And so, slowly, as if through a dream, he paced to her.
In that low purple light, they stared at each other in silence.
Now that he was close, he could see that she was trembling. Despite everything, he knew an impulse to wrap her in his coat. He cursed the traitorous reflex to protect her; it seemed innate, not a thing he could help.
“Magnus...” His name was a choked plea.
“Who is he?” His voice was calm. If perhaps a little loud. There was an odd ringing sound in his ears.
For a time, all he could hear was her breath shuddering in and out.
In and out.
He waited.
She swallowed. She pulled in a longer breath.“The person at whom you are angry is me.” Her voice shook. “If you wish to throttle me, I will not stop you. You are entitled. But I will not give you his name.”
“Oh, no, Alexandra,” he explained, with gentle menace. “I’m angry at youandthe foolhardy bastard who kissed my wife on my wedding day. Give me hisname.”
The last four words were hard and dangerous as bullets.
But she didn’t flinch. She stood before him demonstrating, maddeningly, nearly every quality that made him admire and want her so: her poise, her pride, her grace, spirit, her gentleness, her beauty.
Her loyalty.
Even if it was to some man he somehow had failed to anticipate at all.
This stubbornness he’d only recently come to suspect.
Her voice shook only a very little. “I am not a soldier under your command. I am a woman, the daughter of a viscount, and now your lawful wife. I will not respond to orders as though I’m a subaltern. You’ve every right to be angry. So shout if you must, or make threats. But nothing you do will persuade me to tell you a name you do not need to know, because that man is—and I swear this on my life and the lives of all I hold dear—irrelevant to our future. He is my past. Nor could I bear any harm or scandal to come toyouas a result of harming him. For your reputationfor mercy does not precede you and you deserve to live a peaceful life.”
It took either extraordinary nerve or insanity to issue any part of that little speech acerbically.
And yet she had.
Pride died hard.
He knew that too, too well.
“Harm?” he said almost offhandedly. “No one would blame me, Alexandra, if I surgically removed his cock with a rapier. I suspect I could, in fact, gather a cheering audience for the deed.”
She visibly jerked, as if he’d pricked her skin with said rapier.
No, she had not married a born gentleman. But she knew that.
“I need his name.” The words were slow, measured, and shot through with ultimatum.
He felt, somehow, as though he were floating above the proceedings. Because even as he said the words, he knew she was right: What would knowing the man’s name change? He realized then he was just saying words, any words, because he had no idea know how to articulate the furious tangle of things he felt. Knowing the man’s name wouldn’t give him what he needed, which was for all of this to never have happened. For her not to have kissed that man.
And for him not to have witnessed that kiss.
When the moonlight illuminated tear tracks on her face a vise clamped over his heart.
“You don’t need his name.” Her entire body was visibly trembling now. “You will never meethim. I will never see him again. He is leaving the country, and so are we. I wanted to visit the gate tonight, as this part of the garden has been my favorite, and I did not know he would come here tonight, I did not know he meant to... to... kiss me, I certainly did not mean for you to witness it. I am... horrified... if I have caused you pain. And I am... I am more sorry than I can express.”
If I have caused you pain.
And he thought, with a scalding epiphany: this was a fair statement. What did he truly know of love, or being loved? What woman had wept for him, or missed him, or suffered for him?