She moved back till the wall stayed her. “If you touch me, I’ll scream,” she warned him. “I don’t desire to make a scene, but I will.”
“Scream away,” he said. “You’ll find old Simon is very deaf — when he doesn’t want to hear.”
She was shrewd enough to know that the landlord would hesitate to interfere with his noble patron if he could avoid it, and felt suddenly very helpless. The Marquis towered over her, and it seemed likely that he really would force the contents of his flask down her throat. She said quietly: “Please do not make me drink that. I am not a shameless woman, my lord, though I must seem to be one. I can — I think I can make you understand, if you will listen to me.”
“I’ll listen to you later,” he replied. “There’s no time now.”
As though to corroborate him, someone knocked loudly at the door, and called: “My lord, we’ll miss the tide!”
“I’m coming,” he answered, and turned back to Mary. “Quickly, you!”
She held him off, both her hands clasping his wrist. “You need not make me drunk,” she said. “Since there’s no help for it I’ll come.”
“I thought you would,” said the Marquis with a grim little smile.
He turned away from her to the table, and picked up his tankard, and drained it. He never took his eyes off her, and she found herself unable to look boldly back at him as she would have liked to do. He set down the tankard as she came to pick up her cloak from the chair where she had laid it, and said with a drawling note in his voice: “You’ll see no one but my own fellows on the quay, but if you should be tempted to make a scene, remember I shall be beside you, and can throttle you before you’ve time to make more than one screech.”
He strolled over to her as she drew her cloak round her, and before she realized what he was about, he had grasped her arm, and taken her throat in one of his shapely hands. He let her feel what strength lay in his fingers, and though for dignity’s sake she forced herself to be passive the blood drummed unpleasantly in her head, and she felt herself to be in danger of losing her senses.