“If you loved me, you would know I was telling you the truth.”
“Then I would be a fool.” He paused meaningfully. “And I am no fool.”
She sucked in her breath, taking in his meaning: he didn’t love her.
He should be impervious to her hurt.Shouldbe. But he wasn’t, damn it.
God, he had to get out of here! But he needed to make sure she understood. “You have what you wanted, Caitrina. You will be my wife. Just leave it at that. Don’t expect anything more.”
“Like love?”
Especially that. “I will give you my name and in return I will have my freedom.”
“What do you mean?”
He held her gaze unflinchingly. “I can only be trapped into marriage once.”
She sucked in her breath when his meaning took, looking at him as if he were a stranger. “You do not intend to keep your vows.”
It was not a question. He cocked a brow. “Did you think I would? I have a reputation to uphold. But you know that.”
Her hurt flared to anger. “So I will be your wife, but you will owe me nothing else, is that it? I will stay here with John, run your castle, and you will return whenever you like? What other duties will I have in this marriage you envision? Am I to share your bed, or will it be too crowded?”
His fury matched hers and he returned her sarcasm with his own. “I will need sons.”
“Of course. How could I have forgotten? Those sons that you can have”—she snapped her fingers—“whenever you wish. So you plan to make love to me but not love me, is that it?”
“I told you before: one is not required for the other. Call it whatever the hell you like, but there is very little love involved in shoving you up against a wall and taking you from behind.”
He could not have shot an arrow with more deadly accuracy. His words had struck with cruel precision, wounding deeply. He saw it in her eyes and heard it in her gasp of pain.
But Cate was a fighter. She would not go down so easily. She drew herself up and faced him like a warrior on a battleground. “I won’t let you do this, Gregor. I won’t let you try to convince me that what was between us meant nothing. That it was only lust. Call it whatyouwill,” she repeated his words back to him, “but even pressed up against a wall you care. I can feel it every time you touch me. Every time you whisper in my ear. Every time you let go inside me, crying my name.Myname, Gregor, not someone else’s. The passion we have is more than lust and you know it. Deny it if you want, but I know the truth. What you feel for me is unlike anything you’ve felt for another woman. It’s special, and you won’t convince me otherwise. So if you think you can marry me—make loveto me—and take other women to your bed, who do you think is the one fooling themselves?”
Gregor fought for control, but his blood pounded in his ears. She was the one who’d betrayed him, and yet she stood there so damned confident, so sure that she had him under her spell. This twenty-year-old girl who’d been a virgin a little over a week ago thought she knew more than he did about passion and lust. Thought she knew what he felt. She was still trying to control him, damn it.
But she didn’t know a damned thing, and she’d challenged him one too many times.
She was wrong. And he was going to prove it.
Cate was furious. How dare he try to cheapen what they had by making it sound crude and base!
She knew he was angry and more hurt than he wanted to admit by what he thought she’d done. But he’d gone too far, both in sending the children away without telling her and in turning their future marriage into some kind of meaningless, convenient arrangement. She would never marry him like that—ever. And if she’d really believed he’d meant what he said, she would have told him to go to the devil right there.
But Cate was wagering everything on the fact that she knew him better than he did himself. That what he was doing was not because he didn’t care, but because he did. He was acting like this because she’d hurt him—deeply. Once he realized she was telling the truth, it would be the way that it was before.
She hated that she was being forced to prove her innocence, but she was not ready to give up on him—on them. She had faith enough for them both.
She would make him pay for doubting her, though. Maybe she’d make him write her a love poem or sing her a love song? Or maybe she’d make him take Pip with him as his squire when he left. Aye, that was it. He would personally see to Pip’s training.
For she had every intention of getting Pip back—and Maddy and Eddie, too, if she wasn’t absolutely convinced the kinsmen Gregor had sent them to wanted them.
She couldn’t believe he’d found their families. But maybe she shouldn’t be surprised.You never tried. Cate felt a stab of guilt, knowing she should have made enquiries herself. But she hadn’t wanted to. She’d wanted them for herself.
Yet even if he was right that she had no real claim on them—that it was just “some young girl’s fantasy of the perfect family”—the way Gregor had sent them away was wrong. She had to find them to say goodbye. She had to tell them that she loved them and would be here for them if they needed her.
Somehow she made it through the midday meal without her face cracking, her expression like ice as she sat beside Gregor on the dais and pretended everything was all right. She wasn’t surprised when he refused to tell her where the children were, insisting that for now they needed time to settle in with their families. Later, he told her—later she could go and visit them.
Cate was too furious to chance arguing with him in public. The meal seemed to go on forever, but the moment it was over, she began making enquiries of her own.
