He lay back again, repositioning his hand over his eyes. So. Not a true marriage, of course, but something convenient. Why not? She was already part of his circle. She belonged in that same arena as did his sisters and nieces.
The idea made him wince. All right, not precisely the same. But obligations already tied them together. He’d simply continue to honor those obligations.
“Divorce?” Now her voice sounded full of rust and nails.
“Less exciting to you than ruin, is it?” He spoke in a bored drawl. “I suppose it’s true, divorcées are a dime a dozen, these days. Fashionable, almost.”
“Fashionable—” The word ended on a choking noise. “Oh, please do sit up! You’ve gotten me into this mess; you can’t mean to nod off while I think how to fix it!”
He lifted the edge of his palm to look at her.
She had her arms wrapped around herself again. And a tear slipping down her cheek.
He swung up and came off the bed. “Christ, Gwen—what’s this? You must have known there was a risk that someone would spot us when you agreed to this charade with Barrington.”
“Of course I did!” she cried. Her arms tightened around herself; she must be bruising her own ribs. “But I thought I was choosing the risk! Instead you have made the decision for me, a decision I’ve never thought about—did not plan for—did you plan for this?” She looked up at him, mouth agape, face lit by some emotion he could not parse. “Did you?” she asked softly. “Alex, did you think the outcome might be marriage?”
He cupped her elbows, as bony and delicate as a bird’s wings. She was shaking. The violence of her reaction made no sense. “I never planned for it,” he said slowly. “But if you were ready to be ruined, I fail to see why this turn of events should seem so much greater in magnitude.”
Her face bowed. Silently she shook her head.
He frowned down at her.
Oh, what the hell.
“Gwen,” he said. “I never had any intention to marry. I never had any intention to show you around Paris. I never had the slightest intention of shagging you—but I can swear by God and everything holy that I had dreamed of it for years.”
Perhaps her breath caught. He could not be sure. Certainly, he reflected, it was not the most romantic sentiment one could speak to a woman. But at least her shaking ceased.
This was a good enough result to merit greater investment. “For years,” he said. His fingers tightened of their own volition. “And not just because you are lovely, truly lovely, beautiful in a way that is only partly an effect of your looks. The way you see the world is beautiful. And you make others see its beauty through your eyes. And you have made me exceedingly irritated by wasting yourself on tossers. I have cursed you repeatedly for selling yourself so cheaply. And I have never placed a bid because I never believed you were for sale, and I did not know that I was capable of offering what you deserved. So”—he drew a great breath—“if it’s the divorce that troubles you, we can shelve that part.”
No reaction.
“That is, marry. For good.” Was he really proposing this? Dear God, his sisters would throw a party that would last until the new year. “For real,” he clarified. Christ, he sounded like a five-year-old. Next he’d be adding, For keeps! No take-backs!
A sigh escaped her, almost soundless.
He had no idea how to interpret it. His own thoughts felt a bit muzzy, but he supposed he was making sense. Wasn’t he?
Then why was she not replying?
“My bases are New York and Buenos Aires,” he said, feeling more and more the idiot, “but if you prefer to stay in London, I can move the operations here. Indeed, at this rate, with the Peruvian business—well, that’s no matter. Perhaps biannual trips would serve us. We can choose a house in town. Wherever you like—Grosvenor Square, if you prefer. If you must,” he added under his breath, because he could really only go so far.
She flashed him a dark look and pulled out of his grip. Giving him her back, she went to stare out the window.
“Do you love me?” she asked.
Her voice sounded very small. And he wondered, suddenly, what sort of divide it created between them, that he knew pieces of her that she had never shared with him—facts and stories and moments and memories to which she had no idea he was privy. He had collected them for so long, denying to himself that this acquisition was anything more than casual amusement, when in fact it was zealous, and jealous besides; disowning as accidental the fact that he never forgot a single remark she made, or that others made about her, and that he approved of these other people, or disdained them, according to their treatment of her. Such a lopsided intimacy existed between him and her. Inevitably, it created a chasm whose depth neither of them could know until they tried to chart it. Would this chasm prove impossible to bridge?