As she ate and listened, Elizabeth let her eyes rove around the company. Lucy Worthing and Mr. Dowling, she was amused to see, were sitting together and conversing-or, at least, Lucy was listening to Mr. Dowling talk. The girl was looking almost pretty today with her sky-blue muslin dress that did not make her hair look too yellow or her complexion too pasty. Ferdie, Cecily, and Amelia Norris formed a group with Hetherington, but Elizabeth noticed that Cecily, flushed and slightly disheveled, was talking animatedly to Ferdie, while Hetherington, looking quite genial again, was entertaining his betrothed. He must have been angry to remember that he had invited her, Elizabeth thought, and that was why he had looked so out of sorts a short while before.
When everyone had eaten his fill and the food was packed away again, Mrs. Prosser got to her feet. "Come, Miss Claridge," she said, "show me this church of yours on top of the hill. Is it worth looking at?"
"Oh, not really," Anne said, standing up and shaking out her skirts, "but there is a splendid view from the top."
"Is there? Come, Henry, I need your arm," his wife called cheerfully.
"May I come too?" Mr. Mainwaring asked, and offered his arm to Anne Claridge.
"Miss Rossiter, I should like to discover the walk you were just showing to William," Hetherington's voice said from close to her shoulder.
Elizabeth turned, startled. She was even more surprised to see that he had put the church group between himself and those who were still sitting on the blankets, so that it was almost a private moment that they shared. He obviously meant that she was to go with him alone, not with a group.
She looked into his face for a clue to his motive. But his expression was polite, impassive. She smoothed her skirt and turned quietly to walk along the bank of the stream again toward the bend that would take them out of sight of the group. They walked in silence until they were unobserved. Then he began.
"What is your game, Elizabeth?" he asked quietly. "Is it Mainwaring you are out to captivate now?"
She looked across at him blankly. "What?" she said.
"Because if it is," he said, his voice now revealing an underlying fury, "I am here to tell you that you will not be allowed to succeed."
"What are you talking about?" Elizabeth stopped and turned to him, a puzzled frown on her face.
"Do you think I have forgotten what you are like?" he sneered. "He is wealthy and he is vulnerable, is he not? And it seems that you need money again. So you have set to work. And your plan is succeeding already, damn you. 1 have never seen Mainwaring so taken with a lady."
"I believe I have walked into a conversation not meant for me, my lord," Elizabeth said, breathing rather fast. "I have not the faintest idea what you are talking about, except that I realize you are being insulting. I wish you would explain yourself more clearly."
He turned fully to her now, his fury showing in his heightened color and in his flashing eyes. "You wish me to put the matter plainly to you?" he snapped. "I shall do so. If your position does not offer you enough in the way of luxuries, and if you need more money, you may apply to me for it. I shall give it to you. But you will not ruin a friend of mine who has had a hard life and deserves some happiness. You will leave him alone, ma'am."
Elizabeth's eyes had widened. Her body was rigid, fists clenched at her side. For a moment she could not speak. "How dare you!" she whispered at last. "By what possible right could you so insult me?" Her hand rose of its own volition and cracked across his face.
She watched in fascination as the white marks left by her fingers darkened almost immediately to an angry red. Then she met his eyes, which still blazed.
"By God, Elizabeth, you forget yourself," he said through clenched teeth, and then his hands clamped painfully on her shoulders and crushed her against his body. His mouth came down on hers, hard and bruising.
Elizabeth reacted in panic. This could not happen, her mind screamed. It must not happen. Her only defense against him was distance. If she did not get away immediately, she would be lost, in the same state of raw pain she had suffered for months six years before. So she fought. She clawed at his chest with her fingernails, kicked at his shins, twisted her head from side to side, and moaned her protest. His answer was to haul her harder against him so that hands and breasts were crushed against his coat, and to open his mouth over hers so that she could not pull away.
Elizabeth continued to moan, but gradually collapsed against him and angled her head so that his seeking tongue could slip past the barrier of her teeth. And he was Robert, the man she had always loved, the only man who had ever touched her, the only man she had ever wanted. And wanted now with a searing passion.
But suddenly she was alone again, cold, back beside the stream close to her place of employment, only two hands holding her shoulders in a bruising grip, a pair of cold blue eyes looking at her cynically.
"You could have had it all, could you not, Elizabeth, had you only waited a little while?" he said. "You must have felt that fate had dealt you a treacherous blow. But you have made your choice, ma'am, and you must live by it. You will stay away from William Mainwaring. Do I make myself understood?"
His words had thawed some of the numbness that seemed to grip Elizabeth's heart. "Remove your hands from me, my lord," she said calmly. "I have nothing to say to you, now or ever. I had never thought to hate anyone. Hut I believe I do hate you."
They stared at each other for a long moment, each cold and unyielding. Finally his hands dropped and she turned to go back the way they had come.
"Let us continue with our walk," he said stiffly. "You are flushed and breathless. I do not doubt that I still have the mark of your hand on my face. It would not do for us to be seen in the near future."
They walked side by side, coming around at the back of the hill, and climbed the slope to join the other group, which was still at the top, sitting on the grass admiring the view.
Chapter 5
She was listening to her father again, her father without his usual gruff manner, hesitant, troubled, almost apologetic, telling her. After all the agony and uncertainty that had gone before, she finally knew the worst.
"No!" she was saying. "Please, no!"
"I'm sorry, Lizzie," he said. "I can think of no way to soften the blow. Eventually you will realize that you are well out of it, of course, but…"
His voice trailed away when he realized that she was not listening. She rocked back and forth on the chair, her hands spread over her face, trying desperately to shut out the truth, to blot out reality, life.
"No!" she moaned over and over. "Please, no. It can't be true. No! Oh, God, no!"
John was there, though she had a feeling suddenly that it was a few days later.
"Elizabeth," he pleaded, kneeling on the floor in front of her and trying to look into her face, "You must pull out of it, love. You have not eaten for days."
"No," she moaned.
"He is a scoundrel, Elizabeth," he said angrily. "You must tell yourself that over and over again. Let me hear you."
"No," she replied, her hands before her weary face again. "No. No. No. Robert!"
She screamed the name and clawed at the arms of the chair as she pulled herself upright, gasping for air. John had disappeared. Everything had disappeared. She stared wildly into the darkness, heart thumping loudly, hands gripping bunches of the bedcovers. It took her several seconds to realize that she was in her bedroom at the Rowes'.