“Not a chance.” His eyes had gone dark now, dangerous even. “You want to hate me for it? Fine, go ahead. To your heart’s content. But I will bar every door in this house first before I let you run. Post footmen at the gates. Lock you in your damn bedchamber if that’s what it takes.”
Her pulse hammered in her throat. “You wouldn’t dare.”
He stepped closer, and she caught the scent of him—sandalwood and fury and something wild underneath. “Try me.”
For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think past the heat rolling off him, the absolute certainty in his voice. Part of her—some reckless, foolish part—wanted to see if he meant it. Wanted him angry enough to fight dirty.
But the rest of her recoiled in disgust. “So that’s it, then? I’m your prisoner now?”
“If that’s what keeps you here—”
“Then you have proved my point exactly.” She shoved at his chest, and he caught her wrists. His grip wasn’t cruel, but it was unyielding. “I was never a wife to you, was I? Just another thing you own.”
His face went white. “That’s not—”
“Isn’t it?” She yanked her hands free, stumbling back. “You would rather toss me aside once you’ve used me. You would rather cage me than let me go. What does that make me?”
The silence stretched on. Until it was utterly suffocating.
Then, something in him seemed to collapse. His shoulders sagged, and he turned away, one hand braced against the mantel like he needed it to stay upright.
“It makes me desperate,” he said quietly. “It makes me a man watching his wife walk out the door because he was too much of a coward to tell her the truth from the start…”
She hadn’t expectedthat. Hadn’t known justwhatshe had expected, but it was certainly not the defeat in his voice, the way his knuckles had gone white against the marble.
“But you are right.” He still wouldn’t look at her. “If I kept you here by force, you would hate me all the more for it. And I’d rather—” His jaw worked. “I’d rather let you go than watch you look at me the way everyone has looked at me for the last several years.”
Aurelia stiffened. Something cracked open in her chest. This wasn’t the fight she had wanted. Wasn’t the grand gesture or the passionate plea. It was just him, breaking quietly in front of her.
And she didn’t know what to do with it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Sebastian’s boots slammed against the headland, each step a punishment he’d earned. Wind tore at him, strove to shove him back. He pushed harder.
Summer was coming, yet his mouth tasted like ash and winter.
Aurelia was leaving. Right now.This moment. While he strode like a madman toward a lighthouse that never had anything to offer but his own damned reflection in the glass!
When he returned to Ravenhall, she would be gone.
And Christ, he’d let her walk out.
Stood there like a stone-faced bastard while she’d looked at him with those eyes—the ones that had always seenhiminstead of the title, the house, the convenient arrangement—and he’d said nothing.
Done nothing.
Because the truth was lodged somewhere between his chest and throat, choking him—he didn’t want an heir from her anymore. He wantedher. Her ridiculous sunshine in his gloomy days. The way she’d touch him like he was something precious instead of something broken.
What a fool he’d been to think she would stay with him no matter what she discovered about him. He’d presumed the bonds of matrimony would be far greater for her than they necessitated being for him.
Well, she had proven that wrong, hadn’t she?
And now he was alone the way he was destined to be, walking toward the lighthouse—his monument to failure, his confession in stone and glass. It rose against the bruising sky like an accusation. Catherine had died here. Chosen the rocks and the sea because living with him had become too unbearable.
Now Aurelia.
His fault. All of it, his own goddamned fault.
