Page 39 of Private Arrangements
She reeled.When you make a pact with the devil,her father had often told her,the devil is the only one who comes out ahead.Would that she'd listened.
He smiled coldly. “Excellent. I'm glad we cleared any and all misunderstandings about our respective good faith on this matter,” he said. “I'm sure you understand now why I will be leaving without you.”
Intellectually, perhaps. But viscerally, all she knew was that she loved him and he loved her.
“I know you are angry with me now,” she said, her voice as tentative as a mouse tiptoeing around a cat. “Would it be all right if I joined you in Paris in two weeks, when you—”
“No.”
The finality of his response chilled her. But she would not give up so easily. “You are right, of course. Two weeks does not amount to much time. Would two—”
“No.”
“But we are married!” she cried in frustration. “We can't carry on like this.”
“I beg to differ. We certainly can. Separate lives mean separate lives.”
She hated pleading. She made sure she always dealt from a position of strength, even with her own mother. But what else could she do now? “Please don't. Please don't decide all of our future this moment. Please! Is there anything I can do to change your mind?”
The contempt in his eyes made her feel like something that had just oozed out of a badly mildewed wall. “You can start by offering me an apology, which both decency and good manners require here.”
She could have slapped herself. Of course he'd want her to grovel for forgiveness. Her pride, large and thorny, was difficult to swallow, but she forced it. For him. Because she loved him and she could not lose him. “I'm sorry. I really am terribly, terribly sorry.”
He was silent for a moment. “Are you? Are you really? Or are you only sorry that you are caught?”
What was the difference? If she hadn't been caught, would an apology even be needed? “For what I did,” she said, because that was probably the answer he wanted to hear.
“Stop lying to me.” He said each word separately—Stop. Lying. To. Me.—as if he ground his teeth as he spoke.
“But I really am sorry.” Her voice trembled and she was powerless over it. “I am. Please believe me.”
“You are not. You are sorry that I won't continue to be your dupe, that I won't take you at your word, and that you will be left behind with none of that perfect married life that you thought you were getting.”
Her anger abruptly rose to the fore again. Why had he asked for an apology when he had no intention of accepting any? Why had he forced her to abase herself for nothing at all? “Perhaps I wouldn't have had to do any of this if you hadn't been as dense as a peat bog. I've met Miss von Schweppenburg. I don't know what you see in her, but she would have made you about as happy as a drowned cat. And she never would have married you anyway. She is her mother's puppet. She has less spine than a bowl of trifle and—”
“That's enough,” he said, his voice dangerously smooth. “Now, was that so hard, a bit of honesty?”
She suddenly felt wildly stupid, ranting on about Miss von Schweppenburg, of all people.
“I wish you well,” he said. “But I would prefer not to see you again, not in two months, two years, or two decades.”
It finally occurred to her that he was dead serious. That what she had done was something hideous, beyond the pale. Unforgivable.
She raced ahead of him and blocked the door with her body. “Please, please, please listen to me. I cannot bear the thought of living without you.”
“Bear it,” he said grimly. “You'll live. Now kindly move out of my way.”
“But you don't understand. I love you.”
“Love?” he sneered. “So it's love now, is it? You mean to tell me that love drove you crazed with longing, thereby smashing your moral compass and whipping you down the primrose path?”
She flinched. He had taken the words she meant to say and slapped her with them.
Slowly, he advanced toward her. For the first time in her life, she shrank before another human being. But she refused to move aside, refused to let him simply sail on out of her life. Bracing his arms on either side of her, he brought his face very close to hers and fixed her with a brutal stare. “I wish you hadn't mentioned love, Lady Tremaine.” His voice was low, and cold as ashes. “Right now I am this close to throwing you against the wall. Again, and again, and again.”
She whimpered.
“It so happens that I know a thing or two about not-quite-requited love, my dear. It so happens that I have lived in that state for a while. I have not seduced Theodora so that she must marry me. I have not misrepresented my fortune. I have not forged some letter that declared my cousin's sudden death, clearing a path to the ducal title for myself. And when she writes me and tells me of her mother berating her because she is ineffectual with potential suitors, do you think I write back informing her that she must regale them with her fear of childbirth and her dislike for running a household?
