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‘You… you…!’
‘I must say, I am quite impressed, Mr Linton. You play the shrew exceedingly well. One might almost think the performance were genuine.’
‘I am just doing my job!’
‘Very thoroughly, I must say.’
‘Thank you so much, Sir.’
‘By the way, you’ll pay for that vase out of your wages.’
‘I don’t give a damn who pays for it! I’m staying here in Egypt as your wife! I’m finishing my job, do you understand?’
There was a moment of silence. He was still holding me in his iron grip, and we stared at each other over the small, insurmountable distance between us, hardly able to make out each other’s faces. I was breathing hard.
Maybe a bit too hard for someone who’s only pretending to be angry…
That inner voice of mine should really learn to shut up!
‘Do you,’ I asked taking deep breaths to calm myself, ‘understand?’
Another moment of silence. Finally:
‘Yes.’
‘I’m staying as your wife?’
‘Yes.’
My ey
es narrowed. ‘And you realize that, in that role, I’m going to pretend to hate you passionately?’
Slowly, very slowly, he began to remove his hands from around my wrists. I made no move to attack him again. ‘Something tells me that will not be very difficult for you.’
My lips twitched. Upward? Downward? I had no idea. I didn’t have a hope of understanding the emotions roiling inside me right now. ‘That’s what I thought, too. I mean… you are an arrogant son of a bachelor. Nothing should be easier than to hate you, and as your fake wife, that’s all I’d have to do to play my role, right?’
His hands let go of my wrists fully, and he took a step back. ‘Right.’
His voice was unusually hesitant. He seemed to know that there was something still to come.
‘But then I thought…’ I took a step forward, towards him. When he stepped back again, I stepped forward once more, following him across the room. ‘I thought, since I’m pretending I’m married to you…’
‘Yes?’
Another step back for him, another step forward for me. We were at the window now, his waist pressed into the windowsill. He couldn’t step back any more, unless he wanted to start a new career as a gory stain on the cobblestones of Alexandria.
‘Since I’m supposedly married to you, now matter how much I hate you, I would also have to pretend that I’m still in love with you!’ My hands shot forward. Grabbing his collar, I pulled him down until he was on my level and I could glare right into his dark eyes. ‘I’d have to pretend to tell you that you’re mine, and I’ll be damned if I let some French hussy steal you away from me!’
A low rumble erupted from his chest. ‘Then I’d have to pretend to say: I don’t need a French hussy! I don’t want her! I don’t want anyone but you!’
I pulled him a few inches closer. ‘And I’d have to pretend to say: prove it!’
Maybe I should not have said that. Oh, all right, I definitely should not have said that.
Why?
Because he took me at my word!
