“Do not hit me again, Anna. It was a natural assumption for me to make, that you had agreed to be my mistress, particularly since I woke up to find you lying naked in my bed. Blister it, you even said you agreed. I distinctly remember you saying so this morning. What the devil did you agree to, if not that?”

“You have only to recall what I told you was the only way you could have me, and you’d have your answer. I’m not your mistress, I’m your wife!”

“The devil you are!”

It was probably because he looked so horrified that she shoved her way past him and out the door. That he was utterly horrified was why he stood there in complete bemusement, rather than try to stop her. He just couldn’t believe that, drunk or not, he would so totally ignore the strictures of his class. A marquis did not marry a common Gypsy, well, not so common, but still a Gypsy, well, half Gypsy, but still . . . it just wasn’t done.

She was obviously lying, a ruse to trick him into thinking that he’d married her, and she’d been able to do it because he got so sotted with drink last night that he couldn’t remember what he’d done. Of all the bloody nerve, and especially when he only had to demand some proof and she’d have to fess up that she’d lied, since there wouldn’t be any proof. He would have thought she was more intelligent than that, to think she could get away with it. Some of his fast-rising rage stemmed from disappointment in her.

He went after her. She’d already left the house. He just barely spotted that bright skirt disappearing into the woods quite some distance away. It was too far for him to catch up to her on foot, though, so he ran to his stable.

She was no more than halfway to her camp when his stallion came galloping up behind her and was yanked to a rearing stop a bit in front of her. She ignored him and the beast and continued her march, merely veering around him. It was an easy matter to move the horse in front of her again, and again, until she got the idea and stopped.

He extended a hand to her, to lift her up. When she just stared at it, he explained, “I took you away from your camp last night, I’ll return you to it today. It’s the gentlemanly thing to do.”

She snorted. “How convenient, to play the gentleman only when it suits you.”

That was a serious insult that had him retaliating in kind. “I wouldn’t expect a Gypsy to grasp the intricacies of the nobility.”

She raised a brow at him. “Is that a roundabout way of saying that the intricacies of common courtesy are beyond the grasp of the nobility?”