“I don’t just think,” he said, tilting his head as he looked down at her. His fingers tightened almost painfully, and he took hold of her other arm, moving it away from his body as though he knew what she had in her bag. “Tell me, did you hope he would fall into your arms when his precious wife died?”
“I—”
“Let us not play games. I know you love him.”
She had never given name to the emotion she felt for Nathanial. Perhaps it was love, or perhaps it was possession, but it didn’t stop her from saying, with all the coldness she could muster, “And you? I’ve seen the way you look at her.”
A look crossed his face that made ice form in her veins. For a second, his eyes blazed with fury, before the emotion passed, leaving a cruel amusement in its wake. “And how do I look at her?”
“As though you want her.”
He seemed to consider for a moment. “Perhaps I do. Why, Juliet, are you jealous?”
“Of course not! She’s nothing—a chit in her first Season who knows nothing of the world.”
“True,” he agreed, transferring both her wrists to one hand so he could take her chin. The pistol slipped from her grip, and his fingers were tight enough to be painful. He forced her to meet his gaze. “Yet she has charms you would barely be able to comprehend.”
“I never thought you were in the petticoat line.”
“As I said,” he said, a humourless smile twisting his lips, “you cannot comprehend it.”
“If I had known she would twist you around her finger, I’d—”
“You’d have what?” He forced her hands together away from him when she tried to fight, and for the first time she truly appreciated his strength and power. She tried to control her breathing. “You wouldn’t have tried to murder her?”
“I—”
“Even to me, you will not be honest,” he mocked. “My, how the tables have turned.”
“Montague, please,” she said when his grip on her chin didn’t ease. “Let’s talk about this as adults.”
Both brows rose this time. “Oh, but we are. And you, Juliet, are going to listen to me.”
All she had to do was reach for her pistol, but he was looking at her with more of that amusement, as though he could read every thought that crossed her head.
She hated him.
If she had the pistol pointing in his direction, she would have shot him there and then without a single regret.
But to achieve that, she would have to make him believe he had intimidated her into obeying him. “Very well,” she said, dropping her gaze demurely.
“At the outset, I knew our goals did not align,” he said, the hand from her chin sliding to her throat. She struggled, briefly, but he squeezed, long fingers wrapping almost entirely around her neck, and she froze again. “I concluded I would bear with you until you outlived your use. At the picnic, you did just that.”
His grip on her hand was too tight; without alerting him to what she was doing, she couldn’t point the pistol in his direction. “If that were true, you would have visited me and told me yourself.”
“With Theo out of the city and beyond your reach, there was no pressing obligation.”
“Far more worth your while to attack Nathanial,” she spat.
“Yes,” he agreed pleasantly, even though the look in his eyes was anything but pleasant. There was such yawning darkness there, as though she was looking into the mouth of a chasm that held no end. His fingers tightened around her throat, and she doubled her efforts to twist the pistol to face him. All she had to do was pull the trigger.
“She will never love you,” she said, her last act of defiance. The pistol’s barrel inched around. Just a little further—
Montague leant down as though he was going to kiss her, and his nose almost brushed hers. “No one will ever love you again.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Mere hours after Theo had forewarned Nathanial that his family were likely descending on them, they arrived, his mother in full sail and his sisters following behind. For Nathanial, at least, it was a familiar image, but poor Theo shrank back. Especially when his mother bypassed him and plied her with questions.
