Selfish Is the Heart Read online

  “No. I told you then, as I tell you now, I would be a good husband to you. Better even than many who claim to wed for love alone and no other reason. At least with me, you’d know my intentions were ever to you and our family first, before all else.”

  Annalise put her hand back in her lap and shook her head slowly. “A husband who cannot make love to his wife? You said you wished heirs, Jacquin. How would you expect to get them upon me, when the . . .” She swallowed at the memory, which still stung after all this time. “When the very act of touching me intimately caused you such distress?”

  He paced afresh, boots clacking on the wood. “I was a fool. I allowed myself to depend too much upon the aid of worm and herb, thinking I needed—”

  She stood, then, to pace herself. Heart pounding. Stomach just a little sick at the memory even now. “I don’t want a husband who has to drug himself to make love to me!”

  “It would be different now,” Jacquin said in a low voice. “If you would only allow me to prove it.”

  Somehow, Annalise found herself in his arms, her hands cupping his face. It seemed strange to look into his eyes without having to tip back her head or stand on her toes. Stranger to smell a whiff of pomade and sharp-spiced cologne.

  “It’s true I came here for the wrong reasons. But I think now I’ve discovered the right ones.”

  Jacquin shook his head, took her palms and kissed each one. His gaze bore into her. “I know you don’t believe me, but I do love you.”

  “I do believe it. In your way.”

  He let her go and stalked to the railing to look out across the pond. “I shouldn’t have let you go.”

  “You had no choice.”

  He shook his head without looking at her. “I had a choice. I could’ve kept you close to me. Brought the priests, had a wedding . . .”

  She laughed. “You think you might have forced me to be your bride? Oh, Jacquin, I thought you knew me better than that.”

  She frowned a moment later when she saw he was serious. “You mean it.”

  “We’d have been wed a month already. My babe already planted in your belly, perhaps.” He turned to her, jaw set and eyes icy. “None of this nonsense with you running away, me having to face your parents—”

  “My parents! You were happy to have me come here so that we might delay the wedding without dissolving it! So that you might still have the benefit of working at my father’s side without the mess of either of us being expected to find another partner! This was what we agreed together, Jacquin, yet now you make it out that somehow this was all my decision? All my fault?”

  She stomped her foot, not calm or composed, unable to keep her voice from rising. “You blame me?”

  “The only person who finds your service here worthy is your lady mother! And her only because she’s so far gone into her religious madness she believes you’ll be the one to do it, to provide your patron with that moment of solace that will at last fill Sinder’s Quiver.”

  Jacquin had ever been respectful of her mother, no matter the woman’s fantasies. To hear him speak of her with such derision sent a wave of unease through Annalise. She swallowed the bitter taste of bile on the back of her tongue.

  “Why did you come here?”

  “When you didn’t answer my first letter, and weeks had passed without hearing from you, I realized how much I missed you, Annalise.”

  She gave a soft snort at that. “Surely you had enough to occupy you, what with working for my father and your other pursuits.”

  “None of it was as merry as my time spent with you, this I swear. I missed you. I understood why you left, and I wished to make amends. Where’s the harm in that?”

  “No harm. But this changes naught.” Annalise leaned against the gazebo’s other railing. “Much has changed for me, in ways I’d never thought possible.”

  “We have a contract,” he reminded her. “If you dissolve it, your father will have to pay the price. And it’s a steep one. The business has flourished since I joined him.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Are you threatening me?”

  “No, no. Land Above, no,” Jacquin protested. “I swear to you, not that. I’m merely telling you I’ve come all this way, at no great ease—”

  “I know the hardship of the journey, Jacquin. I made it without benefit of your luxurious transportation, as a matter of fact.”

  Solemnly, he nodded. “I know it. And I can see your time here’s been good for you. Made you . . . amenable. It’s most pleasing.”

  This raised a brow. “Surely I’ve not changed so much.”

  He laughed a little. “Sweetheart, you’ve ever been unhesitantly spoken and forward with your thinking. Why else have you found it so difficult to find a suitor?”

  Anger, thin and cold, burned in her chest. “My difficulties with courtship cannot be traced to my personality, for I know full well my face and figure more than made up for it. Men—most men,” she amended with a slightly derisive look at him she didn’t bother to hide, “seem to put up with a lot in order to wet their wicks. If I had difficulty finding suitors, it was because of my father’s lack of business sense and the six sisters who came before me, eating up all the dowry.”

  “All the more reason for you to renew our betrothal.”

  “Why? Because I might never have another offer?”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  Annalise sniffed. “It’s what you implied, Jacquin, and you know it. I must be honest. If this is how you’ve come to plight your troth, you’re fair disappointing in the execution of it!”

  “Please, please, sweetheart, can’t we talk about this? Will you not allow me to show I’ve changed? Not my heart,” he said quietly, “for that ever was yours. But my body.”

  She allowed him to take her in his arms and kiss her. His mouth, so familiar, no longer urged her to sighs, but she parted her lips for him anyway to let him stroke his tongue inside. His groan startled her enough to pull away, but his hands gripped her hips and held her close.

  “See?” He whispered against her mouth. “Or rather, feel.”

  True, the heat and hardness of his groin between them seemed to indicate arousal. Annalise sighed into Jacquin’s kiss this time, closing her eyes and letting his tongue and hands urge a reaction from her. It wasn’t working, not when her mind filled with an image of dark eyes, dark hair, broad shoulders, and that stern, unforgiving mouth . . .

  “See? Yes, sweetheart, you see, we could be good together.” Jacquin’s voice had gone hoarse. He pushed her to the bench to slide a hand between her thighs, her gown a barrier to his touch. “Just allow me to prove it, and I swear you’ll have no more qualms.”

  They’d kissed many times before, much this way, and Jacquin was correct. It did feel different. It felt . . . wrong.

  “No.” She pushed at his chest until he left off.

  Breath hitching, pink on his cheeks, eyes a little glazed, Jacquin blinked. “What?”

  “This isn’t right.”

  “Of course it’s right. It’s as right as anything ever was. We’re betrothed, sweetheart. You agreed to be my bride and I your husband, and I’m here to show you it can work. It will work.”

  He kissed her again, for even longer this time, but though his hands roamed over her body Annalise felt nothing but resignation. Was this what it would be like to serve a patron, she thought, her mouth taking his kiss but naught else.

  “Where is your head?” Jacquin snapped, and got up from the bench to run a hand over his hair. “Not with me, I’m fair certain of that.”

  “Your mercy,” Annalise said.

  He turned. “You’ll not even give me a chance?”

  “I . . . Jacquin . . . I . . .” Annalise sought words she couldn’t find.

  He got on his knees in front of her, clasping her hands tight. “Sweetheart, I do swear to you I will be ever the most faithful of husbands to you, if only you’ll come back to me.”

  Annalise kissed his fingers and put aside hi