You could marry me.
The words whispered through her mind. She ignored them. She couldn’t marry him. They shared nothing but physical passion. She was wise enough to know that for Nicholas, that was as far as his interest would ever extend.
For her. . .
She stopped as if she’d crashed into a wall. She too felt nothing beyond physical passion. But because she wasn’t a renegade libertine, it was natural to ascribe physical passion to more than mere appetite.
Except the pain that sliced her heart felt more serious than appetite. It felt like an emotion that shifted the world. Something profound, eternal, life-changing.
She deceived herself. Sexual attraction drew her and Nicholas together. That was all. Once she no longer saw him, she’d forget him. Like one forgot an irritating itch after scratching.
Even the cynical voice didn’t bother contradicting that fatuous prediction.
“Let’s not part on a quarrel.” Her voice cracked on part.
“It’s not my choice that we part at all,” he snapped.
She stood firm, although she felt like crawling into the corner and crying like a lost child. “I won’t trouble you any further,” she said dully.
A savage expression crossed his face before hauteur frosted it over. The problem was after last night, she knew him too well to be convinced. She didn’t want him to hate her. More than that, she didn’t want to hate herself for hurting him. She very much feared she hurt him. Once she’d have scoffed to imagine she was capable of wounding his finer emotions. She’d have scoffed to imagine he had finer emotions.
A better man lurked under the charm and dissipation and manipulation. That better man might never see the light of day. But she knew to the depths of her soul that he existed.
With a disgusted sound, he bent, scooped up her gown, and tossed it on the bed with a gesture eloquent of displeasure. “Here.”
He proceeded to ignore her, dressing as if she wasn’t there. She watched him with unspeaking anguish before pulling her shift over her head.
Still in that horrible, cutting silence, Antonia hauled on her dress and bundled her cloak around her. The rose silk was crushed and she wore no corset. Her hair tumbled around her face. She prayed she didn’t run into any of the more curious servants when she returned. She’d try to put her hair up in the hackney on the way home. Right now, she didn’t trust her shaking hands.
As she turned to Nicholas, her eyes were dry. Her despair extended beyond tears.
He was fully clothed but it was too late to erase her knowledge of that long, beautiful body. She knew about the dark gold hair that arrowed down his chest. She knew what it felt like to kiss his hard, arching rib cage. She knew the taste of his sex. She knew the sounds he made when he spilled himself.
Though they’d never meet again, an unbreakable bond united them.
He stared back, his eyes stark with what she didn’t want to recognize as longing. She knew this separation couldn’t hit him as hard as it hit her. Difficult to believe when she gazed into that austere, tightly controlled face. He looked ten years older than the man who had made love to her all night.
Nervously she licked her lips. His glance flickered to her mouth. She waited for him to say something derisive, but he merely collected his hat and marched toward the bedroom door. He opened it with a flourish that lanced pain through her.
It was an unmistakable act of dismissal. Which surely was what she wanted. Why was it so impossible to take the few necessary steps?
She straightened her spine and sucked in a deep breath. She’d faced the unthinkable before. She’d survived. She’d survive again.
No matter that she felt like she was dying.
Still, her feet were heavier than bricks when she trudged to where Nicholas waited in bristling resentment. Her intention was to sail past, avoid further argument. It might be cowardly, but she verged so close to shattering, she couldn’t face another clash.
Of course, when she reached him, she couldn’t bear to think this was the last she’d see of him. She hesitated in trembling uncertainty a few inches away.
His expression was shuttered against her as she’d never seen it. Only the flaring black rage in his eyes was alive. She should be utterly terrified. Except she saw past rage to desolation.
Knowing it was a mistake to touch him, she extended an unsteady hand toward his arm. Through his sleeve, that contact burned. Her very skin recognized him as her eternal lover.
He jerked. As if he too felt that current. Then he stood still and trembling.
Her heart lurched in agony. Why did she feel she committed some unforgivable sin leaving him? Surely the unforgivable sin was coming to him in the first place.
She forced her lips to move. “Good-bye, Nicholas.”