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She scowled and folded her arms, refusing to meet his eye.
He tugged her closer. “I was just trying to help.”
She choked out a laugh. “Really? Winning all of my father’s money—”
“That he’d most likely stolen from you in the first place.”
She ignored that, though he wasn’t wrong. “And taking the deed to our home is you helping? I’d hate to see what it looks like when you aren’t being sohelpful.”
He grimaced. “Yeah, I know it doesn’t sound great, but yes, I was actually trying to make sure that he would walk away from the table with something in his pocket. I purposely lost nearly every hand I had. And it worked. All he had to do was take the money and walk away.”
She folded her arms and glared at him. “Right. But instead, you walked away with everything and we’re left with nothing.”
“How are you left with nothing? You’re my wife, Nora. What’s mine is yours.”
She shook her head. “That’s not how it works. What’s yours is yours and what’s mine is yours. And I’m left with nothing whether you intended it or not.”
He threw his hands up. “If what’s yours is mine, then this property would have been mine anyway, if our marriage was legal. If you were trying to prevent that so hard, then why insist on marrying me?”
She groaned out her frustration. “Because you weren’t ever supposed to know about it!”
He raised his brows, understanding dawning on his face. “Ah.”
“That’s not… I mean it’s not quite…”
“It’s not what it looks like?” he asked, echoing his own argument.
She sighed and sank onto the couch. “I knew my father would end up doing something like this. I won’t gain control of the property until I’m thirty. I was pretty sure he’d gamble it away, or outright sell it, long before that. In order to claim it before that, I had to marry. But…”
“But that would put the property under the control of your husband.”
She nodded. “Unless I could find someone so opposed to the idea of marriage that it would be fairly easy to run him off once the deed was in my name.”
“And the poor bastard would be none the wiser.”
She just looked at him, guilt and shame twisting in her gut along with her anger. She shouldn’t have to feel guilty about any of this. What choice was there if she wanted any hope of having something of her own, something some man couldn’t take away from her when the mood struck him?
He didn’t say anything for a moment, just took a deep breath and blew it back out, scrubbing his hand over his face. “We aren’t going to figure all this out tonight. At least the issue with the deed. With our ambiguous legal status, all my issues, and everything else piling up against us…I just don’t know what we’ll do about it yet.” He shook his head, his face drawn with regret. “We both know if I return the property, he’ll just do this again.”
She sighed. “I’ll hide the deed. He won’t even know I have it back. I can make sure that this doesn’t happen again.”
“Nora.” He cocked an eyebrow. “You weren’t able to stop it tonight.”
His voice had been quiet, kind even. But it still sent a bolt of anger flashing through her. He wasn’t wrong…and that just made her even angrier. She shook her head, too furious and upset to articulate anything else. Though it was less with him personally than the situation as a whole.
“I did, however, always intend on giving any winnings from the game back to you,” he said, and a small spark of hope flared in her chest. “Here.” He thrust a handkerchief full of coins at her. “It’s everything he lost and then some. I would suggest finding a very good hiding place.”
She stared at the bundle in her hand, surprised at the heft of it. There was a good amount of money in there. Enough to keep her from needing to panic too hard just yet. Over money, at least.
“Thank you,” she said. She took a deep, shuddering breath and slowly let it all out. There was nothing more she could do about the situation tonight. And she was too exhausted to want to try, anyway.
“Is it your intention to turn me out of my home?” she asked.
The shock of the suggestion was clear on his face. “Of course not,” he said, his eyes dimming with a lingering hurt. “Why would you ever think that?”
She gave him a slight smile, choking back the guilt that those pain-filled eyes of his sent skittering through her. “I thought you might want to give me a taste of my own medicine now that you hold the deed. I hear the chicken coop is newly renovated and mighty comfy.”
His lips twitched. “Come here,” he said, drawing her into his arms. “The only place you’ll be sleeping is in our bed, right next to me.”
