The breath turned thick in my throat. “I don’t know—”
“Yes, you do!” His green eyes blazed fiercely. “In your innermost heart, you know that we will always be together. That we are incapable of living without the other.”
The intensity of his stare burned through me, stripping my fears bare. I saw anew the man I loved, the man I had chosen to trust this past summer.
“Believe me,” Henry said, as though reading my mind. “I will never leave you.”
His deep voice flooded my senses, and I nodded before realizing what I had done.
“Say it,” he demanded. “I will hear it from your own lips.”
The words wobbled when I spoke. “You will never leave me.”
Relief washed over his face. “Blasted woman!” he laughed softly, and then buried his head in my neck. “Don’t ever scare me like that again. You’re stuck with me for life, Selah Kilbrid, and for the next if we can somehow manage it.”
I released a shuddering breath. “Oh, Henry, I’m so sorry. How could I have been such a fool?”
“Good question.”
“You were so angry at All Hallows, I didn’t know what to think. And then we argued again at the palace, and afterwards when I was in the garden with Jul—” I caught myself at the last second.
Henry twined his fingers through a lock of curls that had fallen loose during our struggle. “What happened in the garden with Julian?”
My heart skipped a beat. “Nothing...” I stammered, the one word hardly convincing even to my own ears.
A slight pressure tugged on my scalp as Henry brought the curls to his lips. “Don’t tell me it’s nothing,” he murmured, “when his meddling clearly contributed to our misunderstanding tonight.”
Damn my blabbering tongue! Stuck between lying to Henry and betraying Julian, one paltry excuse offered the slimmest hope of redemption. “I promised Julian not to tell.”
Henry pulled his head back to stare at me. Anxious at what he might find, I buried my face into his shirtfront, preferring to play ostrich rather than risk his probing eyes. Perhaps, if I didn’t say anything more, he might be satisfied and let the matter go. The methodic beating of his heart pulsed in my cheek, and I wished yet again for the ability to read his thoughts.
Henry sat very still, and I noticed that his breathing had matched my own. “I see,” he said at last. “Well, if you’re bound by such a promise, I will confront Lord Stroud myself in the morning.”
I jerked my head up, receiving a painful tug of hair from the sudden movement. “You can’t do that!”
The curl fell free, brushing against my cheek. “Do you really expect me to act otherwise?” He managed to look surprised, as though I had just told him to walk to China, rather than avoid a simple conversation. “Somehow Julian has managed to fill your head with poison, and I’ve every intention of learning just what he said. I can only imagine the fabrications he has created to shake your trust in me so markedly.”
“Please, don’t,” I pleaded. “I wanted to tell you, but Julian forbade it. I promise never to doubt you again.”
Henry released a long sigh. “I’m done with secrets, and after what happened tonight, I deserve the truth, one way or another.” He reached up to tuck the stray curl behind my ear. His hand lingered, and he traced a finger along the line of my cheek. “Selah, you may not see it this way, but keeping the truth from me is in essence a form of falsehood. And even our love is not immune to lies.”
His words brought me up short. “But...I...I thought...” My voice wavered to a halt.
What did I think?
Over the years, secrets and half-truths had become second nature, a necessary evil for someone like me to survive in the human world. This past summer, I had chosen to risk everything by revealing my ancestry to Henry. Certainly, Julian should have the same right to decide whom to trust with such an important confidence.
A dark shadow crossed my thoughts. What if a secret becomes more than just a secret? What if it is used to conceal ulterior motives and manipulate another person?
Julian must have known that by swearing me to secrecy about our kinship, I would be severely limited in relating our private conversations to Henry—the very conversations he used to plant seeds of doubt by filling my head with dreadful stories about his mother. To be sure, Julian had crossed the line of decorum and tried to turn my heart from Henry. But did these actions nullify any prior claims to my confidence?
Looking back on our brief acquaintance, I now saw a precarious stack of secrets, all rising up from the simple request for anonymity. And who would be hurt the most when the stack came tumbling down, which it would inevitably do if tonight were any indication.
Good heavens! A secret is a dangerous thing, indeed.