“And you do not know what it is to be reminded daily that one misstep nearly cost you everything.”
Her breath caught.
“What misstep?”
“That is not a matter that concerns you.”
She straightened.
“I am your wife. If it affects the way you rule this house, if it affects the way you treat me, then it concerns me whether you like it or not.”
His gaze hardened.
“It concerns you only to the extent that it shapes my judgment,” he replied. “You are not required to dissect my past in order to live here.”
“And I am required to accept your decisions without question?”
“You are required to trust that they are made with reason.”
She gave a short, humorless breath.
“I can respect reason,” she said. “But you ask for obedience without offering explanation, and that I will not give. I will not beg,” she replied, her voice tightening. “If this marriage is to work, it will not be because I asked for your approval.”
He held her gaze for a moment longer than necessary. Then his eyes dropped—briefly, deliberately—to her mouth.
“And if I wanted more than your approval?” he asked.
Her heart betrayed her at once, pounding against her ribs.
“I will not be managed,” she said, though her voice lacked the sharpness she had intended, softening despite herself beneath his scrutiny.
“And I will not be opposed merely for the pleasure of defiance,” he returned, stepping closer, not enough to touch, but enough that the distance between them no longer felt neutral.
“You mistake me,” she replied, forcing steadiness into her tone even as warmth crept treacherously up her throat. “I do not contradict you for sport. I do so because I refuse to vanish into whatever shape you find most convenient.”
He reached for her then, not violently, not even roughly, but with unmistakable intent, his fingers closing around her wrist as though to anchor her in place.
“Vanish?” he repeated, his voice lower now, closer. “You believe I brought you here to diminish you?”
She attempted to withdraw her hand, but his grip held firm.
“You brought me here because I suited your purposes,” she said, lifting her chin even as her traitorous heartbeat thudded beneath his thumb. “Because I was a means for you to spite Kit.”
His fingers tightened just enough to make the contact undeniable.
“I brought you here because I would not see you bartered like coin,” he said, and there was something sharper beneath the words, something that bordered on anger. “Because I would not allow you to be reduced to a transaction.”
“And yet you forbid me from speaking of my brother,” she countered, her breath uneven now for reasons she refused to examine. “You cannot erase him. He is my blood.”
“And you,” he answered, his voice dropping to something quieter but no less forceful. “Are now mine.”
Heat surged into her cheeks, not solely from indignation.
“Yours?” she echoed, though the single word emerged softer than she would have preferred.
“Yes.”
His thumb shifted almost imperceptibly against the inside of her wrist, where her pulse betrayed her with humiliating clarity.
