“Not everyone in this world can make the easy choice or take the straightforward path. Your tidy Mayfair world depends on it. Society’s ease comes with a price for those who will pay it. And make no mistake, Mariana, someone must pay the price. Have you ever taken a good look around you in London? Have you ever noticed the hordes of maimed men littering the sidewalks? Those men paid the price and are still paying it.”
“But, Percy”—This conversation had taken a sharp turn, and she was determined to right it—“you owe . . .” His eyes snapped fire, and the remainder of her words died in her mouth.
“You know nothing of my debts,” he said. “I owe you nothing.”
“But Olivia—”
“My wife, yes.”
“Your wife?” The question startled out of her. “Percy, you were declared dead. Olivia is a widow. You don’t get to call her your wife.”
A stab of concern for her sister cut through her. After years of widowhood, Olivia had settled into a measured life of peace and routine. It wasn’t the sort of life Mariana could tolerate for more than five minutes, but Olivia had chosen it. That was enough for Mariana. And, now, here was Percy, alive to muck up the past. And the present.
His chair a sharp, strident scrape across the floor, he stood. “Allow me to escort you to the door.”
“You never answered my question,” she protested. “Why did you choose this life over your family?”
His head canted to the side, his eyes an onyx glint in half-shadowed light. “You think this life a choice? You’re not asking the right question.”
“Tell me what question to ask.” A strange idea occurred to her. “Are you here against your will?”
Although he hadn’t been moving, somehow his body went yet more still. It was as if she was a gorgon who had turned him to stone with her question. “Someday you and I might debate Aristotle’s meditations on free will and fate, but not today. It’s time for you to leave.”
He placed a guiding hand on the small of her back and all but pushed her along. Nearly through the door, she planted her feet into rotting floorboards. She must say something more to this man, and he would hear it. She swiveled around to face him. “Whatever comes of this, leave Olivia be.”
A strange mixture of curiosity and vulnerability shone in his eyes, but he kept silent.
“Stay dead, Percy.”
He flinched. Good. She pivoted on her heel and strode down the corridor, her footsteps a decisive echo behind her. The old Percy was in there, but buried deep—too deep for her to fathom.
By the time she reached the outside of the building, her feet beat a harder, more decisive tattoo, her thoughts racing toward the source of her burgeoning wrath: Nick. She’d been a fool for the man . . . again.
A storm of anger swept through her, body and mind, before settling into a cold fury. Her furies usually ran fierce and hot, obscuring the world around her for the length of time it took to drink a pot of tea, but this one was unlike any she’d ever experienced. Through this cold fury the events of the past week showed crisp and clear.
She could have forgiven Nick the opera singer ruse. In fact, she saw now that it had been an inevitability. Perhaps she’d been on her way to reconciling with him. Perhaps that had been an inevitability, too.
Now she knew the truth about Percy, a truth Nick had kept secret, not only from her, but from Olivia. Forgiveness and reconciliation with Nick were impossible.
Bitterness frayed the edges of her crisp and clear fury. She should have known better than to be seduced by that most insidious of emotions: hope.
Hope had no place in the lexicon of her relationship with Nick.
No longer was this a game they were playing. Real life had been happening all this time, directly beneath her nose. She’d been playing fast and loose with a ruthless man, one who would watch others grieve when he knew a truth that would save so many from heartache. The good of the many outweighed the good of the few. That was Nick’s belief. What were a few lives worth when so many more were at stake?
But what about those few? What about those individuals who sacrificed so much without any knowledge of their act? What about Olivia?
To harm Olivia was to harm Mariana. It had ever been so. And ever would be. The man who had inflicted that harm had once held her heart, a heart he may once again hold . . .
She swept aside the remainder of that unruly thought and returned to her cold fury, a fury that included herself. She’d gone into her dealings with Nick with the full knowledge that she played with fire. Yet she’d played on, foolishly thinking she could separate the emotional from the physical. She’d thought she wouldn’t get burned. That she’d learned her lesson the first time around. Well, she was scorched.
And she had no one to blame except herself, not even Nick. Past behavior was the best predictor of future behavior, after all. Absurdly, she’d fallen into the trap of believing it could be otherwise and that a new pattern could develop.
Ha.
Nick would always be Nick. And she would always be Mariana, the girl who fell hopelessly in love with him any time he glanced her way. How easily she’d allowed herself to forget.
But now she remembered. And now, once again, she must find a way to forget and carry on with the rest of her life. Dark possibility snaked in alongside the thought, and a way of forgetting came to her. Even as her stomach dropped to her toes, cold intellect pressed forward. It might be the only way.
