“Goddamn it.” He spun away from her and caught the way she flinched at the move. “I’ll yell when I need to yell. You’re only making me madder standing there like you’re waiting for a punch. I’m not going to hit you. Not now, not ever. And it’s insulting for you to stand there wondering if I will.”

“You don’t know what it’s like.”

“No, I don’t, because you won’t tell me.” He reined himself in as much as he could, though temper was still sparking. “Or you tell me just enough to keep things running smooth until the next time.”

“Maybe that’s true. But I told you I couldn’t tell you everything. That I wasn’t going to go into the details.”

“This isn’t a damn detail. You’re still married to the man who did this to you.”

“Yes.”

“Are you planning on ending the marriage?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s plain enough.” He snatched up his boots, his jacket.

“I can’t let him find out where I am. I can’t let him find me.”

He started to yank the door open, then stood there a moment, his hand on the knob. “Did you ever stop and think, just once did you ever stop and look at me and know I’d do whatever needed to be done for you? I’d have done it, Nell, for a stranger, because it’s my job. How could you not know I’d do it for you?”

She did know, she thought as he walked away from her. It was only one of the things that frightened her. Unable to cry, she sat miserably in the house she had made safe, and empty.

Seventeen

“I’ve lost him. I’ve ruined it.”

Nell sat in Mia’s great, gorgeous cavern of a living room, in front of an ox-roasting fire sipping a cup of healing cinnamon tea. Isis stretched her lean, warm body over her lap like a cozy blanket.

None of it lifted her mood.

“Damaged it, perhaps. And nothing’s lost that can be found again.”

“I can’t fix this, Mia. Everything he said to me is true. I didn’t want to think about it, to see it, but it’s true. I had no right to let things get as serious as they did.”

“I don’t happen to have a hair shirt handy, but I imagine we can make something up.” At Nell’s shocked stare, Mia lifted one shoulder elegantly. “It’s not that I don’t sympathize with both of you, because I do. But the fact is, Nell, you fell in love, both of you. And both of you dealt with it the way you needed to deal with it. You brought each other something that not everyone is given. That’s nothing to regret.”