Chapter Twelve
Sarah made certain to lock her door before she leaned her back against the heavy oak panel, covered her face in her hands, and sobbed out her angst so hard her whole body heaved. What the hell was wrong with him? Through her tears, she glanced about the room, but thankfully, she was alone. The maid who’d been assigned to her wasn’t in attendance, for she—like everyone else no doubt in the house—would have assumed she’d spend the wedding night out of this suite.
When had anything ever gone the way she wished?
It had been wicked and this side of sinful to let a man she barely knew do such… things to her, but oh, he had a certain skill. Too bad the act had gone so fast and had been so shameful. He’d humiliated her! The earl had treated her like a prostitute, hadn’t bothered to take her virginity with any sort of gallantry or tenderness, never took the time to initiate her into intercourse so she wouldn’t have felt like such a green girl. If that was what relations between them would be going forward, she wanted no part of it.
“You can pluck an heir out of the damn garden for all I care!” she yelled into the silence of her room. The light from a guttering candle on the nightstand sent anemic light through the darkened room. “I will not be disrespected by my husband again. Do you hear that, Andrew?”
She hoped that he did. Tears continued to roll down her cheeks. Annoyed, she perched her spectacles on the top of her head and scrubbed at her cheeks. How unfortunate it was that when she was beyond incensed, she cried, for no doubt the earl thought he’d hurt her feelings when in reality she’d been enraged beyond all coherence. It had always been a flaw and something she was acutely aware of when people who hadn’t the sense God gave a goose talked down to her or embarrassed her, which her husband had done in spades.
If he couldn’t gain control of himself and stop bottling his emotions to the point that he was a slave to anxiety, she was done, completely done, with him.
Yet she’d married him and had pledged to help him if she could. Were his problems—demons as he’d called them—beyond his ability to conquer?
I’ve been foolish.She’d known better. Of course she had, but here she was, shaking with rage and humiliation because he’d bedded her in a way she hadn’t considered nor been prepared for. Hot saliva filled her mouth, and she swallowed several times to stave off the urge to retch.
“This was a horrible mistake,” she whispered into the quiet.
Oh, dear Lord.Sarah bolted over the floor. She fumbled about in the cupboard beneath the nightstand for the chamber pot and barely grasped it in time to catch the contents of her stomach as she cast up her accounts. Andrew had used her for his own pleasure and devices, hadn’t given her the respect she deserved, and he callously took want he wanted in a way that an untried woman should never be shown, especially on her first bedding.
Sarah’s sobs continued unchecked. It was obvious he didn’t have the basic decency or compassion to make the night special. Did he even care, or had she been a means to an end all along? No doubt he did, for wasn’t it her idea to keep everything between them a business arrangement? Another bout of retching followed. Regardless that she might want a friendship from the earl, none of that was possible right now, not when he was essentially lost and hurting.
Her stomach heaved again, and she spat into the porcelain receptacle. When her insides quieted, Sarah replaced the pot into the cabinet and then wiped her streaming eyes. Her body shook from reaction, her muscles ached from misuse, and the glide of the pretty wrapper she’d bought scraped against her still-sensitized nipples. She recalled his hands on her body—too fleeting and rough for her to properly enjoy the attention, and she shivered, both from emotion and a need she didn’t fully understand.
But he’d been a cad, acted like the beast he thought he was, and he’d torn her delicate nightgown without uttering a compliment about it. Damn him. She’d been so proud of that purchase, bought the finery with the remainder of her pittance to mark the momentous night, and he’d crushed the whole experience beneath his heel as if none of it mattered.
As if she didn’t.
Another round of tears fell, and Sarah let them. She deserved to vent her disappointment and perhaps disillusionment. In a fit of pique, she took off her robe, wadded it up, and hurled it onto the foot of the bed. Bloody ego for wanting to rig herself out for that man. Shaking her head, she marched to the wash table in the corner of the room.
“If he wants a countess and that’s all, then that’s what he’ll have. And an ice queen at that.” After pouring water into the bowl, she wetted a rag and cleaned the stickiness from between her legs. A trace of blood came way on the rag, and she sobbed again, this time for something she’d given that went unappreciated by the Neanderthal down the hall.
Fumbling for her spectacles, Sarah wrenched them from the top of her head. The curved ends of the arms tangled in her hair and she cursed as she pulled the eyewear from her tresses. After popping them onto the bridge of her nose, she inspected her hips where he’d gripped her. Sure enough, bruises in the shape of his fingers were beginning to form purple smudges. “Arse.” Once she’d tossed the soiled rag into the bowl, she moved into the adjoining dressing room. When yanked open a drawer from the bottom portion of the clothes press, she snagged the old familiar and worn night shift she’d always donned for the last few years. With a sigh, she struggled into the garment, and when she blinked, another shower of tears fell to her cheeks.
“How stupid I was to think that this new life would start off with a bit of hope.”
As much as Sarah would have liked to relieve hurt feelings and aggravation by throwing something, she was too smart and thrifty to break the new silver vanity set he’d left in her room, or the cheval glass that even now reflected her tear-stained face. She’d never owned such expensive things. Instead, she settled for returning to the bedchamber where she grabbed a pillow from the bed. Then she buried her face in the heavy goose down mass and screamed into the soft barrier.
A few minutes later, when her ire was spent, she tossed the pillow back onto the bed and followed it down, collapsing into the cool, soft sheets. “I meant what I said, Andrew,” she whispered and then blew out the candle. As darkness accumulated in the room, she pulled the covers up to her chin. “I won’t see you again until you apologize and commit to change. This is a partnership, and I can’t do it alone.” She removed her spectacles and rested them on the bedside table.
Devil take him anyway for making her think there might have been a chance at happiness between them when they’d talked that day in the meadow.
Lies, all lies. She sniffled. And stupidity on her part.
*
Oh, Sarah hatedhim all right. There was no doubt about that. Drew’s cheek stung from that slap, and he’d deserved it. His ears were blistered from her parting words, but damn if the humiliation on her face and the fury in her eyes would haunt his every moment. The slam of her door resonated through the quiet of the manor.
What the hell is wrong with me?
What he’d done was unforgivable. Of course, it was, and he’d known it but did it anyway. He shoved a hand through his hair. Each breath he drew sent pain ricocheting through his impossibly tight chest. Had he harmed her physically? Oh, God, had that incident damaged her mentally, left her in fear of what carnal relations could be? So lost to anger and his own bloody lust as he’d been, he hadn’t given consideration to what she might have been thinking or feeling.
With a growl, he stood. Why was he so terrified if anything good came into his life? Stumbling over to the nightstand, Drew picked up the water decanter and then hurled it against the door. Crystal and water exploded, rained down onto the floor. Sarah had been a damned virgin, and he’d taken that innocence without finesse or gentleness. He hadn’t cared about anything except getting his rocks off, like a savage beast rutting in the woods.
Then he’d shoved her away so he couldn’t begin to care for her.
Or she for him.