“My behavior?” he demanded.

“Did you hear a word I said during our quarrel?” I asked.

“Oh yes, Silence,” he whispered sinisterly. “Some are still ringing in my ears.”

I stared at him.

And then I whispered in return (though, not sinisterly, disbelievingly), “You are angry with me.”

“What gave you that impression?” he asked sarcastically.

“There was not a hint of love…in that house…from him, to me,” I said deliberately slowly.

“And yet you compared him to me,” he clipped.

“There was not…a hint of love…in that house…from him…to me.”

Everything that was Mars went completely inert.

I sensed this.

I even saw it.

But I did not register it.

“And she only gave me what she could get away with giving.”

“Silence.”

“I am wrong.”

“What are you wrong about?” he asked quietly.

His question drifted right through me as if it had not been asked.

“I am wrong. I am not right. I am a bluestocking.”

“Bellezza—”

“The Mouse. Incidental. Useless.”

One of his fists went out of the settee so he could curve his hand under my jaw.

“My love, focus on me.”

“Back there, I would have lived in my shadow if I could. Not to be seen. Not to be known. Nothing expected of me. No one to disappoint. My shadow was everything to me. It was my saving grace. If I had not had it, I would have gone quite mad.”

“Gods damn it,” he murmured, shifting as if he would take me into his arms.

But I shoved against him and scuttled away, shouting, “No!”

I nearly tripped over my skirt as I made my feet.

I then whirled to him, backing away.

He had straightened and was facing me.

“I would wish you to come to me, my Silence,” he urged softly.

“And all this time I was not even his?” I asked.

His voice had changed to one I had never heard when he repeated, “Silence, I wish you to come to me.”

“I know why I have my shadow now, Mars,” I informed him. “I have come to understand it. I understand why I can disappear into nothing. This is because I was never even meant to be.”

“You were.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were, mia bellezza.”

I leaned toward him, emotion bubbling up in me, boiling me from the inside, and I screeched, “I wasn’t!”

He came at me then, and I struggled, I fought.

I did this because I had to flee, I did not know to where.

All I knew was I had to flee.

“I will not fight you, amore, but I will subdue you,” Mars said, doing just that. “But I do not wish to hurt you as I do, so please, calm for me.”

Abruptly, I did as he asked, finding myself caught tight in his arms.

I looked up to see his face, awash with concern, staring down at me.

“I believed,” I told him.

“What is it you believed?” he asked.

“That he…that he…that there was something there for him with me.”