She swallowed, studying his face, trying to see what his issue was and why he was suddenly being so adamant. ‘Actually, I thought I’d wait a little bit,’ she said carefully. ‘I still haven’t got my head around—’
‘He’s been waiting to find you for twenty years. Don’t you think he’d want to know that you’re alive?’
‘Yes, but if he’s waited twenty years, he can wait another few hours.’ She stared at him. ‘Why are you so angry? What is this about, Ares?’
He turned away, lifting his tumbler and draining it. Then he went over to the drinks cabinet and poured himself another measure. He did not look at her.
‘You’re wrong,’ he said after a moment, his attention on his glass. ‘I do blame myself.’
‘Blame yourself?’ she echoed, trying to follow the sudden change in topic. ‘Blame yourself for what?’
‘Naya’s death.’ He picked up the glass and stared down into it, as if the liquid contained all the secrets of the universe. ‘My father was so proud of the Aristiades line. He always said that we were descended from the great hero Hercules and that’s why we were so strong. I shared his pride, thought that the Aristiades name made us better than everyone else. So, when this beautiful daughter of a Russian oligarch agreed to be my wife, even though I had no money and only a mountain hut for her to live in, I was even prouder. Being a penniless shepherd in the mountains is a hard life, and she was everything I’d never had—softness and beauty and compassion. I loved her to distraction. I was always afraid she might discover one day that she’d made a terrible mistake in marrying this poor Greek shepherd boy... Anyway, when Stavros demanded protection money, I refused.’ He gave a low, bitter laugh. ‘I didn’t want her to think that I was a coward, that I was weak. I was an Aristiades and we were the blood of Hercules.’
Rose went cold. He was talking about his wife.
‘The night of the fire, I wasn’t there,’ Ares went on. ‘I was helping my father with a ewe having a difficult birth and so they didn’t find me until the house was well alight. It was a mountain village—we didn’t have a fire engine, only hoses and buckets, so by the time I got there, it was too late. I went in anyway, because I was supposed to be strong enough to protect her, save her, but...’ He stopped, then raised his tumbler and downed what was left in there. ‘I didn’t think the consequences would have been so terrible. She should never have married me. She should have stayed well away.’
The chill had reached her bones now, and was working its way into her heart, that grief she’d felt earlier shredding her emotions once again.
She could see him as a young man, full of youthful pride and arrogance. Yet that wasn’t a sin. That was just youth, the feeling of being bulletproof, that nothing bad could ever happen to you because nothing ever had.
It wasn’t a feeling she’d ever had. That had been taken from her, just as his had been taken from him. And it had been taken. It wasn’t his fault that some awful people had chosen to firebomb his house and he shouldn’t think that it was. Yet before she could say anything, he went on.
‘I was two years recovering from the burns. People kept telling me how lucky I was to be alive, but I didn’t feel lucky. I should have died with her. That would have been a just punishment, I think.’ He reached for the bottle again and then stopped, his hand dropping as if he’d had second thoughts. He still didn’t look at her. ‘Afterwards, when I’d healed, I went straight into the Legion, because that’s when I decided that if I had to live, I’d do things differently. I’d let my pride and my arrogance, and my anger, blind me, and so I had to get rid of them. They’d led me astray, they’d caused Naya’s death, and so they couldn’t be trusted.’
Rose’s heart ached at the emptiness in his voice, the sheer lack of expression in it. He sounded so bleak it brought tears to her eyes.
‘Ares...’ she began hoarsely, wanting to say something, to give him some comfort any way she could.
But he gave a sharp shake of his head. ‘Let me finish.’ He reached for the bottle again and poured himself yet another glass, smaller this time. Then he raised and took a small, careful sip, as if he was rationing it. ‘After the Legion, I was adrift for a time. The only thing I had left was Naya’s memory. That’s what made me build my company. I wanted to do something in her name, create a legacy for her. A company that she would have been proud to be associated with. She became my conscience, my guide. Everything I do, I do for her.’ He glanced at her then, his gaze darker than she’d ever seen it. ‘My father died a few years back and he made me promise that the Aristiades line would not die with me. I promised him it would not. I also promised Naya when we married that we would have a houseful of children, because she was desperate for them.
‘That’s why I agreed to marry you, Rose. That’s why our marriage was to include children. To fulfil my promise to my father and to Naya. But that’s all. If you choose to stay with me, that’s all our marriage will ever be, do you understand?’
Her throat felt thick and tight, her vision swimming with tears of pain for him. And from somewhere she dredged up her voice. ‘You can’t blame yourself for any of that, Ares. It’s not your fault—’
‘Do you understand?’ he repeated over the top of her, his eyes darkening into black in the firelight. ‘If you want to stay with me, our marriage will only be for heirs, Rose. For the promises I made. That is all. You cannot mean anything to me. You cannot be important to me. I will give you nothing. All I have left is this—’ he glanced down at himself and shook his head ‘—empty shell, scarred with the reminders of my failure. That is what you will be married to. That is all I can offer.’
Rose felt as if the winter from outside had come in through the windows and was now creeping around her heart, freezing it solid. There was no doubt in those darkened eyes of his, no doubt in his voice either.
‘You didn’t kill her,’ she said hoarsely, because she had to at least attempt to convince him. ‘A petrol bomb did. Smoke inhalation did. Not you.’
His gaze didn’t waver. ‘If I hadn’t loved her, I wouldn’t have wanted to prove myself to her. If I hadn’t been so obsessed with keeping her, I would have paid the money. If I hadn’t loved her, she wouldn’t have married me in the first place and then she wouldn’t have died.’
‘Something else might have killed her, you don’t know. You can’t keep playing “what-ifs” for ever, Ares.’ She swallowed past the giant lump that had risen in her throat. ‘If I’d stayed put and watched the kittens, if I hadn’t seen another kitten in the street and gone to pick it up, perhaps then I wouldn’t have been abducted. But I was. Second-guessing won’t change that.’
‘You’re right.’ His face was impassive. ‘Yet my wife is still dead, and it is still my fault.’
‘And it’s still my fault I didn’t do what I was told. It was my fault I got abducted.’
Finally, the darkness in his eyes shifted, a flickering silver flame glittering there instead. ‘That is not what I said.’
‘But it’s the same thing, isn’t it?’ She didn’t back down. He had to see what he was saying, he had to. ‘You should have paid that money and you didn’t, so it’s your fault. I should have stayed where I was and I didn’t, so that’s my fault too.’
A muscle flicked in his jaw. ‘You were a child. You were—’
‘You were young,’ she interrupted. ‘You thought nothing could touch you. That’s not a crime. Loving someone and wanting to prove yourself to them isn’t a crime either. Besides, she loved you too. Or does her choice not matter?’
He only shook his head and said harshly, ‘She chose wrong.’