Free And One Rode West by Heather Graham Page B

even as she shrieked, pulling her back up into his arms. “Christa, I can’t strip you of what you’ve already given up. You said you would have married the blue-belly who would have raped you, so don’t ask me to think too highly of your modesty. Maybe I did want to torment you.” And God alive! I tormented myself! he added silently. “But there’s more to it than that. You married me. You didn’t care to first find out what it would mean. Well, it’s done now. And you’re going to find out that it does mean something! But for the moment, good night!”
    He set her down. She sank back to the bed, her eyes spitting fire.
    But when he left her this time, she was silent. Hatefully silent. Even as he walked away, he could feel the fire in her eyes.
    Just who had taken whom tonight, he wondered.
    For Christa might well lie awake worried.
    But he was suffering the tortures of the damned.

Four
    Jeremy came down the stairway with tense, heavy footfalls, trying once again to ignore the numerous Camerons who seemed to be still staring at him from their frames with silent reproach. He didn’t want to see any more Camerons. The memory of Christa, naked and furious, seemed to be branded within his mind, and she was enough Cameron for him at the moment. He could still feel the sparks that had seemed to leap from her, like streaks of electricity. Christa in all her glory. All that magnificent black Cameron hair streaming down her back, every curve and nuance of her perfect young body.
    Her eyes. Those blue fire-and-ice eyes. Revenge? Indeed, he’d had a taste of it. And it was sweet.
    Then why was he the one so aflame now, the one suffering the pain of the damned? What a fool. How the hell could he want her so badly now? When there was nothing but hostility between them, after this travesty of a marriage, how could he have come to this position?
    He reached the Camerons’ study and burst irritably into it, lighting the gas light above the desk and sinking into the chair behind that desk. He poured himself a brandy from the decanter on a side table, then leanedback in the chair, swallowing it down, wincing at the fire that seared his throat. He didn’t dare close his eyes, and he didn’t dare open them. He saw her either way.
    Christa. Naked. Maybe emotions didn’t mean anything after so long a war, and so long a time since emotions had meant something. Maybe the wanting was just enough. Christa was perfect. Tall, slim, a little bit too thin, but not even the war could have taken too much a toll upon the natural dips and curves of her body. Her naked flesh was a beautiful ivory shade and it had the sweetest scent and the most inviting appeal.
    He exhaled on a long groan.
    He should have left her the hell alone.
    He didn’t know what force or demon was driving him tonight, he knew only that she had goaded him to a point where she was going to pay a price for what she had forced upon them.
    If Christa Cameron thought it was an easy thing to twist and bend people to her will at her convenience, he was damned sorry, but she was going to have to see that her actions had serious repercussions.
    Marriage. It had come so easily to her. Just a slip off her tongue. No more than a trip into town, an afternoon’s escapade, easily done, easily forgotten.
    In truth, she hadn’t cared. Hadn’t given a damn about his situation, just so long as she had gotten what she wanted, to protect the sacred halls of Cameron Hall.
    Not that he resented having done something to salvage the place. Perhaps Christa had been right about one thing. The Hall was history. It was beautiful, gracious, a monument to centuries of a family that had found roots and flourished in a new world. Now Cameron Hall had weathered revolution and civil war, and all the trauma in between. It deserved to stand. He could understand her desire to save it, even if he wasinfuriated by the way she was willing to use him to do so.
    Although he had fought all the long years of the