Page 60 of Atone, Adonis

He flinched as if she’d slapped him but she held her ground, even while her heart hammered in her chest. Her heart was either a tiny, little coward or a tiny, little tyrant. She wasn’t sure which, but she knew she wasn’t going to be swayed by it any longer. Her head was firmly in control of this conversation.

She looked up at her husband, whose jaw was clenched so tightly she was half afraid he might break his teeth. “You have no idea what you’re asking,” he said, finally.

“That is exactly my point. I don’t know. And I won’t unless you tell me.”

“And if I did? If I told you the whole of it?” He laughed bitterly, his eyes bright with something…anger? Fear? She couldn’t read his expression but that was because she didn’t know the context of his question. Which was, again, the point of asking.

“It would not merely change how you look at me, Jules. It would change the very ground beneath our feet.”

“And what does it matter?” she demanded. “Is this ground so good? So stable? I am your wife, whether you touch me or not. Thomas is dying, whether you tell him the truth or not. It’s not clear to me this half-lived state of affairs is worth preserving.”

His eyes darkened. “Don’t.”

“Why?” she pressed, stepping out from behind the safe barrier of the table and closing the distance between them. “Because if I name this growing sentiment between us aloud, it becomes real? Because if we speak plainly, you lose your excuse to stay away from me?”

“You aren’t making any sense.”

“Of course I’m not! I don’t know what the hell is happening, Fred. Of course I only have vague metaphors and loose suggestions at my disposal. What else could I possibly have? I am not a mind reader nor do I wish to be.” She dropped her voice low. “I am asking you, husband, please, to tell me the truth of what is in your heart if not in your head.”

His jaw worked and he closed his eyes slowly. And then he said very quietly, “I can’t.”

Julianna stilled. “Why not?”

Fred’s gaze flicked to the door and then back, before he put his head in his hands. When he spoke again, his voice was muffled through the layers of his own flesh and bones. “I said I can’t.”

Julianna felt something inside her go cold as she realized that he truly was not going to let her in. She had told him everything and he was not going to reciprocate. “So you intend to live like this forever?”

“No,” he said far too quickly. “Of course not.”

“When, then, will it be safe enough to tell me your secrets? When Thomas is in the ground? When the gossip has found some other corpse to pick clean? When you have made yourself back into Chester and I’ve lost my Fred entirely?”

She cut herself off, her cheeks flaming at what she’d said. My Fred. But she did not retreat from her own words. She couldn’t very well demand honesty from him and then hide from it herself.

His eyes flashed at her as he growled out a warning, “Jules. We have been happy here these last days. Can you not leave it be and enjoy it?”

“No. You do not get to quiet me. Not in my own marriage.”

For one short moment, she thought he might come to her. Might rise from that table and envelop her in his arms and whisper “Jules” in an entirely different tone in her ear. Might let her into his heart and mind, might tell her whatever truth he’d so obviously been holding back from her.

Instead, when he drew himself up, jaw clenched in that aristocratic way that made him look carved from stone, even with the damnable dimples, he said, “You are correct. I am not able to give you what you want.”

Her throat tightened and she felt the tears threatening to come. “And what do you think I want?”

“Too much.”

His tone was breathtakingly glacial. He was no longer her Fred at all but the cold, snide, Earl of Chester. The sudden swerve nearly made her dizzy.

“Yes, Fred, I do. I want it all.”

“You don’t get to have it. None of us do.”

He looked away first and she realized they were now standing across the room from each other. Like duelers squaring off at dawn. She hadn’t noticed when they’d moved. Nor the practiced scratch of a servant’s knock upon the door.

“Enter,” Fred said and Gilbert appeared.

He cleared his throat quietly and flicked his eyes from Fred to Julianna and then back again. “My lord, you have a caller.”

“Send them away.”