Free The Gift by Julie Garwood Page B

look as if she was going to weep. In truth, she looked like she wanted to kill him. It was a nice beginning. "You're falling out of your neckline, bride."
    Her hands immediately covered the top of her gown. Her face was flaming red in the space of a heartbeat. "It was the only dress that was dark enough to conceal me when I walked along…" She stopped her explanation as soon as she realized she was actually defending herself.
    "Conceal?" Nathan drawled. "Sara, it doesn't conceal anything. In future you will not wear such revealing gowns.
    The only one who sees your body will be me. Do you understand me?"
    Oh, she understood all right. The man was a cad, she concluded. How easily he'd turned the tables on her, too. Sara shook her head. She wasn't about to let him put her in such a vulnerable position when he had so much accounting to do.
    "You look like a barbarian," she blurted out. "Your hair's much longer than is fashionable, and you dress like a… villain. Guests traveling aboard such a fine boat should keep their appearances impeccable. You look like you've just carried in the crops," she added with a nod. "And your scowl is downright ugly."
    Nathan decided he was finished with foolish banter and homed in on the true matter at hand.
    "All right, Sara," he began. "Get it over and done with."
    "Get what over and done with?"
    His sigh was long, weary, absolutely infuriating to her. She desperately tried to hold onto her temper, but the urge to shout at him was making her head pound and her throat ache. Her eyes stung with tears. He had so much explaining to do before she would ever consider forgiving him, she thought, and he had damn well better get on with it before she decided his sins were too mortal ever to be forgiven at all.
    "The fit of weeping and begging," Nathan explained with a shrug. "It's obvious to me that you're afraid," he continued. "You're about to start crying, aren't you? I know you must want me to take you back home, Sara. I've decided to save you the humiliation of pleading by simply explaining that no matter what you say or do, you're staying with me. I'm your husband, Sara. Get used to it."
    "Will it bother you if I weep?" she asked in a voice that sounded like someone was choking her.
    "Not in the least," he said. It was a lie, of course, for it would bother him to see her upset, yet he wasn't about to admit to that fact. Women generally used that kind of information against a man and burst into tears every time they wanted something.
    Sara took a deep breath. She didn't dare speak another word until she'd gained control of herself. Did he actually think she would beg? By God, he was a horrid man. Intimidating, too. He didn't seem to possess an ounce of compassion.
    She continued to stare at him while she gathered her courage to ask him all the painful questions she'd stored up inside her for such a long time. She doubted that he would tell her the truth, but she still wanted to hear what he had to say for himself.
    He thought she looked ready to cry. Sara was apparently back to being terrified of him, he decided. Hell, he hoped she wouldn't faint again. He had little patience with the weaker sex, yet found he didn't want Sara to be too frightened of him.
    In truth, he felt a little sorry for her. She couldn't possibly want to be married to him. He was a St. James, after all, and she had been raised a Winchester. She had certainly been trained to hate him. Poor Sara was just a victim in the scheme, a pawn the daft king had used to try to right the differences between the two feuding families.
    Still, he couldn't undo the past for her. His signature was on that contract, and he was bound and determined to honor it.
    "You might as well understand that I'm not going to walk away from this marriage," he stated in a hard voice. "Not now, not ever."
    After making that statement he patiently waited for the fit of hysterics sure to come.
    "What took you so long?"
    She'd spoken in such a soft whisper, he