Nick met her eyes wide with equal parts hope and fear and saw that she was giving him the benefit of doubt. She was giving him a chance to tell her the truth.
But it was a different truth that gnawed at him. Before him stood the opportunity to right the wrong he’d done Mariana by marrying her. He’d known from the start that he was endangering her heart, but the enemy agent’s note made it clear that this marriage was endangering her physical person, too. That couldn’t be stood.
In a single stroke, he could protect Mariana from the increasingly dangerous underworld he navigated on a daily basis, and he could save her from the inevitable collapse of their marriage along with the bitterness and hatred that would follow. He wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of his father.
“The column is true,” he stated. “Every word of it.”
His heart pounded so hard in his chest that he thought it might rend in two. But she couldn’t see that. She only saw the supercilious smile pasted onto his face.
“How can that be? I thought we were—”
“Happy?” he finished for her, his tone ripe with distancing notes of condescension and disdain.
Although it killed him, this was the right measure. One he should have taken from the start. He would do anything to protect Mariana and keep her safe—even if it meant breaking her heart.
Acid rose in his throat for what he must say next, and for the way he must say it. “We’ve been happy, darling. But I fail to see how my having a sweet bit on the side has anything to do with you.”
She flinched as if he’d physically struck her, and another part of him died. “I wasn’t aware that we had a—”
“Society marriage?” He forced out a laugh, mean and abrasive, ripe with ridicule. “Pray tell, what other sort of marriage would we have? Don’t be daft, darling.”
She blinked once, twice. Betrayal, hot and wounded, shone in her eyes. He’d succeeded. He’d made her hate him and ensured her safety.
“Get out,” she commanded low and hard. Her brows crinkled together in disbelief as if she’d stunned herself with her own words.
“My darling Mariana,” he began in that supercilious tone that irked her to this very day, “I thought you were aware of the sort of marriage we have.”
Eyes glaring at him through twin pools of unshed tears, she pulled her robe tight like a protective shield. “Get out,” she repeated louder and stronger, her resolve clearly gathering steam, “and don’t come back until I say you can.” She’d hesitated before adding, “Unless it’s to see Geoffrey and Lavinia. In which case, you will alert me ahead of time when you will arrive, so I can be out.”
Like that, the mirage of his happy marriage evaporated, and the future pattern of their marriage was established.
He’d immediately taken himself off to the Continent before he could change his mind and beg her to take him back. A single ten-minute conversation had set in motion the trajectory of his life for the last decade.
In the name of England, he gave up Mariana. In the name of truth . . . Well, that was a different matter. No longer did it feel like he was waiting for the axe to drop. It had dropped, and he’d survived.
Little did he know that survive was all he would do for the next decade, that surviving wasn’t the same as living. A part of him, the only part that mattered, had died that night.
Ahead, Mariana’s pace slowed as she approached the well-lit hotel, and without a backward glance his way, she allowed herself to be ushered inside by obsequious attendants. How would she explain her trousers? In a luxurious hotel, discretion was everything. Likely, she wouldn’t have to.
Nick’s pace doubled its rate as he strode past the entrance. Unable to resist, he risked a quick look left toward the lobby and saw her needs being met by no fewer than three attendants. Once past, he further increased his pace until he nearly jogged, as if he could outpace both the present and the past.
But the past wasn’t through with him yet. The momentum of that long-ago night had propelled him ever forward and away from her. At least, it had until three nights ago when he’d spotted his wife at the ballet.
Except the woman he’d just made love to wasn’t his wife, not exactly. The Mariana he was coming to know in Paris was a woman apart from the girl she’d once been. She was a woman who had picked up the pieces of her life, after having been abandoned by her husband, and carved out her own paths and experiences. With her sister, the woman had even created a vocation for herself by founding a progressive school for girls.
Her irresistibility, when he’d first beheld her energetic, lissome form entering a copse of woods with a stout hound at her side, was nothing to her irresistibility tonight. This Mariana—a woman composed of flesh and bone and fantasy—wasn’t a woman who a man released from his grasp once he held her within it.
Yet it wasn’t that simple. Between them stood an insurmountable mountain range the height and breadth of the Himalayas: their history—a history riddled with half-truths, outright lies, and impossibility.
He rounded a corner and a blast of north wind met him full in the face. It was the slap he needed as he traveled a Paris murky with a billion dots of newly-arrived fog. Just as the fog began to dissipate beneath the glare of the sun’s first rays, so, too, did the night’s uncertainty.
An essential truth remained unchanged: he couldn’t have Mariana. It was too dangerous. But he was having trouble remembering for whom it was most dangerous. Was it for Mariana? Or was it for him?
Chapter 18
P’s: To mind one’s P’s and Q’s; to be attentive to the main chance.
A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
