“You did.”
He paused. Should he uphold the status quo and leave her?
He couldn’t. Even if she didn’t know it yet, he understood that these last few days, and last night in particular, had shifted the parameters of their relationship.
“You meant everything to me.”
“And what of the rumors concerning your exploits and conquests?” she pressed on as if she hadn’t heard him.
“Simply rumors. Some were ruses and bait, others were fabrications by bored Society wives. But none were true. I was never unfaithful to you.” He took another step forward. An elemental part of him needed to be closer to her. “Not once,” he said, finally speaking the truth they both needed to hear. “Never.” A terrible weight lifted off his shoulders.
“Never is a very long time,” escaped her lips.
“Ten years.”
“You robbed us of a life together.” Her fragile whisper carried far enough to reach him before her spine visibly stiffened, and she drew herself up to her fullest height. Her next words emerged on a stronger note. “It seems my work in Paris is done.”
“What do you mean?” He felt as if he’d been dropped from a great height, and the only way to break his fall, the only way to hold her in place, was to keep her talking.
“I mean”—Her words and the latent anger within them gathered steam—“I am leaving Paris.”
She pivoted away from him, her skirts swishing about her ankles with the force of her intention.
“Stay,” he called out, the note a raw scrub of his throat.
What was that in his voice? Desperation? Was hedesperatefor her?
The word, or the desperation contained within it, did its job when she stilled. Her eyes caught his over her shoulder.
“Mariana”—He closed the distance between them, even going so far as to place a staying hand on her arm, so she would have to face him—“weareman and wife.”
“Not in a meaningful way.”
“Then what was last night?”
They were the wrong words. Last night wasn’t about their status as husband and wife. Last night was about pent-up, irrepressible desire.
She gave a short, bitter laugh. “Certainly not meaningful.” She shook off his hand and retreated a few steps to steady herself against the nearest elm. “You lobbed a grenade into our marriage and blew it to smithereens. Now you’re claiming marriage after one night of passion? Do you think me such a weak-minded woman that one night could turn my head and undo the past?”
He caught an emotion in her eyes that he didn’t expect to find there. Fear. What was she afraid of?
The answer followed before he’d fully formed the question. She was afraid of herself.
Another question occurred to him, one he was almost too afraid to ask. “Do you think yourself that woman?” He took a step forward, drawn toward this fragile possibility.
“Can’t you leave me be?”
“I don’t think I can.”
“What is happening between us is insanity.” Her eyes searched his. “Haven’t you proven enough?”
“I don’t think I have,” he replied. He’d never known how addictive truth-telling could be. “I think I have a great deal more to prove.”
Last night had done nothing to slake their desire for one another; it had only whetted it. Certain desires weren’t mitigated by the passage of time.
She flashed him a look, a question in her eyes he couldn’t interpret. There was a time when he’d known her thoughts before she did. No longer was that the case. Thespy lessonshad worked too well.
The thing was this: he wanted to be able to read her. The debutante he’d met at the Folly had been in the first draft phase of womanhood. Now she was a completed manuscript, one new to him. At least, she was mostly new. Certain pages he’d read quite thoroughly.
