The Abandoned Bride by Edith Layton Page A

in his next utterance.
    “Now, now,” he said with a curious sort of elation, “I did say you were lovely, didn’t I? No need to show your claws simply because I refuse your bed. You must become used to admiration from afar if you aspire to our family.”
    “I don’t aspire to your family!” Julia shouted, struggling with him only to regain her hand, which he had taken in a firm and hurtful grip. “I never did.”
    “Oh, I believe you once did,” he said though clenched teeth, drawing her so close by pulling upon her captive hand that she could see the knotted muscles in his lean jaw, “at least until you decided that Robin was nothing without his title and legacy. Only then did you decide against allying yourself with us. And what a difficult decision it must have been for you, coming so late, on what was to have been your very wedding night. Tell me,” he said harshly, releasing her suddenly and flinging her away so that she stumbled before she stood , shaking, staring at him, “precisely how did you put it to him? For he never told us that. And I have often wondered. It must have been well said to have influenced him so. Did you say, ‘Oh don’t be a fool, Robin, what is love without money?’ Or were you cruel, saying that only a plentitude of funds could make up for such a paucity of carnal expertise? Perhaps you were more discreet, saying only ‘You are very young, Robin, I shall have you when you have grown in years, and annuities.’ ”
    “I never refused him!” Julia cried out, in her extremity speaking of that which she had vowed never to speak. “It was he who rejected me.”
    “Yes,” breathed her antagonist, “of course. He carried you halfway across the kingdom with him and simply tossed you away.”
    “Yes,” she said quietly.
    “How ve r y disappointing,” the baron said coolly, although he was breathing raggedly and glaring at her as though she were a fiend incarnate, “I had expected a better story.”
    “It is true,” Julia said, shaking her head as she attempted to discover some way to convince him of her honesty.
    “And with no reason given?” he said relentlessly.
    “He said he loved another,” she said woodenly.
    “Ah, the tale gets better. And you believed that?” he asked.
    “No,” she admitted softly.
    “Then why do you imagine he deserted you, and left you all forlorn?” he asked in a travesty of sympathy, with the air of a man who is leading an idiot on.
    “I do not know,” Julia answered. For she had asked herself that question so many times that it now was as if she were speaking to herself again, as she had in so many of the long nights of her short life.
    “Come, come. You can do better than that. You have no idea? You tell me young Lochinvar bore you off on his white horse and then abandoned you, and you have no answer for it? Come, Miss Hastings, I expect more of you. This is poor stuff indeed, coming from such an inventive young woman,” he persevered .
    But now Julia raised her head. Her white-gold hair had come loose from its pins in the violence of her encounter with the baron and now some of it spilled against her pale cheeks. Her eyes were wild and she spoke with violence. The shocks of the day, the incessant and callous questioning, the very helplessness of her situation now made her speak as she had never done before.
    “I do not know,” she cried, her voice so thin and shrill that it was unrecognizable to her own ears. “ I never knew. Perhaps it is he who is the demented one in your vile family. Perhaps I disgusted him. Per h aps he hates those of my sex as much as you do and finds the same perverse pleasures in our pain as you do.”
    It was then that he struck her.

 
    6
    An enormous silence filled the small room. It was the sort of shocked, fearful silence which descends after an act of violence. The pale and wide-eyed young woman stood and held her hand against her cheek. The gentleman remained motionless as well, seemingly appalled