going to drop in at Camille Hall. He had no doubt that he wouldn't be invited to stay for dinner.
Sophie wanted to eat in her room but Jeremy came bursting in upon her. "What's the matter, Sophie?"
Always he was afraid that she would become ill and die as their parents had died. She hastened to reassure him. "I'm just fine, love. I've quite changed my mind about eating here in my room. Give, me a moment and I'll comb my hair."
Jeremy sat in a chair watching her brush her hair, chatting all the while.
"... Uncle Theo had Thomas take me with him to the north field today, just for two hours, not more, because of the heat. It was fascinating, Sophie, but several times Thomas used his whip on a slave. I didn't think it was necessary but Thomas said he had to because they were lazy and had to taste the whip to remind them what would happen if they didn't work. He kept calling them lazy buggers."