“Did she accept?” Annelise whispered.
He laughed. Loudly. “Of course she accepted. And her father—the viscount—declared himself delighted. She is his youngest, but his favorite, and I have no doubt that he will provide for us handsomely.”
Annelise swallowed. It was getting hard to breathe. She needed to get out of this room, out of this house.
“She’s quite fetching, too,” George said, ambling closer to her. He smiled, and it turned her stomach to see that it was the same smile he’d used when he’d seduced her before. He was a handsome bastard, and he knew it. “But I doubt,” he murmured, letting one of his fingers tickle down the length of her cheek, “that she will be as wicked a romp as you were.”
“No,” she tried to say, but his mouth was on hers again, and his hands were everywhere. She tried to struggle, but that seemed only to amuse him. “Oh, you like it rough, do you?” he said with a laugh. He pinched her then, hard, but Annelise welcomed the pain. It woke her from whatever shock-filled stupor she’d descended into, and from the center of her being, she roared, thrusting him away from her.
“Get away from me!” she cried, but he only laughed. In desperation she grabbed the only weapon she could find, an antique letter opener, lying unsheathed on Lady Chervil’s desk. Waving it in the air, she warned, “Don’t come near me. I’m warning you!”
“Oh, Annie,” he said condescendingly, and he stepped forward just as she waved wildly through the air.
“You bitch!” he cried, clutching his cheek. “You cut me.”
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I didn’t mean to.” The weapon fell from her hands and she scooted back, all the way to the wall, almost as if she were trying to get away from herself. “I didn’t mean to,” she said again.
But maybe she had.
“I will kill you,” he hissed. Blood was seeping through his fingers, staining the crisp snowy whiteness of his shirt. “Do you hear me?” he screamed. “I will see you in hell!”
Annelise shoved her way past him and ran.
Three days later Annelise stood before her father, and George’s father, and listened to them agree on oh-so-many points.
She was a trollop.
She could have ruined George’s life.
She might very well still ruin her sisters’ lives.
If she turned out to be pregnant it was her own bloody fault and she’d better not think George had any obligation to marry her.
As if he should have to marry the girl who had scarred him for life.
Annelise still felt sick about that. Not for defending herself. No one seemed to agree with her on that, though. They all seemed to feel that if she’d given herself to him once, he was right to believe she’d do it again.
But she could still feel the awful jolt of it, the wet, meaty resistance when the blade had plunged into his flesh. She had not been expecting it. She’d only meant to wave the thing in the air, to scare him away.
“It is settled,” her father bit off, “and you should get down on your knees to thank Sir Charles that he has been so generous.”
“You will leave this town,” Sir Charles said sharply, “and you will never return. You will have no contact with my son or any member of my family. You will have no contact with your family. It will be as if you never existed. Do you understand?”
She shook her head in slow disbelief. She did not understand. She could never understand this. Sir Charles, maybe, but her own family? Disowning her completely?
“We have found you a position,” her father said, his voice curt and low with disgust. “Your mother’s cousin’s wife’s sister needs a companion.”
Who? Annelise shook her head, desperately trying to follow. Who was he talking about?
“She lives on the Isle of Man.”
“What? No!” Anne stumbled forward, trying to take her father’s hands. “It’s so far. I don’t want to go.”
“Silence!” he roared, and the back of his hand came hard across her cheek. Annelise stumbled back, the shock of his attack far more acute than the pain. Her father had struck her. He had struck her. In all her sixteen years, he had never laid a hand to her, and now . . .
“You are already ruined in the eyes of all who know you,” he hissed mercilessly. “If you do not do as we say, you will bring further shame upon your family and destroy whatever chances your sisters still have at making any sort of marriages.”
Annelise thought of Charlotte, whom she adored more than anyone else in the world. And Marabeth, to whom she had never been close . . . But still, she was her sister. Nothing could have been more important.