“What does this have to do with me? I don’t have any secrets from you.”
“Don’t you?” He was angry now, his eyes hard and his mouth white. “Then should I ask you how you knew to do that? Should I hear about the men you’ve shared your bed with? Should I learn all the salacious details? Will that truth be good for me?”
Margaret sucked in her breath, staring at him in shock. He thought she’d...
Dear lord! What was bothering him was the same thing that she’d been trying to force from her mind. Maybe he was right: some secrets could only hurt.
But he was wrong about her. “I learned from Fin.”
“What?” he exploded. “Why did you not tell me? God’s breath, I’ll kill him—brother by marriage or not.”
She grabbed him by the arm before he could leap off the bed. “I simply meant that he told me you enjoyed that. He asked me if that’s how I persuaded you to marry me.” He eased back—marginally. “I’ve never done that to another man, Eoin.”
He held her gaze for a long moment. She could see some of the anger waning. “I let you think I was dead. You were a free woman. You do not owe me any explanations.”
“Perhaps not, but you shall have one. Unlike my first marriage, I was waiting until I was actually married to share a bed with my second husband. Had you arrived one day later I may not have been able to say this, but there is only one man I have ever been intimate with, and that is you.”
His eyes held hers searchingly. “You don’t need to tell me this. It would not change anything if you had. I would hate it, but I would get over it.”
She understood that too well. “Maybe so, but it’s the truth anyway. My memories of you were too strong. I was almost scared to try. I’d loved you so much.” She smiled sadly. “It was different for you. You hated me.”
He frowned, and then seeming to understand what she meant shook his head wryly. “Not all that different. Besides, unlike you, I knew we were still married.”
Margaret didn’t understand. “But you broke your vows anyway?”
“I was trying to tell you that I didn’t.”
“But you must have!” she blurted.
He looked at her as if she were crazed. “Why?”
“Because...” She could feel her cheeks flush. “Because you’re so different.”
At first he didn’t seem to understand what she meant, but then he smiled. “I had a lot of practice.”
Her heart sank, as the color washed from her face. “I thought you said—”
“Not that kind of practice. The kind of practice I taught you.” Suddenly, she understood: he’d thought of her while touching himself. “I thought of how I wanted to touch you—where I wanted to touch you—in vivid detail. I practiced with you over and over for six years.”
Her breath held, not daring to hope. “You never... with another woman?”
He shrugged, almost as if he were ashamed to admit it. “I wanted to. I hated you, and it infuriated me that I still wanted you. I tried—once. But it didn’t get very far.”
Margaret didn’t know what to say. She was surprised—stunned—and undeniably relieved. She’d been willing to accept what she must, but she was glad she didn’t have to. “I’m glad.”
He shot her a glare. “It was humiliating.”
“You don’t expect me to feel sorry for you?”
His mouth twisted. “Under the circumstances, maybe not.”
“Do you have any other secrets you want to confide in me?” She said it jestingly, but his face drew up in the blank mask she hated. The mask that shut her out.
He’s hiding something.
“Like what?”
Her gaze fell to his arm, where she could just make out a dark shadow under the thin linen. “Like what you are hiding under that shirt, and why you won’t let me see you without it in the light?”
