Silver-Tongued Devil (Louisiana Plantation Collection) by Jennifer Blake

acceptance of the match. What do you think kept me from shouting a refusal at the top of my lungs?”
    “Gratitude,” he suggested, his green eyes turning carefully opaque. “Or at least acceptance of the inevitable.”
    “Because I recognized the compromising situation, whether you admit to it or not? But I had a fiancé, or I must have thought so at the time.”
    “He wasn’t there. I was. And just how well did you know this man you were to marry? Were you anxious to be his wife?”
    “That isn’t the point.”
    “Isn’t it? Marriages are arranged every day between strangers. This union between us, as awkward as it may be, has been faced by countless men and women. Somehow they overcome it and make a life together.”
    “Do they?” she said, and looked away toward where the sunlight slanted across the floor.
    “It helps, of course, if both have the same expectations.”
    “I don’t remember a discussion of our future life — among other things.”
    He leaned his head against the back of his chair. “Would it matter if you did? Or is it just more satisfying to cling to pique and revenge?”
    “Revenge?” The word had a peculiar ring.
    “For things better left undone. By me. For things left unsaid, certainly.”
    The gaze she raised to meet his was unwavering. “You think I’m annoyed now because you didn’t say you hold me in affection. Believe me, I was never so optimistic. Or easily taken in.”
    His face went blank before he shook his head. “You hardly know me, had no reason to care — it never occurred to me you might expect it. No. I referred to an apology, properly groveling, of course, for the mistake in understanding aboard the Queen Kathleen . You might have had it, except I had already repented and received due punishment. If you ever realized that, however, it seems one more thing you have forgotten.”
    His voice stopped. Gathering himself with athletic ease, he rose from the chair. He started toward her, stripping open his dressing gown as he came.
    She had been trying to catch up with his thought processes. They were wiped abruptly from her mind. Pushing herself higher on her pillows, she said, “What are you doing?”
    “Don’t be alarmed,” he said as he put his foot on the bed steps and mounted to the mattress. Settling near her knees, he dropped his dressing gown, exposing his broad shoulders and chest to her startled gaze. “I am not bent on coercion this time,” he went on, “only a demonstration. It isn’t my place to pronounce the penalty for my own misdeeds, but look first, then tell me if you require more atonement. Or should I allow you to add to the scars?”
    He twisted at the waist to present his back to her, then braced as if expecting the lash of a whip. Angelica almost strangled on her indrawn breath as her gaze swept across the wide span of his shoulders and down his spine to his taut waist. The livid traces of barely healed burns slashed across the ridged muscles. Deep in places, shallow in others, they were covered over with newly grown flesh that had the shining smoothness of red-shaded bronze silk.
    “The steam,” she whispered.
    Without conscious thought, she reached out to soothe the scar tissue. Under her fingertips, his skin was firm, smooth, heated.
    Angelica felt an odd, wondering regret as she realized that he had shielded her from the worst of the explosion, taking the brunt of it with his back as he jumped with her into the river. The pain must have been agonizing, both then and for some time afterward.
    A shudder, not quite suppressed, twitched over Renold. Under her hand, the prickling of gooseflesh roughened his skin, spreading, running along the tops of his shoulders. Air rasped in his lungs as he inhaled with unexpected force. He turned his head to stare at her.
    Her gaze flickered up to his, was caught and held. A suspended darkness came into his face. It was as if he waited, yielding, for what she would do next.
    She lowered her lashes. It