I don’t want to say it, but I know that I must. “You don’t have to.”
Emma’s eyes widen. “You tore me out of my life. Now you’ll marry me—takeme—against my will?” She leaps up suddenly and slams her hands against my chest. “What iswrongwith you? You’re insane! You’re a monster!”
She beats my chest with her fists, but I barely feel it. She’s small, and despite her rage, she’s practically ineffectual. Tears stream down her cheeks, and against my will, against my composure, it breaks something in me.
I catch her wrists and pull her against me. “You loved me once.”
“I loved a different man,” she says, the words almost a gasp. “And clearly love has nothing to do withthis.”
She’s soft in my arms, helpless. A surge of animal protectiveness rises inside of me—but I’m the one she needs protection from.
I can’t live two lives, I tell myself, as I did so many years ago, when she and I were together.I can’t be two men.I must be the man that survives.
So I make myself cold, pulling her hard against me, forcing her to look me in the eye. “You will bear a child for me,” I tell her, struck by the hard, determined will and fearlessness in her beautiful face. “You will serve me as a wife. And I will protect you, and any children we have, forever. But I do not have time to fight you. I don’t have time to search for another woman. You loved me once, and perhaps you will love me again. But in the end, Emma, love is not required for this arrangement.”
Her chin trembles, but there is only fury in her eyes. “I’ll fight you,” she whispers. “Every moment of every day that I’m here, I will fight you. I’ll escape. I’ll find a way.”
She doesn’t pull from me. She instead leans even nearer, looking straight up into my face with a shocking resolve that I would never have expected from such a soft, quiet, warm woman. She’s made of far stronger stuff than I could ever have known.
“You’re a smart woman,” I say softly. “Surely you know that you will never escape. And someday, you’ll lose the will to fight. We are in as remote a place as Scotland knows. My staff are sworn to me. You are mine now, Emma Rosen. As you once were.”
Her eyes widen slightly.
“And I will wait for your consent,” I say, adding this in a low growl, and drawing her close so our noses are nearly touching. “But I will not wait long.”
I release her then, and to my surprise, she neither fights nor attempts to run. I turn for the door.
“This isn’t you,” she whispers.
I halt, the words seeming to physically stop me. “You don’t know me anymore,” I reply after a moment. “You never truly did.”
When she doesn’t respond, I look back at her. She stands with shoulders squared and hands in tight fists.
“You will be provided for,” I inform her coolly. “Anything you wish for, you will have granted. But you can’t leave the property—not until you’ve conceived and I’ve been named successor. People will be looking for you—bad people. Dangerous people. Here, at least, you’re safe.”
She smiles then, an enraged, bitter smile I didn’t think her capable of. “Safe,” she whispers. “From every monster but the one standing in front of me.”
The hurt and fear in her eyes, the hate—it hooks me right in the ribs. But I’m not here to fall in love. I’m not here for happiness.Duty. I incline my head. “Be that as it may,” I say. “This is your home now, Emma. This is your life. Don’t fight it.”
I turn without another word and leave. I turn the key, locking her in. The sound of it echoes coldly down the empty halls.
3
Emma
Ipace for what feels like hours.
Walls of black cloud roll off a blacker sea, crashing into the stone walls of Rosehill Manor. The windows in my room are latticed, impossible to break through. Even if I could, I’m nowhere near angry or frightened enough to commit to that mostfinalof escapes.
Maids come and go throughout the day. I ignore them when they offer me food, clothes, a bath, a walk or a drive. I ignore them when they insist on lighting the fire. I ignore them when they try to convince me that Malcom Walker is not the monster he seems—he’s a good man in an impossible position. A good man who once loved me, and who I loved.
Malcom.
Tears burn down my cheeks as I pace, as the day wears into evening. My bare feet are freezing and numb on the frigid flagstones. I’m so cold I almost regret not letting the maids build a fire. But that would be a consent of a kind—it would be me permitting my own kidnapping.
Malcom.
This is not the Malcom I knew. The Malcom I met when I was nineteen and he was older, what? Twenty-five? That Malcom was sweet and sharp and shockingly beautiful.
