Her heart nearly stopped at his words. "What do you mean?"
He rolled off her and pulled her into a sitting position on the edge of the bunk. She let out an involuntary gasp. She felt very tender between her legs. He kneeled before her and took her hand. "Thea, will you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?"
Panic overwhelmed her. Marriage? An image of her mother, wasted from fever and dying, swam before Thea's vision. The words Anna had spoken echoed in Thea's mind even as her body still pulsed from Drake's possession.
She spoke as if to the image in her mind. "I can't."
"No?" He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. Surely he had misheard.
She looked shocked, almost haunted. "Thank you for the offer, but I am not interested in marriage." The words came out in a toneless whisper.
"Why the bloody hell not?"
She recoiled away from him. "Do not swear at me. I do not feel that I have misrepresented myself in any way. I never once promised marriage."
He stared at her, his anger building as quickly as his passion had. He didn't want to believe that he could have been such a fool. He had been used.
Again.
He had not seen it coming this time any more than the first. Damn it to hell. He would have thought that in ten years, he would have learned something about women. Hadn't she told him her reason for traveling to England was to participate in the Season? A Season meant marriage, preferably to someone both titled and wealthy. Not the bastard son of a father who had not even acknowledged his existence.
He had not been good enough for Deirdre; why had he believed he would be good enough for Thea? Deirdre had also been interested in Drake only as a paramour. Gullible youth that he had been, he had believed she loved him. And he had loved her back with all the wild, uncontrolled emotion of youth. Still, he'd been less of a fool at twenty than he was at thirty. At least then, he'd had the foresight to ask for Deirdre's hand before taking her to his bed. She had made it clear that she expected much more from a husband than a bastard with neither title nor fortune.
Three weeks after turning him down, she had announced her engagement to an aging peer. Drake had felt no satisfaction rejecting her less than subtle hints at a liaison. Nor when she had made it clear that she regretted her choice after he made his fortune. He had merely felt sickened at the lack of honor in a woman he had once believed he loved.
Grabbing Thea's clothes from the floor, he swallowed the bile rising in his throat. He hated how successfully she had manipulated him. He threw her gown and chemise at her. "Get dressed."
She let out a startled yelp and batted the cloth away from her face. She stared at him, her face suddenly colorless. "You're very angry with me."
"I'm angrier with myself." And he was. He chafed against the fact that he had been so easily duped by her innocent sensuality.
She made no move to get dressed, just sat there crushing the bright yellow muslin against her. "Why?"
"I let you use me."
Her eyes widened. "What do you mean?"
"Don't play the naive gentlewoman with me. You bloody well know what I mean." Deirdre's betrayal had wounded his pride, but Thea's had shattered something deep inside him. He had to get out of the cabin before he disgraced himself and begged her to reconsider. He yanked his clothes on, trying not to notice that he still carried her scent. A few hours on deck would take care of that. Perhaps hard labor would also dull the ache inside. He reached for the door.
"Where are you going?"
Even in a blind rage, he still reacted to the panic in her voice. He turned back, trying to mask his pain with a facade of anger.
"On deck."
"But… I thought…"
"You thought what? That we'd have time for another tumble before you returned to your cabin and your preparations for leaving? Sorry to disappoint you, but I have things to do."
She flinched and her eyes filled with tears.
Before he gave in to the insane urge to take her in his arms and comfort her, he turned and stalked out of the cabin.
Thea stared at the recently slammed door of Drake's stateroom. What had just happened? She had experienced the most beautiful experience of her life and then been dismissed like the contents of a day-old chamber pot. Just because she had said no to his marriage proposal. Surely he must realize that after what happened to her mother, Thea was not eager to repeat the same mistake.
Two tears burned their way down her cheeks. Drake was just as hard and autocratic as her father. She had refused to fall in with his plans and so he had rejected her and all that they shared. Sacre bleu. Was she an idiot?
She stood up and winced at the pain between her legs and the sticky wetness. She must do something about that, or Melly would know all. She went over to Drake's washstand and made what repairs she could to her person. She dressed and then brushed her hair with Drake's brush.