Free The Dollar Prince's Wife by Paula Marshall Page B

when, having taken her arm, and he had begun to walk her up to her room for her poor sister’s sake, if for nothing else, she said, in a poisonously sweet voice, ‘Oh, and by the way, Cobie, there is one more favour you can do me—do the both of us.’
    He took her hand and put it to his lying lips. ‘Of course, Violet, my darling, and what is that?’
    She shook her head, ‘Oh, it’s Dinah again. Too ridiculous, the poor child obviously thinks that you have a tendre for her. All that attention you’ve given her—playing to her on the guitar…chess games…talking to her in the library…walking with her in the gardens…encouraging her to think of going to Oxford—has quite turned her head. I think that you ought to disabuse her of the notion that you are interested in her—very firmly. I warn you, if you don’t, I will. She really ought to have nothing to do with such as you,’ and her eyes were on him, hard and cruel.
    He knew immediately what she meant, and the kind of blackmail she was subjecting him to. Somehow, she had read him, seen the pity he felt for her unloved sister, and was threatening that, if he failed to do as she asked, Dinah’s public humiliations would continue—might even grow worse. Jealousy is as cruel as the grave, and Violet, astonishingly, was jealous.
    For a moment the world reeled about him. Violet had touched some memory in him which she could not know existed. Long ago he had been kind to a waif even more abused than poor Dinah, more even than Lizzie Steele—and his heedless kindness had led directly to her death. Dinah was in no danger of physical death, but she could not, he thought, stand very much more of the treatmentwhich Violet was meting out to her without her inner self being in serious danger.
    He had gone quite still again. He stood motionless. He was fighting the red berserker rage which Violet, by her cruelty, had roused in him. He was helpless before her, and she knew it. Sleep with me, humiliate Dinah—and I will leave her alone. All he could do was control himself and offer her what she wanted. At the same time his busy brain was working—after a fashion which would have astonished Violet.
    â€˜You ask a lot of me,’ he said at last.
    â€˜Really, Cobie, really? You surprise me. I had not thought that you favoured children. I thought that you left that to others,’ and she laughed.
    Like Sir Ratcliffe, Cobie thought, and Arthur Winthrop—and who else?
    â€˜She is lonely,’ he told Violet gently, ‘and not very happy.’
    â€˜And you make her so? You take a lot upon yourself. After all, it is my sister of whom we speak, not yours. It is I who am concerned about her welfare. It demands that you disillusion her. And be sure that you do it in such a way that I will know that you have done so.
    â€˜Otherwise, my dear, otherwise, I shall immediately send her to my deaf, strict and bad-tempered old aunt in the country to be her permanent companion.’
    â€˜Pax,’ he said, with the sweetest smile he could summon, throwing up his hands like a schoolboy. ‘I think that this is all a great pother about nothing, but have it your way, Violet.’
    â€˜Oh, I intend to do so,’ she told him, mockingly, ‘and now we are here, Cobie. Here is the door to my room. Choose, like the man in the story—the lady—or the tiger?’
    â€˜Oh, no choice,’ he told her carelessly. ‘The lady every time.’ He pushed her through the door, rather ungently, and told himself, that if one must sacrifice one’s principles—not that I possess any—this is as pleasant a way to do it as any. The unpleasant part will come tomorrow, with Dinah.
    He was particularly good value that night, Violet thought, unaware that in his mind Cobie was treating her like the whore she was.

Chapter Four
    M r Grant had been dodging her for the last few days,