“Perhaps I merely find his story interesting.”
“Perhaps you could do me the courtesy of telling me the truth.”
The indifference fled his eyes. He quickly masked it with distaste. “Emma, I’m busy. I don’t have time for this nonsense.”
Her simmering temper boiled over. “Ourmarriageis not nonsense. Stop shutting me out—I won’t stand for it.”
“You’re giving me an ultimatum?” His expression hardened.
“I amnotyour dead wife,” she said in annoyance. “What we’re having is known as a conversation. It’s what married people do.”
“And if I don’t want to talk?” he said icily.
“Then be a coward and hide in your blasted jar!”
“What the devil is that supposed to mean?”
He was white-lipped, livid. She was too angry to care.
“It means thatyou’rethe one putting up the wall between us,” she snapped. “If you’re too afraid to tell me what’s really going on, then you deserve to stay right where you are.”
A hush fell over the study.
“You want to know?” he said with menacing softness. “Fine, I have something to show you.”
***
On the way over to the banks of the loch, he questioned himself again and again.
Do you really want her to know the truth?
He’d never taken anyone to the cave. Not Laura—not even Charlie. Yet something in him would not relent, and it was too late anyway; Emma had issued the challenge, and he could not back down. The looming dread that he’d been battling since their wedding night now suffused him completely. Perhaps it was better this way. The waiting—the anticipation of the blade’s descent—was too much to bear.
Best to get it over with.
Best to be done with illusions of love once and for all.
So now he found himself with Emma at the loch, its blue surface gently rippling and studded with diamonds of sunlight. A rock-strewn beach ringed the water, and green hills rose all around. His steps grew heavier and heavier, yet he trudged on until they reached the place that he was looking for: the opening to the cavern that time and tides had carved into the bank.
“A secret cave?” she said.
He helped her over the boulders and into the sheltered grotto. Although he hadn’t been there in years, it was exactly how he remembered it. Humid and dark, the silence was buffered by the sound of lapping water and wailing gulls. He smelled moss and earth and remembered loneliness.
Emma was looking at him, her head canted. Waiting for him to speak.
“This was the place I escaped to as a lad.” The words emerged matter-of-factly. “When I could manage to get away from my uncle’s cruelties, I came here.” He placed a palm against the mossy wall, remembering how he’d huddled against that stony pillow, retching, gutted by pain. “Sometimes I prayed the water would rush in. That it would cover everything. End everything.”
He heard Emma’s sharp intake of breath.
Nowshe would see how weak, how disgustingly pathetic he’d been.
Ruthlessly, he forced himself to forge on. “When I got sick, my uncle believed I was faking my symptoms to gain attention. He said I was a weakling and a liar. He valued strength and perfection above all else—and he despised me for being a failure on both counts.”
“Did he… hurt you?”
“I preferred the beatings to his other punishments,” Alaric said flatly. “To the isolation, starvation, and scorn. There wasn’t a day that went by without him telling me how contemptible I was. How worthless.”
“Why didn’t your aunt stop his abuses?” Emma’s voice quivered.
