She shoved his head from her breast and slapped him hard across the face. “How dare you take such liberties with me!”
Damon grabbed her wrist before she could slap him again. “I’m only taking what you willingly gave me the night you danced around the lantern, when you bared your breasts for me to hold and suckle. And you offered me more when you agreed to be my mistress, then vanished into the night with my opal. Now I’m collecting what I’m owed.”
Elizabeth’s agitated breaths came so fast from his crass words and the image they brought to mind, that she feared she'd pass out from lightheadedness. “But I’m not your mistress,” she said between ragged breaths, "so you have no right to kiss me there, or anywhere else.”
“But soon I will have the right to kiss you, and touch you, and fondle you anywhere I please, gypsy girl, so get used to it.”
“Only if I marry you! And that won’t happen!” If Elizabeth had not been so furious, she would have burst into tears from the humiliation this man continued to inflict on her. He intended to take full advantage of her brief episode of indiscretion when she’d been forced to live by her wits. And she had no way of convincing him that the wily, spirited gypsy girl she’d fashioned herself to be was not a shameless strumpet skilled at seducing men, but a virtuous women who wanted to be loved and cherished and treated like the lady she was trying desperately to be. And that she wanted Eliza Shirazi and everything she represented banished from her life forever. The irony of it was, when she was Eliza Shirazi, she was too far beneath Lord Damon Ravencroft to become his wife, only his mistress. But as the daughter of Lord William Sheffield, she was too high-born to be his mistress, but worthy enough to be his wife, as long as she came with a sizable dowry.
And all she wanted was for Lord Damon Ravencroft to be out of her life, forever.
She flipped open her fan and fluttered it in front of her chest to protect herself against more unwanted advances. “I could tell the police who you are and you’d be arrested for murder," she said, "and you wouldn’t be marrying me or anyone else.”
Damon lifted her idle hand and pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist. “You could,” he said, trailing kisses up her arm. “Why haven’t you?”
Elizabeth jerked her arm away. “I still may. There’s really nothing stopping me.”
“You’re right.” Damon rapped on the coach window, and the driver pulled the coach to a halt. Raising the shade, he poked his head out the window and said, “Christopher, the lady would like to make a detour by the police station before going to the theater.”
“As you say, sir.”
The driver turned the horses around.
"You're so sure of yourself," Elizabeth said, "but you have no idea what I'll do when we get there."
"But we'll soon find out." Damon sat back and folded his arms.
As the coach continued toward the police station, Elizabeth sat in stony silence, deliberating whether to shock Lord Damon Ravencroft by turning him over to the police, or give him the upper hand by backing down and saying nothing. The temptation to do the former was so strong, goose bumps prickled her arms and the back of her neck, and sweat dampened her brow, and before long, her stomach was in a knot and her hands began to tremble from the resentment and exasperation of being boxed into a corner.
The coach came to a halt in front of the police station, and the footman climbed down and opened the door for Elizabeth to step out. She looked at the large brick building and felt her temper flare. ”If I had it my way, you’d hang by your neck in the town square,” she said, yet made no move to leave the coach,
“I’m giving you the chance to make it happen,” Damon replied. “All you have to do is walk into that building and tell them who I am and it’s all over for me. But keep in mind that before long, you’ll be on the streets doing whatever it takes to stay alive. Think long and hard on it before you act.” He sat back and waited while Elizabeth fidgeted with the swags crossing the skirt of her velvet gown.
After several minutes ticked by, Damon pulled out his pocket watch and said, “The opera starts in thirty minutes, so what’s it going to be? Lord Damon Carlisle swinging by his neck in the town square while Lady Elizabeth Sheffield lays on her back, spread-legged, to make a living, or Prince Rao Singh and Lady Elizabeth Sheffield making a grand entrance at the opera?”
