Her anger abruptly rose to the fore again. Why had he asked for an apology when he had no intention of accepting any? Why had he forced her to abase herself for nothing at all? “Perhaps I wouldn't have had to do any of this if you hadn't been as dense as a peat bog. I've met Miss von Schweppenburg. I don't know what you see in her, but she would have made you about as happy as a drowned cat. And she never would have married you anyway. She is her mother's puppet. She has less spine than a bowl of trifle and—”
“That's enough,” he said, his voice dangerously smooth. “Now, was that so hard, a bit of honesty?”
She suddenly felt wildly stupid, ranting on about Miss von Schweppenburg, of all people.
“I wish you well,” he said. “But I would prefer not to see you again, not in two months, two years, or two decades.”
It finally occurred to her that he was dead serious. That what she had done was something hideous, beyond the pale. Unforgivable.
She raced ahead of him and blocked the door with her body. “Please, please, please listen to me. I cannot bear the thought of living without you.”
“Bear it,” he said grimly. “You'll live. Now kindly move out of my way.”
“But you don't understand. I love you.”
“Love?” he sneered. “So it's love now, is it? You mean to tell me that love drove you crazed with longing, thereby smashing your moral compass and whipping you down the primrose path?”
She flinched. He had taken the words she meant to say and slapped her with them.
Slowly, he advanced toward her. For the first time in her life, she shrank before another human being. But she refused to move aside, refused to let him simply sail on out of her life. Bracing his arms on either side of her, he brought his face very close to hers and fixed her with a brutal stare. “I wish you hadn't mentioned love, Lady Tremaine.” His voice was low, and cold as ashes. “Right now I am this close to throwing you against the wall. Again, and again, and again.”
She whimpered.
“It so happens that I know a thing or two about not-quite-requited love, my dear. It so happens that I have lived in that state for a while. I have not seduced Theodora so that she must marry me. I have not misrepresented my fortune. I have not forged some letter that declared my cousin's sudden death, clearing a path to the ducal title for myself. And when she writes me and tells me of her mother berating her because she is ineffectual with potential suitors, do you think I write back informing her that she must regale them with her fear of childbirth and her dislike for running a household?
“No, I tell her if she cannot look them in the eyes, she can look at the ridges of their noses and chances are they won't know the difference. I tell her that smiling with her head lowered is almost as good as smiling with her face raised to someone, perhaps even more alluring. And do you know why I give advice that is contrary to my own interests in the matter?”
She shook her head miserably, wishing time to go back, wishing all her crimes undone. She didn't want to hear about Theodora, didn't want to be reminded that he remained above reproach while she had stooped to swindling.
But he went on inexorably. “Because she trusts me and I do not abuse her trust to further my chances with her. Because being in love does not give you any excuse to be less than honorable, Lady Tremaine.”
He pulled back from her abruptly, his breathing uneven. “You may think you are in love, Gigi, but I doubt very much that you know what love is. Because it has been all about you, what you want, what you need, what you can and cannot do without.”
He moved further away. Too late did Gigi remember that the bedchamber had two doors.
He opened the second door and left without another word.
And she could only watch as he disappeared from her view, from her life.
Chapter Seventeen
23 May 1893
He had not done too badly, considering the ungodly chemise she had sported. The jolt of lust had been explosive, the jolt of anger almost nonexistent.
I must be getting mellow with age, Camden mused. How he used to fly into a righteous rage when she'd barge her way into his cramped apartment in Paris, then fling aside her long mantle to reveal bits of provocative nothing that would have made the Marquis de Sade drop his whip in stupefaction.
The insult. That she believed he'd let his penis control his mind, that if she could get him to bed, all would be forgiven. He had bleakly delighted in hauling her bodily out to the stair landing and slamming his door in her face. But such vicious enjoyment never lasted long. Over his own pounding heartbeat and harsh breathing, he'd strain to hear every lonely, echoing footstep of her descent.
He'd already be standing by the window in his dark, minuscule salle de séjour as she exited into the street. She'd look up, her face all adolescent anger and bewildered pain, her person stooped and small in the light of the streetlamp. Something inside him broke, without fail, each time.