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As the reception winds down, he glances over at me. “I planned on taking you back to the mansion tonight,” he says quietly. “I could have gotten us a hotel, I suppose—but I liked the idea of having our wedding night in our own bed. I hope you don’t mind.”
I feel that odd pang again, that confusion about what he really wants from me. It feels like a sentimental thing to do, just like the ring. It doesn’t feel like the cold, detached arrangement I’d expected.
It makes me wonder what he’d say, if I said Ididmind. If I told him that I preferred to have our wedding night in a hotel somewhere, something more impersonal. But the truth is, I hadn’t thought about it either way. And it feels wrong, somehow, to test him when it really doesn’t matter to me.
“That’s fine,” I tell him, and I can’t read the expression on his face. But I think, when he reaches for my hand, it made him happy.
I’ve never known a more confusing man.
Marika
Theo is quiet on the drive back to his mansion, sitting in the backseat with me, my lace skirt tucked around my legs. I’m curious about what he’s thinking, but I don’t dare ask.
It’s probably just what he’s going to do to you when he gets you in bed, I tell myself, but I don’t think it’s that. He’s mulling over something, and I’m not entirely sure I want to know what it is.
The mansion itself is beautiful, a good bit outside of the city, on what appears to be acres of rolling green lawn, dark stone rising up out of it at the end of a long, winding driveway flanked by iron lampposts. There’s a certain old-world beauty to it that I can appreciate. As Theo lets me in the front door, telling me he gave the staff the night off, I see that carries over into the interior. The floors are dark hardwood, the walls a deep green, and it has a close, cozy feel that I hadn’t expected from a mansion. It’s certainly nothing like the one I’ve occupied all my life.
“We—” he clears his throat. “We could have a drink first, if you like.”
He seems almost awkward, and it startles me.You’re twenty-some years older than me,I want to say.Why are you acting like you’re sixteen and trying to seduce a girl for the first time?
I don’t know what to say in response. To tell him I’d rather just get it over with sounds rude, but I don’t see the purpose in having a drink and drawing it out. I remember what he told me, that he had hoped for companionship in a wife, and I know that having a drink with him is only leading him into a false sense of what this is—what we might be together.
But I also know that’s what I’m meant to be doing. The more I can lure Theo into thinking that I want him—even that I care about him, the easier it will be to do what Nikolai needs me to do.
I have no reason to feel guilty about it. From what I’ve been told, Theo has deeply hurt our family. But—
Don’t think about it,I tell myself, realizing he’s still waiting for me to give him an answer.
“A drink would be nice,” I tell him. “Champagne, maybe? Something for a celebration.”
“I was thinking whiskey, for myself,” he says with a laugh, leading me down the hall and towards a large room with a huge fireplace at one end, plush velvet and leather couches in deep green and dark browns arranged in front of it. “But I think I can find a bottle of champagne to open for you.”
“I’d take wine, if you don’t want to open an entire bottle.” I sit down gingerly on the edge of one of the couches, feeling very conspicuous, still in my wedding dress. Theo shrugs off his jacket, laying it over the back of one of the nail-studded barstools in front of the gilded mahogany bar at the far end of the room, and loosens his tie.
Something about the motion, the quick way he tugs at it, and the way those long fingers nimbly undo the first two buttons of his shirt as he drops ice into a glass with an audibleclinksends a small flush of heat through me.Calm down,I tell myself, but I see the touch of dark auburn hair at the edge of his shirt. I have a sudden vision of myself undoing the rest of the buttons, my fingers sliding down his chest until I see all of what’s underneath the shirt.
He pours me a glass of wine, carrying both it and the whiskey over as he comes to sit next to me. “Here you are,” he says, handing me the glass, and I take it gingerly.
Theo hesitates, as if he’s trying to decide what to say. “To companionship,” he says finally, tilting his glass towards mine, and I feel another of those confusing pangs in my chest as I tap the edge of my glass against his.
“Companionship,” I say softly, and I know it’s the first real lie I’ve told him.
I have no intention of being his companion. I have no intention of being anything other than his unwilling wife until the day comes when Nikolai has what he needs to put an end to Theo and his empire—then, I will go on with my life and become whoever I will be without him.
There is no future where we are anything other than enemies, and that ends with anything other than Theo deposed and dead.
The wine is good. If nothing else, it softens a little of what’s left of my nerves, and I find myself wondering what tonight would have been like if I were actually a virgin. If Theo really was going to be my first, instead of me pretending that he will be. Would I be more nervous? Less? Angry or sad?
There’s no point in thinking about it, because you don’t know, and you never will,I tell myself. What I need to do is focus on what’s happening now, so I can get through the night without Theo realizing that this isn’t my first time.
He reaches for my hand as I finish the wine, helping me up from the couch, and my heart slams into my chest in a way that it shouldn’t—not with him.I’m nervous because of how tonight needs to go,I tell myself, as he leads me toward the stairs.Not because I’m looking forward to going to bed with him.
I keep telling myself that, all the way up the mahogany staircase, up to the third floor, where Theo leads me to the broad double doors that lead into his room.Ourroom, after tonight, and I feel my heart beat hard in my chest again.
I want to run. Far away from here, far away from all of this, because I feel terrified suddenly. Terrified that he’ll know, that he’ll realize this isn’t my first time, that he’s been duped, and also for a reason I can’t fully express and that I’m afraid to look too closely at. I’m terrified that I’ll want him, and terrified that I won’t be able to pretend to want him enough.
I’m afraid that everything I’ve been told about him is true—and so very scared that it’s all wrong, and that Theo McNeil is a very different man than I’ve been led to believe.
