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

was then she saw one more scar. No more than a fine red line at his throat, it angled from the turn of his neck across his collarbone. It had the look of a slice made by someone careless with a small, sharp knife.
    Or perhaps a penknife.
    She snatched her hand away. How could she have forgotten, even for an instant? She had made that scar, that evening in the stateroom.
    Her voice unaccountably thick, she said, “There was never any question of caring.”
    “Which is, I think, though it’s by no means certain, precisely what I was trying to show you.” With a swift flexing of long muscles, he removed himself from the bed, turning from her as he pulled his dressing gown back into place and fastened it
    After a moment, she said, “Am I now supposed to feel guilty, or merely reassured? You are still a stranger, a man who took me away with him as he might a kitten saved from drowning.”
    “Getting clawed for his pains?”
    “That’s always a risk, isn’t it when the cat isn’t sure whether it’s being rescued or pushed under, taken as a pet or shut up in a prison?” She stopped, putting a hand to her face, rubbing her forehead where her headache had returned. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I can see that you’re trying to make amends for what happened on the steamboat.”
    “Can you?” His laugh was short.
    She barely heard, went on quickly. “I am grateful for your quick action in saving me, and I appreciate the care you have given me and the diplomacy you’ve shown. But the fact is that I have a home. There is an aunt in Natchez who should be contacted and told that I survived. I don’t like to think how she must feel, believing my father and I, and even Laurence, were lost.”
    “I will be happy to send word if you will give me her direction,” he said over his shoulder, “but are you certain she will want to house you now?”
    “You mean now my father is — gone?”
    “I mean,” he said deliberately as he turned and rested a hand on the bedpost, “now that you’ve spent so much time under the roof of a man who is not a blood relative.” He paused, went on. “Or, if your aunt hears of the marriage, won’t she think it strange that you would seek shelter with her?”
    “I will explain everything to her,” Angelica said. “Naturally.”
    Grim amusement invaded his face. “I would like very much to be there for it; from what I’ve heard of the lady, it should prove interesting. However, I don’t think I would depend on her charity. What happens if she shows you the door?”
    “In that case,” Angelica said with a militant look in her eye, “I have a house of my own, a plantation given to me by my father as a bridal gift.”
    “Yes, of course, for the nuptials which never took place. Do you think I will like it?”
    She regarded him with sudden wariness. “Why should that be a factor?”
    “Because,” he said with watchful eyes but apparently unimpaired humor, “I have a way of becoming permanently attached to my pets. I don’t expect to have them always underfoot, but I object to being separated from them for too long.”
    “I am not—” she began, then stopped.
    “No, you aren’t a pet cat but my wife. Only think,” he said as he moved to the door and pulled it open, “how much more attached I may become.”
    The heavy door shut behind him. Angelica lay staring at it in frowning concentration.
    She felt as if she had been buffeted by a strong wind. All the carefully marshaled arguments and plans she had intended to set before Renold had been blown away as if they were no more than dust. She would have been happier if she didn’t have the creeping notion she was supposed to feel this way.
    She didn’t trust him. How could she? Not only was there his treachery aboard the steamboat, but she had little faith in men after the way her father had lied to her for years.
    Married. A wife. Why did those words make no connection in her mind? Why couldn’t she