“All right?” he asked.
“Mm.” She wanted to be annoyed with him for spoiling her scene but had no energy to expend on that emotion. What she felt after her initial surprise was nothing but relief. She searched his face much as he was searching hers. “You?” she asked. “You were in there so long...”
“Was I? I didn’t realize. I was thinking, I suppose.”
Fiona pressed a hand to her stomach but not because it rumbled. She knew what question she should ask and knew herself to be a coward for not asking it. She did want to know what he had been thinking. Instead, she asked, “They haven’t come back, have they? I’ve been listening. I haven’t heard them.”
Thaddeus held out the book to her. When she shook her head, he removed the finger he had been using as a marker and set it on the table. “No, they’re not back. I would have come for you right away. I think, now that it’s dark, it’s safe to say that they’re hunkered down wherever they found shelter.”
“But you believe that’s Thunder Point.”
“Yes. It makes sense that Remington would have tried to get them there. They might have reached it before the storm.”
“It’s still raining.”
“A drizzle.” Thaddeus removed his foot from the rocker runner. “They’ll be back tomorrow.” He went to the bed,turned back the covers, but did not climb in. Instead, he sat on the edge facing Fiona. He leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees. He folded his hands together. “You are so goddamn beautiful.”
Fiona blinked. She heard nothing complimentary about his observation; he said it merely as a statement of fact, one that did not seem to particularly please him. She had no idea if he meant for her to respond so she remained silent.
“Sometimes I wonder if that’s why you think I asked you to marry me, as though I believed your beauty were the sum total of your worth and you accepted that because you think it’s true.”
Fiona’s fingers curled around the arms of the rocker. Her nail beds whitened with the strength of her grip. Still, she spoke evenly and without rancor. “You are wrong, Thaddeus. I do not accept it. Or I didn’t. Not when we were in New York. I had a place in the city, a role on and off the stage. I knew what I was about. What am I about here?” She raised her chin a fraction. The movement helped her keep it from wobbling. “Tell me, Thaddeus, what am I about here?”
She did not know how he might answer her question or even if he would. She held his dark, impenetrable stare until the aching pressure of tears she refused to shed made her blink.
“What did Ellie say when you spoke to her?” she asked. “I know you did. It’s what you always do after we’ve argued. You might have sought out Phoebe if she’d been here—I’ve noticed that, too—but she isn’t, so it would have been Ellie.”
Thaddeus finger-raked his hair, lifting salt-and–pepper strands at his temple. He sat up and settled his hand on his knee. “She heard us, Fiona. She could hardly help but hear since she was in the kitchen.”
“I heard her rattling around.”
“So did I. That should have been our cue to take our discussion to another part of the house, which I believe was her intention in making noise in the first place.”
“Why are you telling me this? It’s not an answer to what I asked.”
“I’m telling you because I think you’re under the misapprehension that I share our private conversations with her, or at least my side of them. I don’t. There’s nothing private when she’s heard everything. She told me in my effort to allay your fears, I dismissed them, and that when I tried to understand, I cornered you. That’s why you fled as soon as you had the chance. It probably explains why you holed up in here the rest of the day. Does that sound as if it might be right?”
Fiona found a curlicue in the pattern of the rug where she could cast her eyes. She tugged on her earlobe. “It might be right,” she mumbled.
“How’s that again?” he asked, cupping an ear.
She raised her head and gave him a haughty look. “You heard me. And if Ellie just had, she’d say you were cornering me again.”
The shadow of a crooked, self-effacing smile crossed his face as he acknowledged the truth. “She would. And I was.”
“Well, stop it. You see what happens when I feel trapped.”
“I do,” he said quietly, “I should have seen it before now.”
Fiona had no use for the look of resignation that suddenly defined his features. It frightened her. “I think I’m hungry now,” she said for want of anything better to say and started to rise from the rocker for the second time.
Thaddeus was having none of it. “You’re a changeling, Fiona. It’s never been clearer to me than it has been today. Sit down. I’ll bring the tray.” He got up and retrieved it and then made room on the table beside her. “I see you’re readingThe Count of Monte Cristo. How many times is that now?”
“Three.”
“Do you want the biscuit? Honey?”
“Yes. Both.”
