Anger surged up, hot and comfortable. It was the only emotion he could trust right now. “Abigail, you are being absurd! It is not my fault that I cannot marry you, so why should we be punished for it by having to keep a distance between us? No woman has ever made me feel the way you do. Does that not count for anything?”
“Even if your family were not an issue, you would not marry me.” Something akin to anger flashed in her eyes, too. “Yes, you love me, I know that. We have something amazing between us, Titus, but it is not enough. We are too different. Look at us. In the past week we have shown ourselves for who we truly are: you are a fine, popular Roman man of nobility, with business concerns and invitations to all the events in the city, and you thrive on that. But I am a Jewish woman raised with strict beliefs, and I have spent too many years as a slave to feel comfortable in a crowd that I am not serving. Surely you remember what Aristotle said about relationships between unequals.”
“I do not care what Aristotle said!” Titus roared. “It is irrelevant anyway. In the important matters, Abigail, we are equals. You yourself have affirmed that. You are my teacher–”
“What lesson have you learned at my hand?” She tossed out an arm in a defiant show. “I teach you the Law and you disobey it, I teach you the Prophets, and you decide their wisdom interferes with your pleasure. I cannot live like that, Titus, not if I want to keep from falling into the same despair I knew with Jason. Why did Jesus bother making the sacrifice he did if I am going to refuse his salvation?”
He dared not step closer lest he do something he would later regret. “This is not about salvation. This is about you being angry that I will not do as Jason did and be badgered into making you my wife.”
“I never asked to be made his wife.” Her voice broke on a sob, but she did not stop. “But I will not be made your whore.”
It infuriated him that she would say that again when he had already told her he did not want to hear her speak of herself that way. He forced himself back into his icy rage. “I did not make you a whore. If you are, you chose it for yourself.”
Abigail’s fists balled up and pressed against her legs. Her spine was rigid. Angry and hurt and determined, she looked more beautiful than ever. “This is not how I wanted to handle this.” Her voice was so tight it sounded like a plucked string. “I am sorry I lost my patience, that I grew angry. I hoped to reason with you, to remind us both of the decisions we made on Golgotha. I had hoped that we could return to the path together, help each other.”
Titus regarded her for a long moment. “If you think I can be your friend again without touching you, you are mistaken.”
“That was my fear. That was why I moved in here. Phillip will be guarding me all night. Attempt to touch me again, and I will not be able to keep him from doing what he has wanted to do all week.”
Titus balked, sneered, and started to turn away. “I do not need you so badly that I would force my way into your room. There are plenty of women willing to satisfy me if you are not, Abigail.”
“Titus.”
He paused at the door but did not turn around.
She was silent a moment, though he swore he could hear each painful pound of her heart. Surely it was not his own–surely his had stopped beating altogether. “Please, do not shun Samuel because of me. He adores you, and it will upset him if you ignore him because of your anger with me.”
Titus made no reply, he simply wrenched open the door and surged outside, slamming it closed again behind him. That she thought she had to remind him not to be a monster with the child was as insulting as the threat had been. He stormed past Phillip and Miriam, who gave him a wide berth and hurried back to their mistress.
He spotted Caelia standing just where he had left her, looking expectant and eager. At least some women seemed to retain their loyalty; certainly, she had gone to his father when he was away, that was only to be expected. As a slave, she had no say over that. But had she not been waiting as soon as he returned? Had she not been hoping to return to him, to be his again? And even over the past months with Abigail present, she had not given up that hope.
He did not hesitate. He strode to her, pulled her to him, crushing her, and devoured her mouth. She responded as though he were the first taste of water she had received after a month in the wilderness. He ended the embrace as abruptly as he had begun it, stepping away. Part of him wanted to command her to wait for him in his room that night.
Perhaps he would have, had the kiss stirred anything but revulsion within him. “Go back to my father, Caelia. You have nothing I want.”
Chapter Forty-One