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She heaved a sigh. “Rafe…”

He shook his head and strode out of her bedchamber. She hurried after him. “Explain to me how marriage changes anything happening between us.” He didn’t slow his pace. “I dare you to. What would change?”

He spun on his heel, and she almost crashed into his chest.

“You’d be mine!”

Her jaw hardened, and fire pumped through her veins. There it bloody was. They glared at each other, his wounded pride battling with her indignation.

“I will never be yours,” she said quietly. “The only person I belong to is me.”

His jaw ticked. “I’d also be yours. Apparently, that is worth nothing.”

That didn’t even dignify a response. It wasn’t remotely close to the same. And he knew that. A husband did not belong to a wife. A wife could not control her husband in any capacity.

He scoffed. “I understand now.” There was so much more to that scoff, to those words, than he let on.

“What do you understand now?”

“You want your freedom. So when I leave, you can slink right off to Mr. Turner’s bed.”

Her mouth dropped open, jaw somewhere on the floor of her cottage. A dull buzzing filled her ears. He might as well have slapped her; the shock was that sharp.

His nose turned up. “Yes, I am aware of your shared history.”

That was not what she was reeling over. That was not what she was bloody raging over. Her fists balled, nails biting into her palms. “Out. Get out.”

He blinked.

“Now, Rafe! Get out of my cottage!”

How dare he? How bloody dare he. She rubbed at her chest, at the piercing ache that had taken up in her chest. She shoved her finger toward her door. “Leave!”

His mouth tightened. Then he spun on his heel and made for her door.

She stood, feet unmoving in her kitchen as he threw open her door and stormed out. The slam of the door rebounded through her cottage, the sound shaking right down to the marrow of her bones. She couldn’t believe this.

But he’d perfectly proven her point.

No man was safe.

If he truly respected her. If he truly cared for her. If he truly meant what he’d said and wanted to be with her. They could have carried on. She would have agreed to exclusivity, even with him spending time in London. They’d just resume when he returned here.

She stared at her door.

If there’d been a chance any man could be safe…it would have been him. Her boy from the cave.

Her chest hollowed.

But not even he was safe.

She’d been worried her feelings were growing too strong. She turned around and walked numbly to her worktable.

Well, he certainly fixed that.

* * *

Theo scratched out another error in her math. She crumpled up the paper and threw it in her wastebasket. Her brain wasn’t working. She was too irritated, too outraged, too bloody despondent. She hadn’t known she could be so furious and so forlorn all at the same time.