“Thinking about what?”
“Reputation.” His choice of word made her chin jerk high.
“Mine? Or yours?” she said, a knowing tone in her voice.
“Both.”
“Ah, are you congratulating yourself that your marriage has given you this meeting with Mr. Bates that you so craved?” She smiled, clearly intending to make a jest of it, but he did not respond.
He lifted the whisky glass that Yates had delivered to him earlier that evening from its place on the table and took a big sip. His cold silence made her smile fade away.
“Clearly, that is not what you’re thinking,” she mused in a darkening voice.
“Perhaps I’m thinking how strange it is that reputations can dictate the path of one’s life so much.” It was a conversation, even if it wasn’t the one he wished to have.
“Truly? That is what you are thinking?” She took a step away from the sideboard toward him. “Are you now questioning the direction of your own life?”
“I am.”
It was as though he had struck her with the words. Her head jerked back, her lips opening and closing.
“This marriage…” she said the words slowly. “Is that what you are questioning?”
He didn’t answer but took another sip from his glass. She understood him, plainly, even without the words.
“Good lord, it is what you are questioning!” she said a little louder as she stepped toward him. “This afternoon, you didn’t seem to mind being married to me. You came close to kissing me, Theo.”
“That was not what happened,” he snapped, laying down his glass on the table. He missed the coaster, something he never normally would have done. There was a loud thud of glass as he sloshed the whisky over the rim.
“It was!”
“It was not,” he hissed, standing to his feet. Even though there was a distance between them across the room, he still towered over her in height.
It was. I had thought so much about kissing her, about giving into the temptation to know what it would be like to be so intimate with her.
Yet he couldn’t admit that to himself. All it would ever be to him was a rush of excitement. If she was risking her heart, then it had to end – this moment.
“Whatever you have imagined is happening here, Maggie, forget it. Forget it this moment. This is a marriage of convenience to improve our reputations. I told you that when I married you.”
“I know you did.” She matched his expression in defiance. “But what would it matter if it could mean something more –”
“Because it can never mean anything more!” he declared so loudly that she actually stopped, her jaw falling. “Do you not understand me yet? Have you not realized what sort of man I am?”
“You are not who you pretend to be,” she murmured.
“You’re wrong, Margaret.” He didn’t use her nickname. It would have felt too intimate. “I am a man without a heart.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“No heart?” Margaret felt hollow. It was as if her legs would give way beneath her as she stared at Theo.
He was furious, his face pale and wan despite the fury. He held himself stiffly, his breathing so fast that his shoulder rose and fell with every breath he took.
“You think you have no heart?” she said again, stepping toward him.
To her surprise, he escaped her. He walked around the settee and put it between them, so there was actually a barrier there.
“You do have a heart. I’ve seen it.”
