This time there were no tears. Hira's face paled under that golden skin and then she whispered, "And you say you are nice to me? I'm alone and without family in this land. You know I have no one and so you can say these things."
His gut roiled, the burst of anger buried under an avalanche of self-hatred. "Hira..."
She kept talking. "I thought, maybe, you were a good man but you are just like my father."
He bristled. "I'm nothing like that tyrant."
"My mother always had to beg him for money." She damned him with those exotic eyes. "Oh, she was given expensive clothes and jewels. Father made sure they were delivered to her like clockwork. We had to keep up the-what is the word-yes, image.... We had to keep up the image of the rich merchant."
Marc just stood there, letting her talk in that soft voice that was so unlike the vivid woman he'd come to know, feeling more and more despicable with every word she spoke. Until he'd married, he hadn't known he had such a volatile temper. No one else had ever made him angry enough to be cruel.
"But she had to ask him for every cent if she ever needed spending money or money to buy her children gifts, or even to go out to have lunch with a friend. Because of their uniqueness, she couldn't sell the jewels without destroying the reputation of the family, so she was dependant on him." Her eyes were distant and pain filled, as if she were reliving the humiliation her mother had gone through day after day.
"He'd sit in his study chair like a pasha and have her stand there like a supplicant, with no rights. He'd make her beg for money as if it was not her entitlement as his wife, who worked so hard to make his life agreeable. As if she hadn't borne him three children, even though she was a fragile woman whom the doctors had advised to stop with only one." Sadness filled every word, ripping at his heart. "And yet he made her beg. Even the lowliest servant was ensured of his weekly wages but not my mother of her income." Her chest was heaving, the only sign of the anger she'd subsumed so well.
"Okay," he said. He'd never been a man who ran from the harsh reality of his own flaws.
"I don't understand." Her eyes remained wary, the haunted shade of a wild creature who'd been captured and was waiting for the pain to begin.
Guilt twisted like a knife inside of him. "I agree that I was a complete and utter jerk. There's no excuse for what I just said."
She seemed taken aback, "Why do you say this?"
He blew out a breath. "I wish to hell I didn't have a temper but I do. I'm as mean as the gators that roam the waters around here, and you got bit. But I can tell you that you aren't ever going to have to beg." The image of her proud spirit being crushed infuriated him.
The next time he went to Zulheil, he'd ensure that his mother-in-law had a separate account with enough funds in it to allow her to live in peace. He knew Amira wouldn't take the money from him but she'd accept a gift from Hira. Such a gift would likely rock the foundation of Marc's relationship with Kerim Dazirah, but he didn't give a damn.
He put his hands on his hips in an attempt to keep them off his wife. He wasn't much good at finding the words a woman needed to forgive a man, but when he touched his wife, she became his in the most raw sense of the word. And right now the temptation to make her his was almost unbearable. "An account was set up for you when we married and money transferred into it. Monthly payments will be made into it automatically."
"What is the money for?" she asked quietly. There was such fragile dignity in her that he knew she still expected to be hurt by him. And the hell of it was, he couldn't deny that he had hurt her, that she had a right to look so shell-shocked. But, damn it, he wanted to wipe that look off her face. He wasn't a saint but neither was he a man who enjoyed the suffering of others.
Especially not of his wife.
"It's yours to do with as you wish. Invest it, use it for your education, blow it in Vegas, whatever you like." He could tell Hira wasn't quite sure how to take this revelation.
"Why didn't you tell me earlier?" she asked.
"I forgot." The truth was, he'd liked paying the bills for his wife's purchases, liked the proprietariness of such an act. Liked knowing she needed him for something. "The documents for your bank account are in my office."
He began to walk to the house. She followed with barely a sound. Once in his study, he found the passbook and charge cards and handed them over.
She gasped when she saw the amount that had already been deposited. "Husband! This is far too much money." Her eyes were darker than he'd ever before seen.
He shrugged. "I'm very rich."
Putting the passbook and cards on his desk, she looked straight at him. "You must take it back."
"What? Why? I thought you'd appreciate the independence." He scowled.
She didn't back down. "I've done nothing to deserve it."
"You're my wife." A wife he wanted with more than simple lust. The way she'd held his boys, the way she'd laughed with them, the way she challenged him with her wit and her honesty, wasn't something he wanted to lose.
"And yet I do nothing that a wife does," She didn't break his gaze as she made that confession. "I don't run this house as it is run very well by the strangers who come in on schedule, do their silent cleaning and leave. I don't help with your business. I am not the mother of your children." Her shoulders squared. "My mother isn't a strong woman, but she does many things to earn her income."
God, he thought, she was so proud and so very vulnerable because of it. His Hira, his wife, could be hurt by a well-placed barb that would strike her pride before anything else. Taking a deep breath, he made a decision that might either save his marriage or expose the cracks in the foundation to the bright light of day.
"And so will you. Things have been quiet on the business front since we married, but they're about to heat up." He frowned, thinking of one particular acquisition. "When negotiations take place in informal settings, such as this house, you'll act as a second pair of eyes, ears and even hands, for me."
"I'll expect you to know the finest of fine details and get me any information I request, ASAP. I won't cut you any slack just because you're my wife. I'll be demanding as hell and I won't tolerate any mistakes. Such negotiations are worth millions. Think you can handle that?"
The offer wasn't just a sop to her pride. A lot of deals were in fact completed here, away from the often virulent media interest. He'd never allowed anyone but himself to be privy to the final stages of those sensitive deals. Until now.
"You would trust me with this?" Nervous excitement glittered in her eyes, but her words were hesitant, as if she wasn't sure she could believe his offer.
"I may be a jerk but I'm not stupid. Not only are you too proud to ever betray my confidence, you're a very intelligent woman." He knew that, had known it almost from the day they'd married, so why had he hurt her like that outside?
Was he afraid that she'd discover a tempting new world of academic grace and forget her bayou beast of a husband? Despite his wealth, he'd never quite lost the rough edges of his upbringing, but until he'd married Hira, he hadn't given any thought to them. Yet lately he'd begun to wonder if his lack of refinement was one of the reasons his wife maintained her emotional distance.
Shock that his motivations might be rooted in jealousy and fear made him curse himself in self-disgust. He'd crawled up so far, and yet he was still the boy who'd pressed his nose against the windows of the Barnsworthy house and declared that one day he'd be oh the other side of the glass. That boy had believed that once you had something, you clutched at it with all your strength. Setting something free only meant you'd lose it for good.