Anne blinked in surprise. He was regarding her with an expression that was almost paternal. “Do you have children?” she blurted out.
His expression turned to ice. “No.”
And just like that, Anne knew. He had never consummated his marriage. Was he impotent? And if so, did he blame her for it?
She gave her head a tiny shake. What a stupid question. Of course he blamed her for it. And dear God above, she finally comprehended the extent of his rage. It wasn’t just his face; in his eyes, she had unmanned him.
“Why are you shaking your head?” George demanded.
“I’m not,” she replied, then realized she was shaking her head again. “Or I didn’t mean to. It’s just something I do when I’m thinking.”
His eyes slitted. “What are you thinking about?”
“You,” she said, quite honestly.
“Really?” For a moment he looked pleased, but this quickly gave way to suspicion. “Why?”
“Well, you’re the only other person in the room. It makes sense that I’d be thinking about you.”
He took a step toward her. “What were you thinking?”
How on earth could she not have noticed how utterly self-absorbed he was? Granted, she’d been only sixteen, but surely, she’d had more sense than that.
“What were you thinking?” he persisted when she did not immediately reply.
She considered how to answer this. She certainly could not tell him that she had been pondering his impotence, so instead she said, “The scar is not as dreadful as I think you think it is.”
He snorted and turned back to whatever it was he was doing. “You’re just saying that to get on my good side.”
“I would say it to get on your good side,” she admitted, craning her neck to get a better look at his activities. He seemed to be rearranging everything again, which seemed rather pointless, as there wasn’t much in the hired room to rearrange. “But as it happens,” Anne continued, “I think it’s the truth. You’re not as pretty as you were when we were young, but a man doesn’t want to be pretty, does he?”
“Perhaps not, but I don’t know a soul who’d want this.” George made a grand, sarcastic gesture to his face, his hand sweeping down from ear to chin.
“I am sorry I hurt you, you know,” Anne said, and to her great surprise, she realized she meant it. “I’m not sorry I defended myself, but I am sorry you were injured in the process. If you’d just let me go when I asked, none of this would have happened.”
“Oh, so now it’s my fault?”
She shut her mouth. She shouldn’t have said the last bit, and she was not going to compound her error by saying what she wanted to say, which was, Well, yes.
He waited for a response, and when he didn’t get one, he muttered, “We’re going to have to move this.”
Oh dear God, he did want to move the bed.
But it was a huge, heavy piece of furniture, not something he could move on his own. After a minute or so of shoving and grunting and a good deal of cursing, he turned to Anne and snapped, “Help, for God’s sake.”
Her lips parted in disbelief. “My hands are tied,” she reminded him.
George cursed again, then strode over and yanked her to her feet. “You don’t need your hands. Just wedge yourself against it and push.”
Anne could do nothing but stare.
“Like this,” he bit off, leaning his bottom against the side of the bed. He planted his feet on the threadbare rug, then used his body weight to shove against it. The big bed lurched forward, about an inch.
“You really think I’m going to do that?”
“I think that I still have the knife.”
Anne rolled her eyes and walked over. “I really don’t think this will work,” she told him over her shoulder. “For one thing, my hands are in the way.”
He looked down to where her hands were bound, still behind her back. “Oh, bloody hell,” he muttered. “Get over here.”
She was over there, but Anne thought it best to hold that quip in.
“Don’t try anything,” he warned her, and with a tug, she felt him slice through her bindings, nicking the base of her thumb in the process.
“Ow!” she yelped, bringing her hand to her mouth.
“Oh, that hurts, does it?” George murmured, his eyes taking on a glaze of bloodlust.
“Not any longer,” she said quickly. “Shall we move the bed?”
He chuckled to himself and took up position. Then, just as Anne was preparing to pretend to be trying with all her might to push the bed against the door, George suddenly straightened.