Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 112133 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112133 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
“That won’t do. Why would people want to take baths in a pool with some shriveled, soggy woman lurking at the bottom of it? She might grab their ankles.”
“Echo and Narcissus?” he suggested.
“How does that one go?”
“I’m no storyteller like Darryl. I don’t think I even remember it correctly.”
She squeezed his arm. “Just do your best.”
“Well, as I recall, Narcissus was a good-looking fellow. Beautiful, they said, and very vain. He spent all his time gazing at his own reflection in a pool. And Echo—she was a nymph—she was in love with him, I suppose. But she had a curse or something, and she had no words of her own. She was only able to repeat what others said to her. So he would sit by the pool, and she would just stand behind him quietly adoring. Until one day, Narcissus said to his own reflection, ‘I love you,’ and Echo was at long last able to say ‘I love you’ to him.”
“And what happened?”
“The vain fool never took notice of her. She wasted away to just an echo of her voice. And he stared at his own reflection until he went mad with frustration and stabbed himself.” Rhys chuckled.
Meredith didn’t. She didn’t say anything for a good long while.
They turned the street corner, and the way was more shadowed. The night had grown late, and they were alone. She clutched his arm in the dark.
“Merry? Are you well?”
“I used to watch you.”
They stopped walking.
“I used to watch you,” she repeated, turning to him by slow degrees. First her head pivoted, then her body. Finally, she lifted her chin and looked him in the face. “At the pool. When I was a girl. I used to follow you there in secret and hide behind the rocks.”
“What?” Rhys felt as though he’d had the breath knocked out of him. He was stunned. “Why would you do that?”
“It was wrong, I know it.” Her words were a rush. “I shouldn’t have. But I was young and … and curious.”
Curious? Anger swelled inside him. The same as it always did, when he picked himself up from a blow.
Grasping her by the elbow, he pulled her into a darkened alcove where a small flight of stairs met the street. “Just what did you see?”
“You.” She swallowed hard. Her lip trembled. “All of you.”
His heart stalled for a moment, until his vicious oath spurred it back to life.
That pool had been his refuge after a beating. His one safe place. There he would examine the damage to his body, soothe his wounds with the cool spring water, try to wash himself clean of the blood and shame. And to think, someone had been spying on him from the rocks, all that time? It churned his stomach. He’d been naked, in every way. Vulnerable. All those purpling bruises and raw, angry welts … she’d seen them. She’d seen them all.
It had taken him years to cover all the wounds his father had wrought. He’d healed from some and hidden the rest under other, newer scars. Or at least, he thought he’d hidden them. But he hadn’t. Meredith had seen them. Every single one. Even the ones he couldn’t have seen himself.
Adding to that mortification, he’d been an adolescent with natural male impulses, desperate for even a fleeting moment of pleasure …
Damn it to hell. So that’s how she knew he favored his left hand.
He dragged in a breath and choked on the air. “I can’t believe this.”
“Rhys, please.”
He turned away, disgusted. Disgusted with her, in some measure. But mostly disgusted by himself. Had he truly dreamed that Meredith would marry him? Willingly? Even women who hadn’t been witness to such shame were repelled by his touch.
He tugged at his cravat, pulling it loose from his throat. The air felt too thick to breathe. She knew. She knew everything.
“Please.” She grabbed his sleeve and laid her other hand to his cheek, tugging him to face her. He turned his head, but he still couldn’t bear to meet her eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice breaking. “It was terribly wrong of me, and I know that now. But I followed you everywhere. I couldn’t help it. You were strong and wild and always in motion, and everything I wished I could be, and I … I was fascinated by you. Infatuated, to tell the truth.”
A derisive laugh caught in his throat. “Infatuated.”
“Yes,” she replied, her voice strengthening. “Yes. I adored you. I was mad for you. God help me, I still am now.”
She slid both hands to his face and pulled his head down, brushing a kiss to his jaw, then the corner of his mouth. Then his cheek. Then each of his closed eyes in turn. His own hands stayed clenched in fists at his sides. Part of him was aching for the closeness, but he didn’t trust himself to touch her.