Because while her head understood, her nerves were still jangling, her pulse still spiking. India. He would have left, and he hadn’t been truthful. The reality of it continued to ebb and flow through her veins, burning like acid. Images kept surging, of Cecily’s face, the glimmer of triumph in her eyes, the guilt in Tristan’s. Her foolish request of going to the fair with him; her dreams of going anywhere with him. It felt as though she were falling.

“My dear.” His hands slid up from her hips and locked around her waist, the warm, possessive pressure unwelcome and devastating. Her instinct was to run from him, the source of her hurt and confusion. In a terrible paradox, it was his arms she wanted to run to.

She shook her head.

His eyes heated. He rose up on his knees and his face was close to hers.

“You feel very far away right now,” he said.

She turned her face away, because he was near enough to kiss, and stupidly, she wanted to.

He leaned in and buried his face in her neck.

She was frozen in his embrace. But his lips moved up over her throat and the soft, familiar contact unleashed a warm wave of longing down through her legs, rendering them useless.

She took a fistful of his hair and pulled. He had cheapened something glorious, and she wanted him in pain for it.

“I never intended to hurt you,” he murmured against her ear. “I ask your forgiveness. Forgive me.”

“Sweet words won’t absolve you.”

He drew back, his eyes bright. “And this?”

She made an angry sound when his mouth covered hers, but her lips parted and let him in. His kiss was drenched in need, and her hand slid from his hair and curved around his nape to pull him closer, and she loathed herself for it. His arms circled her and pressed her to his chest, and she became soft and pliant in response, and she resented that, too. Her body was melting, wanting his, even without the honesty, without the trust. She wanted him inside her and resented him at the same time. How sordid, how grotesque.

His thighs were pinning her skirts to the settee, keeping her legs trapped. She could bite him, but she could smell the arousal on him, and felt the heat of his urgency, and knew the only thing stopping him now would be her asking him to stop. And the words did not come.

With an angry moan, she slid her hand down the flat plane of his stomach, over the front of his trousers, and found him hard. He made a guttural sound, and his weight crashed down on her, crowded her back into the upholstery. It was a tussle, a heated tangling of tongues and fingers dragging off clothes and untying laces, until fabric ripped, and she wrenched away. She gasped at the sight of the remnants of her chemise, torn like paper, clean from her collarbone to her navel.

She glared at Tristan, panting. “Get a hold on yourself!”

He gave her a thin smile. “This is me having a hold on myself.”

His hands spread the ruined fabric, exposing her breasts, and his head lowered. A rush of heat swept over the surface of her skin as her body arched up.

She let her head fall back against the settee. There was no stopping either of them, now. He was in the grip of something stronger and older than reason, and she wanted one last time. One last time. She offered no resistance when he shoved up her skirts. She had taken a rogue into her bed, into her life, so a mad last tumble in a ripped bodice was a befitting good-bye.

He leaned over her, one hand on the back of the settee, his other hand working between them, unfastening his trousers, his expression so darkly determined, she barely knew him.

Her lids lowered, shutting him out.

When he did not move, her eyes slitted open.

Above her, his face was agony. “Lucie,” he said hoarsely. “Say you will have me.”

How tempting, to deny him his pleasure at the height of his pain.

Unfortunately, it would hurt her just as much.

One last time.

She slid her hands up his arms and held on to his shoulders. “I will have you.”

He moved over her with the might of a storm, forcing the air from her lungs, and she clung to him, her mouth beneath his, as they tumbled through the dark. She knew he would not stop taking her until she would cry out. She would lose this battle gladly. How foolish of her, to once have thought holding back her voice would hold back her heart. How foolish of him to think wringing such bliss from her now would return her heart to him. She held out long enough to make him sweat, until he had to be hurting from it, and when the blaze consumed her, she screamed.

He was heavy on her until the beat of his heart against her ribs had slowed. He sank to the floor with her in his arms, cradling her close.

“Let me stay tonight.” He was slurring the words.

