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“You do have a bit of altruism and you.”
“Nothing that was not forced upon me. I would never have given a thought to have somebody else live. I clawed my way up from the gutter. That has given me less compassion in most situations. Let me assure you. Because I lived a life where it was all about survival of the fittest. So those who cannot keep up fall behind, and that is the natural order of things. It was not until I had to face my own mortality, my own frailties, that I had to perhaps acknowledge that people are trying a lot harder than I give them credit for. And that perhaps it is not so bad to offer a hand up.”
“It has changed you.”
“Obviously.” He looked at her, and the gaze was pointed.
She wanted to roll her eyes at him. She didn’t. “Yes. I understand what you mean. You mean physically. That isn’t what I mean.” She paused a moment. “Can I see the north tower now?”
“Why would you want to see that?”
“Because I have seen you,” she said. “And I am your wife now.”
These words felt every bit as much like vows as the ones they’d spoken in the church.
He laughed, low and hard, and doused her certainty. “You are not my wife in any real sense of the word.”
“I am your wife in themostreal sense of the word.”
They’d said vows in a church and signed papers. It was real.
“You know, back when this village thrived. We had something called handfast marriages. And they were not real until they were consummated.”
A riot of heat assaulted her. And she imagined him wrapping his arm around her waist and drawing her toward his chest. She imagined that kiss that he had declined to give her. She imagined...
She drew slightly closer to him. Then she reached out and plucked the flower out of the buttonhole. She held it close, and twirled it in a circle. “I see. And so without consummation it is not real to you?”
“No. It is not. I believe the Catholic Church would agree with me.”
“And yet it must be real enough to deter my father’s men, or Mattias from ever coming after me.”
“Yes. But they do not have to know whether or not the marriage was consummated.”
“Consummated. That’s a very cold and clinical way of putting it.”
Yet she did not feel cold.
“Do not spin fantasies. The act itself is cold and clinical.”
She frowned. “I would hope not. I intend to have a life after this. And so I will find out one way or the other.”
“Good for you.” He didn’t sound like he meant that.
She wanted more of him and she wasn’t going to get it here. This conversation was making him cruel, and she didn’t know why, but she felt...tender.
“Show me the tower?”
“There is nothing for you to see.” But he didn’t say no. And when he began to walk into the castle, she went after him, and then she saw that he was leading them toward the north tower. She wondered if this was his way of apologizing.
She trailed after him, up the stairs, and back to that place, which was still upended from the tantrum he had thrown the day before.
“Oh, all of your things...” She moved to the collection, which was the only thing still righted.
“They don’t matter.”
What he meant was he could easily replace them. She knew that.
The collection though... That long bar under glass. Because this was not a room for anyone to see.
