All my helplessness and fury surge up and I scream, “Liar!” Shoving him back as hard as I can, I take advantage of his surprise to leap off the counter and race out of the room.
Chapter Nineteen
In which all arguments should be resolved in a heavenly pool house.
Morana…
It’s raining, the grass is slippery as I charge through the back gardens. I don’t know where I’m going but I won’t stay in the house with fucking Cameron.
For a moment, he was being honest with me. He told me about his poor cousin, he told me Artim was dead. I didn’t even feel a flicker of remorse. Then he has the fucking audacity to lie to meagain?
“Wife! Come back in the house!”
The Laird of the Manor is roaring like a bear trampling through the woods and with about as much subtlety. Anyone in the household who was not awake to witness this debacle certainly is now. I see one of his guards walking toward me, he looks over my shoulder and abruptly turns the other way.
Putting on a burst of speed, I round the lavender bush and nearly trip, knocking my hip painfully into the swing under the oak tree and sending it flying.
Right into fucking Cameron.
“Christ, woman!” Skidding to a stop, I watch the blood gush from his nose. “This is the second time you’ve nearly broken my nose, what the hell do you have against my face?”
“Because it’syours!”I shout, “You lying sack of shit! Why do you keep playing with me? I know we’re not married!”
He looks at me as if the light has finally dawned.
“You believed Ivanov when he was talkin’ shite about the marriage being fake? You’d really believe that son of a bitch over me?”
“He told me to check the city records! We do not have a marriage license! Cormac and Mala’s is there, but there is nothing for us!”
He frowns, clearly not picking up on the key points in my statement. “How did you get online?”
“Why does that matter?” I scream, “The point is that you fucking lied to me. Your whole family did and this is so sick!”
“Christ, woman!” He runs his hands through his wet hair, his bloody nose forgotten. “Why is this so important to you?”
“Because now I’m sp-”
Spoiled. I was going to say, “I’m spoiled and no other man will want me.”Bozhe moy,the indoctrination was that thorough. Part of me has always believed that my virginity was the only thing of value I had to offer.
“What? You’re what?” He reaches for me and I slap his hand away. “We are married, for better and for worse, though we’re gettin’ a lot of the latter part. I haven’t lied to you, not once. Yes, I withheld information, but I did not lie.”
“Yes, my trust in you has grown byleaps and boundsafter the night when you used me as bait,” I sneer.
“Son of a motherless whore!” he shouts to the sky, “I am sorry, lass. It had to be done. I do ugly things sometimes, dark things. But the women and children your feckin’ father is moving around for Stepanov do not deserve what’s bein’ done to them. We started moving against the Ivanovs before they killed Ferr. Yes, I want to avenge him. But Ferr would tell you there’s something more important than revenge. It’s rescue.
“So yes, I kidnapped you. I used you to draw in your cousin. This is true. But if you are the woman I believe you are, you would have done both things willingly if it helped those girls.”
The rain is pouring down his face, rinsing away the blood and turning his t-shirt transparent against his sculpted chest.
He’s right. I didn’t know my father was already in the Red Trade with Stepanov. If I had, I would have done anything I could.
Maybe I still have something of value to offer after all.
Surging forward, I kiss him, hard, mouths crashing together and I try to angle the kiss so I’m not bumping his wounded nose again. His fingers are weaving through my wet hair holding me to him, kissing me back greedily.
I’m startled into a shriek when he swings me up in his arms and heads in the opposite direction, moving toward the back of the house. There’s a glassed-in building I haven’t seen before - do things just pop up out of the ground overnight here?
“What is that?” There’s steam inside, condensing on the glass and I can’t see inside.