She was too wrung out to send him away. “Draw the curtains and lock the door,” she said, the leaden exhaustion after a shock already claiming her. By the time he had returned to her, she was asleep.

* * *

The sense of betrayal returned with the cold light of dawn creeping through the curtains. She lay staring up at the ceiling with tired eyes. The longer she looked, the more cobwebs she saw, flimsy torn veils graying with dust.

Tristan was still going to India, and she still felt like a fool. It weighed on her chest and leered at her as grotesquely as the gargoyles protruding from every roof in Oxford.

She should be rejoicing. With Tristan gone, she would have time for all the things that mattered again, and at least de facto she would have much more control over London Print. Free rein, had that not been her heart’s desire a month or two ago?

How quickly things could change. The thought of him gone left her hollow.

What puzzled her most was that nothing had been missing from her life before him—how could he feel essential now?

She took a shuddering breath and rolled to her side, away from him, and dragged herself to a sitting position. He woke then; she could feel it.

A soft rustle of blanket, and then his fingers touched her bare spine. Her shoulders tensed in response.

The caress faded to nothing. “I gather you are still angry,” he said.

The intimate scratchiness of his morning voice hurt her. The sooner he was gone, the better.

“I am,” she said to the room. It had to be anger. The hollowness, the sickness in her chest.

There was a pause. More rustling, as Tristan was sitting up, too. “Will you look at me?” he asked gruffly.

She glanced back over her shoulder and blinked against the fresh pain the sight of his tousled hair and bare shoulders brought on.

“Funny, is it not,” she said. “You told me not to trust you, but I did. I told you to be honest, and you were not. We have both broken the rules.”

His eyes had a hard look to them. “No,” he said. “It is not funny.”

She looked away. At least he was not trying to deny his lack of honesty, or attempting to dress it up as mere secrecy. Dishonesty, secrecy, good reasons or not: at the end of the day, she had suspected nothing. She had been skin to skin with him, looked into his eyes while he was inside her, and she had suspected nothing. He was greatly skilled at guarding his secrets. He could hide anything he chose from her—until he couldn’t, because the secret things always found a way to the light, and then they would pull the floor from underneath her feet.

“No,” she agreed. “It is not funny.”

She buried her face in her hands and ground her palms against her eyes. She had to look well put together for the celebratory lunch at the Randolph with the Investment Consortium today. The chance for this was slim. She was so fatigued, it felt as though her face were melting off her skull.

“I would be much obliged if you could take your leave,” she said.

She looked away when he picked up his clothes and dressed, because this was the last time she would ever see him do so.

He let her herd him to the kitchen without protest or attempts to sway her, perhaps because he felt guilty still.

He turned to her a good few paces from the back door. “I wish to see you tonight.”

She quickly shook her head. “I’d rather not.”

His hands flexed by his side, as though he had to stop himself from reaching for her.

“Because of the broken trust,” he said, calmly, but his body was a column of tension.

Because of everything.

She could only nod.

A dreadful emotion rose between them; they stood and watched helplessly while what they had created between them was changing as unstoppably as the tide was turning.

His eyes shuttered then, the amber glow gone. “I will find the countess,” he said. “And then I will earn your forgiveness.”

The sound of the kitchen door falling shut behind him came from a distance. Moments later, his head and shoulders darkened the kitchen window as he walked past. He was looking straight ahead.

Her back against the kitchen wall, she slid slowly to the floor, her legs sprawling on the cold flagstones.

The problem was not that she had not forgiven him. It was that she already had. She was an inch from bolting out the door to go after him, calling his name. She’d fling herself into his arms and bury her face against his neck. She’d breathe him in and ask him to stay; to forget everything that had happened and to ignore everything that was coming for them.

She was an inch from becoming his creature. So close to becoming someone who’d plead with their husband when he did not come home at night, who made excuses when they lied, who lied to themselves only so they could carry on orbiting around the fickle creature that was man. She was so close, when Tristan was neither the source of the food she ate, nor the roof that sheltered her, nor the name protecting her.