Which was where he found her.
She sat on a shingle bank, his heart’s desire, with a shawl tucked around her shoulders. Her arms clasped her knees, her chin resting there as she gazed at the sea.
At the sound of his boots on the shingle she looked up. She flinched, froze, the breeze seizing its chance to pull the end of her shawl free and string it out, a pennant streaming in the wind.
“No,” he said. “Don’t run.”
There was tension in every line of her body, a rabbit inches from its burrow. She stared at him like he was an apparition.
“I’m not a mirage,” he said, “and neither are you.”
“I…” She swallowed, though it might have been the wind which dried her throat. It was as thick as earth or water here, an element that made itself felt, both taste and scent, scouring his lungs, carving his face.
Her image seemed to quiver. But a mirage wouldn’t have chapped lips and weather-reddened cheeks and flyaway hair. A mirage wouldn’t have been so perfectly, imperfectly beautiful.
“I thought you’d gone.”
She could have saidwished, she could have saidworried, both might have fit into the hollow of her tone.
“I wanted to understand this place.” He couldn’t take his eyes from her. “I wanted to see…to see what you loved. And I hoped… I hoped I might meet you, just like this. Be able to talk to you.”
“Why?” She got to her feet, retucking her shawl, brushing down her skirt. The buffeting wind didn’t seem to bother her. “There is nothing to say.”
“Then why are you afraid to hear it?”
“The only thing you can possibly have to say to me is an apology.”
“And I am sorry from the depths of my heart.”
She wouldn’t look at him, kept her arms tightly wrapped around herself, focused on the sea as though her strength was anchored there.
“Well. It has been three months, I suppose. Your wife is with child, perhaps. You come seeking other diversions.”
He bit back an oath. He’d taken plenty of beatings. He was man enough to take one he deserved.
“I am not married. I’ll never marry anyone but you.”
She laughed, brittle as the flint they stood on. “So the Thornes will fall either way. To mediocrity and scorn or to bachelorhood.”
“You think I’ll be ruined if I marry you? Know that I would give up everything, if I must. But I’m not so easily defeated. Society will do as I tell it. It will do asyoutell it. I know you have that power, even if you hate to use it.”
Her answer took a moment to come; a whisper dredged from somewhere deep. He could hardly hear it over the wind and the waves.
“I hate it all. I hate you.”
He fought to stay standing. To stay solid and still and keep his heart beating. Did she really think all his floggings had left him unable to be hurt?
“Why did you come?” she said. “Why can’t you let me be?”
“To wither and die? A spinster aunt?”
“I was happy.”
“Were you?”
She turned from the sea and took a step back up the shingle, away from him. He wrapped his hand around her arm before she could walk away.
“Shall I repeat the words that made you hate me? You are alive, Madelaine. You deserve to live. I force you to it, not for my sake, but foryours.”
