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Tears pricked at the back of her eyes. “I’m sorry that even your name is a battlefield.”
“Everything is a battlefield, Timoney.” His voice was low. Gravelly. “And I take a deep pleasure in winning these wars. It has been this way with everything and everyone, always. Until you.”
Once again she felt winded, and she could feel the tears threatening to spill over. “That’s not fair.”
“Did you think this would be fair?” She only realized the car had slowed to a complete stop when he turned in his seat. His strong hand pulled her face around to his. “Love or war, it’s all the same to me.”
“You don’t believe in love,” she replied in a whisper, not jerking her chin from his grasp. Not fighting him.
“Maybe not, but I have always preferred war. It is simple. There are winners and losers. There is none of this mess.”
“This is only as messy as you want to make it,” she managed to say. “You could so easily have stayed away, Crete. You broke things off for a reason. You could have carried on as you have these past two months. What changed?”
“Nothing has changed.” She thought she saw some kind of ghost in his gaze then. Or did she only wish she did? Either way he dropped his hand, though his gaze remained intent. “But you deserve better than Julian Browning-Case.”
“Let’s think about this rationally,” she suggested, her gaze direct on his. “You carry me off like a caveman.”
“Do cavemen drive Range Rovers?” His voice was arid. “I had not realized.”
“Obviously there’s a spark between us. I won’t deny that. Let’s say that I stay with you again. Or who knows? Find my way back to that listed house in Belgravia that you were so disdainful of earlier.” She shook her head, still holding his gaze. “Sooner or later, it will be too much for you. Again. And by that time, perhaps, Julian will have moved on.”
“Good,” Crete growled.
Timoney sighed. “Julian isn’t the point. If I don’t show up at my own wedding tomorrow, my uncle will disown me.”
“Is this a tragedy?” Crete demanded. “You’ll excuse me if I do not weep. Whether your uncle disowns you or does not, all you will have to do is wait a few years for your trust to kick in. Is this not how it works to be an heiress?”
“You’re talking about money, Crete. I’m talking about family.”
“You don’t even like your family.” He sounded mystified.
“What does that have to do with anything? My aunt has her moments. And my cousins are perfectly unobjectionable.” He had been honest with her about his name, so she swallowed, hard, and returned the favor. “And they are all I have left.”
He shook his head, then turned his attention back to the lane before him. When the Range Rover began to move again, Timoney couldn’t tell if she’d lost something or gained it.
“I know you don’t understand family,” she said, her gaze drawn back toward the way the headlights danced over the lane. The way the dark night held them fast in its grip, as if they were alone in all the world. Suspended here together in the quiet and the cold. “I don’t expect you to. But until a few years ago, I would have told you I had the best family in the world. My parents loved me and I loved them in return. And I know that they would expect me to do whatever I can to maintain a relationship with my uncle and his family, no matter what.”
“If your parents loved you at all, how could they possibly countenance your uncle’s wish to sell you off to one of his cronies?” Crete made a dismissive noise. “A man who makes no secret of the fact that his only interest in you involves the marital bed. Was that what your parents wanted for you?”
Her parents seemed very far away tonight. But then, happily, so did any marital bed she might share with Julian. But what caught at her was that Crete had brought them up of his own accord. She couldn’t recall him ever doing so before.
Much less speaking of love.
Her heart seemed to skip a few beats.
“My parents wanted me happy,” she said quietly. She laced her fingers together again, because it was that or reach out to him and she didn’t quite dare. “This is what I’m trying to make you understand, Crete. No matter what happens now, whether I am disowned or I simply go off with you for a time and come back to be married off to someone else, it’s all the same, isn’t it? I’m not happy. I’m not going to be happy. Because what I want I can’t have. You’ve already made that abundantly clear.”
“You don’t know that.”
But he drove faster, so that the dark and misty night seemed a blur on the other side of the windows.
“I do know that.” She sighed. “I have no intention of playing war games with you. And you don’t believe in love. Those are incompatible positions, Crete. You must know that.”
“Compatible or incompatible matter little if you’re carrying my child,” he gritted out.
Her hands rested in her lap and she resisted the urge to touch her belly. To imagine. “And if I’m not?”
“Then you will come to a place of gratitude, I have no doubt, for the act of service this is,” he said. With all his arrogance. “You are not required to suffer that man’s bed. You are welcome.”
