Only With Your Love by Lisa Kleypas Page B

shirt at the lake’s edge and scooped water on her bloodstained thighs. But she no longer had the right to tears—she would not allow herself that luxury anymore. She was responsible for what she had done last night, and she doubted that even a lifetime of remorseful prayer would ease her sin and shame.
    Philippe, she thought in agony, I am glad you never found out what kind of woman I really am.
    Unsteadily she washed herself, her remorse doubling with each scrape and bruise she discovered on her pale skin. Griffin had made those marks. Remembering the way she had pushed her body up at him and writhed underneath his hands, she bit her bottom lip.
    There was a rustling sound behind her. She whirled around to see him standing there. He was clad only in his worn breeches, his hair-covered chest left bare and his long hair tied back at the nape of his neck. He looked at home in their primitive surroundings—far more at ease, she suspected, than he would be in more civilized circumstances.
    His gaze wandered over her naked, glistening body, his interest undiminished even when she snatched up the discarded shirt and covered herself. “Don’t go anywhere without me again,” he said.
    She stared at him with swollen, reproachful eyes. “I’ll do what I wish,” she dared to say.
    “You’ll obey me if you prize your neck. We’re not in New Orleans yet.”
    The threatening softness in his tone sent a cowardly chill of fear through her. “ D’accord, ” she agreed, the word sticking in her throat. She inched away from the edge of the lake, holding the shirt tightly closed.
    Griffin lowered himself on his haunches and scooped several handfuls of water over his face and chest. Droplets glittered like diamonds on his sun-darkened skin. He turned to glance at her through narrowed eyes. “Why were you still a virgin?” Tactfulness was a quality he had discarded long ago.
    A searing blush covered Celia’s body. Although she had been more intimate with him than with any other man in her life, she knew nothing about him. It was nearly impossible to confess such personal things to him. Still, if she did not reply willingly, she knew he would force her to. “Philippe was a gentleman. He…he said he would wait for me to feel comfortable with him before he required me to…to perform my duty as his wife.”
    “‘Perform your duty,’” he repeated mockingly. “No wonder he didn’t press the issue, if that’s how you regard it. And at your age—what is it, twenty-three, twenty-four…?”
    “Twenty-four,” she muttered.
    “In New Orleans you’d have been considereda full-fledged spinster. At your age you should have welcomed Philippe into your bed with cries of gratitude. But you asked him to wait.”
    “I wish I had not,” she said under her breath, but he heard her clearly.
    “So do I. God knows I never expected you to be a virgin.”
    “If you had known, would you have left me alone?” she asked bitterly.
    He held her gaze for a long moment. “No.”
    No apologies, not even a pretense of concern for how she might feel this morning. Celia was torn between self-pity and outrage. He was nothing but an insensitive brute!
    “You’ve lost nothing,” he said, reading the anger in her eyes. “No one will ever suspect it wasn’t Philippe who bedded you.”
    “My worry is not what I have lost, ” she said sharply.
    Griffin looked at her questioningly.
    Celia’s forehead was wreathed in a frown. “I am speaking of consequences, monsieur, something I am certain you never pause to consider. What if I conceive a child as a result of what happened between us?”
    Although Griffin’s face registered no emotion, inwardly he was startled. She was correct—he had never bothered to consider the possibility before. After all, the kind of women he visited all possessed remedies to prevent or take care of unwanted pregnancies. But a well-bred French Catholic girl would not be versed in such matters. “It is a