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"Of course."
Matthew knew it wasn't right to feel so pleased. There was no sense in pretending Kathryn would not marry eventually, and even to hope such a thing was selfish and cruel. He loved her; he wanted her to find happiness.
But not with that fop, Jason. Not with any man he knew, for that matter. It was one thing to think in broad, philosophical terms, to tell himself that she deserved a rich and full life once she left Elizabeth Island...
And another entirely to have to envision her in any arms but his.
The goblet he'd been holding shattered in his knotted fist. He blinked and looked down dumbly as shards of glass bit into his flesh and rained to the floor.
"Matthew?" Kathryn swung towards him, her eyes wide. "Oh, what happened? Are you cut?" She grabbed his hand and a thin line of blood oozed up across the palm.
"I'm all right."
"You're not. You're bleeding."
"I'm fine, for God's sake." Matthew snatched back his hand, wiped it on the seat of his jeans, and glowered at her. "Perhaps it would have been kinder to have given the man such news when you see him next week in Florida."
"Let me see that hand, please."
"Kathryn, dammit—"
"Do you have any idea how often you say that?" Kathryn took his hand, tugged him onto the terrace and into the sun, and peered intently at the cut. "Kathryn dammit? As if it were all one word."
His throat constricted as he looked at her bent head. Sunlight had put glints of flame into the dark silk which had parted to fall forward over her shoulders, exposing the delicate curve of her neck. God, how he loved her!
"If I say it as one word, and say it often," he said gruffly, "it is because you specialize in irritating me."
She lifted his hand, pressed a kiss to the tiny cut, then looked up at him and laughed.
"What you're trying to say, Captain, is that I piss you off. It's inelegant, but if you're going to be a twentieth-century male, you'll have to learn the lingo."
Matthew smiled. It was impossible to do anything less, with those blue eyes of hers teasing his but then his smile faded, his frown returned, and he pulled his hand from hers.
"I am not a twentieth-century male, Kathryn. That is what you refuse to accept."
"Don't be so stubborn." She put her hands flat against his chest, reveling in the steady drum of his heart. "This is 1996 and here you are. What else would you call yourself?"
"A freak of nature," he said coldly, "or of darkness. I am not certain which."
"Honestly, Matthew, in some ways you're as impossible as Jason. When I told him I wasn't going to meet him in Florida, that I'd decided to stay here, at Charon's Crossing—"
"You told him what?"
Damn, Kathryn thought, oh damn! She hadn't meant to break the news this way. Matthew was going to try and talk her out of it, she was certain of it. Well, she was just as certain that she wanted a life with him and not with Jason. She'd made a decision. Sooner or later, he had to be told of it and now was as good a time as any.
"I'm not going back," she said softly. Her eyes met Matthew's. "I told that to Jason when I phoned him."
A muscle knotted in Matthew's jaw.
"What do you mean, you're not going back?"
"How much more clearly can I put it, Matthew? I love you. You love me. And we want to be together. Isn't that right?"
"Kathryn." He shook his head, knowing the rest even before she said it. "Listen to me, Kathryn..."
"No. You listen to me, for a change." Her words were rushed, with an almost desperate intensity. "I'm going to live here, with you, at Charon's Crossing."
"Dammit, Kathryn!"
