Eve Silver by His Dark Kiss

repugnant to me. She was wearing it the night—” He shot her a sidelong look and then continued, “I thought it was burned years ago.”
    She glanced at the portrait, at Delia arrayed in this very gown, looking confident and lovely, just as Emma remembered her. “If you did not give it to me, then how did it come to be lying across my counterpane?”
    Lord Anthony scowled but made no reply. She met his gaze unflinchingly. There was no warmth in him now. He stared down at her with a remoteness that acted as a solid barrier between them.
     “I had no idea. About the gown, I mean.” Emma looked away from his grim expression, back toward Delia's portrait. His reaction clearly indicated that he could not bear to see another attired in the belongings of his beloved.
    Such a bitter tonic, that realization. She had wondered if he loved her still, his Delia, and now she had her most unwelcome answer.
    “You must have loved her very much,” she whispered. Impulsively, she reached forward, twining her fingers through his and squeezing gently. Offering small comfort in the face of his loss.
    Silence was the only reply, but she could feel restless emotion shifting the currents of the air, cold eddies that licked the edge of her skirt, up and under, raising gooseflesh.
    “No wonder you were so angry when you saw me garbed in this dress.” She cleared her throat nervously when he yet held his silence. “Are you angry still?”
     He turned to her then, and Emma realized her mistake. His predator eyes glittered with all the dark fury he had earlier held in check. “I am angry , though that single word can hardly aspire to adequately describe the black pit of utter rage that burns my entrails like an evil humor.”
    His fingers closed firmly around hers where she had so foolishly linked their hands, and she felt the surge of his temper hovering just under the surface, a writhing thing that once unleashed might be impossible to control.
    Leaning close, he held her gaze, mesmerizing her. “So you see, Miss Parrish, you are wrong on two counts, and right on only one. I did love Delia once, if love can be named as the obsession of youth. And then I hated her, with the powerful hatred of a man. Hatred strong enough to wish her gone from my life. Gone from this earth. Gone to Hades where she could meet her just match.”
    “No.” Emma whispered, pulling her hand from his with a desperate twist, backing away from him in disbelief. His intensity frightened her.
    “I wished Delia dead,” he said flatly. “I hated her with enough passion that I dreamed of wrapping my hands around the delicate white column of her throat, snapping her neck like a dried twig. And for that I cannot grant forgiveness to myself. What think you now, Miss Parrish? Do you still cast your maiden’s glance at me? At my lips? My chest? My thighs?”
    She took another step back. Dear heaven, he knew her every thought, had seen each languid, longing glance….
    He stalked her, both with his words and with his body. For each step Emma retreated, he pressed forward, until the wall pushed against her back and she could retreat no more.
    “No,” Emma whispered again, leaning against the cold, unyielding wall as if she could seek protection there. What he was saying was too terrible to consider. And she had thought him lost in his lamentation at the early death of his beloved. Foolish girl. He spoke of darkest thoughts and deeds. Tears welled in her eyes, and a single drop escaped to roll down her cheek. She could not believe it of him. Did not want to believe it of him.
    “There are demons in my soul that you can have no wish to see.” Words wrenched from him, rough as gravel.
    “Do you name yourself murderer? Do you?” She choked on a sob, every rumor, every ugly insinuation she had ever heard churning together with this horrific confession into a repulsive and frightening brew.
    One last step and he was before her. Slowly, deliberately, he raised his maimed