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‘The Robinson Crusoe. It was your father’s book first?’ Her lips quirked up and her expression nearly felled him. This moment was the most precious one of his life. He felt the strength of the world inside him as some mystical force flowed from her eyes, igniting a flame within him.
‘I’m certain,’ he said.
‘Mr Crusoe. A man who wanted adventure and then spent most of his life alone. I don’t think I will finish it after all.’
He looked at her long enough to see the smile in her lips and the sadness in her eyes. ‘I want you to take the copy of Crusoe when you go. You may sell it if you wish. I will never read it again. It would always make me think of you alone on the island of Melos.’
‘I would not sell this book. Perhaps I should read it at night when I cannot sleep. I could see how truthful the book is.’
At his side, she took his cut hand, examining it closely. ‘I think you will live.’
‘I think we both will,’ he said.
He reached out with his other hand and let his forefinger touch her skin. She accepted the movement as one might let raindrops linger on the face. His caress slid over the contours of her cheekbone, feeling the silk. One fingertip was not enough. He stretched his hand so he could sweep more of her into his senses.
‘I never thought dark colours could be so bright,’ he murmured. ‘Your eyes. They shimmer.’
His fingers moved to the valley at the side of her temple, where her cheekbone rose. ‘They linger in my sight. They take my soul and hang on to it.’ He ran his touch over her nose. ‘You were created for a warrior god.’
She shook her head, but not enough to move from his fingers, but to brush against them. ‘I am blemished. More so than my sisters.’
He chuckled. ‘Marred? That could not be possible.’
Her nod moved her closer. ‘I have a longing mark.’
‘That cannot be bad.’
‘My sisters’ marks are brown, almost the shape of hearts, but mine is red, more like a scrape that never goes away. With my sisters we believed my mother wished for love for them, but for me, we could not think what she wished for.’
He moved, the smallest bit closer to her. ‘Did you ever ask her?’
‘Yes.’ She stumbled over the word. ‘She said she had wished for love for my sisters, but by the time I was born she said she had realised her error. She told me the two red blemishes on my skin are where a heart was torn in half. She said she wished that I would never fall in love. She said it hurts too much. She thought like your father. Perhaps you and I are in agreement on the foolishness of possessing a heart.’
He’d touched her lip when she spoke. She could no longer move. This was not the same immobility of fear, but of an embrace of security. He was fire you could walk into and never be burned, just feel the tingle and caress of the flames.
Now the fingertips from both his hands rested on her skin and his breath whispered against her. ‘Your mother was wise for you.’
‘She was. I know. Because I already saw my father leave my mother and I want no man near who will not stay with me all his life. Who will not place me above everything and everyone else.’
His hands slid from her face and he closed his fingers. ‘I hope to remember the touch of your face. You’re the magic I will hold within me for the rest of my life. In a secret part of me that keeps me whole and gives me breath. But I cannot give you what you need most.’
She touched above her breast. ‘And I must have a man who puts me above...his father. His mother. Even his children. Who loves me with all the intensity of the sun’s heat and his love reaches to the stars.’
‘You ask—’
‘For what I wish for. Why should I ask for less? I am happy to be alone before I will be with a man who does not cherish me as I wish.’
‘A man can say the words easily enough. Words, Bellona. But how will you know if he speaks the truth? And what if he’s not sure about his own future? What if he does not even know if he can feel for a woman what you wish him to?’
‘If he does not know—then he does not feel enough.’
He swallowed. He moved and his elbow touched an inkpot, knocking it askew. He caught it, but not before splashes destroyed the paper.
Turning, she moved to his desk. Ink had pooled on his work. She put the stopper back on to the empty bottle.
He shrugged and touched a blot on his sleeve and frowned, still staring.
She put her fingertip in the obsidian pool. She paused, studying the letters scratched on the piece of paper. Taking her time and reading. The list of things he planned to do in London. The places he would go and the people he would meet. She dotted her finger over the letters, obscuring them. Then she put another spot at the side of the first one, letting her finger drag over, smearing the lines into darkness.
