“Yes.”
He shook his head. “Have him escort you the next time—it’s not safe for you otherwise.”
The hypocrisy. The greatest threat to her well-being was currently himself. The flash of indignation brought her to her feet, and she turned to him. “I visited my parents.”
His eyes revealed no emotion, but an alertness came over him and subtly tensed his shoulders. He might be an unfeeling liar, but like an animal, his instincts were finely attuned to the faintest signs of trouble. She suspected it was how creatures like him survived.
“I know now,” she said, unable to stop. “I know.”
“Know what?”
“About Plasencia-Astorga.”
“Very well,” he said after a pause. “It was hardly a secret.”
“You bought me.”
Her inclined his head in concession. “Why not call it a bride-price? It’s not uncommon.”
“At half price!”
He blinked. “I can assure you that substantial sums were involved.”
Her breathing became labored. “I cannot condemn you for taking what was on offer,” she said unsteadily—the offer was entirely Julien Greenfield’s responsibility. “However. What I must know is whether you manufactured the opportunity for a sale.”
He was not so blasé now. He was holding himself too still. “Explain your meaning.”
“The kiss,” she said. “The kiss—it wasn’t a coincidence that it took place in a room with large two-way mirrors behind which a crowd happened to be waiting.”
Mr. Matthews must have known, too. If she hadn’t been so lovely, so na?ve, so shocked, she would have suspected it the very moment it had happened in the gallery.
“I don’t recall stealing the kiss from you,” Lucian said. He was as expressive as a stone.
“You didn’t,” she said bitterly.
“Nor did I prolong it against your will.”
“You didn’t. My own foolishness compelled me to give it freely.”
“Therefore—”
“Please.” She gripped his forearm. “Please set aside your cruel ways for once and tell me the truth: have you finagled the situation? If you don’t confirm my suspicions, I shall forever question whether I imagined it and it shall drive me utterly mad over time.”
He glanced down at her white hand clutching at his sleeve. A muscle worked in his jaw as he deliberated, and finally, he looked her in the eye. “I arranged for the situation,” he said. “Then I took the opportunity when it presented itself.”
The room was swirling around her in a shrill stream of colors.
“How could you be certain a kiss would take place?” she managed. “And at that very moment? With an audience behind those mirrors?”
“I wasn’t,” he said, impatient now. “How could I? But at the very least, we would’ve been observed talking together, and I had planned to further those impressions over time. The kiss just brought everything to a conclusion quickly.”
“You should have stepped away,” she said thinly, “just should have.”
“To what end, when I wanted your hand?”
“I see.” Her voice came from afar, grotesquely distorted. “I presume our union is but one step on the ladder of your social climb.”
He glowered and plucked her still-clinging fingers off his arm. And made as if to leave.
“Where are you going?” Her hands were on her hips; from somewhere came the urge to yell like a fishwife.
He looked back over his shoulder. “You know all you wanted to know.”
“Why me?” she cried. “It was my life with which you tampered.”
“Because,” he said, “you made yourself available. Repeatedly.”
It knocked the air clean from her lungs. She tried to breathe and couldn’t. She pressed her hands below her breasts. Nothing. Panic turned her cold, as if she had just been thrown hard from her pony and lay staring blindly at the sky, desperately trying to drag air into her stunned lungs. He hadn’t set a trap because a sudden bout of mindless desire had compelled him to steal her; no, he would have snatched any available, unsuspecting woman of her station stupid enough to amble into his path … Finally, a breath.
“I want this marriage annulled,” she said.
Her words hit him square between his shoulders and he halted abruptly. When he turned back, his thoughts were written plain on his face: their marriage had not yet been consummated—she was free to leave him without much complication indeed. His expression darkened, and her vision wavered. The presence of the vast bed behind her pressed to the fore of her mind. She backed away on shaky legs. “If you force me, I will scream.”