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Timoney couldn’t let herself think about Crete as a child. It was too much. It had been bad enough to read those dry recitations of unfortunate facts in so many articles—but he had stood before her tonight and told her how little affection there was, how little kindness. She would dissolve where she stood if she let herself think about him as a small boy, surviving such coldness, and she couldn’t afford that. He was a man who capitalized on the weaknesses of others, always. She admired that in him. It had made him who he was today, and she loved him.
But she couldn’t allow him to use her own weakness for him against her.
“I’m sure you have nothing to worry about,” she told him, though she was not sure of any such thing. Her body had always seemed to delight in its irregularity. She did begin to wonder, as she watched that dark incredulity move across his face again, what exactly she was playing at here. “I don’t think it’s the right time of the month.”
“Somehow, this does not comfort me,” he growled at her, as if he knew exactly how unreliable her body was. To say nothing of her claims.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said in as British a manner as possible. Which was to say, she made it abundantly clear she was not, in fact, sorry. “Not everything is comforting. Some things hurt, Crete, and they keep right on hurting. Time doesn’t change them. Space doesn’t change them. Sooner or later, you either die or you learn to live with them.”
And she felt his hand contract on her bicep as he took her meaning.
She hardly recognized him then, his face was so hard. His gaze so cold.
“Was this your plan all along, Timoney? Is this some kind of sick revenge?”
She pulled her arm out of his grasp then, too aware that he let her do it. It was disconcerting.
“Did you know you were coming here tonight?” He only glared back at her. “I will take that as a no. And no, I did not, in fact, plot out some kind of revenge. I had no idea you would turn up here.”
Not this night. Not ever.
Not even though she’d spent two very long months wishing fervently that he would.
“But now that this has happened, you are happy enough to capitalize on it, is that it?” He shook his head in a kind of awe. Not a good kind. “I had no idea you were so ruthless.”
That was rich, coming from him, but she suspected he wanted her to lose her temper. One fire might lead to another, and then he would win. The way he always won.
“If you would like to sit down and answer more of my questions, fine.” Timoney tried to look as if she was casually moving toward the door. Instead of what she was actually doing, which was making a break for it. “But if you’re going to stare at me like that, as if you might at any moment begin to chew off pieces of me, I think I’ll pass.”
“You will not walk out that door,Timonitsa mou.”
The way he said that was alarming. She couldn’t deny it. Every hair on her body seemed to stand at alert.
Especially because he didn’t move.
As if he didn’tneedto move to cut her off. He was that sure of himself.
She told herself it was fear that raced through her, making her nipples harden into points and her core melt, but she knew better.
“I couldn’t decide if I wanted to see you again or if I never wanted it,” she told him when she reached the door. She put her hand on the latch but turned to face him because she felt she owed him this much. It was more consideration than he’d shown her—and she also needed to convince him not to press her. Because her willpower to walk away from him and marry the man her uncle had picked for her was very flimsy indeed. “But I think that this has been good. It has eased something inside me, Crete. Though I doubt that was your intention, I’m thankful all the same.”
“You are thankful,” he repeated, his voice a dark and dangerous ribbon of sound that seemed to connect hard to all those places she was still trying to convince herself were fearful. And then set them all alight. “Oh, joyful day. You may be pregnant with my child. You insist that you will marry a man who disdains and disgusts you. But what can that matter when you arethankful.”
Timoney felt as if her lungs were wrung out. She could only seem to take tiny little sips of air, and none of it seemed to get where it needed to go. Her hand ached, and she realized she was gripping the door latch far too hard.
But she didn’t let go.
“Maybe he does disdain me,” she replied, her voice not quite as steady as she would have liked, because she might have been ignoring his other points, but that didn’t mean the blows didn’t land. “But at least he’s honest and up-front about it. Which is more than I can say for you.”
Crete reared back slightly, as if she’d struck him. “Try not to alter history of which I was a part, please. I was never anything but honest with you. Iamnothing but honest, and to my detriment.” His hard mouth twisted. “Ask anyone.”
“You may be blunt and direct when it suits you, but that’s not the same thing.” She dropped her hand from the door and had the vague thought that she was making a strategic error, but she brushed it aside. And glared at him instead. “Are you ever honest withyourself?”
His eyes narrowed. And Timoney knew she shouldn’t have let go of the latch. She should have left by now. She should have flung open the heavy old door, hurled herself out to the chilly hall, and then run all the way through this house until she could safely barricade herself in her bedchamber and count the hours until morning.
When you will do what?asked a sharp little voice inside her.You will put on that dress you never liked but didn’t wish to argue about? And then march down the aisle and shackle yourself to a man who thinks you’re a whore?
There was a sour taste in her mouth. She couldn’t seem to stop flashing back to that particular look in Julian’s eyes when he’d stood here before her, called hermy dear, and called Crete a mongrel. She couldn’t stop remembering the way his gaze had moved all over her, as if he was using his hands to find his way all over her body.
