Moonwitch by Nicole Jordan Page B

her compromising embrace and turned to see her betrothed standing at the rail of the gallery. His fists were clenched by his sides, his face contorted with anger.
    He stormed down the stairs and across the garden. “So!” he repeated, stalking up to Selena. “Edith was right. The minute my back is turned, I find you consorting with a sailor. My betrothed!” He seemed to have forgotten Kyle’s presence entirely as he glared at Selena with fury. “Come away at once! I shall escort you home, where I will decide how to deal with this.”
    Although she was quaking inside, Selena faced him with outward calm. Now that the moment of confrontation was at hand, she was strangely relieved. She had now given Avery adequate reason to break off their engagement without bringing up his sordid affair with her stepmother or her own loss of innocence. She had only to get through these next few unpleasant moments… and the hundreds following when she would be required to face the censure and gossip and ridicule.
    “No, Avery,” she replied unsteadily, “you will
not
escort me home, nor will you decide how to deal with this. You may, however, consider our engagement at an end.”
    “I will not be played false!” he shouted, taking a threatening step toward her. Before she could move, he had raised his hand and slapped her across the cheek.
    Selena was shocked more than hurt, but Kyle gave a snarl of fury.
    “Why, you bloody—” Grabbing Avery’s lapel, he let fly with a powerful fist. The blow lifted Avery off his feet and sent him catapulting into a hibiscus bush. Neither the yelp of pain he gave upon landing nor the groan he emitted as he tried to sit up was very dignified.
    Kyle stood over him, his expression savage. “I ought to keelhaul you,” he growled as he flexed his knuckles. “Get up, you scurvy bilge rat! I’m more your size.”
    Selena, who disliked any form of violence, was visibly shaken now. Yet Avery’s double standards had incensed her. She stared down at him, holding one gloved hand to her smarting cheek, the other clenched in a gesture of defiance. “Play
you
false?” she jeered. “And just what do you call what
you’ve
been doing for the past year or more?”
    “What does that mean?” Avery retorted, his tone guarded.
    “It isn’t something I choose to bandy about in public! And it hardly matters now. I don’t intend to marry you. You won’t be getting the plantation you coveted.”
    Avery stared at her. “But it was what your father wished.”
    “My father would have been the first to understand,” Selena returned with icy civility. “If he had known you merely wanted the plantation, he never would have pressed me to accept your suit.”
    “I don’t merely want the plantation. I want you, too, of course.”
    “Oh, yes, you require a ‘chaste little puritan’ for your wife!” Selena raised her chin, determined not to give Avery the satisfaction of knowing how his betrayal had hurt her. “Well, even if I were to marry you, you wouldn’t be getting the virgin bride you wanted.”
    She sensed Kyle’s sudden stiffening even before Avery’s eyes narrowed in a sharp glance.
    “What,”
Avery demanded in a tone that had suddenly turned ominous,
“do you mean?”
    Selena checked abruptly, realizing that in her distraught state she had said more than she ought. Avery had read into her words exactly what she had meant. “N-nothing,” she stammered, taking a step backward. “I only meant I wouldn’t marry you.”
    Slowly, with effort, Avery climbed to his feet, his face darkening as he glanced from Selena to Kyle and back to Selena. “You little slut,” he breathed. “You gave him more than a kiss, didn’t you?”
    Kyle took exception to the slur and raised a clenched fist, while Selena exclaimed, “No! Of course not!” with too much fervor.
    They were all startled when Edith Markham spoke from the gallery. “Oh, Selena, how could you?” she exclaimed in shocked tones.