Page 38 of Vengefully Matched

Priscilla swallowed. She didn’t want to talk about it. And yet her lips moved.

“The thing is, she wanted to have a family.” Understanding washed over Agatha’s face.

“And you didn’t?”

Priscilla shook her head. “It’s not that I don’t like children. I don’t mind other people’s. I just don’t want them myself. And Evelyn said I’d change my mind. I thought maybe I could change my mind, for her. I loved her so much, you know.”

Agatha bit her lip, features softening. She opened her mouth, and spoke very slowly.

“Sometimes love isn’t enough.” She hesitated. “I actually think it sounds like maybe you loved her quite well to have let her go.”

Priscilla threw her head back, resting it against the velvet of the high-back chair. She wrenched her eyes shut, but she didn’t stop talking. It felt good. Painful, but good, like she was relieving a pressure that had been building and building between her eyes, threatening to pop and explode into unbridled cruelty.

“I should have told her earlier,” she whispered. “I wanted to be able to change my mind for her. I wanted for love to be enough, like it was for my parents.”

Agatha said nothing, for long enough that Priscilla opened her eyes, and the president just sat there, looking at her, not with pity but with understanding.

“You can say it. I was terribly selfish to leave at that precise moment.”

Agatha shook her head. “No.” She paused, chewing on her lip for a moment, deep in thought. “It was brave to leave when you knew for sure that it would hurt both of you to stay, even if the timing was bad. It would have been very selfish to have children that you were strong-armed into having. Children aren’t stupid, and they don’t ask to be born. They deserve grown-ups who want them completely. And once you do have them, there really is no walking away completely. Only abandoning. Breaking up with your fiancée sucks, but it was better than pretending your way into making kids suffer for you.”

Priscilla blinked. “Yes. I just wish I would have thought of it before the actual wedding.”

“Well, you’re young.”

“I beg your pardon; I’m a sitting member of the Council.”

“You’re what, twenty-five?”

“I’m twenty-six,” she said indignantly. Agatha’s eyes sparkled, as though perhaps she knew exactly how old Priscilla was. “Why, how old are you? Thirtysomething?”

“Thirty-seven,” said Agatha, her mouth twisting wryly.

Something about that was thrilling; she’d imagined Agatha a bit older, but not that much older. Eleven years was more than she could count on her fingers.

“You’re a cougar, then. A cradle robber.”

Agatha blushed. “You’re far beyond the age of consent, and if I am in fact a dirty old woman, well, I’m a fake one, then. It’s not like we’re actually together.”

“Dirty Bertie!” Priscilla exclaimed and somehow the thought of Lex and his silly obsession with a dead English king was so funny that she doubled over in laughter, a full minute before she could even meet Agatha’s now-confused expression.

“What does this have to do with a promiscuous king and his French prostitutes?” She asked it matter-of-factly, as though quite obviously that’s what the moniker brought to mind.

“Does everyone obsess over a depraved monarch except for me?”

Laughing, Agatha shook her head. “No, but he is known for it. I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself a Dirty Bertie. I don’t think I could handle more than one partner at a time—but I am more creative than you give me credit for, with your low blow about my uninteresting bedroom life.” She winked, and Priscilla was suddenly unable to think of a single clever retort. “You might label me a slutty bisexual, and I mind if you mean it derogatory. But if you wanted to call me a slutty bisexual, complimentary, well, I wouldn’t mind that very much at all, Hart.”

Oh, shit. Priscilla was in deeper than she realized, watching Agatha fiddle with her neckline, pushing a strand of long blond hair back over her shoulder. She found herself suddenly unable to do anything other than watch the path of those fingers, and she leaned forward, setting her head on her palm.

“Prove it, honey.” She let the word drip off her tongue.

“I think I’d rather punish you, chérie.” Agatha grinned and ran her finger down farther, and Priscilla could feel her pulse low, a heartbeat beneath her belly button. Aching for her to touch that path Agatha traced down her collarbone, her breast.

A knock at the door interrupted, and Priscilla was ready to murder whoever it was. Agatha dropped her hand and straightened up.

Kevin, of course.

“President Vanderbilt Voisin, your mother is on line two.”