he said, ‘Does it feel like I’ve been gone years?’
His voice was low, contemplative. She knew immediately how to respond to the judgemental, accusing Nicholas, but not to this man. Rubbing her arms against the wind, ignoring his steady gaze, she gave his answer some thought.
How long did it feel? Like centuries and like just yesterday. Especially since he’d brought up everything from the past simply by returning. It didn’t matter how much time, it mattered what was felt.
And she shouldn’t be feeling anything for him. No matter what his presence here meant. She’d married another. Loved and grieved for another and was now carrying his child.
‘Your absence has no bearing on what I feel. You were gone six years and that’s the truth. What we care for or feel matters not.’
‘I care very much.’
Judgement, accusation, and now lies. ‘For what? In three years I have heard nothing from you, and you’re here now—’
‘I’m here now because this is my home.’
More lies. ‘Don’t give me sentiment. This property is your income.’
There was a curve to his lips, but his fingers flexed as if to release tension. ‘It is my home.’
Which didn’t give him the right simply to return and order them around. She bent and scraped some of the almost solid soil into her palm. When she stood again, she tossed it at him. ‘This is yours—the rest of us are not.’
He suddenly became as dark as the soil still clinging to her fingers. ‘You made sure of that.’
‘I?’ She brushed the soil off, desperate to remove all traces of his property from her body. She wanted no part of any of this. ‘I had nothing to do with your leaving or your staying away.’
‘You had everything to do with it.’ He took a step forward, leaning towards her as if he meant to plough her down. His queue was loose, his hair whipping in the wind. ‘Everything! You who—’
He didn’t say any more, but she’d heard enough.
A mere day since he’d returned, their first conversation, and it was nothing but barbs and jabs and not anything she could possibly understand, even though she had been a part of it all.
Except... She’d made promises that weren’t part of what had been between Nicholas and her.
She’d made vows to love and marry Roger. To raise their child as he would want. They’d talked about when Nicholas returned and if it would matter. She’d told her husband that it wouldn’t, because she wanted a new life. Or at least to look at the one she had differently. She’d made her choice and so had Nicholas. Still, it had hurt Roger when Nicholas had never replied, but he’d forgiven him.
She thought she’d forgiven him, too. Yet, here she was with him in a graveyard at night. She was supposed to have changed, but turmoil roiled inside her. Anything between them was supposed to be dead.
‘And you’re here now expecting what?’ She gestured at him, at their surroundings.
‘Answers!’ He pulled himself away then, as if he hadn’t meant to say that word or put any emphasis on it.
Answers. In that she would agree—it was why she had written to him.
‘Then you should have replied to my letter.’
He hadn’t because he didn’t truly want answers. He was a mercenary—had fashioned himself to be a trained killer. He’d wanted to leave this home that she loved, and he’d wanted never to return. Now he made demands for no reason.
‘Your letter?’ His expression turned mutinous. ‘Damn your letter. How could I have answered that? Do you know when I received your precious letter?’
His hand went to the back of his head, as if to brush through his hair, but his fingers stopped at the strap of the eye patch.
Biting out another curse, he jerked his hand away before locking his venomous gaze with her. ‘Too. Late. That’s when I received your letter.’
Nicholas was like a berserker, crying for blood across the field, and everything in her wanted to answer. To raise her own sword and strike the killing blow.
He was a madman, a mercenary with no conscience. He should be mourning his friend’s death. Should be apologising for not answering their letters. He should have been here when her mother died.
He’d done nothing.
And Louve had sent her out here to provide comfort. There was no comforting madness and cruelty.
They stood here in this graveyard, shouting on matters that had no bearing in the present. Right now it wasn’t about them, or the past and their arguments. Those had been long decided by his absence, by his deeds. All that mattered now was that she was the one who’d married Roger; she had been there at his death. And she’d go to her grave making sure that Nicholas, who had abandoned them all, knew why.
‘Stop making this into something it’s not. You don’t care about what happened to us. Roger’s dead. And I refuse to let you ignore that.’
He huffed out a breath as if she had hit him. ‘I’m not ignoring his death.’
A strike to Louve’s jaw...standing in the night surrounded by graves... Maybe he wasn’t ignoring Roger’s death, but he wasn’t acknowledging it either.
‘You refuse to talk about him.’
‘It’s pointless.’
The pain in her belly was so sharp she was certain it was physical. ‘Pointless?’ she gasped as she locked gazes with him.
There was so much there in his face as his brows drew in, as his lips parted. He wanted to say something, but then his face shut down again. The hard angles of his jaw, the slash of his cheekbones. The strip of leather along his left cheek. His scar. His eye. Why did she see it now, and not when he’d struck Louve, or when he’d gripped his father’s memorial?
To see beyond his injury must be a weakness in her. For it was the wound of a man who killed for a living. She must remember to look at that silvery bisecting jaggedness to remind her that this man had no heart.
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘It is pointless. Louve told me to come here and tell you, and you don’t care.’
‘Not now. Not yet.’ His words were clipped, as if he’d forced them out.
‘Is this too soon?’ she mocked. ‘Did you want to wait a few days? Get some rest? Have Cook prepare huge meals?’
‘It is too soon for this.’
‘Because today you returned? If you didn’t want to hear any of this you could have kept away—like the coward you are.’
‘Coward?’ he growled. ‘You want to hear what I want to know? I want to know if that child
