“How could you not tell me?”

“I thought Bedwyr did. He said that he had.”

“He had not.” Her voice wavered. She forced it to steadiness. “I was obliged to learn it abruptly when you walked through that door.”

Luc reveled in the luxury of seeing her face. Her cheeks were touched with pink, her cornflower eyes were wide, and her lips were perfect, as always, soft and pink as raspberries and ample. He wanted his on them. He wanted a reunion kiss that would end up with them in the grass and half dressed, as they’d been on that beach too many miserable weeks earlier for him to contemplate.

But she looked sick to her stomach.

He halted at a distance from her. “I am sorry I failed to tell you the entire truth about myself.” He bowed deeply. The cutting pain in his side had not been so acute in a sennight, but this was worth it. “I beg your forgiveness.”

The cornflowers opened wide. “You are sorry you did not tell me the entire truth? What sort of partial truth could you have told, I wonder?”

“Partial truth?” Luc’s impatience got the best of him. “Are my title and position so abhorrent to you?”

“Your title and position?”

He shook his head, befuddled. Then the reason for her astonishment struck him in his sore gut like another cold knife.

“Bedwyr did not tell you that I was alive.” Not possible. “Did he?”

“He did not.” Her throat worked against emotion.

“Dear God.” He stepped forward. “I never imagined he would not. He did it to punish me rather than you, undoubtedly. But I should kill him for it. I was unable to travel until yesterday, but if I had known, I would have written to you.”

With a squaring of her shoulders, she seemed to make a decision. “Why didn’t you tell me before who you really were?”

“I would have.” He rubbed his jaw. “I intended to.”

She looked away. “Men deceive as a rule.”

“I intended less to deceive than to—”

“It matters nothing to me. You are nothing to me.”

“Yet your eyes were bright with relief when you saw me at the house. You deceive yourself, duchess.”

“Do not call me that.”

“That you care at all what I call you is instructive.” He moved closer. Her shoulders seemed to flatten against the wall behind her. He traced her lovely profile, and his fingers itched to play in the coppery strands that dangled from the heavy knot of hair at her neck. “You care for me,” he said.

“I cared for you when I believed you dead.” Her voice quivered. “You were more interesting then.”

A constriction in his chest loosened. “If it will hold your attention, I shall gladly die again. Name the date and time.”

“You are outrageously amusing, my lord. You ought to gather a theater troupe and put on a traveling show.” Still she would not look at him. “Perhaps invite Lord Bedwyr to join you. The two of you would make money hand over fist.”

“I have enough money already. And I simply cannot hear you call me ‘my lord’ in that disgusted tone. It makes me want to write the king and tell him I won’t have the title after all.”

Finally her lips twitched. Then she seemed to lose the battle within her entirely; her brow softened and she turned her face to him. Luc thought he could die now indeed. To have her gaze upon him with such grace and charity was the blessing of heaven.

“I am . . .” She seemed to struggle for words. “I am glad you are well.”

“Glad? Is that all I am to have from you?” He reached for her and curved his hand around her cheek. Arabella jerked away.

Anger flashed in his eye. “You will not let me touch you? You let Bedwyr touch you.”

“I did not.”

“He said you embraced him. Did he lie about that too?”

“I—” She sought in her memory. In the garden the earl had held her. “I did—”

“You allowed that raking libertine cad of a—”

“It was an embrace of comfort only, the briefest—” She cut off her justification. “I needn’t defend myself to you.”

“You jolly well do.”

“I wept! Don’t you see? I wept for you, for your death that I caused, and he comforted me. That is all. Mere momentary comfort. Now here you are, having lied to me and made me grieve, and you expect me to fall into your arms?”

“Yes.”

She gaped. “Your arrogance seems to have survived along with your body.”

He flattened his palm to the wall behind her head and leaned in. “My body survived, indeed, and it remembers the touch of yours. Quite well.”

Now her body betrayed her. His teasing she could withstand. His closeness she could not.

“My cousin says that you intend to marry Reiner,” he said.

“He told you that, but he neglected to tell me you were alive?”

“He is a contrary fellow,” he said a bit grimly. “Too much untrammeled adulation, I think.” He leaned in to the side of her face and seemed to breathe in deeply. “But by God, what seeing you does to me. All else fades away.” His lips brushed her earlobe, stirring soft pleasure deep in her. “What are your intentions toward Reiner?”

He was alive, well, and he was touching her. She had dreamed of this. She had wept through entire nights dreaming of this.

She must make herself form sensible words. “I haven’t any intentions toward him. I hadn’t any since the moment I allowed you to touch me on that beach.” Days before that.

“Good,” he murmured. The tip of his tongue traveled the tender dip beneath her ear, then his mouth found her neck. “Because I would have to call him out for marrying my wife. As I am the better shot, he would perish, then his country would be left leaderless and there would be a whole international incident. It wouldn’t be pretty. It is far better this way.”

She dragged herself from pleasure and sidestepped out from under him. “I am not truly your wife.”

His arm fell to his side. “The priest said, ‘You have declared your consent to be man and wife.’ I believe you are.”

“I did not hear him say that.”

“The moment must have overcome you. I understand that is common with brides.”

“It was not a legal wedding.”

“You signed a marriage contract.”

“I signed a blank page.”

“It is no longer blank. Friendly elves that I encountered whilst convalescing in the woods revealed the invisible ink on that page that now makes it quite clear you are wed to me. Isn’t magic remarkable?”

“How can you jest about this?” she cried.

He came forward, took her face gently between his hands and brought his mouth an inch from hers.

“I jest not. We are wed. Truly and validly.” His breath feathered over her lips, and all the life in her seemed to heat up.

She had trusted him, believed in his honor, given him her body, and all along he had been lying to her.

“If I tell you to release me,” she said, his scent and warmth all around her, tangling her thoughts as he always did, “you will do so.”

“Are you certain?” His voice was deeply husky. His lips brushed hers like a whisper. She closed her eyes against the sensations of her weakness.

“Yes. I am certain. Release me now.”

For a taut moment he did not move. Then with a snarl he released her and backed away.

“What do you want of me?” he demanded. “Another apology? A dozen apologies? Then you have them.” He threw forth his hand. “I was wrong. I made a mistake. I was accustomed to playing that part and saw no reason to inform you otherwise.”

“I don’t care why you lied to me, only that you did. Don’t you see?”

“I see that given the outcome, you are making a mountain of a mole hill.”

“You forced me to marry you under false pretenses!”

“I have never forced you to do anything.” He advanced on her again, coming as close as he could without touching her. “But I will now, little governess. I will force you to care. I will make you care more than you can bear.”

“Now you threaten me?”

“How you can consider that a threat, I have no notion.”