“That I shall never do,” she answered, her heart beating high with excitement at her own temerity.
“What imbecile school-girl freak is this?” he asked, harshly. “This morning you were encouraging him.”
“I did not know my own mind this morning,” she said, blushing deeply; “and I did not know Lord Carthew’s real position. He belongs to a class I greatly dislike.”
“He belongs to the class from which your husband will come, or you will die an old maid. You have been reared, trained, educated, solely for this end, and you will be presented at Court next month as Viscountess Carthew on her marriage.”
“I will never marry Lord Carthew.”
He took her roughly by the shoulder. He hated her proud, pale face, so like her dead mother’s at that moment that he could almost hear Clare’s voice speaking to him from the dead. He longed to strike those firmly shut lips, to bring a look of fear into those dauntless eyes. But he contented himself by gripping her shoulder with all his strength, so that for days afterward five dark bruise-marks showed the clutch of his cruel fingers.
“You have never yet set your will up in opposition to mine,” he said, in a low voice. “And I warn you not to try. In dealing with me it is better to bend, to avoid being broken. Go back to the house now, to your own room, and think over what I have said. Before this month is over you will marry Lord Carthew.”
“That I shall never do!”
Her voice rang out in clear defiance, accentuated a little by the sharp pain of his grasp upon her arm. He threw her roughly off, and proceeded on his walk through the grounds, while she retraced her steps, trembling with indignation and anger, toward the house. As she emerged from among the trees, she came upon Stephen Lee, the keeper. His face was flushed, and his eyes shone so strangely that the idea occurred to her that he must have been drinking, and she was walking quickly past him when he stopped her.
“I beg your pardon, miss. But may I make so bold as to ask whether he—Sir Philip, I mean—was hurting you in any way just now? It seemed to me he gripped your arm that tight he must have hurt you.”