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Her left hand flipped into the air. “A paramour. We shared a tryst or two.”
“Or more?”
Her gaze shifted to him, every word raw through her throat. “You know I’m no innocent, Rune. And my widowed circumstances have given me much freedom.”
“To indiscriminately couple with whoever catches your eye. Even though he’s a bloody bastard.”
Her head cocked to the side and she glared at him. “I’m not a whore. I actually liked him for quite some time. He liked me—until he liked me too much. He needed to know my every whereabouts, my every conversation.” The scratch in her voice sounded foreign to her own ears.
“And then?”
“And then…” She stilled for a long breath, the shiver that came with the memory skittering across her back. Her eyes downward, she drank another sip of the brandy. “And then one night he choked me. He said it would make the sex better. He would choke me and I would go to another place.”
Both of Rune’s hands curled into fists. Fists so tight his knuckles went white, purple veins straining, pulsating.
She couldn’t look up at his face, didn’t want to see the violence in his eyes. “I didn’t know what to do, how to get away. I was already in my stays and chemise. And his hands went around my neck, cutting off my pleas. So he did it and he liked it. I remember that. He liked it. I woke up with a brain about to explode and I left his house. I broke all ties with him in a note and had been avoiding him ever since.”
“But he’s refusing to listen?” For how Rune’s fists looked ready to slam through the nearest wall, his voice was oddly calm.
She nodded, her gaze fixed on his fists. “And then he showed up at a house party in Berkshire—he wasn’t invited—he wormed along with another guest. I dodged him the best that I could until I was walking along the corridor in the guest wing and he appeared out of nowhere, shoving me into a room. He started to choke me, but Jules and Des happened by. Des tore him off me and pummeled him—into a bloody mess, as far as was reported by the staff that saw him on his way out. I haven’t seen him since. I thought he was gone for good.”
Silence.
Her stare couldn’t move off of his tightly wound hands. His fists quivered, near to shaking.
The last thing she wanted to do was see his face in that moment. But her eyes lifted, her gaze finding his look.
The jolt of rage emanating from his eyes struck her, echoing down her chest to rest in a hard boulder in the pit of her belly.
“All I need is a name, Elle.” A growl. A demand. A death sentence.
She shook her head.
“A name, Elle. Now.”
In that moment—the air between them palpitating with murderous intent—realization hit her.
He could never know.
Not for what he would do.
She refused to lose him to, of all things, a hangman’s noose for murdering Howard. For that was exactly what he was planning.
And in the core of all that was the notion that she didn’t want to lose him.
Which meant she wanted to keep him.
How in the blasted Hades had that happened?
That wouldn’t do.
Couldn’tdo.
Her mouth clamped closed, her stare direct on him.
She wasn’t going to tell him anything.
Not about Howard.
