He almost laughed at her pronouncement. Would have had he been capable of levity, but the desolation of mourning was still enshrouding him, and he could not smile. Could not laugh.
“Indeed,querida? Pray, tell me how you might know me better than I know myself.”
She framed his face in both her hands now. “You think you cannot feel, but in truth, you are terrified of acknowledging just how much you do. I still have your tears on my skin, Alessandro, proof you have a heart.”
But she was wrong about that. He had spent years proving it.
“My heart is dead,” he denied, “and the sooner you realize that, the better off you shall be. Ours is a marriage of convenience and nothing more.”
And having her examine him was decidedly inconvenient.
How easy it had been to hide from the pain when he had been at war. When his every move had been made for the sake of survival and vengeance against the enemy. When it had been either kill or be killed.
“Hearts do not die,” Catriona insisted. “We are all capable of healing and loving again. Will you not try, at least for this time we have together, if not for your own sake, then for mine?”
He thought of all he had seen, all he had done. The bloated corpses of dead soldiers, the screams of dying men. Death had become commonplace, but he was not as numb as he had imagined. He was beginning to realize that now.
Something inside him froze. “Precisely what is it you want from me, madam?”
“I want to feel as if you do not resent me,” she said.
“I do not resent you.” That much was truth, for he did not.
“I want to feel as if what I feel for you is returned, at least a modicum,” she pressed.
“What is it you feel for me? Hmm? You do not even know me.”
If she knew him, the real him,El Corazón Oscuro, she would flee. She would not be on his lap. She would not be holding his face in her hands with such indefinable gentleness. If she had seen the sins he had committed, if she had walked in his boots, she would run screaming, recognizing him for the soulless devil he was.
But still, she did not go. Nor did she allow him to retreat. She remained where she was, a weight in his lap he liked far too much. Her thumbs traveled gently over the ridges of his cheekbones. Twin, silken caresses.
“What would you do if I kissed you now?” she asked.
Kiss you back.
He was saved from folly by the carriage rocking to a halt.
They had arrived at the coaching inn at last, and not a breath too soon.
With more force of will than he had recently been able to evince, he clasped her wrists, loosening her hold upon him. Then he deposited her on the opposite bench.
“We have arrived at the inn,” he told her. “Perhaps you wish for a respite whilst the horses are changed.”
Without waiting for her response, he threw open the carriage door and leapt to the ground as if the fires of Hades were upon him.
Perhaps, in a sense, they were.
Chapter Fourteen
She had pushedAlessandro too far.
Catriona knew it when, after the first change of horses, he had chosen to sit on the box rather than share the carriage with her. Subsequent stops had maintained the same distance. And his imposition of space had not improved by the time they reached the inn where they would be staying for the evening.
She had dined in a private room alone.
She was now in the room where she would be staying for the evening, also alone.
And her patience for him had reached an end.
