“Don’t do this,” she pleaded frantically as he caressed her breast. “I’m going to be sick!” she cried, trying to lunge out of bed. “You’re going to make me sick!”

Her words hammered into his brain like sharp nails, and black rage exploded inside him. Shoving his hands into her luxurious hair, Jason rolled onto her. “In that case,” he growled on a raw, infuriated breath, “we’d better get this over with in a hurry.”

Visions of blood and terrible pain roared through Victoria, adding their horror to the nausea the wine was causing. “I don’t want to!” she cried piteously.

“We made a bargain, and as long as we’re married, you’ll keep it,” he whispered as he pried her stiff thighs apart. Victoria whimpered as his rigid manhood probed boldly at her, but somewhere in the depths of her stricken mind, she knew he was right about the bargain and she stopped fighting him. “Relax,” he warned bitterly in the darkness above her, “I may not be as considerate as your dear Andrew, but I don’t want to hurt you.”

His vicious mention of Andrew at a time like this cut her to the heart, and her anguish erupted in a scream of pain as Jason rammed into her. Her body writhed beneath his, and tears poured from her eyes in hot, humiliated streaks as her husband used her without kindness or caring.

The instant his weight lifted from her, Victoria turned onto her side, burying her face in the pillow, her body racked with sobs that were part horror, part shock. “Get out,” she choked, pulling her knees up to her chest and curling into a ball of anguish. “Get out, get out!”

Jason hesitated, then rolled from the bed, picked up his robe, and walked into his room. He closed the door, but the sounds of her weeping followed him. Nude, he went over to his dresser, snatched up a crystal decanter of brandy and half-filled a glass with the potent brew. He swallowed all of the burning liquid, trying to drown out the memory of her resistance and the sound of her heartbroken revulsion, to blot out the thought of her stricken face when she tried to pull her hand free of his at the altar.

How stupid he’d been to believe he’d felt warmth from Victoria when she kissed him. She’d told him when he first suggested they marry that she didn’t want to marry him. Long ago, when she discovered they were supposedly betrothed, she’d told him what she really thought of him: “You are a cold, callous, arrogant monster. . . . No woman in her right mind would marry you. . . . You aren’t worth a tenth of Andrew. . . .”

She’d meant every word.

How stupid he’d been to convince himself she actually cared for him.. . . Jason turned to put the glass down on the dresser and caught his reflection in the mirror. Traces of blood were smeared on his thighs.

Victoria’s blood.

Her heart might have belonged to Andrew, but not her beautiful body—that she had given only to Jason. He stared at himself while self-loathing poured through his veins like acid. He had been so damned jealous, so wounded by her attempt to leave him at the altar, that he hadn’t even noticed she was a virgin.

He closed his eyes in agonizing remorse, unable to bear the sight of himself. He had shown Victoria no more tenderness or consideration than a drunken seaman shows a paid doxy.

He thought of how dry and tight her passage had been, how small and fragile she had felt in his arms, how viciously he had used her, and a fresh surge of sickening regret ripped through him.

Opening his eyes, he stared at himself in the mirror, knowing he had turned her wedding night into a nightmare. Victoria was indeed the gentle, courageous, spirited angel he had thought she was from the very beginning. And he—he was exactly what his foster mother had called him as a child: the spawn of the devil.

Shrugging into his robe, Jason took a velvet box from a drawer and went back into Victoria’s room. He stood beside her bed, watching her sleep. “Victoria,” he whispered. She flinched in her slumber at the sound of his voice and he ached with remorse. How vulnerable and hurt she looked; how incredibly beautiful she was with her hair spilling over the pillows and gleaming in the candlelight.

Jason watched her in tormented silence, unwilling to disturb her. Finally he reached down and gently drew the covers over her slim bare shoulders, then smoothed her heavy hair off her forehead. “I’m sorry,” he whispered to his sleeping wife.

He blew out the candle and put the velvet box on the little table beside the bed where she would be certain to see it when she awoke. Diamonds would soothe her. Women would forgive anything for diamonds.

Chapter Twenty-two

Victoria opened her eyes and stared blankly out the windows at a dark, overcast sky. Sleep hung over her like a thick web, tangling her waking thoughts as she gazed aimlessly past the unfamiliar rose and gold silk draperies hanging from the corners of her bed.

She felt sluggish and dull, as if she hadn’t slept at all, yet she had no particular urge to go back to sleep or to fully awaken. Her mind floated aimlessly, and then it suddenly began to clear.

Dear God, she was married! Truly married. She was Jason’s wife.

She stifled a cry of stricken protest at the thought and jerked upright as the full recollection of last night hit her. So this was what Miss Flossie had tried to warn her about. No wonder women didn’t discuss it! She started to hurtle from the bed in response to some belated instinct to flee; then she checked herself, straightened the pillows, and fell back against them, gnawing on her lower lip. The humiliating details of her wedding night came back in painful clarity and she cringed, remembering the way Jason had crudely disrobed in front of her. She shuddered as she recalled the way he had taunted her about Andrew, and then he had used her. He had used her as if she were an animal, a dumb animal without feeling or emotion, unworthy of tenderness or kindness.

A tear trickled down her cheek as she thought of tonight, and tomorrow night, all the nights that lay ahead of her until Jason could finally get her with child. How many times would it take? A dozen? Two dozen? More? No, please, not more. She couldn’t bear much more of it.

Angrily she dashed the tear away, furious with herself for succumbing to fear and weakness. Last night he had said he intended to continue doing that ugly, humiliating thing to her—it was her part of their bargain. Now that she knew what the bargain really entailed, she wanted out of it immediately!

She flung the bedcovers aside and climbed out of the silken cocoon that was supposed to be her compensation for a lifetime of misery imposed on her by a cynical, heartless man. Well, she was no simpering English girl, afraid to stand up for herself or face the world. She would rather face a firing squad than another night like the last one! She could live without luxury, if this was the way she was expected to pay for it.