Why did you break your vows?was the unspoken accompanying question.
She knew the answer might devastate him. She understood, as did he, that her answer would break this spell.
But there was no hope for it. There was no going forward without saying it. And it needed to be the truth.
She wanted him to hear the truth.
She breathed in, and prepared to say aloud words she’d never spoken to another soul.
And she turned so she could watch his face as she told him.
“Because... the point of my life has been... it seems it has been to make others happy. From the time I was very small, it seemed all my choices were made for me, because I loved my family and I wanted above all for everyone to be happy, and this determined everything I did, and everything I chose. And I was, for the most part, content to please everyone. But when I chose Paul... I knew it would not be a forever love, but it was the first time I’d ever chosen something or someone just forme. I didn’t know he would come to the garden gate that night. I thought he had already left the country. And when he kissed me...” She swallowed. “I didn’t know that he would kiss me. I truly didn’t know. He had never yet kissed me. And I didn’t know thatIwould... that I would kiss him.”
She could feel that Magnus’s breathing had gone shallow.
“...except that it seemed to me at that moment that kissing him... might be the last time in my life I would ever be able to choose who I wanted to kiss.”
Magnus closed his eyes slowly.
His lips shaped a silent oath.
He could feel his chest contract beneath her cheek as if she’d shot an arrow right into him.
He pulled in a long, shuddering breath, and pressed his palms over his eyes.
“And I think, Magnus, that you knew that I would have no choice at all but to say yes to your proposal. Because you see things so clearly. You are known to be such a clever strategist. But whatIwanted didn’t seem to matter. You never even asked. I’m not certain you ever gave it any thought. You just assumed you could have me for a price. You were right, of course. Youcouldhave me for a price.”
She felt more brutal than a firing squad aiming at a deserter.
How odd that she could feel his pain in her own body. His suffering radiated from him into her.
She could scarcely breathe for hurting him.
But some pain simply needed to be felt, she had learned.
“And I am ashamed to have hurt you. I am ashamed of what I did. I had never thought of myself as a person who would ever break a vow. But the question you asked was ‘why?’ And I think... I think that was the reason, above all, that I kissed another man on our wedding night. It was a chance to choose one final time.”
And she wasn’t sorry to have at last said those words out loud.
“But I choose to be in your bed now,” she said softly. “And I will, as we agreed, depart tomorrow.”
She didn’t know whether she wanted his absolution. She didn’t ask for it.
She loved him anyway.
So utterly and completely. He had been right about the two of them from the beginning.
Did he know she loved him?
Could he tell? If you were raised without love, did you recognize it when it was in front of you?
The ragged saw of his breathing told her he was suffering.
Finally, he swallowed slowly.
“I’m sorry.” His voice was a rasp.
He didn’t contradict any of it, because it was all true. It was precisely what he’d done. It was precisely what she’d done.
