CHAPTER TEN
At two in the morning, Malachi stirred. His head was killing him; his mouth tasted as if he had been poisoned, and his tongue felt as if it was swollen in his throat. A clock ticked with excruciating, heavy beats on the mantel.
He staggered out of bed and peered at the clock. When he saw the time he groaned and looked around the room. Iris was gone. She was a good kid. She had gone to Sparks, trying to help him. He was sleeping in her room, while Shannon…
Oh, hell.
His head pounded with a renewed and brutally savage fury. Shannon…
Shannon would be sleeping, too, by then. If she wasn't sleeping, it was even worse. She'd be furious, hotter than a range fire.
He threw himself back on the bed. The hell with her. They were going to have one fabulous fight, he was certain. It couldn't be helped.
He was going to be a rational man, he promised himself. He was going to be level and quiet. He was going to be a gentleman. Every bit as much a gentleman as the Yank she mourned.
The hero…
Well, hell, at this moment, it was easier for a Yank to be a hero. Rebs weren't doing very well. Just like she liked to tell him—they had lost the war.
Darlin'…the South will rise again, it will, it will, he vowed to himself. Then he remembered that he had just promised himself that he was gong to be reasonable.
They were married to one another.
His head started pounding worse as his blood picked up the rhythm, slamming against his veins. He was married to her…for real. If he had a mind to, he could walk right across that street and sweep her into his arms. He could do everything that the rampant pulse inside him demanded that he do. He could meet the blue sizzling fire in her eyes and dig his hands through her hair and bury his face against her breasts. He could touch her skin, softer than satin, sweeter than nectar, he could…
Rape his own wife, he thought dryly, for she sure as hell wasn't going to welcome him.
She would have let him hang! He was the one with the right to be furious. Granted, he would have come for Kristin with or without Shannon—he had meant to come without her—but it was still her sister he had traveled into enemy territory to save.
He could have been in Mexico by now. He could have been living it up in London or Paris. There was no more cause, no South left to save. It was over.
It should have been over.
He exhaled. He wasn't going to go to her now. She'd surely bolted the door against him. And the house would be silent. Dead silent. It just wasn't the time for a brawl, which is what it would be.
If she didn't just shoot him right off and get it over with.
She wouldn't shoot him. She was his wife now.
Yeah, a wife pining for a divorce, or pining to become a widow quick as a wink.
The turmoil and tempest were swirling inside him again. He didn't want to start drinking. He rose and went to the washstand and scrubbed his face and rinsed out his mouth, availing himself of Iris's rose water to gargle with. He felt a little better. No, he felt like hell. He felt like…
Racing across the street and breaking the door down and telling her that she was his and that she would never lock a door against him again, ever…
He groaned, burying his head in his hands. They were just a pair of heartfelt enemies, cast together by the most absurd whims of fate. She was in love with a dead man, and he wasn't in love at all. Or maybe he was in love with…with certain things about her. Maybe he was just in love. Maybe there really was a mighty thin line between love and hate, and maybe the two of them were walking it.
He walked to the window and stared at the night.
The new moon was coming in at long last, casting a curious glow upon the empty street.
They were forgetting their mission. Kristin…they had come all this way and met with physical danger, culminating with the last encounter with the Haywoods. They had come together in a burst of passion, and they had exchanged vows, and now they were legally wed, man and wife, and despite it all, they were still enemies, and despite it all, he could still never forget her, never cease to want her.
He walked over to the bed and lay down, folding his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. Iris would come back, and then he would have a better idea of what to do next. Cole must have heard what was happening by now. Jamie, too. And once they had heard about Kristin, they would have started moving this way.
He and Shannon had to start moving again. They had to cease the battle and come to a truce and worry about their personal problems later.
It was the only logical move…the only reasonable one.
He gritted his teeth hard against the fever and tremor that seized him again. He steeled himself against thoughts of her. He wanted her so badly…he could see her. He could see her as she had been in his dream, rising from the water, glimmering drops sluicing down her full, full breasts… water running sleek down the slimness of her flanks, down her thighs…
He could see her eyes, dusky blue, beautiful as they met his in the mists of passion. He could almost feel her moving against him, sweetly rhythmic. He could hear her whispering to him…whimpering, crying out softly and stirring him to a greater flame, a greater hunger…
Logical, reasonable. This was insane.
He was a gentleman, he reminded himself. He had been raised to be a Southern gentleman; he had fought a war to preserve the Southern way of life, perhaps the great Southern myth. He didn't know. But he had been taught certain things. He loved his brother; he would always honor his brother's wife. He believed in the sanctity of honor, and that in the stark horror of defeat, a man could still find honor.
Logic…reason. When the morning came, he would defy the very fires within him. She would not be able to ask for a more perfect gentleman. As long as she didn't touch him, he would be all right.
The perfect gentleman.
If not quite her hero.
Someone was turning the knob of her door.
Shannon didn't understand at first just what was awakening her. Something had penetrated the wall of sleep that had come to her at last.
She lifted her head and she listened. At first, she heard nothing.
Then she heard it. The knob was twisting. Slowly. Some weight came against the door. Then the knob twisted and turned again and again. Someone was trying to be quiet; stealthy.
She rose, biting into her lower lip.
It was Malachi, at last.
She leaped out of bed and ran to the Haywoods' lovely little German porcelain clock. She brought it close to her eyes and looked at the time.
It was almost three in the morning.
She spun around. The knob was twisting…
Malachi. Damn him! He had finished with his whore, and now he wanted to come back to her to sleep! On her wedding day!
Oh, granted, it was no normal wedding day!
But still…
She hated him! She hated him with a vengeance! With everything inside her. How could he? How could he drag her—force her!—into this horrid mockery of marriage, and then spend the day with a harlot. After last night…
It was foolish to give in to him, ever.
She hadn't meant to give in to him.
Ever.
She had simply wanted him, and therefore, it had never been so much a matter of giving, it had been a matter of wanting. Of longing to touch, and to be touched in turn. Of needing his arms. Of needing his very height, and his strength. Of hearing his voice with the deep Southern drawl, of feeling his muscled nakedness close to her…
She had loved once.
And she loved now, again. Perhaps he could never understand. And if she valued not only her pride but her soul and her sanity, he could not know.
Not that it mattered. She could never let him in; she could never let him touch her again. He couldn't come straight from his whore to her. Whether emotion entered into it or not. He just couldn't do it, and that was the way that it was.