Elizabeth stared at her restless hands, disgusted with herself for her cowed spirit and lack of will to punish this man for the grief he was causing her. Eliza Sharazi would have marched into that police station and turned him in without batting an eye, just to get the exasperating man out of her life. After all, justice was justice. If he were innocent he’d be exonerated. But Elizabeth Sheffield couldn’t seem to bring herself to do it. “I suppose we’ll go to the opera,” she said in a subdued voice, then vowed to scream bloody murder before letting him touch her again,
Damon kept his hands to himself for the remainder of the ride to the opera house. He did, however, place her hand in the crook of his arm and cover it with his palm as they stepped away from the coach. “Smile, Lady Elizabeth,” he said as they walked toward the opera house. “All eyes are on you and your magnificent bosom.”
Elizabeth feigned a smile as she said in a provocative voice, “No, Your Royal Heinie, I believe all eyes are on you and your ostentatious get-up.”
Damon dipped his head at the curious faces as they passed. “I think I shall enjoy being married to you, gypsy girl. You make my blood boil and my loins ache.”
Elizabeth acknowledged a woman on the street who reached out to touch her dress, then leaned toward Damon, and said in a silky voice, “You are crude and offensive.”
Damon let out a short laugh as if they’d just shared a private joke, and whispered against her ear, “Only with women who emasculate me by stealing my jewels.”
“I may have stolen your opal," Elizabeth said, nodding to a familiar face in the crowd, "but your other claim is baseless.”
Damon gave her hand an affectionate pat. “I wasn’t aware that you’d noticed the state of my masculinity, Lady Elizabeth.”
“I hadn’t," Elizabeth clipped. "Nor could I care less what you keep tucked between your royal legs,” she said in a wry voice. “But you seem overly fixated on it.”
Damon laughed a deep, rumbling sound. “What man isn’t?" he said. "But the day will come when you’ll share my fixation.”
“Never, Your High and Mightiness,” Elizabeth said in a velvety voice. “And I regret now that I didn’t turn you over to the police when I had the chance, so there would be no possibility of marrying you.”
“But you didn’t, gypsy girl, and you will marry me," Damon said. "Willingly.”
Once inside, Damon ushered her up the wide bank of stairs to the mezzanine, and guided her toward the enclosed private boxes off to the side and overlooking the stage, and lifted the curtain to one particular box. Elizabeth looked at him with a start. “This is my father’s private box,” she said. “You and my father planned this in advance.”
Damon's hand tightened on her arm as he ushered her into the box. “I leave nothing to chance when I go after something I want," he replied. "But it works both ways. Your father wants a titled man of wealth for his daughter, and I want his daughter’s dowry and streetwise skills to recover my opal. After that, you and I will part company, and your father and I will continue to be fast friends, just as we have been for years.”
Elizabeth settled against the plush velvet-covered seat and folded her hands in her lap, and Damon took his place beside her. The lights dimmed, the stage curtain lifted, and the opera commenced. Although Elizabeth tried to focus on the music and the singing and the drama, it was impossible to stay focused, her attention diverted by Damon’s breath against her ear as he commented on the performance, or on her chest as he commented on her gown. He picked up that subject again, when the lights came on during intermission. “I appreciate your wearing the gown for my benefit tonight," he said. "Your breasts and your eyes
are your finest assets, gypsy girl. I'm captivated by both.”
Elizabeth felt heat rush up her face, a combination of anger at his constant reference to her years as a gypsy—a time in her life she desperately wanted to put behind her—and her vexation that he assumed she’d worn the low-cut gown for him. “I did not wear this for your benefit!" she said forcefully, wishing there was some way she could pull the bodice up to her chin. "Décolleté gowns are the fashion." Why she'd been so brazen as to wear it tonight was beyond her.
Damon's gaze moved over her bosom, sending tingles coursing through her to settle low in her belly, triggering a longing of a time when she'd been unhampered by the restraints of modesty and propriety and respectability. “A fashion I support. Every time you take in a breath,” he said, trailing a finger over the swell of her breasts, "your bodice comes within a hair’s width of offering my lips this to latch onto."
Elizabeth whacked his hand hard with her fan. “You have no right to touch me there,” she said, aware that he had not so much as flinched when she struck him.
