frowned. “Have I been unkind to you in some way?”
“No,” she said, trying to dispel his fears quickly. She was afraid that he was imagining himself to be some kind of monster when that couldn’t be further from the truth. “You are independent. We do not live in each other’s pockets, as you have already noticed by virtue of the fact that we have separate bedrooms. We do not often take long meals together out on the terrace. We do not often share our innermost thoughts.”
“Why did you marry me?” The words were so confused, so utterly filled with disbelief. It was shocking. To hear him question why on earth she might have married him.
“I could give any number of reasons a woman would marry you. You are incredibly handsome. Successful. And as for me... I am... Well, let’s not be dishonest about the situation, Leon. I am quite plain.”
He frowned even more deeply. Then he reached across the table, the edge of his thumb touching the corner of her mouth. Her heart slammed hard into her breastbone, her entire body going rigid, every fiber of her being on high alert to see what might happen next. He traced the line of her upper lip, then dipped down to the lower one before sweeping his thumb up to her cheekbone, dragging it slowly across her skin.
“I will confess that my first thought was that you were plain. But as I have spent time with you, as you have cared for me... I can no longer see what I first did. The only real memory I have, the only concrete image in my mind is your eyes. You are what I remember, while everything else is vague impressions and hazy ideas. If it is not entirely absent altogether. Your eyes are my truth, Rose. How could I find them, or you, anything but incredibly beautiful?”
She had stopped breathing now. Any moment, she had a feeling she was going to tip sideways in her chair and lose consciousness completely. But to have him look at her like this, to have him say those things... This entire nightmare was being twisted into a dream. Perversely, she was enjoying it. Perversely, it was everything she had ever wanted. But not like this.
Still, she found she couldn’t turn away. “That is... It is an incredibly nice thing to say.”
“I’m stingy and arrogant, remember? I am neither generous nor particularly nice, to hear you tell it. I am not being kind when I say these words. I am being truthful. There’s a limit to the sorts of truths you can tell in my position. There are very few things I know for certain. But this is one of them.”
He shifted the position of his hand, cupping her face, his palm warming her. Igniting her. “You are my wife. I wish to know everything about you.”
He dropped his hand away from her face, drawing it back to his side of the table. She cleared her throat nervously, shifting the cutlery on the table in front of her as a displacement activity.
“Did you go to university?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“What did you study?”
She shifted, feeling uncomfortable and edgy beneath his intense dark gaze. “I was a history major. As you’ve probably guessed, I like old things. Really, the older and dustier the better.”
“Is that a jab at my age?”
She laughed. “Um. It wasn’t, but that’s an interesting point. No, I like the smell of books, musty pages and such. Aged velvet furniture that’s always a little damp.”
“Doesn’t sound too appealing to me.”
“No. Of course not. Your room here is all modernized.”
“I like things sans dust and mold, what can I say,” he returned. “So you did your history degree.”
“No,” she said. “I went for two years. And then I stopped.”
“Why?”
“I married you.”
Her answer settled uncomfortably between them. An accusation, when she hadn’t meant it to be one.
“Which begs the question,” he said, “that I have been dying for the answer to. How old are you?”
She fiddled even more intensely with the silverware. “Twenty-three.”
“So you were twenty-one when we married.”
“Twenty. I was just shy of my birthday, and we have been married a little over two years.”
“That seems a bit too young.”
She lifted her shoulder. “My father was dying. We both knew it. Knowing that I was safe with you, knowing that we were settled brought him a lot of joy. Neither of us wanted to deny him that.”
“And then your father died and... I have been off partying. I left you here in this house by yourself with no finished degree doing...”
“You helped. When he died. You didn’t just abandon me and go to parties. You supported me. You took care of so many details when I was far too emotional to do it myself.”
The relief on his face touched something deep inside of her. “Well, that’s something.”
“And I’ve been organizing my family history. Our family tree, which stems back to the founding of the country, actually. So it’s very rich and...you know, complicated.”
“Wonderful. So I left you here to grow moldy with the old furniture you love so much. How generous of me.”
“No,” she said, her chest tight. Because it was the truth. Her father had died and Leon had returned to the exact lifestyle he had been living before their marriage. He had never touched her, not once, but he had continued to sleep with other women. She knew it. She wasn’t blind. Gossip magazines were alight with it. The poor, sad Tanner heiress and her wandering husband. But she didn’t want to tell him that. She didn’t want to tell this man that.
How strange that she did not want to disappoint him with the truth about himself.
“You are not being truthful with me.”
“I’m not entirely certain the truth is beneficial in this situation.”
He rose from his seat and came to stand in front of her before dropping to his knees. They were eye level, and he was so close she could smell the soap on his skin, could feel the warmth coming off his body. She was seized by the desire to touch him. To close the distance between them. But she didn’t. She just sat there, frozen as ever.
It turned out she didn’t have to close the distance, because he was the one to do it. He reached up, cupping her cheeks with both of his hands, drawing her face down toward him. “Then we shall make a new truth. I see no reason why we cannot make a new life. You have shared with me your dreams, and I find that I like the sound of them.”
“You aren’t working right now. You are...housebound. I am the only entertainment you have.”
His dark gaze turned stormy. “You make me sound like a child.”
In some ways, he was. In some ways, he always had been. A man with a very short attention span who was constantly on to the next toy. The newest thing, the shiniest thing. As a girl she had found it exciting. His flashy cars, his sharp wardrobe, even the beautiful women he would sometimes bring to her father’s parties. Until the sharp claws of jealousy had sunk deep inside her. Until she had wanted to occupy the position those women were in.
It was the moments in between that got her. That held her affection for him. The spare times when she’d caught a hint of haunted darkness around the edges of his bright smile. The times when he’d looked at her and seen down deep.
The times he’d looked at her, period, and not just past her.
“I...”
“I am not a child,” he said, his voice a dark temptation she couldn’t turn away from.
And before she could say another word, before she could protest, before she could even