rejection and then pounding up the stairs two at a time before he could see the tears of rage and self-loathing in her eyes.
CHAPTER TWO
IN A tempest of stormy emotion, Molly switched on the lamp beside the massive Victorian double bed. The bed looked like a ship forcibly squeezed into a too small bottle. The carved mahogany headboard stopped only a foot short of the ceiling and the bed itself was so high, she suspected it enjoyed the benefit of more than one mattress.
A snug little fire glowed in the cast-iron grate on the facing wall. She frowned in surprise, only then noticing the suitcase sitting below the window. How very kind of Sholto to give her the room he had clearly planned to occupy himself! So considerate, so incredibly decent all of a sudden!
Snatching up the case with a shaking hand, she plonked it out on the landing. Forgive him? She tore at the jeans, wrenched at the sweater and then slowly, painfully dug her fingers into the garment, bringing it up to her face and breathing in deep. The elusive scent of him engulfed her like a dangerously addictive drug and, hating herself and hating him for being able to exert that evocative power over her even after so long, she flung the sweater aside, horribly ashamed of her lack of control.
Naturally Donald was not worried about her being alone here with Sholto. Sholto might have an exceedingly dangerous reputation with women but Donald and indeed the whole world knew that the one woman Sholto Cristaldi had cheerfully contrived to keep his lustful hands off was Molly! Even when she and Sholto had been engaged he had not made one single serious attempt at seduction.
Deeply humiliated by that awareness, Molly climbed naked into the big bed. She sank into what felt like layer upon layer of feathers. To think that all those years ago she had actually been grateful for what she’d naively seen as Sholto’s respectful restraint! But Sholto simply hadn’t wanted her enough. And it was also possible, although she cringed at the same suspicion, that all the time he had had another far more satisfying outlet for his sexual needs.
She heard light steps on the stairs, the soft thud of the bathroom door and then she dug her head frantically under the pillow, muffling her ears with two determined hands. Temptation pulled at her and she resisted it. Donald was right. How could she ever go forward if she couldn’t overcome this pitiful fascination with a male who had long since given his heart to another woman? And that woman might not be his wife, she might indeed not even be his lover, but she still held Sholto more securely than any prison bars of steel.
Molly reared up with a startled squawk as the bedding she had wrapped around her was suddenly wrenched sideways and redistributed. The bedside lamp was on again and momentarily she was blinded by the light. ‘What on earth...?’
Her soft mouth fell open as her vision slowly cleared. Sholto reclined like an indolent tiger against the backdrop of the pillows beside her own. The soft glow of the lamp gleamed over wide brown shoulders and powerful pectoral muscles hazed with curling black hair. Something clenched low in her stomach and all of a sudden she felt like someone hurtling down in a runaway lift, made utterly helpless by disbelief and paralysis.
‘This is the only bed in the house,’ Sholto said softly.
‘It...it can’t be,’ Molly whispered weakly.
‘Freddy had a horror of visitors who might expect to stay overnight. The other bedroom has not a single stick of furniture,’ Sholto informed her, stretching with a long, languorous shifting of limbs. ‘Downstairs there are several hard wooden chairs. On a night as cold as this, I am not prepared to sit up until dawn in any one of them.’
Belatedly becoming conscious that she was exposing a rather bountiful amount of bosom. Molly snatched the linen sheet all the way to her shoulders. ‘You’re not sharing this bed with me!’
An ebony brow climbed. ‘Now why is it that I am experiencing a strong sense of déjà vu?’
Thoroughly unnerved by that leading question, Molly felt the burn as a slow, painful flush of appalled comprehension crawled up her throat.
‘Sì...I have it now...the wedding night we never had,’ Sholto supplied for himself in the same considering tone from which any hint of emotion had been ruthlessly erased. ‘All those weeks and weeks of anticipation and then? Nothing...Something of an anticlimax, cara.’
Molly’s heart sank like a concrete block inside her. In an involuntary flash she recalled that night, his murderously quiet but cold fury when she had tried to lock him out of the bedroom, her hysterical anger and tears. In a sharp, defensive movement, she turned her head away, fiercely burying the memory deep and shutting it back out of her mind again.
‘If you turn your back, I’ll get up and get dressed again. I have no objection to spending the night in a chair,’ she stated stiffly, hoping to shame him into making that move himself.
‘Turn my back?’ Sholto repeated with flaring incredulity. ‘Molly, are you fifteen or twenty-four?’
As her cheeks flared with fresh embarrassment, she cursed her fair skin and set her teeth together. ‘I’m not wearing anything.’
‘Neither am I but I am not so overcome by conceit that I imagine that one flash of my unclothed body will incite you to insatiable lust.’
‘Don’t make fun of me!’ she bit out tautly.
‘Dio, cara...’ Sholto purred like a big, indolent cat basking at his leisure in the sunshine. ‘Are you afraid that I might not be able to control myself if I have a glimpse of naked female flesh?’
‘Of course not but—’
‘Then what are you worried about?’
Molly’s fingers tightened on the bedding. ‘We can’t possibly sleep in the same bed It wouldn’t be right.’
‘Who’s going to know?’ Sholto prompted very drily.
‘I would know! That’s not the point. The point is—’
‘That you’re the most frightfully stuffy little prig and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. What do you think I’m going to do...jump you as soon as the light goes out?’
Sick with mortification, Molly dragged her stricken gaze from glittering eyes that shone pure lambent gold. ‘No.’
‘Or maybe it’s yourself that you don’t trust. Am I the one in danger?’ Sholto enquired even more drily.
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Molly found herself sinking back below the bedding by slow, almost involuntary degrees until the back of her head rested on the pillows again. Abruptly the blankets at his side of the bed were thrust back. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed his long, golden-skinned back view as he sprang out of bed. The door opened. She rolled over, feverishly grateful that he was leaving, and then, suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, desperately disappointed. She shut her eyes tightly, fearfully aware that she was no longer in control of her own emotional reactions.
A soft bundle of cloth landed beside her cheek. ‘What?’
‘A T-shirt, cara...and I’ll put on something too, shall I?’ Sholto proffered with deeply sardonic bite.
It was an unexpected compromise and not one she should accept. But the prospect of sitting blue with cold for hours on end in that cheerless ice-box of a room downstairs was far from tempting. She snatched the garment below the covers, rustled about like a hamster burrowing into cotton wool and pulled the T-shirt over her head, smoothing it down over her hips with careful hands. The bed shifted as Sholto’s weight came down on it again. Molly lay rigid as a marble pillar, knowing that every scrap of common sense she possessed urged retreat but somehow not flexing a toe to leave the bed, even though she was now decently covered.
A prig. Well, yes, she probably was. The accusation stung but, in all honesty, could not be denied.
She had no memory of her own father. He had died when she was a baby and her mother had married the Reverend George Gilpin two years later. Her stepfather had been a strict disciplinarian with a cold puritanical