He smiled a slow, self-satisfied smile. “But you clearly enjoyed what I was doing as much as I or you wouldn’t have waited so long to swat my hand.”
“You caught me by surprise," Elizabeth insisted. "I’m not used to having men paw me. The gentlemen who call on me show respect for me and treat me like a lady. They would never be so presumptuous as to do the things you do, which I find rude and offensive.”
Damon threw his head back and laughed. “Have you stolen their jewels too, gypsy girl, emasculated them so they have no desire to paw any woman at all? Or is it that they just don’t know the real Lady Elizabeth Sheffield, who can straddle a horse bareback at a dead run, brawl on the ground with a man like a ruffian, and use her womanly wiles to swindle him out of his second most prized possession.”
“Second most prized possession?" Elizabeth said, curious. "What is more precious than that opal you so passionately covet?”
“Ask any man, except perhaps your gentlemen friends who’d rather fondle a deck of cards than a woman," Damon replied. "When you display your breasts for them, do those sexless popinjays even look? I doubt any of them could stir your blood or arouse your passionate nature, much less get under your skirts. No, gypsy girl. Those impotent dandies are not for a woman with your passionate nature.”
“I do not have a passionate nature!”
“Oh yes, you do. I look forward to the day when you’ll wrap your legs around my hips and straddle me like you did when you kissed me in my bedchamber. Only next time, we will be flesh to flesh when you do.”
Refusing to feed fuel to the fire, Elizabeth said, “I am the one to decide what kind of man is to my liking, and I assure you, I prefer the men you call sexless popinjays to your unwanted advances and unsavory presence.” She flipped open her fan and fluttered it across her chest. He would not touch her breasts again, she vowed, even as the memory of his kisses and caresses sent tiny shivers skittering across her bosom and a disconcerting urgency settling in an area she didn't want to acknowledge.
The lights dimmed and the opera continued. Elizabeth hoped it would be the last of Damon's advances. Instead, he took her fan from her hand and kissed the curve of her shoulder. “No, you don’t prefer those men to me—" his lips moved up the column of her neck and across her chin “—and you do have a passionate nature." He turned her face and covered her mouth with his, nudging his tongue between her lips. His slow, sensual strokes blocked the protest she was primed to spit at him. And when his hand came up to gently caress her breast, that private pleasure began to stir. He was the one to break the kiss. Removing his lips from hers, he looked at her and said, with irony, “Since you have an aversion to my touch, I’ll make my offer more acceptable to you.”
The taste of him still lingering, Elizabeth said in a husky voice intended to display her wrath, but which came out like an impassioned plea, “That would be impossible. I find your company intolerable. There is nothing you could possibly add that would so much as tempt me to change my mind.”
Damon looked at her steadily. "Even if the marriage is not consummated?”
Elizabeth let out a short, sardonic laugh. “I do not for a moment believe you’d marry me and not consummate the marriage," she said. "As it is, you take liberties you have no right to take. I can only imagine what you'd take if I were your legal wife, living under your roof. Short of providing me with a body guard, there's no way I'd be safe from your unwanted advances."
“That’s because you have not heard what I propose.”
“Go ahead, tell me. But it won’t change my mind. And would you please return my fan.” He opened her fan and handed it to her, and she promptly fluttered it across her chest.
“The marriage would remain unconsummated for three months," Damon said. "If, during that time you recovered my opal, I’d deed Shanti Bhavan to you, and the marriage would be annulled. If you did not recover my opal, the marriage would still be annulled, but you'd forfeit the right to Shanti Bhavan and return to your father’s house. Either way, your father would know nothing about your past, only that I was unsatisfactory as a husband. I’d take responsibility for not performing my marital duty.”
"What if my father paid you for the opal," Elizabeth offered. "Surely you did not pay a fortune for it. It was only an opal. A gypsy talisman."
