Free The Velvet Promise by Jude Deveraux

slipped a large ring from her finger, opened the hinged lid and slowly poured a white powder into her drink.
    As she began to sip the wine, Gavin knocked the goblet from her hand, sending it flying across the garden. "What are you doing?" he demanded.
    Alice leaned languidly against the wall. "I would end it all, my love. I can withstand anything, if it is for us. I can bear my marriage to another, yours to another, but I must have your love. Without it I am nothing." Her lids dropped slowly and she had a look of such peace, as if she were already one of God's angels.
    "Alice," Gavin said as he gathered her in his arms, "you cannot mean to take your own life."
    "My sweet Gavin, you don't understand what love is to a woman.
    Without it I am already dead. Why prolong my agony?"
    "How can you say you have no love?"
    "You do love me, Gavin? Me and me alone?"
    "Of course." He bent and kissed her mouth, the wine still on her lips.
    The setting sun deepened the applied color on her cheeks. Her dark eyelashes cast a mysterious shadow across her cheeks.
    "Swear it!" she said firmly. "You must swear to me that you will love only me—no one else."
    It seemed a small price to pay to keep her from killing herself. "I swear it."
    Alice rose quickly. "I must return now, before I am missed." She seemed completely recovered. "You won't forget me? Even tonight?" she whispered against his lips, her hands searching inside his clothes. She didn't wait for his answer, but slipped from his grasp and through the gate.
    The sound of clapping made Gavin turn. Judith stood there, her dress and eyes ablaze in a reflection of the setting sun.

    "That was an excellent performance," she said as she lowered her hands.
    "I haven't been so entertained in years. That woman should try the stage in London. I hear there is need for good mummers."
    Gavin advanced toward her, his face mirroring his rage. "You lying little sneak! You have no right to spy on me!"
    "Spy!" she snarled. "I left the hall for some air after my husband" —she sneered the word—"left me to do for myself. And here in the garden I am a witness to that same husband groveling at the feet of a pasty-faced woman who twists him about her fingers like a bit of yarn."
    Gavin drew back his arm and slapped her. An hour before he would have sworn that nothing could have made him harm a woman.
    Judith slammed against the ground, landing in a mass of swirling hair and gold silk. The sun seemed to set a torch to her.
    Gavin was instantly contrite. He was sick at himself and what he had done. He knelt to help her stand.
    She retreated from him and her eyes glinted hatred. Her voice was so quiet, so flat, that he could hardly hear her. "You say you did not want to marry me, that you did so only for the wealth I bring you. Neither did I want to marry you. I refused until my father held my mother before me and snapped her arm like a splinter of wood. I have no love for that man—
    but for you I have even less. He is an honest man. He does not one hour stand before a priest and hundreds of witnesses and swear undying love—
    then in another hour pledge that same love to someone else. You are no man, Gavin Montgomery. You are lower than the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and always I will curse the day I was joined to you. You made that woman a vow and now I make you one. As God is my witness, you will rue this day. You may get the wealth you hunger for, but I will never give myself to you freely."
    Gavin moved away from Judith as if she'd turned to poison. His experience with women was limited to whores and friendships with a few of the court ladies. They were demure, like Alice. What right did Judith have to make demands of him, to curse him, to make vows before God? A husband was a woman's god, and the sooner this one learned that the better.
    Gavin grabbed a handful of Judith's hair and jerked her to him. "I will take whatever I want whenever I want, and if I take it from you, you will be grateful." He