Free The Devil Who Tamed Her by Johanna Lindsey

could feel the anger coming back. “I thought the same thing, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. He doesn’t even like me! So it makes absolutely no sense that he’d want to help me.”
    “Help you?” Sadie frowned. “How is stealing off with you supposed to help you? I’d like to know.”
    “He intends to show me what a mean, horrible person I am,” Ophelia said sarcastically. “And it doesn’t sound like he’ll be satisfied until I’ve turned about and am dripping sweetness all over his marble floors.”
    Sadie gave a hoot of laughter. “Is that what he told you, dear? What a crock of—”
    “He was serious.”
    “Well, then, show him how sweet you can be.”
    “I will not!”
    “You’re too upset to, I know, but if it will get us home…Well, never mind. I don’t believe it anyway. Are you sure he’s not secretly in love with you and brought you here to court you to his favor? That sounds much more likely. You two got off to a bad start, after all.”
    “And we’ve gone downhill ever since. He admits he doesn’t like me, Sadie.”
    Sadie wasn’t convinced. “That could just be a strategy, you know. It’s a pretty old trick.”
    “What is?”
    “To make you think you can’t have him,” Sadie said sagely. “For some people, it works to make them want the person all the more.”
    Ophelia snorted. “That wouldn’t work on me.”
    “But he doesn’t know that—yet.”
    Ophelia frowned. She might have to give that some thought—no, it was a silly notion. But then Raphael’s explanation was even more silly. To change her? When he didn’t know the first thing about her or what motivated her?
    She shook her head at her maid. “Trust me to know if a man is harboring secret affections. Locke insults me with every word out of his mouth. He delights in telling me that no one likes me. He’s called me mean and spiteful. He’s as nasty as Mavis was. He even called me a ‘shrew’!”
    “You know you can be shrewish at times.”
    “With reason! I’m so sick of all the insincerity, and it grew much worse with the opening of the Season. There’s been so much of it that I can’t trust anyone anymore—well, aside from you and my mother. Besides, you know that at least half the things I say and do are deliberate. I just can’t control this bitterness sometimes.”
    “I know.” Sadie sat beside Ophelia and put an arm around her shoulder.
    “It hurts.”
    “I know,” Sadie said soothingly, adding, before the tears started again, “Did I mention it’s snowing? That’s what I came to tell you.”
    “Is it?”
    Ophelia would ordinarily have been delighted by the news. Ophelia loved to watch the snow fall. But she was too distraught at the moment to enjoy one of her few pleasures. She did glance toward the windows though, all four covered in sheer white drapes that let daylight into the room. She wished now that she’d let Sadie open the drapes this morning, instead of telling her not to bother since there was no view whatsoever to look upon.
    Ophelia had been given a corner room, with many windows that looked out on nothing more than the empty countryside. It was a serviceable room, but not exactly designed for a woman. If Raphael had been truthful about his grandfather’s only coming to Alder’s Nest for solitude, then all of the bedrooms were probably like this. There was no vanity, but there was a lovely desk in cherrywood with ornate scrollwork along the edges and legs, and a plush velvet, cushioned chair to go with it. A large stuffed reading chair sat between the windows on one wall. A long bookcase was on another, with a tall wardrobe with a mirror on the inside door. The lamps on the two side tables by the double bed were plain, but gave off a nice bit of light in the evenings when they were lit.
    A carpet covered the entire floor, its pattern woven in shades of brown and purple. That coupled with the marble-manteled fireplace allowed her to move about the room with her feet