Page 70 of The Phoenix Bride
“Of course. Run away, as you always do.”
My jaw clenches. “Cecilia, enough.”
“Shall I handle you like porcelain? Shall I coo at you and say,Yes, David, your life is so difficult, I pity you terribly,so you can go home and be smug in the knowledge you have a gentlewoman pining for you?”
“What is it you want from me?” I demand. “You complain I treat you cruelly, and yet you won’t let me leave. You want me to yell at you instead, is that it? You want me to rant and rave about the sins you have committed, thatIhave committed? Would that make you feel better?”
“Maybe!” she cries. “It would be preferable to your absence!”
I am very close to saying something unforgivable; I clamp my mouth shut, grit my teeth, hands fisted at my sides. She is breathing heavily, her flush trailing down her cheeks and neck, all the way below her collarbone. Her chest is heaving, dress falling, hair in disarray from the force of her movements, eyes bright with anger. She looks like every one of my most illicit imaginings, and it is shameful how much it affects me. But itdoesaffect me, after weeks of misery and exhaustion, to stand before the woman who has haunted me and see her like this. I can no longer separate anger and desire.
Instinctive, unthinking, I find myself moving forward, ignoring the tiling entirely. I seize her by the waist, spinning her around, pressing against her so we stumble backward and butt up against the closed door. She gasps and loops one arm around my neck, raising her head in the expectation of a kiss; it takes all the temperance I have to bring my lips to her ear instead.
“You have suchinfinitetrust in my self-control,” I murmur to her. “I did once, too, but I am not myself recently, querida. I am fraying at the edges, and you continue to test me, and there is only so much more I can bear before I break.”
She arches her back, pressing into me. I swallow a groan. “Break, then.”
“There is a roomful of courtiers downstairs.”
“I doubt they can hear.” She laughs breathlessly. “You know the king is there, too?”
“What?”
“I don’t care if he knows,” she says, plaintive. “I don’t care if any of them know. You have driven me to madness, David Mendes. I am yours entirely.”
I look down at her, squirming in my arms, eyes glassy, mouth parted. Her lips are the color of rose hips, and it would be so easy to take them with my own and make them bloom, pretend we are any other two lovers having a tryst at a party. This close, the scent of her is almost dizzying, perfume and dessert wine and salt-sweet heat. I skim my mouth across her collarbone, the swell of her breast. She whimpers. Reason is impossible. I bring my face to hers, her hand lifts to press against my cheek—something glints on her finger—I turn my head to kiss her wrist—
And then I see the ring.
I release her. I step back. She frowns in confusion, says my name, her hand still raised. Then her eyes follow mine, and she realizes what I have seen. Her arm drops.
There is a lump in my throat, coal black, heavy. I swallow around it.
“David,” she whispers. “I…”
“It is official, then.”
“Yes.”
“When will you…?”
She fiddles with the ring, twists it on her finger. The diamonds glint in the light of the sconces. “Ten days.”
It feels as if I have been punched. “Ten days,” I echo.
“It isn’t—he—we aren’t like that,” she says. “We are friends.”
“He will be yourhusband,Cecilia.”
“Yes, but…That doesn’t mean anything.”
“It does to me.”
She flinches. “What would you have medo,David?” she asks, voice breaking. “It is my only choice. My only chance at liberty.”
“I know.”
“My hand is his, but my heart is yours. Can that not be enough?”
