“I see.”
She wished she could see his face.
“So I’m sorry. It’s not much of a thanks for the good deed you did me, to tie you to me for life. I know you didn’t want me for a wife, and I… I know a man like you wouldn’t ever choose someone like me, but… but I’m the wife you’ve got, and we must make the best of it.” She stared at his grim, silent silhouette, waiting for him to say it was all right, that he forgave her mistake, to repeat that he was content in his marriage.
But as the silence stretched, she knew it was just a lie he’d told to shut Ramón up.
Oh God, she was going to cry. She wouldn’t. She refused to. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her lips tightly together.
But she must have made a sound, for he leaned forward, lit the candle, and shone it on her face. “You’re crying?”
“No, I’m not.” She turned her face away, scrubbing at the tears that had welled up, unexpected and unwanted. She despised tears.
There was another long silence.
“And all of this is about me removing my shirt, is that it?” His voice was quiet, but there was an unsteady note in it that caught at her heart.
She leaned forward and laid her hand on his knee. “Luke, however it happened, mistake or not, I’m your wife. I made sacred vows to love you and honor you and I promise you I will never ever break them. There is nothing you cannot show me, no disfigurement that can make any difference to me. I don’t care if it’s ugly or—”
“Ugly?” He gave a harsh, jagged laugh. “You think I’m hiding something ugly?” In one fluid movement he pulled his nightshirt over his head and dropped it on the floor. “There! My disfigurement! Satisfied?”
Bella stared. She couldn’t believe her eyes. “That’s all it is? A tattoo?” All this fuss for a little tattoo?
“It’s not a tattoo.” He passed her the candle and she looked closer.
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
It was a scar, yet it was like no scar she’d ever seen before.In the hollow beneath his right shoulder was a rose, its petals black-edged and raised against the surface of his skin. Carved into his skin—the edges of the petals were ridges of hardened skin, stained black to stand out.
It was beautiful. And horrible in its careful, deadly intricacy.
“Who did this to you?” she whispered. Each line, each petal had been sliced into him. Who would carve such a thing into a man’s living flesh?
He didn’t answer. She put the candle aside and touched the rose with gentle fingertips. He flinched. She looked a question at him.
“It doesn’t hurt. It was done seven years ago.”
And yet he’d flinched.
It must have been agony at the time. Some men liked such things, she knew. Tattoos and decorative scars. But if he liked it, why hide it? “You chose to have this done?”
His jaw tightened and he looked away. His knuckles were white.
“It was forced on you?” she whispered in horror. “By whom?”
He hesitated, and for a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer. “A gift from La Cuchilla.”
“The Blade,” she whispered and looked at the cuts in his flesh.LaCuchilla. He’d used the feminine form but it must be a mistake, she thought. It could not have been a woman… could it?
He took a deep breath and didn’t quite meet her gaze. “Now, if your curiosity is satisfied, wife…” he said in an attempt at a light, jocular tone that failed miserably.
Bella’s curiosity wasn’t nearly satisfied, but she could not deny him, not seeing the vile, beautiful thing engraved in his smooth, warm flesh. Done a year after he’d married her.
She pulled off the shirt she was wearing and flung it on top of his other one. She was naked beneath. She drew him down to her, covering his face with kisses, as if somehow she could make up for the dreadful thing that had been done to him.
He pressed his face against her breasts for a long moment, holding her tight against him, while a long shudder racked his body.
Bella ran her hands over his body, kissing every bit of him she could reach, glorying in him, knowing it was futile to comfort him for something done seven years before, but unable to stop herself from trying.
