He sat down beside her. “I’ve never before sincerely wished I possessed Zeus-like qualities. If I had, maybe I could convince you to be my Hera.”
“Do you know how Zeus won my namesake? He made himself a helpless little bird. She took him in, nursed him because he was broken and in need, and she fell in love. Then, his infidelities transformed all Hera’s compassionate care into vengeful, jealous cruelty.”
He blinked. “Hera was, by natural disposition, a jealous woman.”
“Goddess,” she corrected. “And by natural disposition? I think not. She was jealous byinfluence.By Zeus’s false image and his selfish use of her compassion.”
“I willnevermake myself helpless,” he vowed. “Or misuse your compassion. Or give you reason to be jealous.”
She stared at him, wide-eyed, accusing. “How can you, who perceive so much, understand so little.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You’vealready doneas Zeus did. You’ve made yourself that wounded bird by simplybeing. Having caught a glimpse of you—therealyou—and that, only the smallest glimpse youinvoluntarilyallowed...how am Ieverto settle for anything less?”
“You don’t have to.”
“Perhaps not...” She turned to him. Something urgent burned in her eyes. Something almost wild. “Tell me something about youno oneknows.”
There was only one thing about him no one knew—an experience rather than a fact. And, often, the experiencedidrender him helpless.
He heard the sound. The screeching wheels. The desperate cracking.
His arms tingled as if his blood was dripping out from the bottom of his fingertips. Suddenly, all the arguments he’d made in his favor felt hollow.
His father, too, had been a duke—and had he been able to protect his duchess?
No.His reckless choice had cost him her life and his own. And who, two weeks past, had encouraged Hera out into that storm—when, at any moment, a strike could have takenherlife?
He was danger personified.
Like his father, curst by the gods for his hubris.
So, he looked into her eyes, and he lied. “I would. But I have no secrets to share.”
* * *
If she hadn’t left that stupid penny wrapped up in a handkerchief and tucked inside her bedside drawer, she would have hurled the metal chip at his head.
Sheknewhe’d suffered. She’dseenthe still-living suffering within his eyes. And she’d witnessed that terrible wreck of the carriage. Yet, he’d gazed at her with complete sincerity andlied...just after he’d asked her to marry him!
Did he even understand what that would mean for her? How she’d have to give up her separate existence—legally, physically, and spiritually—and become one with his own. He’d asked everything of her when he’d long loved another and then would not even confide in her his greatest pain.
She would have taken a chance. She’d would have told him about Annis, and, if he’d agreed to take them both, put at risk her heart and her being to give him her hand. She’d have been willing...if he’d have first given herhistrust.
Perhaps selfishly, she’d wanted something of him that didn’t belong to Chev or Ash or Alicia...and certainly not to Penelope. Even if he already confided his past to any or all of them—and she did not believe he had—she would have settled for him telling her the simple truth.
But he’dlied.
Worse still, she’d ached with him when she’d seen the torment that had briefly flashed across his features. In that moment,she’dgrown old and smarting. Now, she felt vastly alone—a visceral premonition of how she’d feel if she were to live with the unrecognized shadows he carried about inside of him.
She could not.
And so, she would have to leave him tomorrow.
He was so—she ran the back of her hand down his cheek—beautiful.
Toobeautiful.
