Chapter 23
Impudent devil! Black hearted oaf! Conniving bastard! How dare he kiss her so warmly and tenderly with those deceptive lips of his! How dare he make her feel loved, all the while harboring her sister in secret. This went far beyond betrayal! It went . . . It went . . . Well, just too far!
Willow exploded into her chamber in high dudgeon, quickly turning to slam the door and lock into place. She jumped when a hand halted her fireworks, shoving the door open and filling the entrance.
“Get out,” Willow snapped. Tears threatened to spill.
“We need to address this, Willow.”
“I don’t ever want to speak to you again!” she exclaimed, snatching a pillow and throwing it at him. “I mean nothing to you!”
“That’s not true,” he denied. “You are much more than nothing.”
Willow gave a hollow laugh. “I thought to give you the benefit of doubt. I believed that this marriage could become more than what it started out as, but I was wrong. There is no heart in you.”
“That’s not true,” he growled.
“The truth lies in your actions, Ambrose, and they seem clear to me.”
“Damnation!” He ran a hand through his hair, a muscle working in his jaw. For a moment, it looked like her husband was going to say something—something crucial. But then he only looked away, a mask falling over his face.
“Nothing to say?” she mocked. “Of course not, once again you have disappeared behind your mask of control.”
He remained silent.
Willow squared her shoulders. “What you did is reprehensible, and I cannot help but resent you for it, Ambrose.”
“Willow, I—”
“No, do not lie to me. Your actions tell me all I need to know.”
A pained look crossed his face before a look of determination replaced it. Silence settled between them.
Willow turned and paced across the chamber, stopping beside the fireplace, her heart in her throat. He was impossible to look at, stealing her ability to think, her ability to reason, to draw breath. She stared at the cold hearth, no embers crackling tonight. Her heart was breaking. For their future that suddenly seemed doomed. For her sister.
If there was no future for them, then perhaps they could at least finally have the truth.
“Why do you have a set of rules?” she asked, afraid to look at him, afraid he’d deny her this. He didn’t.
“Eleven years ago, my sister fell ill.” He paused, inhaled a ragged breath. “Celia never quite recovered from her illness, always getting tired early and sleeping late. She refused to allow those limitations to stilt her life. She lived to the fullest, or at least, as full as a thirteen-year-old girl could live—insisting on dance lessons, running barefoot in the country fields, and climbing trees—even when the physicians argued against it. She never once slowed down, until a year later, the strain on her heart was too much, and it just stopped beating. At least, that is what the doctor said.”
She turned towards him. “I’m sorry . . .”
He raked a hand over his face. “He claimed her heart finally failed due to fast, unhealthy living. That we could have prevented an early death if we had kept her under lock and key.”
Willow’s heart slammed against her chest, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. She imagined him ten years ago, his ravaged features as he sat beside his sister’s bed, blaming himself for not taking better care of her.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she whispered, clenching her fists into her skirts to keep herself from going to him.
“I could have prolonged her life if I had forced her to live a slow-paced, routine-filled life.”
“She was sick, Ambrose, and your sister knew that. She chose to live her life on her terms. Had you forced her to live any other way, she’d have been miserable and passed on that way, too.”
“But she could have lived longer if she’d lived by rules. Perhaps become well again.” His obsidian eyes were shadowed with pain as they lifted to meet hers.
“That is no way to live.” She motioned between them and the chamber. “We both deserve the freedom of our choices. Or else what is the point of living?”
“I agree.”