"It was far more than a gypsy talisman," Damon said. "It was the Burning of Troy, an opal given to Josephine by Napoleon. It disappeared after Josephine's death and fell into the hands of gypsies. I was going to use it to bid a pardon from the queen, and to secure funds needed to restore Westwendham. The price of the Burning of Troy is even beyond the reach of your father, I'm afraid."
Elizabeth stared at him. The idea that she'd held in her hands an opal of such value was almost inconceivable. But it didn't change her predicament. “If I still refuse to marry you," she said. "What then?”
Damon looked at her soberly. “All of London will learn that Elizabeth Sheffield once roamed with gypsies, worked as a servant, stole a priceless opal from the man she worked for, and murdered his gateman.”
Before Elizabeth could reply, the crowd of opera goers burst into applause, the curtain dropped, and a bank of lights beamed on the lineup of costumed players taking their final bows, the jubilant scene before Elizabeth shattering images of gypsies, and fiery opals, and a pearl-handled knife in a man's chest. And a troubling past she desperately wanted to relegate to her other lost memories.
Damon raised a cynical brow. “Do you really want all of London to learn about your questionable past, Elizabeth, when what I offer is a chance for you to gain a jute plantation, along with independence from your father and all men, including me?”
Elizabeth gazed at a breathtakingly-handsome face she'd come to detest, and into deep blue eyes as cold and unfeeling as the sapphire in Damon's turban, and said, “And you would never insist on your rights as a husband?”
“Not for three months. I want you to have a reason to find my opal," Damon said. "After three months, however, I make no promises.”
“Except that the marriage could be annulled at that time, if unconsummated.”
“Of course," Damon said. "I don’t want the burden of a wife. I never did. Mistresses don’t make demands on a man and they can be replaced if they do. It’s as simple as that. You’d have no trouble terminating our marriage after three months, or before, if you recover my opal.”
“And you’d deed Shanti Bhavan to me,” Elizabeth said, to make things absolutely clear.
“Only if you recover my opal," Damon said. "Think on it, Elizabeth. It’s the best offer you’ll get. It’s a chance to be a free woman in a man's world. Your only chance because if you don't accept my offer, your father will expect you to marry a man of his choosing, and that man might not be so generous, or so tolerant about staying out of your bed." He trailed a finger up her arm to her shoulder and back down to brush the top of her hand.
For a few moments
Elizabeth sat immobilized by his touch, as distant memories brought to mind a time when a foolish girl was caught dancing around a lantern, and he awakened her body to a level of sensuality she’d yearned for since. But that girl was in her past. She moved her hand away. “Everything you say is all well and good, but how am I to keep you out of my bed when I cannot even keep you out of my gown!”
Damon folded his arms. “I’ll give your father my word, and have our solicitors include it in a written prenuptial agreement. I’ll tell him that I want to take you back to India with me now, but since you have not been properly courted, our marriage would remain unconsummated for three months. If you felt no affection for me after that time, you’d return to him, and the marriage would be annulled.”
“And what about the deed to Shanti Bhavan?”
“That would be in a separate agreement through my solicitor, a legally binding contract between you and me, but without your father’s knowledge.”
During the ride back to her father’s house, Elizabeth found herself considering Damon’s marriage offer. Recovering the opal could present a challenge—by now Januz and the tribe would have melded into the milieu of India's wandering bands. But she knew their migratory habits, one being their yearly return to Calcutta for the horse fair. But there was still one problem. “I cannot return to India. I’m wanted for murder."
Damon gave her a rueful smile. “Not anymore. A witness saw the stabbing. It was the man you mentioned, the one who took the opal from you.”
Elizabeth glared at him. “Why are you just now telling me this?”
“Because it wasn’t relevant," Damon said. "When you arrive in India as my wife you’ll be Lady Ravencroft, mistress of Shanti Bhavan. You’ll stoop to no one there.”
“Except, of course, to Lord Ravencroft.”
Damon gave a short, cynical snort. “You never stooped to me when you were a servant in my house, Elizabeth. Why should I expect you to do so after we’re married?”
Her Master's Touch Page 10
