Page 51 of Crying Wolfe
He made an ugly sound of disbelief, his lip pulled back in a snarl. “You can’t stop?” he echoed, his voice rising in volume. “It’s not that hard to not take things that don’t belong to you, Rosaline. You just don’t fucking do it.”
She rushed toward him, beseeching him to listen, to hear what she’d never had to say. “I don’t take anything important. Nothing of value. I just…I can’t help it. If I don’t give in to the—”
“This had value to me.” He brandished the cup at her. “This was priceless. Possibly one of the most valuable artifacts in the known world. I spent a bloody fortune on this. Ten fortunes. Above that, I sacrificed my freedom for it, as we’d never even be in this predicament if you’d not stolen it in the damn first place!” Whirling on his foot, he stalked to the tables, setting the cup next to a matching set. The ones inlaid with a ruby and an emerald.
She’d taken the chalice. The one belonging to the missing Anatolian Sapphire.
His words crushed her defenses, and she lost the battle with her tears. They leaked from a wound so deep, she worried that everything that gave her life would bleed away in the approaching storm of sadness.
Predicament? After what she’d thought was a rather happy beginning to their marriage, he still considered her apredicament? Still felt as though their match was a sacrifice of his beloved freedom?
Of course he did. She’d known that was what their arrangement was. That he’d been forced into the marriage by circumstance, Morley’s coercion, and his own ambitions.
That it had been her doing.
And yet, she’d thought they’d somehow moved past that. That they’d established affection. Intimacy.
Perhaps more.
But no. To him she’d been a predicament, one he was trying to make the best of by at least enjoying her in bed.
“I knew it,” he growled, spreading his palms on the table, the cup sitting between them. “I knew that night that you’d taken something, and I let those big, doe eyes of yours convince me otherwise.” Pushing away from the table, he stalked toward the door, his stride long and angry.
“Eli,” she sobbed his name, chasing after him. “Eli, wait.”
He paused. Not turning back to face her but allowing his chin to touch his shoulder to cast her a sidelong look.
“I’m sorry, Eli. I—I thought this was harmless. Until you told me what you told me tonight… And I heard you, Eli. I vow it, I was putting everything back where it went. I’d made a pledge not to ever again touch what wasn’t mine.”
Exhaling for what felt like forever, he finally spoke in a quieter voice, though one as measured and cold as the underside of a glacier. “That’s not nothing,” he conceded. “But no more. No wife of mine will be a thief, you hear? I refuse to spend my life watching for you to slip up. Wondering what else you’re going to take from me… I just…” Both fists curled at his sides. “I won’t fucking do it.”
The door slammed behind him like the gates of a fortress he’d erected between them.
The leaking dam behind her eyes burst, and she fell to her knees, wracked with sobs too powerful to deny. They tore through her, rending her strength obsolete.
This agony wasn’t his fault.
It was hers.
How could he ever understand the weight of this demon?
CHAPTER11
He’d left without her.
Rosaline haunted the halls of Hespera House for days, languishing like a ghost denied the paradise promised beyond this life.
The night she’d been caught, she mustered the courage to go back to their room, hoping she’d given him enough time to cool down. Finding their bed empty, she’d sat and waited for him to return…
And woke late the next morning, as alone as she’d ever been.
Rushing into the foyer, she’d noted her luggage was still piled neatly next to the door. Eli’s, however, was gone. No goodbye. No note. No message left with the servants.
The trip was to have taken four days and three nights, and Rosaline decided that when Eli came home, he’d return to a different wife.
Her first order of business was to return everything as she’d vowed to do, arranging the pilfered items just so in the places she’d found them. Second, she sorted through the rest of her trove, and identified where and to whom each item initially belonged. It took a bit of doing, but she was able to post almost everything back to the original owner.
Anonymously, of course.
