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“You and Julian will be staying in his guest suitetomorrow night,” her uncle told her coldly. “He does not wish to travel after the reception.And I had better not hear of any impediment to a swift and comprehensive consummation of your union.”
“What a pity we can’t gather everyone round for viewing of the marital sheets,”Timoney said drily.
Uncle Oliver’s gaze was scathing. “To what end? That is a ceremony for virgins. I think we both know that there is notan unspoiled inch on your body, girl. Not after letting that animal rut all over you.”
Timoney couldn’t keep herself from thinking about the way he’d said that as she left her own party, smiling distantly at the assembled guests, all of themcold likeAuntHermione, cruel like her uncle, or simply self-satisfied like her husband-to-be.They would go on, no doubt toasting their own wealth and consequence, well into the wee hours.
Maybe there would be so much toasting it would stave off the worst of anycomprehensive consummating.
“Tomorrow, my dear,” said Julian when she crossed his path, his creased and reddened faceperhaps a shade too jolly for her liking.
“Tomorrow,” she agreed, and had to force the ends of her mouth to curve.
Soon enough, she told herself harshly as she took herself out of the grandhall, she would be lying beneath that man.Far more intimately acquainted with his brand of jolly than she liked.It was not a pleasant thought. It had been better in the abstract, when the wedding wassomeday,not soon. Not tomorrow.
Timoney stopped at the foot of the stairs that led up toward the bedchambers. She looked toward the banquet hall she’d just left. Then, following an urge she could hardly name, she turned and fled out into the cold gardens.
Because Timoneyknew full well that she would do as women always had. Or she hoped she would. She would lie back, close her eyes, and think not of England,but of the manwho had imprinted himself upon her so completely that it was not clear to her that she would ever take another breath without feeling him somehow inside her all over again.
She was glad she’d thought to grab her cloak on her way outside, for the night was cold. A mist made the winter garden mysterious, especially when the moon shone through.
It was a silent night indeed.
And ifTimoneyhadlet herself feel, all the things that moved inside her then might have taken her to her knees.Right there where the flowers would bloom again in spring, long after she had calcified and died anew inside this marriage of hers. Long after Julian carried her off to his estate, sampled her, and then added her to his collection of stodgy statuary that was often written up in guidebooks, or so he claimed.
Shedidn’tbuckle or fall over. She drew the warm cloak around her and sank down on the first stone bench she found, letting her eyes fall shut.
And she worked so hardto keep herself from thinking about Creteor that last nightwith himtoo closely.But tonight was the last time she would be able to think about him as a singular event in her life.In her body.
From tomorrow forward,Crete would be the gold standard—butthere wouldbe Julian, too. And here, in the privacy of this frozen garden, she allowed herself to take a peek at all the thingsshe truly felt about that notion.
Shock. Despair. Horror.
And a kind of resoluteacceptance, becausethere was no changing this.
Crete Asgar had swept into her life like a wildfire,burned her to a crisp, then had left nothing in his wake save charred ground.
She could remembereach and everymoment with such distinct and spectacular detail it was like punishing herself. Every touch of his hand. The first, life-alteringcurve of his hard mouth.The kiss that had knocked her sideways and stolen her heart.
She had given him her innocenceand in return, he had taken her apart.
He had made her body feel and do things she had not believedcould be real. She still woke in the night, her body electric and alive, her heart pounding so hard it hurt and his tastein her mouth.
Sometimes she would dreamthat she was still living with him, the heat of his possession making the whole of that penthouse glow, all its hard angles and edges softened by the fire in the way he looked at her. The way he held her. And howall-encompassing it was between them.
You are a terrible distraction,he had told her onceand, foolish girlthat she was, she had thought of that as a compliment.
To be able to distract a man of his singular focus. A man who had established himself with his single-mindedness. A manwho had been flung out of his father’s family the moment he was of age and left to fend for himself—because he was a bastard,evidence of an affair, and soundly unwanted.
Crete Asgar had not cared who wanted him. What he wanted was power.
It had taken him five years to make his first fortune. And then he had made so many subsequent fortunes that it had become something of an international sport to guess his net worth.
She should have known better than to imagine a man like thatwould ever welcome too many distractions.
Timoney stayed there on her cold bench,her eyes screwed shut as her heart began pounding again.
If she let herself, she could almost imagine that the Christmas Eve air was thick with the tension that had always hummed between the two of them. Only between them, and obvious from the start. She had looked up from her mobile, thereoutside a club in London so trendy it had already disappeared before that weekend had ended, checking in big names to another party. Shecouldn’tremember the supposed purposeof that particular evening.
