Page 11

Amazed at my own boldness, I hissed at the Viscount.

“I don’t care what you say! am going to saynowhen they ask if I object!”

“Is that so?” the Viscount whispered in my ear, and, without another word, he put a hand on my mouth and dragged me down a side hallway.

I thought I had been afraid of him before, but it was nothing to now, one hand tight on my mouth and the other hand twisting my arms behind my back.

Then he whirled me around.

“You will do nothing to stop this ceremony,” he ordered, and he put a hand on my high lace collar and grabbed the fine fabric, twisting it so hard in his hands that I gasped.

“Stop,” I croaked, but he only twisted tighter with cruel fingers, and I began to panic as his hold cut off my air supply, my fingers desperately scrabbling at my neck, trying to pry him off me.

But he was too strong.

“I’ve been planning this wedding for a long time, and no bratty little miss is going to stop it,” he snarled.

“A long time?” I gasped, barely even able to talk. “You just met me for the first time a week ago!”

My head swam, stars flashing in my eyes, and I stumbled. It was only then that he loosened his hold on me. With hard, impatient fingers, he undid the first button at the back of my collar.

I gasped for air, inhaling it into my lungs, and he undid another button.

“What are you doing?” I cried, my voice cracking, and I put my hands back to try to push him away, only for my fingers to meet cold, dry scales.

Then I felt the sinuous, cool slide of a snake around my neck and I screamed.

“Don’t scream,” St. Erth said. “I’d hate for it to bite you. The antidote for snake venom is so hard to find.”

“Take it off me, please,” I begged in a whisper.

“No,” he said.

“I promise,” I cried, as the heavy body of the snake wound around my neck, “I’ll marry you!”

The snake slithered down my shoulder, and I could feel its little tongue flicking out against the high curve of my breasts and then my nipples with a rattlinghiss.I stifled a scream as it wound with cool unconcern around my breasts, the tail flicking back and forth, and settled underneath them.

“I’m afraid I just don’t trust you,” St. Erth sighed. “I need some assurance.”

Then he turned my body and marched me back into the church where the bishop was waiting.

The ceremony was a blur. The words, the avaricious looks on Papa and Mama’s faces, the heavy golden ring on my finger. I could think of nothing but the snake rustling invisibly underneath my breasts, coiling its cool body between and around me. At every moment I expected the snake to open its jaws and sink its fangs into me.

St. Erth’s “I do” was firm and confident and apparently my tiny, shuddering “I do” counted just as much as his, because I heard a sound from his throat when I said it, low and unsettling.

As we walked back out, I felt a sharp prick on the back of my neck, two little puncture wounds underneath my new bonnet, and I shrieked and stumbled forward.

“It has bitten me,” I gasped to St. Erth as his hard hands caught me. But I felt his mouth twist up behind me and he unbuttoned the top button again, this time so harshly that the entire pearl button popped off. He reached a hand down my top, his fingers skimming my breasts, making me shiver, as he grasped the snake’s body and pulled it carefully from my bosom.

As he threw it into the grass outside, I heard his low mocking laughter.

“I am dying,” I cried, my knees giving out.

But he only set me back on my feet.

“That snake isn’t poisonous,” he growled in my ear. “I’mmore dangerous to you than any snake. That was a reminder that you are mine now.”

My parents and brother came up to give us congratulations, my whole family looking relaxed and joyous.