“Then kill me.” Her voice, low and sultry, seethed fury.
The coursing fire exploded. He grabbed the table and sent it flying toward the opposite wall. “By thunder, Marietta, don’t think I won’t! I killed my brother for you. I won’t hesitate to kill again if you are idiot enough to rebel when you should rightfully be mine!”
The dual gasps, his mother’s piercing keen, pushed him forward. He was upon Marietta in two steps, grasping her shoulders and pulling her flush against him.
Now her eyes weren’t so cold. Now she couldn’t doubt of what he was capable. Better the horror on her face than the ice. “You did what?”
“It’s your own fault. Had you simply consented to an affair—but you refused me, every time you refused me, saying you could be with no one but your husband.” The fire shook him, shook her by extension. “What else was I to do? Wait for him to grow old and die, to claim you only when you were too faded to be of use to me? I have waited years, years for you!”
She tried to break free, the idiot woman. As if she could ever escape the power of their love, as if denying it would change how it had consumed them both. “Get off me.” Her voice shook with the same resonance, proving, even in her anger, that they were built for one another. “Get away from me! How could you? How could you kill your own brother?”
She pushed at his chest, shoved at his arms. Made him smile. That was the Mari he loved, full of passion and vim. “It was the simplest thing in the world, darling. Lure him away, lie in wait, plunge the knife into his stomach, and watch him die. I should have done it sooner. Then you would already be my wife.”
She managed to pull one of her arms free. Her eyes narrowed to yellow-green slits, she bared her teeth and pulled the arm back.
His smile faded when her fist slammed into his nose.
He was going to kill her. Marietta saw it flash in his eyes when she struck him. She saw the gleam of murder, pulsing moments before, snap from recollection to promise. And still she couldn’t regret embracing the whisper of those long-ago lessons from Isaac.
He had killed him. He had been the one to stab Lucien in that dark alleyway, not some random thief. The knowledge made every muscle quiver and contract.
One of Dev’s hands still gripped her upper arm with enough force to bruise her; with the other he dabbed at his nose, cursing when he saw the blood upon it. Fingers digging in still more, he jerked her forward, toward the back end of the car.
Mother Hughes’s cry went from animal whimper to sobbing, but he didn’t so much as glance at her.
“How could you do this, Dev?” She tried to plant her feet, but he was so much stronger. Every time she dug in, he simply jerked her onward. “You destroyed your family. You have undone us all. He loved you, he—”
“He was a braggart and a tyrant, always flaunting his advantages.” With one vicious yank, he opened the rear door.
Her stomach flew to her throat at the ground whizzing by outside. Would he toss her over? The ground was still all but flat around them; the fall might not kill her. But a river snaked just ahead. Would he wait until they were on the bridge?
She knew how to swim, but she would first have to escape her heavy clothing, and that might be impossible.
Despite her challenge to him a few minutes earlier, she had no desire to die. When he tried to pull her out the door, she braced her feet and free hand on the posts. “Let me go, you monster!”
Another nasty curse tripped off his tongue. He took a step onto the rickety, rocking metal grate between the two cars and slid open the door on the second one. Then, as if all her resistance were no more effective than a kitten’s, he picked her up and tossed her into the dark tomb of the freight car.
She landed hard on her hip, her ribs striking a crate that robbed her of breath.
Dev filled the whole opening, a black silhouette. “Maybe a few hours in here will calm you.”
“Calm me?” Wincing at the strain against what would surely be another set of bruises, she pushed back to her feet. “You killed my husband, and you expect a few hours in the dark will calm me?”
She flew his way, screaming when the door slammed shut before she could reach him. Unable to pound at him, she pounded at the door instead, tears mixing with the rage. “He was your brother! He loved you!”
Pain sent her to her knees. Not from the bruises, but from within. She might not have been the one to wield the dagger, but she had encouraged Dev, had made it so clear that the only thing between them was Lucien. Her hand had not held the knife, but his blood still stained her. “Oh God, forgive me.”
“Don’t you dare take the blame for anything he did.”