“Well, if I choose to wear mourning for the next fifty years, that's my concern and none of yours!”
His broad shoulders lifted in a careless shrug, a common gesture that he knew was bound to incense her further. “No doubt many will admire you for walking around dressed like a crow—”
“A crow,” Holly repeated in outrage.
“—but I've never been one to admire displays of excessive grief, especially public ones. There's some merit in keeping your feelings private. However, if you're so in need of sympathy from others—”
“You insufferable swine!” she hissed, more angry than she could ever remember being in her life. How dare he accuse her of using mourning merely as a way of gaining public sympathy for herself? How dare he imply that her grief for George was not sincere? Rage sent the blood rushing to her face, until she was hot and crimson. She wanted to hit him, hurt him, but she saw that her anger pleased him for some unfathomable reason. The cool satisfaction in his black eyes was unmistakable. Just a few minutes ago she had taken such pride in his gentlemanly appearance, but now she almost hated him.
“How could you know anything about mourning?” she said, her voice unsteady. She could not bring herself to look at him as she spoke. “You could never love someone the way I did George—it's not in you to surrender any part of your heart. Perhaps you think that makes you superior. But I feel sorry for you.”
Unable to tolerate his presence a moment longer, she strode away rapidly, her stiffened petticoat batting at her legs. Ignoring Paula's and Elizabeth's worried, questioning voices, she churned up the stairs as quickly as her heavy skirts would allow, while her lungs worked like leaky bellows.
Zachary stood exactly where she left him, stunned
by the argument that seemed to have flared out of nowhere. He hadn't planned to start it, had even felt a surge of pleasure the first instant he had seen Holly…until he had realized that her dress was gray. Gray like a shadow, a pall cast by George Taylor's ever-present memory. He had known at once that every moment of Holly's evening would be given over to regret that her husband was not with her, and Zachary would be damned if he would spend the next several hours trying to win her away from George's ghost. The silvery-gray gown, pretty as it was, had taunted him like a banner before a bull. Why couldn't he have her for just one evening, without her grief being wedged so insistently between them?
And so he had spoken carelessly, perhaps even cruelly, too wrapped up in his own annoyance and disappointment to care about what he was saying.
“Zachary, what did you tell her?” Paula demanded.
“Congratulations,” came Elizabeth's sarcastic voice. “Only you could ruin the evening for everyone in a mere thirty seconds, Zach.”
The few servants who had witnessed the scene suddenly busied themselves with meaningless self-appointed tasks, clearly not wanting to fall victim to his evil temper. However, Zachary was no longer angry. The moment Holly left his side, he had been flooded with a strange, sick feeling. He analyzed the sensation, unlike anything he had experienced before. Somehow he felt worse at this moment than he had after the worst beating of his prizefighting days. There was a huge block of ice in his stomach, the coldness spreading until it reached his fingers and toes. He was suddenly afraid he had made Holly hate him, that she would never smile at him or let him touch her again.
“I'll go up to her,” Paula said, her tone motherly and calm. “But first I wish you would tell me what was said between you, Zachary—”
“Don't,” Zachary interrupted softly. He held up his hand in a swift restraining gesture. “I'll go to her. I'll tell her…” Pausing, he realized that for the first time in his life, he was ashamed to face a woman. “Hell,” he said savagely. He, who had never cared for anyone's opinion of him, had been utterly cowed by the words of a small woman. It would have been far better if Holly had cursed him, thrown something, slapped him. That he could have survived. But the quiet contempt in her voice had devastated him. “I just want to give her a minute or two to calm herself before I approach her.”
“The way Lady Holly appeared,” Elizabeth remarked sourly, “it will take at least two or three days before she's ready to set eyes on you.”
Before Zachary could respond with an appropriately sarcastic rejoinder, Paula took her disgruntled daughter's arm and tugged her away toward the family parlor. “Come, Lizzie…we'll both have a relaxing glass of wine. Heaven knows we both need it.”
Heaving a sigh, Elizabeth followed her, stomping away in her ball gown with all the grace of an infuriated eight-year-old. Were it not for his own turbulent emotions, Zachary would have smiled at the sight. He went to the library for a drink, stopped at the sideboard and poured something from a decanter. Downing the stuff without even tasting it, he poured another. However, the spirits failed to warm his frozen insides. His mind sorted busily through a deluge of words, grasping for an apology that would make everything right again. He could tell Holly anything but the truth—that he was jealous of George Taylor, that he wanted her to stop mourning for her husband, when it was clear that she had dedicated the rest of her life to his memory. Setting his glass down with a groan, Zachary forced himself to leave the library. His shoes felt as if they had been made with lead soles as he hoisted his feet up the grand staircase toward Holly's private rooms.
Holly nearly stumbled in her eagerness to step over the threshold of her private apartments and close herself inside. Mindful of Rose sleeping peacefully just two rooms away, she tried not to slam the door. She stood very still, with her arms tightly bunched around herself. Her mind rang with echoes of every word she had just exchanged with Zachary Bronson.
The worst part was, he hadn't been entirely wrong. The gray gown had seemed exactly right for this occasion, for just the reason he had suggested. It was elegant and stylish, but not so very different from the circumspect Half Mourning garments she had worn during the third year after George's death. No one could find fault with it, not even her own beleaguered conscience. She was more than a little afraid of fully rejoining the world without George, and this was her way of reminding everyone—including herself—of what she had once had. She didn't want to lose the last vestige of her past with George. There were already too many days that slipped by without her having thought of him. There were too many moments when she felt a heady attraction to another man, when she had once thought that only George could stir her senses. It was becoming terribly easy to make decisions for herself, on her own, without first considering what George would have wanted or approved of. And that independence frightened her fully as much as it pleased her.
Her actions of the past four months had proved that she was no longer the sheltered young matron, or the virtuous, circumspect widow that family and friends had approved of. She was becoming another woman entirely.
Stunned by the thought, Holly didn't notice her servant Maude's presence until she spoke. “Milady, is something amiss? A button loose, or a trimming—”
“No, nothing like that.” Holly took a deep breath, and then another, anchoring her roiling emotions. “It appears that my gray gown displeases Mr. Bronson,” she informed the servant. “He wants me to wear something that looks less like mourning.”
“He dared…” Maude began in astonishment.
“Yes, he dared,” Holly said dryly.
“But milady…ye're not going to oblige him, are ye?”
Holly stripped off her gloves, threw them to the floor and kicked off her silver slippers. Her heart was pounding with the remnants of fury, and a nerve-rattling excitement like nothing she had ever felt before. “I'm going to make his eyes fall out,” she said curtly. “I'm going to make him sorry that he ever said one word about my attire.”
Maude stared at her strangely, having never seen such an expression of feminine vengeance on Holly's face. “Milady,” she ventured cautiously, “ye don't seem quite yerself.”
Holly turned and went to the closed armoire, turning the small key in the door and opening it. She extracted the red gown and shook it briskly, giving it a quick airing. “Hurry, Maude,” she said, turning her back and indicating the row of buttons that needed to be unfastened. “Help me out of this thing quickly.”
“But…but…” Maude was dazed. “Ye want to wear that gown? I haven't had a chance to air it properly and press the wrinkles—”