Because he was a fool.
Because he was bloody stupid.
Because it had beenhers.
Initially, he had hated the thing. He’d thrown it against walls, had tossed it into a puddle—the corners of pages eighty-three through ninety-one remained slightly rippled despite his efforts to dry and flatten them afterward. He had left it in a hotel, only to retrieve it some two hours later, unable to part with it. He had carried it across seas, across borders, had read it frontispiece to back cover again and again. Once, during a mad bout of drinking champagne in Paris, he had decided to burn the thing at last.
And so, he had tossed it into the fire, only to have second thoughts and retrieve it—drunkenly—from the flame. It had survived far more unscathed than his hand, which still bore several faint scars from the burns. The book had suffered some slight scorching on the red leather cover. It was fitting, he thought—the book wound up as bruised and battered as his heart.
“Clay,” she prodded, and she had the journal in her hands now, stroking it, this relic from their past. This unwanted part of them that would not seem to go away. “Why did you keep it?”
“I…” He could not think of a damned thing he wished to say in his defense. “You may have it back. Take it, Duchess. I have no need of the volume any longer.”
Nor did he have a need of her.
She could take back the bloody poetry. She could disappear through the doors connecting their chambers. He had no need of her beyond slaking his hungers inside her willing body.
I loved her once.
God, how I loved her.
Until she had betrayed him, he reminded himself, adding an inwardsod offto the weakness inside him for good measure.
“I do not want it back,” she said. “You may keep it, Clay. By now, it is far more yours than it was ever mine.”
If only my heart could be the same bloody way, more mine than yours.
If only I had stopped loving you.
No, damn it.He did not love her. Not any longer. He tamped down the maudlin sentiments. They were not only unwanted, but they made a man weak.
“I don’t want it,” he bit out. Not the book, not the way he felt for her, nor all the old, long-buried, long bitter emotions she unleashed in him. Not the memories. Not her.
She smiled sadly. “Someone told me that when a warrior gives a gift to another warrior, it is bad luck to take it back. You must keep it forever now.”
His chest hurt. “This is not a blade but a book.”
He could say she was not a warrior, but that would be wrong, for she was. She had been through so much upheaval in the last few months—Burghly’s murder, the threats and danger surrounding her, nearly being attacked by a would-be assassin—and her resilience had shown through it all. He admired her strength, even if he could not forgive what she had done.
“Words are every bit as powerful, every bit as dangerous, as weapons,” she said then, her voice quiet. Steeped in regret.
He thought of the words she had written him. He had long ago shredded the letter, tossed its pieces into the grate. But he had not forgotten them.
“Perhaps you are right, Duchess.”
They stared at each other, tension heavy and thick in the silent stillness of the chamber, the rumpled bed at their backs a reminder of their folly. A reminder of his inability to resist her.
“I must return to my chamber,” she said then, her gaze flitting from him, to the book, and then back again. They were wide and bright. Curious and questioning. But also dark with something indefinable.
Melancholy? Longing? The invisible fist holding his heart squeezed tighter.
“Don’t,” he said, the word torn from him, a plea. It was not what he had intended to say. Not what he should say. Not what he should want.
“I must.” She caught the fullness of her lower lip in her teeth, hesitating.Damn it, tears glistened in her eyes. A knot rose in his throat and he could not speak past it. Could not do anything but gently take her in his arms and hold her.
“No,” was all he said.
He buried his face in her wild curls, drinking in her scent. Roses in bloom. Ara. Young love. Recklessness. Stolen kisses beneath a thousand leaf-covered branches. How the hell had they ended up so far from where they had begun?
