Sara considered crawling between the sheets and pulling the pillow over her head, but that seemed impossible in such a fraught atmosphere. Warily she sat down in a wing chair facing her husband, sure that a blazing great row was waiting to happen. She would have preferred to face it rested and composed, but rows, like childbirth, took place in their own time.
Mikahl had already undressed and wore his flowing black caftan as he stared out the window and sipped a glass of brandy. When he had made love to her at the ball, his mood had been volatile but good-humored. Now he seemed dark and dangerous, and very foreign. He turned to face Sara when she entered the room, his expression rigid with suppressed anger.
"Why are you glaring at me?" she asked, hoping to appeal to his sense of humor. "After all the different things I heard about your past tonight, I should be the one seething."
Her lame attempt at a joke failed. "So Weldon did say something appalling when you were dancing," Mikahl said grimly. "What did he accuse me of then— the same things he told the queen, or worse?"
So he was going to the heart of the trouble; Sara would have preferred a meaningless quarrel, which would be forgotten when it was over. Talking about what had happened tonight could open a Pandora's box of her husband's dark secrets, and she was terrified that what was revealed might destroy their marriage. Taking a deep breath, she said, "Worse. Charles claimed that he first met you in Tripoli."
Her husband's body went taut as a drumhead. "What else did dear Charles say?"
Sara wanted to drop her eyes, but didn't. "He said that when he met you, you were a male whore, and the reason you hate him is that he kicked you out of his bed."
Rage sizzled through the room like St. Elmo's fire. Sara shivered; if ever she was to fear her husband, now was the time.
But he did not move or threaten her, just stared with ice in his eyes. "Do you believe him?"
"He was acting from malice, and he probably thought it was safe to be outrageous because I would be too horrified to discuss his accusations with you." She hesitated, choosing her words. "But in spite of that, I did think there was a grain of truth in what Charles said."
His voice low and over-controlled, Mikahl said, "Of the different things Weldon said, what do you think is true?"
"I'm not sure," Sara said slowly. "I just had the feeling that what he said was not wholly invented."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. "If I deny his accusations, who will you believe, me or your aristocratic former suitor?"
"You are my husband," Sara said, an edge to her voice. "I would hope that I could believe you."
"But you aren't sure," he said bitterly. "What a touching vote of confidence from my own wife."
Beginning to feel angry herself, Sara snapped, "I am trying very hard to have faith in you, Mikahl, but you are giving me damned little to work with. I think it's time you told me the truth about your past."
There was a flicker of surprise in his eyes at her unaccustomed profanity. Then he tossed back half the contents of his brandy glass. "Surely you know all you need to know. An aristocrat like you would never dishonor your name by marrying a man who was not of suitable rank. Ergo, I must be of suitable rank, and Weldon was lying from sheer bloody-mindedness."
"That is no answer," she said, exasperated. "Why don't you answer a few questions instead of just asking them?"
Her husband banged his glass down on a table and stalked across the room to brace his arms on the wings of her chair.
"What questions do you want answered, sweet Sara?" he said in a low, menacing tone. He loomed above her, his face a foot away, and his eyes glittering like emerald shards. "Do you want to know if I am really a whore or a London gutter rat? What would you do if the answer is yes? Will you return to your father's house and look for a lover who is 'of suitable rank' once you learn what I am?"
Insight struck Sara like lightning. Mikahl's underlying fury was for Weldon and tonight's near-humiliation, but some of his anger was for her, and now she knew why. Amazingly, her powerful, confident husband feared that Sara would reject him if she knew the truth about his origins.
Sara raised one hand and slipped it around his neck, her fingertips caressing the tight muscles. "I know what you are, Mikahl," she said softly. "That is why I married you. But I admit that I am also curious about what you were."
His angry expression shattered, leaving desperate vulnerability in its wake. Then he straightened and spun away, unable to face the tenderness in her eyes. He stopped at the window and stared out, showing only his broad, black-clad back. Sara felt the energy currents swirl through the room, changing tone like light refracted through cut glass.